32. Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and "being at peace with oneself", so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment. As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature.[Now, how many times do we come up against this line of ridiculous thinking? This so reminds me of a discussion I had in my recent past on conscience and the determination of moral sexual ethics.]
These different notions are at the origin of currents of thought which posit a radical opposition between moral law and conscience, and between nature and freedom.
3 comments:
What did Newman say ? 'I will toast the pope but I will toast conscience first' 'Sola Conscientia'
That quote is often used to infer that Newman would be a friend today to those who assert their own feelings as the only arbiter of the moral law, but that is ridiculous on its face. Newman understood conscience (in continuity with all of Christian history) in a way almost totally contrary to the contemporary meaning of the word. For Newman, conscience was not a speculative faculty of the intellect capable of knowing in the abstract what it good and evil; rather, conscience is a practical faculty of applying general principles to concrete cases. And for this reason, conscience must be taught the general principles by some other voice than itself and before it is able to fulfill its proper function. That voice is divine revelation, contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and transmitted authentically and authoritatively by the sacred teaching authority of the Church exercised by the College of Bishops and its Head, the Pope. An untutored conscience is no longer the practical voice of right reason; it is the tyranny of unreformed individual desire, and that is nothing more than the will to power. No, Newman would not give a blessing to sodomy or priestesses simply because those who have embraced these fantasies have intense feelings about them; he would, instead, insist that all of us must surrender in the obedience of faith to the Gospel, because only then is the conscience able to do its proper job.
Father,
Thank you for your comment. I think that is exactly correct. Your statement gets to the heart of the encyclical and how conscience and divine law are wedded together to shape the human intellect and the virtuous life. Newman's quotation is so often abused and ripped from its context.
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