The 5th dubium: the conscience

[JimG]

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.”

Yes. The law inscribed by God is to do good and avoid evil. That is the ontological character of the human will and intellect. The content is filled in by learning. Is a child born with the entire moral law pre-programmed by God? If that were the case, then the conscience could not err. In fact, that would be the case even if we view the conscience as the voice of God speaking directly to each individual. God does not err.

 

[Brendan]

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.

According to Aquinas, it is an act of the intellect.

For conscience, according to the very nature of the word, implies the relation of knowledge to something: for conscience may be resolved into “cum alio scientia,” i.e. knowledge applied to an individual case.

ST I, Q79, a13

That is reflected in the CCC as well

Conscience is a Judgment of Reason (Intellect) whereby the Human Person recognizes the Moral Quality of a Concrete Act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed". (CCC, n. 1778)

Any feelings would be an effect of the act, not the act itself.

 

[Thomas_White]

Yes. The law inscribed by God is to do good and avoid evil. That is the ontological character of the human will and intellect. The content is filled in by learning. Is a child born with the entire moral law pre-programmed by God? If that were the case, then the conscience could not err. In fact, that would be the case even if we view the conscience as the voice of God speaking directly to each individual. God does not err.

No, this is also incorrect. Both will and intellect are distinct parts of the mind and cannot in themselves have character traits, i.e., an ontological character. The law inscribed by God on the heart is innate and a natural part of man and thus a part of both human nature and man’s ontological being.

The persistent error is the attempt to objectify Absolute Truth. And this is the same error that holds that God can be known solely by the limited language and reason of human beings.

 

[Thomas_White]

Simply stated: The law inscribed by God on man’s heart is not the conscience. It is the voice of this law that man discovers deep within his conscience. They are not the same thing. The intellect comprehends what is heard by the conscience but is not the source of it.

If we are not careful in our understanding of the teaching, we risk lapsing into an unwitting secularism, which asserts that Reason is the Providence of Man. And this was Adam’s sin–the sin of pride. Sorry, it is late here, and that will have to do.

 

[Vico]

…

The idea of autonomy of conscience is an error:

Catechism

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

 

[Ginny89]

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…

Well this leads to interesting questions which someone may perhaps indulge me in answering.

What about psychpaths? Their chief disability is the inability to feel remorse, guilt or shame and a very limited capacity for empathy. Does this mean they lack a conscience in the way Catholics understand conscience?

Is concience a spiritual thing? Feelings are not spiritual are they? Another way to ask this: do angels have a conscience?

If conscience is the command in the heart of the soul to do good and not evil, then it seems it is the very thing that determines sin. It is our most direct and personal contact with God as creatures of free will.

Its violation is the ultimate sin, the sin of the damned angels and men. One may be mistaken in their understanding of good and evil but not have violated this basic command or orientation of their will to subbordinate itself to the good. I guess this is why the church teaches that full knowledge must be present for mortal sin. Because one must be clear that they are choosing evil and violating this most direct and personal command of God to the individual.

I hope with St. JPII that hell is empty or nearly so. I recall Pope BXVI also speculating the same. I don’t remember the document but I remember him saying it would take a real act of hatred or rejection of love to take someone to hell. That gives me comfort. I believe very few people make a genuine internal act of rejecting this basic command to do the good. Most of us are just confused and lost about what is good and bad.

As an aside, I always thought the Eastern notion of reincarnation was merciful. It keeps someone perpetually returning for more tries until they are enlightened and can choose rightly. I know its not true because it assumes that once each person is properly enlightened, they can only choose the good. Our religion teaches us that some very intelligent and enlightened beings did willfully choose the evil with full knowledge of hell. I find that mind boggling and the thought scares me.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Again, quite an insult.

Then you must define “insult” as including any comments that even hint you are not yet perfect.

None of us are perfect, it isn’t a crime, its part of life to mature, we all need help to grow well. If you find my advice unhelpful just ignore it, treat me as an idiot and move on.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

The idea of autonomy of conscience is an error:

Catechism

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

It does not seem that “the idea” of conscience’s autonomy is an error.

Rather, it is a asserting "a mistaken idea"of same that can be problematic.

Therefore there seems to be a correct way to understand conscience’s autonomy.

 

[Vico]

It does not seem that “the idea” of conscience’s autonomy is an error.

Rather, it is a asserting "a mistaken idea"of same that can be problematic.

Therefore there seems to be a correct way to understand conscience’s autonomy.

It means that it is a mistake to believe that a persons conscience is autonomous from the teachings of the Church. The conscience must be formed.

 

[Ender]

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.

I don’t think it would be true. It would be true if following our conscience always erased our culpability, but that is clearly not the case. The church teaches that we may well be held accountable for our sins even if our conscience is clear.* 1790 …it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.
1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility.*
Furthermore, the church explicitly states that rejecting church doctrine and believing the conscience is free to choose may lead one to error.1792 …assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

The one who does not has not committed the contemplated sin but has sinned in not following the conscience and is culpable.

You’ll have to give me an example of this one.

Ender

 

[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?

I understand that the act the person considered immoral was not objectively wrong, but the nature of the act is only one of the criteria used to determine if a sin was committed. A sin is committed if we do a good act for a bad reason, and doing something we believe is sinful is a sin because our intention is to commit evil.*1753 …an added bad intention (such as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).
*Ender

 

[Ender]

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.”

This passage has to be accounted for by those (like myself) who believe the conscience can be formed, and that man does not start out with a full knowledge of God’s law. By the same token, your position must accommodate other passages that provide difficulties for your position. We are all obliged to reach an understanding that accords with everything the church teaches about the conscience; it is not enough to pluck out one passage and ignore everything else.

Citing 1776 to support your judgment is insufficient. You have to explain how your view of the conscience agrees with statements such as “1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason” and “1783 Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened.”

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.

If we are free to pick and choose among what the catechism teaches, why would we bother with any of it? Selecting A and rejecting B effectively claims the best that can be said of the catechism (and by extension, the church) is that it sometimes gets things right. More significantly it also implies that objective truth cannot be known. No one has a better claim to know the truth than anyone else, and there is no valid reason to believe these choices are right and those choices are wrong.

If objective truth does not lie with the church, where is it to be found, and if it cannot be found why would we believe it exists?

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.

Your assumption is that 1776 means all people are born with consciences aware of God’s law in its entirety. The problem with this is that it doesn’t accord with the teaching that the conscience must be formed. If, however, what is inscribed on our hearts is an untrained sense of right and wrong - the perception that right and wrong actually exist - then this satisfies 1776 as well as all the other passages.

Of course conscience can make wrong judgments.

How can you say this? Who is to judge what is right or wrong? If we are free to discard church doctrine when we act, why are we not free to ignore it when someone says our actions are wrong? How can I possibly do wrong if I think I have done right? How can someone else’s conscience be justified in claiming my conscience has erred?

Ender

 

[Brendan]

I understand that the act the person considered immoral was not objectively wrong, but the nature of the act is only one of the criteria used to determine if a sin was committed. A sin is committed if we do a good act for a bad reason, and doing something we believe is sinful is a sin because our intention is to commit evil.*1753 …an added bad intention (such as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).
*Ender

So could you explain how the eating of the carrot in my example was a sin?

 

[Thomas_White]

Well this leads to interesting questions which someone may perhaps indulge me in answering.

What about psychpaths? Their chief disability is the inability to feel remorse, guilt or shame and a very limited capacity for empathy. Does this mean they lack a conscience in the way Catholics understand conscience?

I will try. It is a very good question. It correctly implies that feelings of guilt and shame are a response of the conscience. The lack of these feelings, as well as the limited or non-existent capacity to feel empathy, are personality traits of sociopaths, psychopaths and those with Antisocial Personality Disorder. These are terms used to describe the same phenomenon relative to a neurotypical (i.e., normal) person’s conscience. They are classified as affective disorders, which means a disorder of the emotions rather than the intellect. In modern neuroscience and cognitive behavioral science, there is a vast amount of empirical research that supports this hypothesis.

Do they lack a conscience in the way Catholics understand conscience? I’d say yes, in that the lack of a conscience is considered a disorder. Nevertheless, the law that God has inscribed on man’s heart is innate, which is to say it is part of human nature. It would seem the disturbance of a psychopath, et all., concerns a person’s inability to hear the voice of conscience (i.e., the ability to know right from wrong) rather than the absence of a conscience. Cardinal Ratzinger also speaks of this as a disorder–as the stifled “protest of the anamnesis of being”. In this, his understanding was ahead of modern science.

Is concience a spiritual thing? Feelings are not spiritual are they? Another way to ask this: do angels have a conscience?

The voice of God’s law inscribed on the heart is a spiritual thing. There is both reason and belief, or faith. The later is of the heart and not the head. There is a long history of Catholic Saints who approached spirituality by way of mysticism, but I believe we live in an era (the age of analysis) that has all but lost this tradition and where Objectivity is deemed the sole source of truth.

I cannot know if angel’s have a conscience, but absent a material body it would seem to necessarily differ from the one that human beings share.

If conscience is the command in the heart of the soul to do good and not evil, then it seems it is the very thing that determines sin. It is our most direct and personal contact with God as creatures of free will.

I’d say so. It tells us when we have sinned.

Its violation is the ultimate sin, the sin of the damned angels and men. One may be mistaken in their understanding of good and evil but not have violated this basic command or orientation of their will to subbordinate itself to the good. I guess this is why the church teaches that full knowledge must be present for mortal sin. Because one must be clear that they are choosing evil and violating this most direct and personal command of God to the individual.

Yes, and I believe it is the sin of Adam as well. It concerns pride, I think, the seeking of the knowledge of good and evil so as to become God’s equal in determining what is good and what is evil.

 

[Thomas_White]

This passage has to be accounted for by those (like myself) who believe the conscience can be formed, and that man does not start out with a full knowledge of God’s law. By the same token, your position must accommodate other passages that provide difficulties for your position. We are all obliged to reach an understanding that accords with everything the church teaches about the conscience; it is not enough to pluck out one passage and ignore everything else.

Ender

It is not as though the fullness of official teaching is literally inscribed on the heart, but first I have a question. Is it that only that those who have a full understanding of the CCC may have a “formed conscience”? What of every other human being? Do they not have a conscience that knows right from wrong?

But to the point: What does it mean that “Conscience is a judgment of reason…” (CCC 1778).

Let us consider CCC 1780. It will be quoted in consecutive part. It begins as follows:

“Conscience includes the perception of the principles of morality (synderesis)…”

Synderesis is the natural ability of human beings to apprehend intuitively the law inscribed by God on man’s heart. This follows Plato.

“…their application in the given circumstance by practical discernment of reasons and goods…”

This is praxis. As such, it concerns practical reason, and practical reason is the intuitive ability to apprehend the law inscribed within the conscience (synderesis). Practical reason differs from speculative reason, the mere consideration of truth. Practical reason concerns truth in consideration of action (praxis).

“…and finally judgment of concrete acts yet to be performed or already performed.”

Again, this is the intuitive judgment of practical reason. It differs from speculative reason, which is of the intellect. I believe this is at the root of the misunderstanding.

 

[JimG]

“Conscience in the strict sense, or conscientia, is the action of the practical intellect deciding whether a particular, proposed operation is good or bad, here and now. It is the conclusion at which reason arrives after duly applying the principles of morality to a specific course of action.”
–Father John Hardon, writing under the heading of “Conscience in Christianity,” which can be found here, as a subheading of “Norms and Postulates.” He has a rather lengthy discussion of the matter.

 

[Ender]

So could you explain how the eating of the carrot in my example was a sin?

If the intent behind an act is sinful it makes the act - whatever it is - sinful. This is why an act of almsgiving becomes sinful if the intent behind it is immoral. If you commit an act in the belief that it is sinful then you have sinned. This doesn’t make eating carrots a sin, but it does make your particular act of eating them a sin precisely because you believe it is sinful to eat them and you do it anyway.

Ender

 

[Thomas_White]

“Conscience in the strict sense, or conscientia, is the action of the practical intellect deciding whether a particular, proposed operation is good or bad, here and now. It is the conclusion at which reason arrives after duly applying the principles of morality to a specific course of action.”
–Father John Hardon, writing under the heading of “Conscience in Christianity,” which can be found here, as a subheading of “Norms and Postulates.” He has a rather lengthy discussion of the matter.

How does practical reason (intellect) arrive at the principles of morality?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

It means that it is a mistake to believe that a persons conscience is autonomous from the teachings of the Church. The conscience must be formed.

This is so patently obvious it goes without saying.

And yet we have contributors suggesting that the assertion of the possibility of blameless erroneous formation logically constitutes a mistaken notion of autonomy thereof.

This is not so.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

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?

Yes it would be a moral fault, an immoral act.

The matter is disordered so far as the agent is subjectively concerned, and they freely chose to do so all the same.

In fact there is no transgression of objective law.
However there is transgression of internal perceived law.

I am unclear what you mean by “moral law”.