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"Conscience" in liberal non-Catholic churches?
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Magnanimity
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Let me try to put it another way. Jesus teaches the primacy of love and self-sacrifice. He teaches a philosophy of detachment (“he who loses his life for my sake will find it”). He teaches a Golden Rule. Christianity generally teaches that there’s something seriously and basically wrong with the world (and wrong with us)…and simultaneously teaches the elevated status that we have, humanity’s intrinsic dignity. It teaches that we were made for beatitude—literally destined for a great end (Heaven). It instructs that we should care for the poor and most vulnerable, etc, etc.
All these things, every single one of them, correspond to something already present within us (even if barely formed). That is to say, we have a sense of these things, that they very likely are true. That the Christian message describes much of Reality spot on. As in, as Plato says, we recognize the truth of them. We say to ourselves as we’re hearing the gospel, “you know, there’s seems to be something to this.” We do not say, “I’m just going to pick this religion here. I’m just going to arbitrarily and wholeheartedly believe it.”
What Newman and the CCC are getting at with regard to the conscience IMHO is that it is precisely bc God is ever meeting man in his conscience, ever reaching out to him in the depths of his being, that man is ever able to “see” the truths of the gospel in the first place.
If this weren’t the case—if you did not recognize the necessity of justice, the primacy of love, the dignity of man, then your decision to believe Christianity at all would presumably be arbitrary. What do you think?
I’m guessing that no such person exists. God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. Graces abound, in the lives of all. The conscience is the very depth of you where God comes to meet and commune with you, whether you know that or not and whether you’re a Christian or not.
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What you say makes a whole lot of sense. You did a very good job in explaining this aspect of it. Our Lord’s teachings did, indeed, “bring it all together” in a way I’m assuming nobody else had ever done before — to paraphrase Alexander Pope, "What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d”. As I always say, if I lost my faith tomorrow, I would still adhere to 95% of Christian morality and philosophy, because even from a human standpoint, there’s nothing else in the world even nearly as excellent.HomeschoolDad:
Let me try to put it another way. Jesus teaches the primacy of love and self-sacrifice. He teaches a philosophy of detachment (“he who loses his life for my sake will find it”). He teaches a Golden Rule. Christianity generally teaches that there’s something seriously and basically wrong with the world (and wrong with us)…and simultaneously teaches the elevated status that we have, humanity’s intrinsic dignity. It teaches that we were made for beatitude—literally destined for a great end (Heaven). It instructs that we should care for the poor and most vulnerable, etc, etc.
All these things, every single one of them, correspond to something already present within us (even if barely formed). That is to say, we have a sense of these things, that they very likely are true. That the Christian message describes much of Reality spot on. As in, as Plato says, we recognize the truth of them. We say to ourselves as we’re hearing the gospel, “you know, there’s seems to be something to this.” We do not say, “I’m just going to pick this religion here. I’m just going to arbitrarily and wholeheartedly believe it.”
What Newman and the CCC are getting at with regard to the conscience IMHO is that it is precisely bc God is ever meeting man in his conscience, ever reaching out to him in the depths of his being, that man is ever able to “see” the truths of the gospel in the first place.
If this weren’t the case—if you did not recognize the necessity of justice, the primacy of love, the dignity of man, then your decision to believe Christianity at all would presumably be arbitrary. What do you think?
If what you describe is what Newman was getting at, I have no problem with it. Neither are saying that you may prescind from the Church’s teachings in forming or following your conscience. What I do object to is what I referred to upthread as the "filter called ‘me’ ". If someone says, in so many words, “I have 500 Catholic moral teachings here in front of me, and I’m going to review each one of them, take each one on its own merits as it seems to me, my own conscience, my own wisdom, and if 495 ‘make the cut’ and 5 don’t ‘make the cut’, then I shall accept the 495 and reject the 5”, then they make themselves the sole arbiter of what they will believe, and what they will not believe. That’s what a lot of Protestants (and others) do when they are trying to settle upon a church they will go to — “does this church teach what I already believe?” We are not Protestants.
The “examination of conscience” that you will find in the pew or confessional of many churches does not have a blurb at the top of the page that says “We present common, traditional Catholic moral teachings here for your consideration — go over these, and if any of these things don’t seem wrong to you, then your conscience is supreme, don’t give it a second thought, make your confession according to the things you do accept, and be at peace”. The G-d of the Old Testament didn’t deliver the Decalogue to Moses with a caveat of “you do not have to follow the Commandments that condemn something your conscience tells you is not evil, yes, I am your God, but your conscience is supreme”.
Well, I think they do. There are all sorts of people who consciously reject Catholic and Christian moral teaching on various things, and manage to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with their actions, often with an appeal to “modern times” — “oh, come on now, it’s the year 2020, nobody thinks there’s anything wrong with two people hooking up anymore!”. You may never have heard that kind of thing before, but I’ve heard it in abundance.HomeschoolDad:
I’m guessing that no such person exists. God causes it to rain on the just and the unjust. Graces abound, in the lives of all. The conscience is the very depth of you where God comes to meet and commune with you, whether you know that or not and whether you’re a Christian or not.
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RolandThompsonGunner
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To be fair, I’m imagining a pretty extreme case. Like, one so extreme that I would just conclude the Church isn’t what it claims to be and leave Catholicism altogether. As in, the church commanded me to perform a child sacrifice or something.
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Magnanimity
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Fair enough. Primarily, I’m trying to reason that the existence of the conscience itself is enough to establish that it’s never just “you.” As in, there’s no you without God intermingled, since he’s constantly reaching to the depths of you via your conscience. And there’s no you without the wider community. ”no man is an island,” no consciousness is an isolated consciousness, no conscience is formed on its own.
You and I recently talked about slavery in another thread. Slavery is an example where humanity itself led the way—not the church. But now the church and the wider world condemn slavery in tandem. It was the dictates of human conscience that led to universal intolerance of the ownership of people, not the magisterium.
Let’s say that a person reviews them and then looks for the justifications underlying them. For instance, JP2’s theology of the body project is, in some sense, trying to provide the church and the world with the underlying rationale for a document like humanae vitae. The church regularly provides, not just its bare teachings, but the rationales for its teachings. Not all of us examine so deeply as to get to the rationales. Sometimes we get hung up simply on the teachings and turn our backs on them.
Additionally, conscience formation is a lengthy process. In young adults with so little experience, consciences are often immature. So judgments resulting from those consciences are often found wanting. But I think it’s obvious that the judgment of a 40 year old mother is worth something. She needs to be reckoned with and reasoned with, not told to “just believe.” Right?
I was just challenging the idea of a “conscience uninformed by divine grace.” I would go so far as to say that no conscience ever forms but for divine grace. The “grace” of a properly functioning human community needs to be present too, but the church has been very particular in her advocacy of the primacy of human conscience. The catechism affirms, along with Newman, that the conscience is indeed the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.” (CCC, 1778) The conscience is as basic and inalienable to humans as are their powers of reason.
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blackforest
Well-known member
Isn’t this the whole reason that Christianity ended up with different denominations? Isn’t it the whole reason that Catholics, including on CAF, disagree on a host of different issues?
Conscience plays a role in the Catholic faith, too. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a6.htm
And even those of us prayerfully forming a conscience will come to different conclusions.
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Dovekin
Guest
It won’t be a popular term at most parties. It is the proper term for what you described: “I accept everything the Church teaches, regardless. I don’t run it through a "filter called ‘me’…” I do not believe you do that, as your explanations explain.
The liturgy is a good example. If you accepted everything the Church teaches, you would accept the OF as the ordinary form. You prefer the EF, which is fine, just a judgment based on your personal filter. It is an example of your autonomy.
Conscience is not the abstract evaluator of whether laws are right or wrong, as it has been discussed here. There is some of that, but primarily conscience is about the practical judgment in a particular situation. It is about Harry’s decision to love Sue more than it is about whether mixed race couples are acceptable.
It’s an academic question. The Holy Spirit protects the Church from a situation like this.HomeschoolDad:
To be fair, I’m imagining a pretty extreme case. Like, one so extreme that I would just conclude the Church isn’t what it claims to be and leave Catholicism altogether. As in, the church commanded me to perform a child sacrifice or something.
I would add, though, without agreeing or approving, that many Catholics found the post-Vatican II changes in the liturgy (and other changes of those times) to be so distressing that they resorted to all sorts of radical solutions and explanations, such as sedevacantism, ecclesiaprivationism (“the post-Vatican II ‘Newchurch’ is not the Catholic Church”), departing for Orthodoxy, or even leaving the Church entirely.
More very good discussion, thanks. I like your last comment (bolded).HomeschoolDad:
Fair enough. Primarily, I’m trying to reason that the existence of the conscience itself is enough to establish that it’s never just “you.” As in, there’s no you without God intermingled, since he’s constantly reaching to the depths of you via your conscience. And there’s no you without the wider community. ”no man is an island,” no consciousness is an isolated consciousness, no conscience is formed on its own.
Yet more good discussion. I do not think, though, that everyone who rejects HV does so from a standpoint of having studied it, weighing all arguments pro and con, and then selflessly coming to an educated, well-reasoned conclusion either to reject it, or to invoke “conscience”, not necessarily denying the teaching, but saying it would not be wrong (or at least not mortally sinful) for them, in their circumstances. No, I think it is more common for people just to say “I don’t agree with that, there is nothing wrong with contraception, nobody else except the Catholic Church has a problem with it, and besides, we live in ‘modern times’, that teaching is out of date”. (This presupposes that Church teachings have expiration dates.)
I would like to see this “40-year-old mother” have a more docile and obedient attitude towards the teaching Church, and not to have to be “reckoned with and reasoned with”, but I’d rather see her accept the Church’s teachings as the result of being finally persuaded by them, than not to accept them at all.
Sometimes consciences never really form, aside from avoidance of what causes pain, pursuit of what causes pleasure, and not doing what can get the agent in some kind of temporal trouble (getting arrested, loss of reputation, avoiding undesired pregnancy, losing friends, losing one’s job, and so on). Many people also conflate “legal” with “moral”, so that whatever is legal is morally acceptable, and whatever is illegal is also immoral.
I was surprised to see that the CCC actually incorporates Newman’s turn of phrase. I would just add that this “aboriginal Vicar of Christ”, unlike the actual one, is not infallible. Otherwise, nobody would ever make a mistake in listening to their conscience, and nobody would ever disagree on moral matters, for Christ is not divided.
I would like to recommend giving one’s conscience back to God, and docilely accepting the teachings of Holy Mother Church, the same way that the Christian soul gives to God his liberty, memory, understanding, and will in St Ignatius Loyola’s Suscipe prayer.
This is not Church “teaching”. I do accept that the OF is “the ordinary form” — that’s just a fact. I prefer the EF. It is a disciplinary matter. No doctrine, dogma, or teaching even enters into it. The Church could say tomorrow “the Novus Ordo didn’t work out the way we thought it would, we’re going back to the Tridentine Latin Mass, at least until we figure out what went wrong, and come up with a better alternative”. People would scream bloody murder, but Catholic doctrine wouldn’t be affected one little bit.
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Dovekin
Guest
And how do you determine what is Church teaching and what is not? Your professed standard is whatever the Church says, not run through a personal filter. But now you are filtering out some things the Church says as “not doctrine.”
And yes, I agree it is not immutable doctrine. I am questioning your conscienceless obedience.
Conscience does not decide if racism or helping the poor is good or bad. Conscience decides if I should ignore Yuri or Phan when he says I cannot breathe. it helps you decide if you should call the police when someone asks you to obey the law.
I certainly hope that the Cardinal was taught to accompany thieves, embezzlers and liars and to help them discern what is right. Sometimes it can be very simple, and sometimes very difficult. Conscience needs to be formed to reject these things. Sexual sins stand out because they change as we grow so we need learn how to decide in particular situations.
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Once more — the Church’s promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae, and derogation of the TLM to being an “Extraordinary Form” (albeit one that any Latin Rite priest may celebrate at any time, at his discretion, subject to his pastor’s or bishop’s wishes), is a disciplinary matter, not a doctrinal one, nor one that falls under the rubric of “Church teaching”. If the Church splits the diocese I live in — to use another matter that is purely disciplinary — I am entirely within my rights to say “No! There was no need to split this diocese. There aren’t enough people in that part of the state to have a viable diocese. There’s not a church in that whole diocese suitable to be a cathedral. Rome made one horrible business and logistical decision, and I hope they’ll come to see that, and reconsider.” In no way, shape, or form is “Church teaching” at issue.HomeschoolDad:
And how do you determine what is Church teaching and what is not? Your professed standard is whatever the Church says, not run through a personal filter. But now you are filtering out some things the Church says as “not doctrine.”
I will grant that much. If it is a matter of “conscience as an innate moral sense that applies immutable teaching to concrete situations”, without denying that teaching, then that is fine. If it is, however, “conscience as my sense of right and wrong, which the Church can inform but cannot force me to change”, then I reject it out of hand.
A case in point would be deciding to vote for (mostly) pro-life Trump or pro-choice Biden. I abhor much of what Trump says and does, and I abhor his coarse, difficult, arrogant persona, but I am voting for him, because he is the only chance we have, to get conservative, pro-life Supreme Court justices, and other federal judges, for possibly several decades. How he shapes the courts in the next four years will set the tone for this country for much of the next half-century, regardless of who succeeds him in 2024. However, someone who is equally a faithful, orthodox Catholic could very well say “you never know how a Supreme Court justice is going to decide (they decide, they don’t “vote”, they’re not a rump legislature), ideally, a judge is supposed to interpret and apply the law, not interpolate their own ideology — and besides, Roe v Wade doesn’t force any woman to have an abortion, if abortion is illegal, rich women will always find a way, and poor women will resort to desperate measures, Trump is a meanie (or whatever word you choose), I’m voting for Biden”. If I were a priest, and if a person said these very words to me, I wouldn’t hesitate for an instant to give them communion or absolution.
If “conscience” allows for this kind of legitimate diversity of opinion, then I’m all for it. But if “conscience” leads someone away from the teachings, doctrines, and dogmas of the Faith, then, to paraphrase Dickens’s Mr Bumble, “conscience is a donkey” (only he did not say “donkey”, he used a three-letter word that is found in the Bible).
As I said above, I give my conscience to God, to give back to me formed by the Church’s teachings. That’s what everybody should do.
As I said above, I give my conscience to God, to give back to me formed by the Church’s teachings. That’s what everybody should do.
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They get a “special pass” because the average, normal person has no urge to steal, embezzle, covet, or bribe (venial sins of untruthfulness and minor transgressions against the Fifth Commandment are, sadly, far too common), but the average, normal person would like to have sexual license to do whatever strikes their fancy — it’s hard-coded into human nature. Animals do whatever their native instinct prompts them to do. We are not animals. Following the Church’s teachings on sexuality is hard, counter-cultural, and can demand great sacrifice of some people. That’s not to many people’s liking these days. It never was — but nowadays, these people have a huge “amen corner” telling them that Church teaching is a big load of piffle, and that’s what they listen to. Many people don’t say anymore “yes, it’s hard, and sometimes I fail, but I don’t want to go to hell, so I will go to confession, beg forgiveness, and try not to do it anymore”.
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Servant31
Guest
This is challenging sometimes. But there are also degrees. Some things are black and white. Murder for example is wrong. So no matter how I feel about it personally it’s still wrong. But most things aren’t that way, there is room to evaluate situations. This can be bad when people take things to the extreme, either completely “my conscience” centered, or completely “rules rules!” to the point of blindness.
However in some ways I think of it like a science, in physics gravity works the way it does. My opinion about it might be a or b, but if it actually functions like c, that’s how it works. That doesn’t mean that I can’t have insights, but it’s still independent of my thinking. So an appropriately formed conscience is informed by both.
However in some ways I think of it like a science, in physics gravity works the way it does. My opinion about it might be a or b, but if it actually functions like c, that’s how it works. That doesn’t mean that I can’t have insights, but it’s still independent of my thinking. So an appropriately formed conscience is informed by both.
Very good comments, and granted, many things in life aren’t “black and white” — the teachings may be (and not all teachings are “black and white” either), but how to apply them, that’s another story. I don’t deny that, and I have never denied that. I would just want to be clear, though, that when I say “apply”, I do not mean that a person may say “that teaching, while true, does not apply to me, because…” — no, I mean “this is the teaching, how do I apply it to Scenario X, or Moral Dilemma X?”, or “here is Scenario X, what moral teachings come to bear here, and what are we to make of it all?”. That is casuistry, and the intelligent, morally informed Catholic uses it every day of the world.
I’m not clear, though, on your last sentence. What is the “both” you refer to?
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Magnanimity
Guest
I would agree. There are surely folks who have read HV and even studied the theology of the body (JP2, Chris West) and have still and all said, “I don’t think so.” However, this would be a small minority of both overall humanity and even among Catholics. Most of us just don’t dig deeply into moral matters. We have our consciences, partly formed by our fellow man (bc that’s how consciences are ever formed at all, by God and the human community in which you live) and that’s enough. We make our judgments based on little more than that. Is that what you’re saying? I think that’s probably right.
I don’t think so. The formation of the conscience is tantamount to the formation of reason itself. Each is irreducible to the human mind/soul. The use of the word “primordial” by Newman and the church is no accident.
I understand that attitude. I really do. And I respect it on one level. But I also believe that docility did not get slavery abolished. Docility didn’t see human freedom of conscience championed by Vatican 2. And the fight against capital punishment has been a long time forming. It wasn’t docility that got the church finally and fully on “the side of life,” to include even those convicted of heinous crimes. These have all been hard-fought fights and humanity (and the church!) are the better for them. My two cents anyway…
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