At the service of Conscience

by

Bishop Mario Grech

Our future depends on the human capacity to choose between what is good and what is bad, between truth and falsity. Woe to that society which endorses as good that which is bad!

Although material and scientific progress is a formidable gain, moral illiteracy can turn this progress into a destructive force against humanity.

Along the years, human beings have achieved greater freedom through the attainment of many civil rights. But if this freedom is severed from truth, it becomes just a license to act according to individual whims, trampling on others’ rights.

The antidote against this pernicious threat is the cultivation of one’s moral conscience. Although the exercise to foster a true and upright conscience is difficult and delicate yet it is a necessary process. Since conscience is the helm that gives direction to life, it would be a great pity for the citizen and for society if conscience becomes sick, persists in error and more gravely, loses its sensibility.

If one is to trust his conscience and be guided by it, then conscience has to be formed and infused by truth. Truth is antecedent to conscience. The “primacy of conscience” postulates the “primacy of truth”. It is the enduring role of conscience to seek truth and apply it in concrete practical everyday experiences.

The Magisterium of the Church is not an obstacle for Catholic believers. It is an aid given by Christ to human beings of good will, to seek, find and embrace the truth. Church teaching enlightens the moral conscience to identify objective truth in a certain manner. As Vatican Council II affirms: “In the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church. For the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself.” (Dignitatis Humanae,14).

The Magisterium of the Church is not an opinion amongst many other opinions; it does not encroach, threaten or eliminate the freedom of personal conscience; it is an aid which enlightens conscience. “The authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom ‘from’ the truth but always and only freedom ‘in’ the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith.” (Veritatis Splendor, 64).

For the benefit of those who want to be part of the people of God, called to enter the liberty of the truth revealed by God in Chirst, Church Magisterium “protects God’s People from the danger of deviations and confusion, guaranteeing them the objective possibility of professing the authentic faith free from error, at all times and in diverse situations. It follows that the sense and the weight of the Magisterium’s authority are only intelligible in relation to the truth of Christian doctrine and the preaching of the true Word” (Donum Veritatis,14). This same document published by the Congregation of Faith in 1990 points out that “what concerns morality can also be the object of the authentic Magisterium because the Gospel, being the Word of Life, inspires and guides the whole sphere of human behaviour. The Magisterium, therefore, has the task of discerning, by means of judgments normative for the consciences of believers, those acts which in themselves conform to the demands of faith and foster their expression in life and those which, on the contrary, because intrinsically evil, are incompatible with such demands” (n.16)

It is in this context that one should read Pope Paul VI’s words that Catholics should show a “sincere obedience, inward as well as outward, which is due to the Magisterium of the Church” (Humanae Vitae, 28).

This does not mean that the Magisterium expects to take the place of one’s conscience. “The Church puts herself always and only at the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit (cf. Eph 4:14), and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it.” (Veritatis Splendor, 64). The risk that conscience can “swerve from the truth about the good of man” is indeed true, especially today when there is a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine which sublimates the subjective sphere of individual feeling. As Pope Benedict XVI remarks, “for Catholics to accept this faulty line of reasoning would lead to the notion that there is little need to emphasize objective truth in the presentation of the Christian faith, for one need but follow his or her own conscience and choose a community that best suits his or her individual tastes” (New York, 18 April, 2008).