The 5th dubium: the conscience

[graciew]

Forgive the ignorant like me but I cannot consent to something being the truth…unless somebody feels very strongly that it is not.

Take your time.
It is fair to respect our own inner timing to let things sink in.
When I was kind of not knowing what to do,that time when in concrete things one has to make decisions someone very dear to me gave me this advice.
" Be still". " Quedate quieta" in Spanish. Which would be the equivalent of " Hush,breathe,wait,stop running around “. In my heart " Be still,and know that I am God”.
I have been reading Guardini,whom I love to read and also doing handcraft,and painting and sanding,which I also love to do. And away from everything noisy for some time,some of the quiet comes back.
Take you time. You are dear to God. And God is patient.

 

[RCinMT]

.

Excellent post. I also had a warm family upbringing–during the pre-Vatican II era–and from my earliest memories the importance of conscience was firmly taught–and it was simply to know right from wrong, without need of clarification, by listening to one’s conscience. Considering the uproar we now see about the role of conscience, one wonders if a later generation has any clear understanding of the role of conscience. My understanding of it was learned in a traditional Catholic way, both at home and school–through Catholic education from kindergarten through high school by members of Catholic religious orders, including Catholic priests. Its overarching importance was always stressed, and it was thought it was enough for us at six-years of age to know whether or not we ought to receive communion with first going to confession. Absent such a background, I would guess that many no longer have a clear understanding of conscience and perhaps don’t even hear the internal promptings of conscience–and thus their misunderstanding. For it is hardly that a person may do as he pleases.

Yet one can easily convince oneself that what he feels is what’s right. An idea takes hold, thinking changes and suddenly a person who felt strongly, innately as you say, about the morality of something one day no longer feels it is right after a great deal of reasoning or rationalizing.

Say this person is a doctor and tells you that there is no longer a voice or a feeling tugging at him/her that abortion is wrong. What exists now is an urge, a strong feeling and determination to press forward with performing abortions. A feeling that it’s a moral imperative. This change was brought about by seeing many pregnant girls in difficult situations giving birth to kids who end up in difficult situations. The doctor commits him/herself to performing abortions for free and in anonymity (no profit motive or notoriety being sought). This person is acting morally in accordance with conscience. Is that true?

You see, I was taught a strong sense of obeying conscience but before acting I was taught to compare that strongly with the doctrines and teaching of the catholic church. Responses to questions of morality weren’t explained by saying “because the church says so”. But were met with the reasons why the church said so with any unanswerable questions dutifully brought to the priest of the parish of which we were members. The answers always made sense, still do, because they were reasonable, well thought out in the light of faith and eminently true because the source was, I thought up until recently, people who devoted great time and energy to understanding and discerning truths in light of Christ’s teachings, guided by the Holy Spirit.

After all of that one was hard pressed to believe that in spite of all that it was best to just trust to strong feelings.

It is astonishing to me that anyone would question their faith, and even talk of leaving the Church, as the result of what is their misunderstanding of the role of conscience. I would agree it is best for them to “just obey Church teaching”.

It’s astonishing to me that anyone would say that church teaching is truth when all one needs to know truth is to act in accordance with conscience, which is written into each man’s heart by God. What’s the claim to truth if somebody having been taught that truth is not acting rightly if they do not act contrary to that truth because of their conscience?

Don’t be shocked when people who believed in church teaching abandon the faith because they are called rigid, lazy and, as implied by yourself and others, stupid. Who knew that believing in and upholding church teaching made you a jerk in the eyes of the church and theologians? Wish I would have known that sooner, I would have a lot more friends, a better job and a lot more entertainment and reading options. Instead I tried to spread what I was bilked into believing was the truth when it turns out that the people who disagreed with the church in good conscience, including atheists, were actually more faithful catholics than I was.

It’s now by leaving the church that I hope to fulfill this new vision of catholicism as explained to me.

 

[JPUSC]

Don’t be shocked when people who believed in church teaching abandon the faith because they are called rigid, lazy and, as implied by yourself and others, stupid. Who knew that believing in and upholding church teaching made you a jerk in the eyes of the church and theologians? Wish I would have known that sooner, I would have a lot more friends, a better job and a lot more entertainment and reading options. Instead I tried to spread what I was bilked into believing was the truth when it turns out that the people who disagreed with the church in good conscience, including atheists, were actually more faithful catholics than I was.

It’s by leaving the church that I hope to fulfill this new vision of catholicism as explained to me now.

I wholeheartedly agree with everything you are saying. You are absolutely right!

I am looking forward to starting my new life without the catholic church.

 

[graciew]

Yet one can easily convince oneself that what he feels is what’s right. .

That would be speaking alone.
You mentioned a doctor.
Take your time.

 

[Abynissa]

If you believe that “we are all free to disregard Church doctrine and teaching because there’s no need for it: we all know what’s right or wrong for us” then you are probably right that the Church has nothing to offer. But why do you assume this position is valid? That’s precisely what this debate is about. I certainly don’t accept that position, and I reject it precisely because of what such a position implies: the church is not who she says she is and we have no need of her.

Ender

Okay, I’m trying to understand this.

The Bible clearly states the condition of the human heart which seems to go against the law of God being inscribed on man’s heart.

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

Mat 15:18-19 “But the things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man. For from the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies.”

1Co 6:9-10 “Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.”

Isaiah 53:6 “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Rom 3:10 As it is written: **“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” **

But then the apostle Paul acknowledges that Gentiles have the law written on their hearts (Rom. 2:15). Yes, all men and women have some sense of a moral standard, but the unregenerate do not have God as the basis of their moral standard. Paul’s point in Romans 1:19– 23 is that even if the morality of the unregenerate is religiously motivated, their darkened hearts cause their conception of God and their sense of connection to Him to be distorted.

Ezekiel 36:26–27 is explicit: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

The metaphor of a “heart of stone” used in Ezekiel 36 and the “hardness of heart” alluded to in Ephesians 4:18 are apt descriptions of the unregenerate condition because they punctuate the inability of the human heart to respond to God and to the things of God — particularly His law. This is what Paul refers to as “dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked” in Ephesians 2:1–2. But as promised in Ezekiel, God has “removed the heart of stone” and replaced it with a “heart of flesh.”

A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience" (CCC 1800)
CCC 1792 states the consequences of disobedience: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”

So is seems that it goes against CCC 1800-1792? I’m not that all familiar with CCC. Since no one can obey the law of God until they became Born Again and the stony heart replace with a heart of flesh.

Otherwise woould have this case: if a pro-choice individual believes she is following her conscience and believes that they are doing right. They are committing sin by going against their consciences by being persuaded not to have an abortion and will they not be condemned to hell? Will not those advocating a pro-life be guilty of sin by causing someone to violate their conscience according to CCC if their conscience can never be 'involate" out of “invincible ignorance”?

 

[Brendan]

A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience" (CCC 1800)
CCC 1792 states the consequences of disobedience: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”
…

Otherwise woould have this case: if a pro-choice individual believes she is following her conscience and believes that they are doing right. They are committing sin by going against their consciences by being persuaded not to have an abortion and will they not be condemned to hell? -

I think your disconnect is this statement “he would condemn himself”. Note that the subject (the one doing the condemning) and the object ( the one being condemned) are the same.

A condemnation requires a judge. In this case the condemnation is coming from the person themselves, not from God. The person is the judge. The person considers themselves to have done wrong.But that does notequate to sin, which requires God to issue the judgement, not a human.

Now consider sin, in thatcase GOD is the judge, and the results are damage to or death of, the soul. That is what would happen if the pro-choice person follows their conscience and assists in an abortion, the personmight be free from their own personal condemnation, but would rightly experience the condemnation of God.

 

[Ender]

Okay, I’m trying to understand this.

Yeah, aren’t we all.

The Bible clearly states…

The Bible “clearly” states a number of things that aren’t actually all that clear. I am very cautious about citing the Bible to prove a point; I am much more comfortable citing the church’s interpretation of the Bible.

Paul acknowledges that Gentiles have the law written on their hearts…

What seems evident to me is that we all have a natural sense of right and wrong, and that innate sense is the same for everyone. That said, the conscience has to be formed from its initial state as it is “a judgment of reason”. If the conscience could not develop we would all behave like children, who are in fact not held morally accountable for their actions before the “age of discernment”.

Yes, all men and women have some sense of a moral standard, but the unregenerate do not have God as the basis of their moral standard.

I think this is the point to keep in mind: what we are given is a sense of the moral law. Even after great study we cannot know it in its entirety, yet we can certainly grow our understanding.1780 …Conscience includes the perception of the principles of morality…

A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience" (CCC 1800). CCC 1792 states the consequences of disobedience: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”

All this means is that if we do something we think is wrong we sin. This does not say if we do something we think is right we do not sin. That’s the distinction that keeps getting lost when these passages are brought up.

Ender

 

[RCinMT]

All this means is that if we do something we think is wrong we sin. This does not say if we do something we think is right we do not sin. That’s the distinction that keeps getting lost when these passages are brought up.

Ender

Okay, this is going somewhere to my simple mind.

Can you explain in language this plain why the following would be true:
Two people are considering the same act, which they both know by church teaching is a sin. Both feel compelled by their conscience to commit the sin. One does, one does not. The one who does has committed a sin but is not culpable because the person obeyed the conscience. The one who does not has not committed the contemplated sin but has sinned in not following the conscience and is culpable.

So the person who concretely committed a sin has nothing for which to answer while the one who didn’t commit the concrete physical sin does have a sin for which the person has to answer.

 

[Ender]

The person considers themselves to have done wrong.But that does notequate to sin, which requires God to issue the judgement, not a human.

I’m not at all comfortable saying someone has “done wrong” but has not committed a sin. In what sense has he “done wrong” if not in the moral sense, but if his act is morally wrong doesn’t that make it a sin?*1750 The morality of human acts depends on: *

• • the object chosen; *
• • the end in view or the intention; *
• • the circumstances of the action.
    *The act is immoral - a sin - if the intent is to do wrong, so if we purposefully do something we think is wrong (immoral, sinful, harmful…) doesn’t this make the act a sin according to this definition?

Ender

 

[Brendan]

I’m not at all comfortable saying someone has “done wrong” but has not committed a sin. In what sense has he “done wrong” if not in the moral sense, but if his act is morally wrong doesn’t that make it a sin?

1750 The morality of
Ender*

Note that I said that they*‘considered themselves to have done wrong’, that is distinct from*violating the moral law.

A*person who came to a judgement that eating a carrot was wrong, but went ahead and ate one anyway, would consider themselves to have done wrong. But no moral law was broken, the act of eating a carrot is not an immoral act, and therefore no sin.

Do you see the distinction?
​

​

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Catholics are now left with the following concept: the only thing one has to believe is true, really,

It may be beneficial to reflect on whether what “one has to believe” is also at heart a “feeling”. Afterall belief isn’t a “fact” … only objective factual truth doesn’t involve subjective “feelings”?

Why must anybody “have to” believe?
Only angels/devils “have to” believe in God by the force of their piercing intellects.
For them it isn’t really belief, God is a fact.

What’s that point of gathering to hear words that one is free to disagree with?

Do you visit your old dad/mum because you think truth drops from his every utterance?

If you turn the volume down a little on the histrionics and try quietly reflecting a little more you might learn something important and gain new insights here regardless of your theological academic background.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

.

Excellent post. I also had a warm family upbringing–during the pre-Vatican II era–and from my earliest memories the importance of conscience was firmly taught–and it was simply to know right from wrong, without need of clarification, by listening to one’s conscience. Considering the uproar we now see about the role of conscience, one wonders if a later generation has any clear understanding of the role of conscience. My understanding of it was learned in a traditional Catholic way, both at home and school–through Catholic education from kindergarten through high school by members of Catholic religious orders, including Catholic priests. Its overarching importance was always stressed, and it was thought it was enough for us at six-years of age to know whether or not we ought to receive communion with first going to confession. Absent such a background, I would guess that many no longer have a clear understanding of conscience and perhaps don’t even hear the internal promptings of conscience–and thus their misunderstanding. For it is hardly that a person may do as he pleases.

It is astonishing to me that anyone would question their faith, and even talk of leaving the Church, as the result of what is their misunderstanding of the role of conscience. I would agree it is best for them to “just obey Church teaching”.

Interesting. My education was almost totally by nuns, brothers then Marist Priests.
From the age of 14 I was vocally debating with them in Religious studies lessons.
The priests took no offence at all as they were theologically very well trained and did not feel the need to argue blindly from authority. The easy approach of those priests taught me to respect Church teaching as a point of reference to agree, argue with, reflect and keep coming back to even when I still disagreed. Its a dance.

Like yourself I am amazed the younger one’s here just do not understand how to ride that bike and have a real personal relationship with the Church and its Teachings.
It seems to be to do with our upbringings, ours seem very similar.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

If those were truly the only reasons you belonged to the Church for that may well be a good thing in the short to medium term.

I sincerely meant exactly what I said.
You sound like you are in the Church for some fairly weak reasons at the moment.
Leaving for a while could be just what you need to do to get a better perspective and a firmer footing. You do seem to have issues.
Its not abnormal from my experience of teens and young men…an age group you seem to belong to from the characteristics and tenor of your comments.

 

[Thomas_White]

According to JPII: “The judgment of conscience is a practical judgment…” This is not my opinion on the matter, it is what the church teaches.1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason…

This is easily misunderstood if we seek to turn the certain judgment of conscience into an objective one. It is not, at its core, objective knowledge; it is innate and not learned. In that way, it concerns faith and belief rather than objective knowledge.

You might want to reconsider your understanding of what the conscience is.
I didn’t give you my interpretation; I cited what JPII said, and what he said was that it was Jesus himself who calls us to form our consciences.
Do you mean the voice of conscience tells us what to believe and the judgment of conscience is the determination of how that belief is to be applied in a particular situation? Can the voice of conscience err, or only the judgment of conscience? Is it the voice of conscience that can tell us to ignore church doctrine?

Once again: "Deep within his conscience, man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey…For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God (CCC 1776).

The voice of conscience does not tell us what to believe. It tells us whether or not a particular action is right or wrong. It is of the heart and a feeling, not literally a voice. In this sense it is related to belief rather than knowledge. I think your confusion lies in not recognizing that there is a inner (subjective) component to conscience. Conscience differs in this fundamental way from objective truth. It is only understood by the intellect and is not an objective formulation of the intellect.

No, the voice of God cannot err. However, the judgment of conscience can err if its voice is “stifled”, as Cardinal Ratzinger has explained. This has been gone over time and again on various threads. The voice of the conscience could not possibly tell us to ignore doctrine. It is a certain guide for our understanding of whether or not a particular act is right or wrong for us.

Can objective truth be known, and if so, how? It cannot be known from the conscience alone or there would not be such great divisions over moral issues like contraception, but if the conscience cannot supply it, what is the origin of the knowledge of objective truth?
It is one thing to assert that our understanding is incomplete, but quite another to state that what was believed true yesterday is believed not to be true today. This comes very close to saying truth cannot be known since we can have no trust that what we believe now won’t be repudiated in the future.

Ender

Of course objective truth can be known, and it is known by the intellect. It is learned. Again, there is a subjective component of the conscience. I do not see that conscience could weigh in on general issues like contraception. Rather, the certain judgment of conscience could only tell an individual whether for him or her that contraception would be right or wrong. But whether or not millions of people have heard the certain judgment of conscience cannot possibly be known.

There is a much larger issue concerning whether Absolute Truth can be objectively known by limited human language and reason. It is why so many have held through the ages that faith and belief are important.

 

[RCinMT]

I sincerely meant exactly what I said.
You sound like you are in the Church for some fairly weak reasons at the moment.
Leaving for a while could be just what you need to do to get a better perspective and a firmer footing. You do seem to have issues.
Its not abnormal from my experience of teens and young men…an age group you seem to belong to from the characteristics and tenor of your comments.

Again, quite an insult. I don’t know how you define young but given that you lumped teenagers in the group, no, I’m not young.

But I digress. My reasons for having been in the church were related entirely to the consent of reason and belief in the truth claims laid out by the church. As evinced, again, by high handed comments from people like yourself and the pope, I see there’s no room in the church.

A word of caution, though: the whole approach here seems to be to bring people to Christ, to have the smell of the flock, as your pope said. Relativism has been tried before by certain denominations. It doesn’t seem to be keeping the young in mainline protestant denominations nor is it keeping in those who were faithful.

Relativism seems like an even worse approach for a church that makes a lot more truth claims than the protestant churches. At least those denominations don’t have a bunch of doctrines and teachings that they’ve been holding out as truth which they are now trying to recant from by appealing to conscience. As hard it is to say after all these years to me there’s appears to be more coherence in protestantism than catholicism.

You may wish to engage in subterfuge or perhaps you mean it when you talk about having disagreements with the church but always coming back to those as a point of reference. I think the church is to you more of a security blanket because if you don’t believe in the teachings–and to disagree with one is for the entire narrative to collapse because the whole thing is supposedly an integrated, systematic doctrine so to refute one aspect, e.g. birth control, is to have to engage in incredible mental gymnastics to justify other beliefs, e.g. being pro-life. If one isn’t pro-life than one cannot possibly believe that God knew us in the womb, breathed the spirit in to us. Devoid of that belief than the whole idea of a conscience and heart inscribed by God collapses…and this could go on.

Relativism is one of those things that you’re either out or in but there’s no dipping a toe in the water without being logically incoherent.

 

[Tobias2]

This poses an interesting question. What if one no longer believes in their conscious that the Catholic Church is the “true” church. This paradigm in a way blesses that person leaving the church and presumably, following their honest conscious, being in harmony with God.

It’s one thing if one remains a Christian. What if one in conscious no longer believes in the Christian claims about Jesus? They are free to become Muslim or Buddhist or whatever.

As long as they are “choosing” a faith in honest conformity to their conscious then the particular faith does not matter.

It gets back to the hope for universal salvation that Von Balthazar wrote of - as long as one lives by the golden rule, no matter one’s religious affiliation, one is saved.

I believe JP2 toyed somewhat with this idea. Hoping that hell was empty or near empty.

Maybe the Spirit is leading the Pope and bishops in a direction that places the Catholic church on a transformational path? His recent selection of Cardinals seemed to favor men open to a radical call of the Spirit.

 

[JimG]

Conscience has nothing to do with feelings. It consists of a moral sense of right and wrong, but it is not pre-programmed. It is an aspect of the intellect.

All human beings have a human spiritual soul, with the faculties of intellect and will. But we do not have innate knowledge like the angels. All knowledge begins in the senses, is integrated in the brain, and abstracted into immaterial ideas by the intellect, which itself is a spiritual faculty.

The only sense in which one might say that we are pre-programmed is that the will is designed to seek the good and the intellect is designed to seek the truth. That’s a far cry from knowing right from wrong on day one of our existence.

That’s why parents have to teach their children right from wrong.

To quote a Q&A from Catholic Answers (here),
“Many people mistakenly think that conscience is the faculty that tells us what is right and what is wrong. Conscience is better thought of as an alarm. With your intellect you learn what’s right and wrong, and then conscience “sounds off” when you are about to violate the standards your intellect has learned. If you have no standards, you’ll never hear the alarm.”

Conscience can make wrong judgments. When Humanae Vitae was issued, many claimed that their conscience viewed artificial contraception as not sinful. But they were wrong, as was their conscience.

 

[goout]

True, but why must a person always obey the certain judgment of his conscience?

CCC 1792 states the consequences of disobedience: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”

Why would he condemn himself?

"Certain". …the certain judgement… What do you think certain means?

 

[goout]

Conscience has nothing to do with feelings. It consists of a moral sense of right and wrong, but it is not pre-programmed. It is an aspect of the intellect.

All human beings have a human spiritual soul, with the faculties of intellect and will. But we do not have innate knowledge like the angels. All knowledge begins in the senses, is integrated in the brain, and abstracted into immaterial ideas by the intellect, which itself is a spiritual faculty.

The only sense in which one might say that we are pre-programmed is that the will is designed to seek the good and the intellect is designed to seek the truth. That’s a far cry from knowing right from wrong on day one of our existence.

That’s why parents have to teach their children right from wrong.

To quote a Q&A from Catholic Answers (here),
“Many people mistakenly think that conscience is the faculty that tells us what is right and what is wrong. Conscience is better thought of as an alarm. With your intellect you learn what’s right and wrong, and then conscience “sounds off” when you are about to violate the standards your intellect has learned. If you have no standards, you’ll never hear the alarm.”

Conscience can make wrong judgments. When Humanae Vitae was issued, many claimed that their conscience viewed artificial contraception as not sinful. But they were wrong, as was their conscience.

The conscience is the voice of God speaking within a person. God “speaks” the moral law to the person. The person and God come together, in whatever degree of unity, in the conscience.

 

[Thomas_White]

Conscience has nothing to do with feelings. It consists of a moral sense of right and wrong, but it is not pre-programmed. It is an aspect of the intellect.

Really? My experience has invariably been that when I err, I later feel bad. This is known as having a guilty conscience. And it will happen without the necessity of my first consulting official Church teaching. It is a feeling.

All human beings have a human spiritual soul, with the faculties of intellect and will. But we do not have innate knowledge like the angels. All knowledge begins in the senses, is integrated in the brain, and abstracted into immaterial ideas by the intellect, which itself is a spiritual faculty.

All knowledge is not synthetic a posteriori, and not all judgments are synthetic a posteriori either. That’s all.

The only sense in which one might say that we are pre-programmed is that the will is designed to seek the good and the intellect is designed to seek the truth. That’s a far cry from knowing right from wrong on day one of our existence.

That’s why parents have to teach their children right from wrong.

Well, there remains CCC 1776: “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey…For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.”

I accept this teaching of the Catechism but a person is free to reject it. It is your right to do so. But, again, a persistent error and the source of much misunderstanding is the erroneous insistence that truth must be objective knowledge. And I see this error as an impediment to spiritual growth, which also requires faith and belief.

When my own children were emerging from infancy to toddlers and beyond, I would reinforce what was right or wrong but always had the feeling that they readily understood. It was as though I was only bringing this to their awareness. I do not recall any arguments about it, and their sense of guilt of often palpable.

To quote a Q&A from Catholic Answers (here),
“Many people mistakenly think that conscience is the faculty that tells us what is right and what is wrong. Conscience is better thought of as an alarm. With your intellect you learn what’s right and wrong, and then conscience “sounds off” when you are about to violate the standards your intellect has learned. If you have no standards, you’ll never hear the alarm.”

If this were truly so, it would utterly negate CCC 1776. It is yet again an attempt to objectify the law inscribed on a person’s heart by God (and thus on conscience itself). I cannot accept that what the Catechism teaches us is “God’s law inscribed on the heart” is what the intellect has learned, and that the voice of God’s law is something man has taught Him. Do you realize the seriousness of this error?

Conscience can make wrong judgments. When Humanae Vitae was issued, many claimed that their conscience viewed artificial contraception as not sinful. But they were wrong, as was their conscience.

Of course conscience can make wrong judgments. This is not in dispute.