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F. Formation of Conscience (Veritatis Splendor)
In discussing the sexual sins, we applied the truths
about the dignity and value of the human person and the truths about love
to specific acts. Implicitly, we accepted the truths of the Church's
teaching, including the commandments, about certain human acts. How is
this attitude towards truth and the commandments reconciled with the
Church's teaching that our consciences are to judge the rightness and
wrongness of our acts?
It is absolutely true that all of us are to follow
our consciences in judging specific acts, but conscience is "to apply
the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to
express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and
now." (See Pope John Paul II,
The
Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no. 32.) In other words, it
is necessary to relate the general norms of morality (the truth revealed
in Christ and taught by the Church) to our own specific acts. This task is
performed by our consciences. Since judgments are made by our intellects
and our consciences make judgments, the human conscience is a function of
the human intellect.
"God provides for man differently from the way
in which he provides for beings which are not persons [e.g., the animals].
He cares for man not 'from without' through the laws of physical nature,
but 'from within', through reason, which by its natural knowledge of God's
eternal law, is consequently able to show man the right direction to take
in his free actions." (See Pope John Paul II,
The
Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no. 43.) Animals, plants
and inanimate creation cannot know and choose their own acts. Instinct and
physical laws replace knowledge and choice for the animals, plants, and
inanimate creation. But persons have intellects and wills. We can know and
choose. Therefore, God, acknowledging our dignity and value as persons
with minds and wills, allows us to know and choose our own acts. But He
also allows us to know what is good and what is evil. "The role of
human reason [conscience] in discovering and applying the moral law .
. . calls for that creativity and originality typical of the person, the
source and cause of his own deliberate acts. . . . At the heart of the
moral life we thus find the principle of a 'rightful autonomy' of man, the
personal subject of his actions. The moral law has its origin in God
and always finds its source in him: at the same time, by virtue of
natural reason, which derives from divine wisdom, it is a properly
human law. Indeed, as we have seen, the natural law 'is nothing other
than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we
understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave us this
light and this law to man at creation.' The rightful autonomy of the
practical reason [conscience] means that man possesses in himself his own
law, received from the Creator." (See Pope John Paul II,
The
Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no 40.) Thus, Pope John
Paul II answers the question posed above about the relationship between
truth and the commandments.
All of us need to appreciate the almost
incomprehensible gift God extended to us in allowing us to participate
through our consciences in His role as Creator. He established the laws of
the universe. But, these are not imposed on us as they are on the animals.
Rather, through our consciences, we can know what these norms of creation
are and then we legislate them for ourselves and further, we choose
whether to follow them. Far from violating freedom, the role of our
consciences preserves freedom because the law we follow is one we give to
ourselves!!! Of course, God could have simply imposed His law on us as He
did on the animals, plants, and inanimate creation, but that would have
destroyed us as free beings. We would have been reduced to the level of
non-persons. As it is, we know the truths of creation through our reason
and we ourselves are our own lawgivers. Then, we choose to follow this law
or not. In this fashion, God respects the intellects and the free wills He
gave us. "God willed to leave man in the power of his own
counsel." (See Pope John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth,
Veritatis Splendor, no 38.) The moral norms, the truths about human
dignity and love, as well as the commandments, are written "not on
tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (See Pope John Paul
II, The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no 45.) Therefore,
on the basis of God's revelation of His own acts, the human conscience
evaluates each human act.
It is vital to note that conscience does not
determine what is good and evil. If our consciences could determine good
and evil, we would be equal to the Creator. The Creator establishes the
way things are. We do not. Certainly, our consciences do not establish
what is good and evil, what is right and wrong. "The judgment of
conscience does not establish the law. ...'Conscience is not an
independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is
evil. Rather there is profoundly imprinted upon it a principle of
obedience vis-a-vis the objective norm which establishes and conditions
the correspondence of its decisions with the commands and prohibitions
which are at the basis of human behaviour'." (See Pope John Paul II, The
Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no 60.)
Conscience cannot be the source of truth. If that
were the case, each of us would establish our own reality, our own set of
norms. In the end, this leads to a radical subjectivism where nothing
would be right or wrong, good and evil, for everyone. Each person would
determine for himself or herself what is right and what is wrong. If
someone's conscience establishes slavery as a good, then for him or her,
that would be good. Even if it were determined by the slave that slavery
was evil, it would not matter as long as the one who thought slavery was
good had the greater power. In other words, a radical subjectivism which
allows each one to determine what is right and wrong from moment to moment
leads to a world where "might makes right." There could be no
laws at all expect insofar as they were forced upon us by a powerful
force--a dictator or even a mob. In other words, civil laws would not be
right or wrong, but only the will of the lawgiver, the dictator or some
other power. We might have a different sense of right from wrong (from the
dictator--because our consciences might establish a different set of good
and evil acts), but we would be powerless to enforce it against the
greater power of the dictator. The rule of law presumes that there is a
standard for all, that there is an established right and wrong which we
can come to perceive, but cannot change. This is what Thomas Jefferson
meant when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that
"We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . ." There is a
God-given reality which includes the great moral truths. We perceive these
truths and through our consciences "legislate" them for
ourselves, but we do not and cannot establish them or alter them.
It follows from what has been said that we must form
our consciences. In other words, we have an obligation to come to know the
truth. "Conscience has rights because it has duties." (See Pope
John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no 34.)
The dictates of conscience "could not have the force of law [within
us] unless it were the voice and interpreter of some higher reason [i.e.,
the reason of the divine lawgiver]." (See Pope John Paul II, The
Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no 44.) Where do we learn the
moral truths established by the Creator? From Christ Who speaks through
the Church.
"In forming their consciences the Christian
faithful must give careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of
the Church. For the Catholic church is by the will of Christ the teacher
of truth. Her charge is to announce and teach authentically that truth
which is Christ, and at the same time with her authority to declare and
confirm the principles of the moral order which derive from human nature
itself." (See Pope John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth,
Veritatis Splendor, no 64. See also Second Vatican Council, Declaration
on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, no. 14.)
" 'Conscience is like God's herald and
messenger; it does not command things on its own authority, but commands
them as coming from God's authority, like a herald when he proclaims the
edict of a king. This is why conscience has binding force.' ... Conscience
is the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate
the depths of man's soul." (See Pope John Paul II, The Splendor of
Truth, Veritatis Splendor, no 58.) This is true because conscience is
to form itself with the very truths of God.
We are always obligated to follow a certain
conscience, but it must be informed with the truths of Christ. However, it
is possible for our consciences to be in error. If we are certain at the
time we act, we must follow our conscience. If we later discover that our
conscience was in error, that does not change the act. In other words, if
we honestly judged an act morally acceptable and did it, and then later
discovered it was morally unacceptable, the goodness of the act we did
does not change. But in the future, we must avoid this act, having
reformed our conscience in accordance with the truth.
The other case which sometimes arises is that we
know the truth, e.g., we know that the Church teaches a certain act to be
immoral, and yet we cannot understand how that can be. Our consciences
might tell us that the act is either not immoral or even good. In other
words, our practical judgment differs from the Church's teaching. We must
conform our consciences to the objective norms as taught by the Church.
(Otherwise we would be in the position of assuming the prerogatives of God
Himself.) If we cannot conform our judgment to that of the Church, we must
suspend our evaluation of the particular act, not do it, and try to come
to a greater understanding of the Church's teaching. We also must pray
about it. Usually, with good will, we will in the end be able to conform
our consciences to the teaching of the Church, either through a greater
understanding of the Church's teaching or through the action of grace
(obtained through prayer) which enables us to conform our intellects to
the Church's teaching. Of course, usually both study and prayer, greater
knowledge and grace, lead us to form our consciences properly.
Sometimes our consciences are unable to make a
determination. We are not bound to follow an uncertain conscience.
However, we should always seek certitude. Since a doubtful conscience can
sometimes be attributed to a lack of knowledge, we are obligated to
provide our consciences with the proper information so that they will not
be doubtful or uncertain. On other occasions, a doubtful conscience
results from an apparently insoluble conflict between two or more divine
norms. Sometimes these apparent conflicts can be resolved by seeking
advice from moral theologians, priests, and confessors who are faithful to
the Church.
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