Conscience
The
next stage we confront in considering our moral decision making/lives is to ask
about the mutuality of relationship between our body and soul. One asks how can
we make a choice of good over evil in the face of multiple choices: how can I
do good and avoid evil?
What is Conscience?
Conscience
is a judgment of the intellect in which we as a human person recognize the
moral quality (good or bad) of some concrete human behavior. The word
“conscience” comes from two Latin words, the preposition “cum” translated “with
or together” and the word “scientia” which is translated “knowledge.”
So
conscience etymologically means to “have knowledge together with.” While the
individual conscience is a subjective act of reasoning, the label “conscience” indicates
the social nature of the moral conscience
implying that conscience is not solely a subjective reality but something
shaped by and learned within the communities in which we live.
The
basis of conscience in the subjective is the fact that as creatures created by
the godlike constitution of our being, we possess what Paul wrote to the
community of Christians in Rome.
Romans 2:14
that
(the Gentiles) who do not have the law (of Moses, revealed in Scripture) do by
nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do
not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their
hearts while their conscience also bears witness . . .
Vatican
II,Gaudium and Spes
Conscience is then an inner sense, a capacity
to recall that which is inherent to every person. It is the place that God
speaks to us. (16).
The
objective basis of conscience is the ongoing process of turning to what is true
and good. We find the conversation that leads us to a moral decision from our
own experiences in life, the experiences of family, friends, colleagues,
experts in the field in which we are called to make a decision, we analyze and
test narratives of our communities, images, language, laws, rituals, actions
and norms that those around us who live moral lives. For the Christian, the
Word of God, the convictions of our creeds, the lives of the holy ones (saints)
who have gone before us, the informed judgment of theologians, etc., but most
of all, the moral instruction of the teaching authority of the Church--the
teaching office of the pope, the bishop of Rome and bishops worldwide (Gula, in
Hoose, 1998, p. 115).
The Catholic
Catechism
Conscience is a
judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a
concrete act that one is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or
has already completed. In all one says and does, man is obliged to follow
faithfully what one knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of one’s
conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine
law. (1778)
The great Oxford scholar John Henry Cardinal Newman described
the conscience as
a law of the mind;
. . . not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of responsibility, of duty, of a
threat and a promise.... (Conscience) is a messenger of Him, who, both in
nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by
his representatives. Conscience is the original Vicar of Christ.” (‘Letter to
the Duke of Norfolk,' V, in Certain
Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching II, London: Longmans Green, 1885, pg. 248)
Catholic
Catechism
Moral conscience
present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do
good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that
are good and denouncing those that are evil [cf. Romans 1:32
.]. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good
to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he
listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking. (1777)
Formation
of Conscience
As one can imagine, conscience is not just “there.” It
requires growth, development, exercise. We call this the formation of
conscience. As mentioned above, we form a good conscience by a continuing
passion for what is good and what is true. We search out the answers from those
resources that are credible and well-informed. Because not all of us are top
rate scholars—philosophers and theologians—we need to seek out the opinions and
teaching of those who are well formed and well informed.
High among those credible individuals is the Vicar of
Christ, the Bishop of Rome, who enjoys the charism of truth in the gift of
infallibility (Matthew 16). We live in a special time of the lives of two
pontiffs who are exceptional in their personal holiness and intelligence, the recent
John Paul the Great and the present Pope Benedict XVI. Their scholarship and
writings are so easily available to us these days on the World Wide Web. The
Vatican Web site offers easy access to all papal teachings. Search engines can
reveal not only those teachings, but credible and authoritative commentaries and
explanations of those teachings, as well as the writings of the great teachers
(Fathers and Doctors) in the history of the church for two centuries on the
subjects of moral interpretation.
Another important moral formation of conscience is the
healthy and correct development of one’s own emotions and passions. We are
creatures of very strong movement of our hearts and heads at an emotional level
and they get in the way of acknowledging what we know to be the right course of
action. All the electronic media, so attractive to us these days, form our
emotions and passions in ways often contrary to the Gospel and the teaching of
the Church. Our emotions and passions have the power to sway us from the best
of right moral arguments.
The continuing formation of our consciences includes
cultivating our emotions to go along with what we already know to be morally
right. Expose your self to right emotional reactions. Read the loves of the
Saints; pray for right development of emotions. Cardinal Ratzinger reminded his
hearers (and us) in 1991 that the “high road to truth and goodness is not a
comfortable one.” We must be prepared for personal tension and social
contradiction in making a right moral decision.
The
Supremacy of Conscience
Our Church has always recognized the supremacy of the
conscience. The origins of this supremacy can be found in St. Paul’s teachings
of eating meat offered to idols in his first letter to the Church at Corinth
(8:1-18). If your conscience has been well formed--if you have sought out right
counsel--and if you have mature control of your emotions and passions, your
conscience--the voice of God in your spirit--is inviolable.
Jesus put it one way: “Render to Caesar the things that are
Caesar’s and to God the things that belong to God” (Matthew 22:21). In our own
time, John Paul the Great wrote an encyclical entitled Splendor Veritatis (The
Splendor of Truth) in which he defended the moral law that is found in
every human heart. Peter reminded the Jews of his time that “it is better to
obey God than to obey men” (Acts 5:29). But it bears reminding that as in most
things in human nature, the supremacy of conscience is not an absolute
supremacy. Supremacy involves responsibility that one has sought the counsel of
those who hand on the teaching of the moral law, the best living authorities
and the best traditions of the past. Then with the awareness of role of our
emotions and passions—attending to our own active faculties—we can come to a
right moral decision.
Guilt
and Conscience
It is not an uncommon criticism from the secular world
today that we are a “guilt-ridden” people. Other Christians easily stereotype
us Catholic Christians by what they often call a “guilt laden lifestyle.” How easily they misunderstand that part of the
nature of conscience is guilt. Without guilt the full exercise of conscience is
retarded. “The feeling of guilt, the capacity to recognize guilt, belongs
essentially to the spiritual make-up of the person” wrote Cardinal Ratzinger,
now Pope Benedict XVI (1991). “This feeling of guilt disturbs the false calm of
conscience and could be called conscience’s complaint against (one’s own)
self-satisfied existence.” The Cardinal went on to say that as physical pain
signals a disturbance of one’s normal physical bodily functioning, so also does
guilt function as a disturbance for one’s normal spiritual functioning for an
erroneous conscience. He stated that “whoever is no longer capable of
perceiving guilt is spiritually ill . . . all persons need guilt feelings.”
Reference
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, 2007. On Conscience, Ignatius Press: San Francisco, CA
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture texts are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
© 2011 Robert J. Schihl
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