Tis_Bearself
Patron
They wouldn’t. You need to start by accepting Christ and His Church first. Everything else follows from there.
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fhansen
Guest
Yes, and accepting is a choice/decision, aided by grace-and one that can and should continue to grow in strength and resolve. A process in any case.
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fhansen
Guest
That’s probably how it works-even for Catholics who may struggle with one belief or another. Anyway, as someone who “reverted” back to Catholicism I had to first entertain such ideas. We can’t simply make ourselves believe, not in any real or honest way.
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Freddy
Guest
I wouldn’t class it as a survival feature in itself. Not stopping to help someone in a car wreck might cue a guilty conscience. But listening to your conscience and stopping to help doesn’t increase your chances of survival in any way. But helping others in need - reciprocal altruism if you like, allows societies to hold together which is a long term benefit.
That we live within a society means that the majority of people within that society are inclined to behaviour that allows the society to continue. They have a genetic tendancy towards it. And naturally pass on that tendancy to their offspring. So the society continues. And acts that go against that tendancy trigger our consciences. Something ‘doesn’t feel right’.
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Magnanimity
Guest
I understand. But, I don’t think this is what makes folks reject Catholic sexual ethics, at least not in plenty of cases. I think they’re rejecting it because much of it does not correspond to their consciences. And this is not just in the cases where their consciences are unformed or malformed. A person’s conscience could be quite mature because the person is living a generally good moral life, is conscientious and is ever concerned with “the good,” all the while finding the church’s teaching on (say) contraception and divorce and sex outside of marriage to be objectionable (not corresponding to that ‘voice within’).
So, Sam Harris could sit down for hours with Christopher West and genuinely listen to him explain the “theology of the body” as the theological underpinnings for most of that Catholic sexual ethics only to, at the end, reject either aspects of the theology of the body or particular sexual ethics stances taken by the church. Right? This is all plausible. In fact, it’s probably happened in not a few cases. As I said in the OP, Catholics tend to think it’s just a problem of knowledge when folks have issues with church teaching. Often enough though, it’s a problem of a teaching going against one’s own conscience. As the CCC suggests, the conscience is inviolable–it cannot just be bypassed. And to try to ignore it is to ignore one’s very self.
Yes. I’d probably state it even stronger–the conscience (must like faculties of reason or introspection) does change over time, as in it matures over the course of a properly-functioning human life (which would be the vast majority).
I get what you’re saying, but there does seem to be a fundamental tension/paradox in what the church is teaching in CCC regarding conscience. Even just CCC 1790 itself: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.” That’s a head-scratcher. One must always obey the certain judgment of one’s conscience. And yet, conscience can be either ignorant/unformed or make erroneous judgments.
If I hold to synderesis, I can also hold that our consciences can make erroneous judgments? If it’s simply a matter of lack of formation and ignorance, that’s one thing. That’s totally understandable, and I can get behind that. But, once a person is out of the woods of ignorance, so that she cannot be faulted for a lack of knowledge, what then? How precisely would a conscience lead you astray? We just got done saying that the conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ.
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Magnanimity
Guest
CCC 1791 and 1792 try to give various instances of how the conscience could go wrong. The first suggestion–a person taking little trouble to find out what is true and good–doesn’t fly too well with me. Who are these people exactly? Certainly, it would seem to constitute a tiny minority of folks. Most of us who have jobs in the regular (secular) world encounter people all the time who are generally like ourselves, just doing their level best to live a good life and provide for their children. It’s absolutely not the case that Catholics are the normal-conscience folks and everyone else are the weirdos (in fact, it might be the reverse 
).
The second possibility mentioned in CCC 1791 is that a person can almost blind the conscience by degrees through the habit of committing sin. This one I can see. It seems basically Aristotelian in its thrust. That is, virtues and vices are all developed over time by habit-formation. And the habits we develop go toward our overall character. That’s all well and good, but the church gives the caveat here by saying that conscience cannot be completely blinded but “almost” blinded. So, even in a life of vice (take a minor one, like stinginess) the person never quite escapes the internal and ongoing judgment of conscience that she shouldn’t be so stingy–she should give more, especially to those she cares most about. So, even here, the conscience is present and functioning on a good enough level to orient us toward the good.
In every example of CCC 1792, a person could be a genuine victim, so culpability is hard to speak of in those instances mentioned there, which leads one naturally into the “invincible ignorance” issue explicitly addressed in CCC 1793. Idk that I want to get into that discussion (plenty of threads on CAF have devoted themselves to exploring that). I mostly want to note that the church here, in speaking about conscience, has affirmed its most basic primacy in human lives (as fundamental as reason, from what I can tell). And yet, the church has only described two real scenarios for when the conscience can go (a little) astray but never quite leave us. These are ignorance/undevelopment and habituation in vice. It seems rather obvious to me that most folks aren’t inescapably captured within either of those two categories. Freedom from ignorance and moving from vicious habits to virtuous ones is what most of us strive for, it seems to me. We don’t all strive on an equal level, of course, yet we do all strive to some degree. All of us are oriented toward the good. And even though conscience-maturation is an ongoing process and we all have some level of vice in our lives, still and all synderesis is the reality, as you say.
).The second possibility mentioned in CCC 1791 is that a person can almost blind the conscience by degrees through the habit of committing sin. This one I can see. It seems basically Aristotelian in its thrust. That is, virtues and vices are all developed over time by habit-formation. And the habits we develop go toward our overall character. That’s all well and good, but the church gives the caveat here by saying that conscience cannot be completely blinded but “almost” blinded. So, even in a life of vice (take a minor one, like stinginess) the person never quite escapes the internal and ongoing judgment of conscience that she shouldn’t be so stingy–she should give more, especially to those she cares most about. So, even here, the conscience is present and functioning on a good enough level to orient us toward the good.
In every example of CCC 1792, a person could be a genuine victim, so culpability is hard to speak of in those instances mentioned there, which leads one naturally into the “invincible ignorance” issue explicitly addressed in CCC 1793. Idk that I want to get into that discussion (plenty of threads on CAF have devoted themselves to exploring that). I mostly want to note that the church here, in speaking about conscience, has affirmed its most basic primacy in human lives (as fundamental as reason, from what I can tell). And yet, the church has only described two real scenarios for when the conscience can go (a little) astray but never quite leave us. These are ignorance/undevelopment and habituation in vice. It seems rather obvious to me that most folks aren’t inescapably captured within either of those two categories. Freedom from ignorance and moving from vicious habits to virtuous ones is what most of us strive for, it seems to me. We don’t all strive on an equal level, of course, yet we do all strive to some degree. All of us are oriented toward the good. And even though conscience-maturation is an ongoing process and we all have some level of vice in our lives, still and all synderesis is the reality, as you say.
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GLam1761
Guest
What I discovered, upon being exposed to the Catholic
teachings on Life and Religious convictions… is that they
are so down-to-earth common sensical!! Anyone who
follows Christ and subscribes to WWJD would venerate
Mary, His mom, for example. I strongly urge ppl to make a
correct judgment about the Teachings of Mother Church,
the Woman whom Satan is pitted against in these last days!!
See Gen, 3:15
teachings on Life and Religious convictions… is that they
are so down-to-earth common sensical!! Anyone who
follows Christ and subscribes to WWJD would venerate
Mary, His mom, for example. I strongly urge ppl to make a
correct judgment about the Teachings of Mother Church,
the Woman whom Satan is pitted against in these last days!!
See Gen, 3:15
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Magnanimity
Guest
Right, we should say that examples of such don’t abound (not when compared with the norms of peace and equanimity). Even war itself seems to be a fairly rare disruption to the norm of peace and cooperative living. Also, quite a few folks have brought up recently (J. Peterson is an example) that although most of us would like to think that we would be Oskar Schindler’s during a nazi regime, the reality is that most of us would probably turn a blind eye and not resist such a regime. We may even be complicit in its rise to power and sustaining its power. Awfully sad but true nonetheless.
I think that’s right. Although consciences are held individually (as rationality is), still the “group” informs it such that one might even say that conscience can be conceived socially, in a sense.
If by this, you mean that the conscience can be ignored then I agree. We can willfully ignore that voice within, as we can willfully ignore reason itself (persist in illogic, even when we know better). I think that’s about all we can say though. Do you agree? Conscience, like rationality, seems rather basic and inalienable from us.
An excellent point and very well said! This is what gets me about the conscience–its inescapable nature. Sometimes, we want to say, “but we’re supposed to listen to the church!” But, foundationally, its the conscience itself that judges whether or not it is wise for us to listen to the church. The conscience is, in a way, prior to the claims of the church.
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
Let’s backup for a minute and look at how the CCC defines conscience, since we’re working from assertions that come from the CCC.
Conscience is comprised of 3 things:
- the perception of the principles of morality (synderesis);
- their [principles of morality] application in the given circumstances by practical discernment of reasons and goods;
- and finally judgment about concrete acts yet to be performed or already performed.
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
I think those two things could be unfolded enough to cover a rather large part of humanity. But I agree that there is room to ‘insert your own circumstances’ and still be somewhere in the ballpark of either ignorance or habit, yet at the same time either be actively moving toward the Good, or simply just having a desire to move toward the Good without really being able to do so in a concrete way, or erroneously moving toward a false good.
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
This is an important point, and one that is recognized in Church teaching but too often overlooked.
But it’s not just prior to the Church for the laity but also conscience judges actions already done. And so, Church teaching needs to be accepted by the sensus fidelium in order to rise to particular level of assent.
And that brings us back to a particular teaching about sexual ethics that has, IMO, not been fully been accepted by the sensus fidelium. (The sense of the faithful including bishops, priests, religious, and lay people.) So I would agree with your original assertion that it is indeed the conscience of faithful individuals that leads them to dissent on particular Church teachings of a sexual nature. That’s not even to bring into it the consciences of those good people outside of the visible Church.
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Magnanimity
Guest
Reciprocal altruism is a long term benefit, quite right. However, the listening to one’s conscience and stopping to help hasn’t really anything to do with considerations of reciprocal altruism, does it? It is, in fact, an unlikely thing to even be on the periphery of our consciousness when we are determining whether to stop and help. We might think something like, “If I were in need, I’d want someone to stop and help me…” But, that’s probably where it stops for us in our deliberations.
Consider the matter from this vantage point. When I was in an ethical theory course in undergrad, the prof had us read an article by Peter Singer (no friend of religion) called “Famine, Affluence and Morality.” One of the most interesting aspects of the article is that Singer doesn’t pretend to arrive at his moral maxims by constantly looking for some utilitarian or evolutionary explanation. He puts forward various notions and takes for granted that they are true. He gives arguments in the article, to be sure. But, if, for example, you don’t accept this maxim–“suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad”–then he invites you to stop reading. He has nothing to say to such a person.
Moreover, and this is where I think it gets really good, he gives the reader another maxim for which he will argue for the remainder of the article: “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” Singer goes on to give scenarios in which his maxim applies that all folks with properly-functioning consciences would assent to (e.g., walking by a pond and seeing a child drowning–we’d all go into the pond and help bc the “bad” of getting one’s clothes muddy is nothing by comparison to the value of the life of the child).
For me, all Singer is appealing to is his reader’s conscience. This moral maxim does not obviously have wider ramifications for the society. It simply occurs to us as true, whatever the long term consequences may be. If I can prevent something bad from happening without also causing something morally terrible to occur simultaneously, then I ought to do it. As far as I can tell, this is something on the level of the Golden Rule or “love your neighbor as yourself” or “justice is the rendering to each one that which is due to her.” We simply know these things to be so, and the interior conscience is the seat of this knowledge.
Does this not strike you as strange? How exactly do we naturalistically know the good? How is it that Singer can take for granted that I’ll accept his maxim?
On what basis do you make this assertion, and what do you mean by “particular level of assent”?
The Church is not a democracy, Catholicism is not democracy, and Christianity is not democracy.
If a large portion of the faithful — even including priests and bishops — reject what the Church teaches on this point or that, it does not affect the truth of the matter, nor its binding force, one iota. They are wrong and the teaching Church is right. They are the ones who need to change, not the Church.
I take it you are referring to the reiteration of the Church’s teaching on birth regulation in Humanae vitae (1968). Here you had a novel concept — being able to use artificial means, means that were now efficient, effective, not unpleasant to use, to customize the size of one’s family and to have sex pretty much on demand without consequences — a “shiny new thing”, as I have elsewhere referred to it — and Catholics wanted to be able to use it. Pretty enticing, wouldn’t you say? All Christians had condemned contraception until the Anglicans approved it at the Lambeth Conference in 1930. In the wake of Lambeth, the various Christian confessions dropped their objection. Catholics saw other people using it, having easier lives as a result, said “they do it, why can’t we?”, and in short order, made up their minds “there is nothing wrong with it”. It’s pretty obvious what happened then. They became emboldened to dissent from Church teaching, not infrequently because priests told them they could do that. They refused to accept the teaching, convinced themselves that they were still good Catholics (again, with the encouragement of priests and other teachers), saw that the sky didn’t fall as a result of their disobedience — “non serviam!” — and there you had a large wing of the Church, centered in the affluent societies of the West, refusing en masse to accept the Church’s teaching. Here you had people in large numbers, emboldened by the consensus of society outside the Church, making up their minds about what they were going to believe, and what they were not going to believe. As I always say, "the tail wagging the dog".
This did not affect the truth of the Church’s teaching one iota. Again, the Church is not a democracy, and the truths of Catholicism do not depend upon the consent of the faithful. The teachings of the Church are what they are, and if people — even large numbers of people — choose to disbelieve them or not to adhere to them, that is on those people, not the Church.
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fhansen
Guest
This must be true. Adam, I would think, had a properly formed conscience to begin with, especially involving the basic need to obey God at the very least. Either way, the ability and the possibility for a human to disobey or override or ignore the dictates of a properly formed conscience must accompany us all our lives; temptation isn’t triumphed over just because we know better-and our weaknesses and concupiscence remain.
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Freddy
Guest
I’m with Singer on the point of bringing to a close discussions with anyone who cannot agree on simple maxims such as ‘pain is to be avoided’. Yes there are situations when you may need to amputate a leg to prevent a disease from spreading but that’s why we have maxims such as ‘exceptions that prove the rule’. It’s even been suggested that I’m right but as an atheist I have nothing on which to base that claim. Anyway…
So some people are more empathetic than others. Which doesn’t mean, as some think, that that implies a greater ability to sympathise. It only means that you understand what others are feeling. You may care and sympathise or not. But having that ability prompts those of us who do have a tendancy to sympathise with the plight of others to help those in need. And people are more or less sympathetic to the plight of others depending on their personal characteristics. You could be a warm and loving person, tending towards expressing emotion and constantly worrying about the welfare of others. You might do charity and support policies that help the less well off. Or you could be a cold and emotionless sob that only considers your own well being.
I would suggest that these emotional characteristics are genetically based. I’m not saying that ‘here’s a gene for generosity and there’s one for sympathy’. But I do believe that, with obvious exceptions (that prove the rule) and all things being equal, generous and sympathetic parents will tend to produce generous and sympatheic children.
Now the characteristic that used to prompt us to help others naturally expressed what we call the golden rule. Aka reciprocal altruism. And that is enormously helpful in allowing small groups of people to work better together as opposed to working individually. The whole becomes more efficient than the sum of its parts. So those that had those characteristics tended towards social groups and those that didn’t…didn’t.
cont’d…
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Freddy
Guest
cont’d…
Now the ones who tended towards reciprocal altruism didn’t consciously think ‘what’s in it for me if i share my food with my neighbour?’. He had, if you like, the type of personality who would do that anyway. And if his neighbour reciprocated at some point when the hunt was a bad one then you have two people working together and being more efficient that two individuals. And this small group would automatically grow. Those who were like minded became part of the group and those who weren’t didn’t.
So within the group, these tendancies to reciprocal altruism were passed on to future generations and the characteristics became the norm. And not helping someone went against one’s natural tendancies and simply felt wrong. So it was described as wrong. And helping someone in need just felt right and was thus described as right.
Looking at it through the lens of evolutionary psychology, right and wrong are simply descriptions of what worked to bring us together. And that can be summed it in the golden rule.
So Jesus wasn’t saying: ‘Hey guys, I’ve got this great new idea…’. What He was saying was ‘Hey guys, you may not have thought about this, but helping someone out if they are in need in the same way as you would like to be helped if you were in need has always been the right thing to do. It got you to where you are now. Just be aware of that and make an effort to consciously follow through on it. The world will be a better place for it’.
Now the ones who tended towards reciprocal altruism didn’t consciously think ‘what’s in it for me if i share my food with my neighbour?’. He had, if you like, the type of personality who would do that anyway. And if his neighbour reciprocated at some point when the hunt was a bad one then you have two people working together and being more efficient that two individuals. And this small group would automatically grow. Those who were like minded became part of the group and those who weren’t didn’t.
So within the group, these tendancies to reciprocal altruism were passed on to future generations and the characteristics became the norm. And not helping someone went against one’s natural tendancies and simply felt wrong. So it was described as wrong. And helping someone in need just felt right and was thus described as right.
Looking at it through the lens of evolutionary psychology, right and wrong are simply descriptions of what worked to bring us together. And that can be summed it in the golden rule.
So Jesus wasn’t saying: ‘Hey guys, I’ve got this great new idea…’. What He was saying was ‘Hey guys, you may not have thought about this, but helping someone out if they are in need in the same way as you would like to be helped if you were in need has always been the right thing to do. It got you to where you are now. Just be aware of that and make an effort to consciously follow through on it. The world will be a better place for it’.
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Magnanimity
Guest
I think we would need to distinguish between the conscience and practical moral judgments. The conscience is that interior seat–the locale of those things that we cannot not know. Right? So, there are always times when we can act contrary to conscience.
That’s true, but as you note, we seem to remain in the ballpark at all times. Conscience would be at the level of reason itself, I think, and therefore inalienable from us. We can willfully violate reason, as we can willfully ignore the prick of the conscience. But we seem to accidentally violate reason only infrequently (and I’m ignoring informal logical fallacies when I say this).
That’s a very astute point. I like that.
Quite right, I’m glad we’re on the same page here. It’s what you just reasoned above that illustrates that Newman had the right qualifier when he spoke of the conscience. It most certainly is aboriginal, almost a priori we might say. When the church tells us to assent to proposition X (and even tries to give a rationale for X) and yet our consciences react by telling us that X doesn’t seem quite right, it’s cause for significant concern.
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Magnanimity
Guest
This thread itself is the basis for such assertions. The church has acknowledged that the conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ. The conscience is primary and inalienable.
But it is akin to representative government. The bishops represent the people. Take, for example, what happens in an ecumenical council. The bishops and others will deliberate on a matter, a document will begin to be drafted, and the bishops will literally vote on certain wording to be included or excluded from said document. Wording will sometimes be voted down. This is all well documented from Vatican 2.
I would like to point out to you that it is your conscience that has enabled the possibility of something like the “body of Christ” existing on Earth (the church). And you cannot infallibly know that the church is Christ’s body. It is a belief that you hold. It is a reasonable belief but not a necessary truth.
Also, as I noted above, the church has changed her views on not a few important matters over the centuries, to include slavery, usury, marriage and capital punishment. In point of fact, it’s the pope’s conscience–his belief that human dignity cannot be forfeited, that it is inalienable and inviolable–that underlies the recent change to the CCC on capital punishment. Right? But, the pope was hardly alone in this. Theologians have been opposing capital punishment for years. So, in this case, it was the church herself that was late to get on board.
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence,” as John Adams said. As difficult as it is, we nevertheless must assimilate these facts from church history into our broader view of the church in the world.
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
You mean the assertion about the sensus fidelium? It comes from the Catholic Church.
I guess my phrase “particular level of assent” is a little cryptic. I’m trying to convey two things. One, that bishops must be in a unison of belief on a particular teaching for that particular teaching to require the fullest expression of free assent from the faithful. And two, it needs to be accepted by the consciences of the faithful laity in somewhat of the same manner as it is accepted by the consciences of the bishops.
This is a straw man.
I don’t know exactly what you mean by “the truths of Catholicism”, but some teachings do depend upon the consent of the faithful.
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