As long as you’re sincere…

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Manchester 10 May 2006

CONSCIENCE

In the paragraph about the downfall of moral values, Pope John Paul directs our attention away from the rules of morality to something deeper: “the problem is not so much one of ignorance of Christian ethics but ignorance rather of the meaning, foundation and criteria of the moral attitude” (1).

One of the main elements in the foundations of our contemporary moral attitude is a sense of the respect due to the individual person’s conscience. In itself, the recognition that people should be free to act responsibly on their own judgement is, as Vatican II put it, “greatly in accord with truth and justice” (2).

The recognition of the importance of conscience is something that we cannot and should not want to row back on. But we also need to take account of how the meaning of conscience can be interpreted in a way that misses its real depth.

Sometimes, as we saw, we speak as if, when a person’s conscience says that something is right when we believe it to be wrong, then it may simply be that this person’s truth and ours are different. That conclusion, however, would lead to a deep contradiction. The dignity of conscience and the respect due to a person’s conscientious decision arise precisely from the fact that conscience is a search for the truth. It is a truth which we do not create but rather seek to discover. It is, as we believe, ultimately a search for God’s will, that is why conscience is sacred and worthy of such respect. “The search for truth and the search for God are one and the same” (3). If conscience were simply a search for my opinion, and if another outcome of that search would be equally good, what would be the basis for according to that search and its outcome that kind of respect?

It is, of course, true that “what takes place in the heart of the person is hidden from the eyes of everyone outside” (4). It is not for anyone else to judge whether a person is or is not honestly pursuing the truth to the best of their ability. But, when one is dealing with fundamental moral principles, basic human rights for instance, it is a truth which we are all seeking together.

That is what conscience means. It is not a little voice that whispers in our ears; it is not a feeling. All these images are misleading because they suggest too passive a picture – as if I just sat there waiting for a voice to tell me what to do. My conscience is the end point of a search by which I honestly try to discover the truth and, indeed, believe that I have, to the very best of my ability, found it. It is my assessment as to what the situation actually is, what it actually demands, what are the obligations and rights involved, what is the likely effect on others and on myself, what are the possibilities open to me and so on.

The question is one about the truth – whether a particular line of action reflects and recognises the truth about the people and the values involved. The question is not simply about which line of action will work best, or will make people feel best, or will be generally approved of, but whether it corresponds to the truth. Nor is it a truth which simply applies the teaching of the Church or the Christian tradition to the choices that face me as if it would be unintelligible to someone who is not Christian. It is also part of a wider common search in which all human beings are involved:

Through loyalty to conscience, Christians are joined to others in the search for truth and for the right solution to so many moral problems which arise both in the life of individuals and from social relationships. Hence, the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and endeavour to conform to the objective standards of moral conduct (5).

It is worth noting that, in this passage, the Council uses the phrase ‘correct conscience’ in a sense that would not have been acceptable in the moral theology before that time. The older ones among us would have failed our moral exams for using it in that way! It uses ‘correct conscience’ to refer not to a conscience that is objectively in accordance with the truth, but to a conscience which has honestly endeavoured to conform to the truth.

This is important for many reasons, not least because it makes clearer the way in which the teaching of the Church interacts with our conscience, not by coercing but by enlightening it. There is a sense, therefore, in which the person who has honestly listened to the Church and has honestly reflected on the situation and has come to a conclusion as to what God wants of him or her, has a correct conscience. The Church does not make people’s conscience judgements, but serves them by opening them to the truth, revealing perhaps the prejudices and errors that lurk in all of our reflections.

… the Magisterium (the teaching of the Church) 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… The Church puts herself always and only at the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro… and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of humanity (6).

THE WHOLE TRUTH

But the other side of this recognition that conscience is each human being’s sacred search for the truth about God and about human life is that to speak about ‘my conscience’ is a much deeper thing than to speak simply about ‘my opinion’. It is in the first instance, in the Pope’s phrase which I have quoted several times, a search not just for answers to specific questions about right and wrong but a search for the full meaning of life.

When you look at the diverse moral views in our society, one of the things that strikes you is that there does not seem to be much in the discussion that has any reference to who we are or to what life is for, or to the ultimate destiny of human beings. There does not seem to be any reference to how the values we seek – justice and solidarity and integrity and human dignity – relate to the purpose of creation. When we pursue these values and goals, are we swimming hopelessly against the tide or are we acting in harmony with the meaning of creation? Is it a hopeless task or is it sharing in the journey of creation towards its creator?

Similarly, when one looks at the moral diversity, one might wonder at what level of their being people are involved in it. Does it actually touch the deep longings for peace and justice and love in the human heart?

Several years ago, the then Cardinal Ratzinger gave a conference in which he spoke about the unease he felt when someone said, “If Hitler believed that what he was doing was right, then it was the right thing for him to do”. The Cardinal suggested that there might be a deeper level at which one has to address the question.

There is a story in the Bible about a man who followed his conscience to the letter. You remember how it begins, “Two men went up to the Temple to pray…” The Pharisee did everything his conscience told him, but it was the tax collector, who had done all sorts of sinful things, who went home justified. At some level, the Pharisee’s conscientiousness was deceptive and deeply sinful:

The sense of guilt which ruptures a false serenity of conscience and which might be defined as a protest of conscience against my self-satisfied existence, is as necessary for human life as physical suffering seen as a symptom which allows us to recognise disruptions to the normal functioning of the organism (7).

What I firmly regard as my opinion may be no more than an uncritical acceptance of prevailing attitudes or an arrogant pursuit of my own prejudices or a lazy tolerance of attitudes that I should be questioning. Certainly, as Cardinal Ratzinger put it, we have to do what we believe to be right – but there may be a deeper fault. My failure to seek seriously for the truth may be what has left me with a false sense of security.

One of the most creative human activities is self-deception! One could list some of the more common forms of rationalisation:

‘The end justifies the means’ can be expressed in all sorts of familiar phrases: “It’s all in a good cause”; “all’s fair in love and war”; you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” All of them involve taking the focus off what we are actually doing and looking instead at some desirable end product. More subtly, it may take the form, “this dreadful evil, let’s say the threat of terrorism, faces us, we have got to do something, even if it sacrifices other people, even though in the cold light of day it might be clear that it cannot achieve the desired result; even though it may make things worse, but doing nothing is not an option.”

I agree with the principle in general, but my particular case is an exception. This involves regarding myself as so special that different standards apply to me. But morality has to be universal. To say that I believe I am justified in acting in a particular way means that I believe that anyone else in the same situation would also be justified in doing so.

‘Everybody is doing it’. ‘Surely nobody takes the traditional Christian views on sexuality seriously any more”, “When you see how many excellent and respectable people are doing it, how can it be wrong?” Claims like these seek to justify a particular action on the grounds that it is widely accepted. It doesn’t quite succeed in justifying the behaviour, but it gives a comfortable feeling of being in respectable company. Basically, of course, to claim that morality is just a matter of going along with the majority would be an abdication of conscience, of my own responsibility for my actions.

What such rationalisations enable me to do is to feel on a certain level that I am justified, to be able to claim that I am sincere. It may be that, after a while, on the surface of his or her consciousness the person genuinely believes that he or she is right. But a deeper and more honest self-knowledge might reveal a different picture.

RESPONSIBILITY

One of the classical proponents of sincerity as the criterion is Polonius:

This above all, to thine own self be true

And it doth follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

But does it follow? Surely it is entirely possible to follow one’s own conscience while doing something harmful to someone else. The statement of Polonius is true only, it seems to me, if one understands being true to oneself in a much fuller way than is usually meant by that phrase. Being true to others is not so much the consequence of being true to oneself. It is the meaning of being true to oneself. One of the phrases of Vatican II which is most frequently quoted by Pope John Paul II is a basic insight into anthropology: “human beings… can fully discover their true selves only in sincere self-giving” (8).

Freedom has to do with how I respond in relationships, it has to do with responding by giving myself in honesty and generosity and truth. Freedom, to put it in a word, has to do with responsibility. In the exercise of freedom I am answerable, most obviously to myself; I feel responsible for the choices I make; I feel that to some extent I am shaped by them.

I am responsible also not only to myself but to others. Being sincere means that I have done my best to recognise and respect the demands made on me by other people and by the realities of my situation. It means that I have sought to respect the reality of myself, not seen as some kind of hermetically sealed entity, but as person in relationships, interdependent with other human beings who make me what I am. The judgement I make is not just about my feelings; it is a judgement about the people around me and the world in which I live. One sign of that is that for every free action there is some answer to the question, “Why did you do that?” In other words, every free action is, in principle, capable of being explained to others, and, in fact, I am usually willing to try to explain my action to people affected by it.

I am responsible also to God:

Interiorly, the human being surpasses the whole universe of material things. It is to that deep interiority that a person turns when entering into his or her heart. There, God who probes the heart, awaits; there, a person decides his or her own destiny beneath the eyes of God (9).

That leads to the most profound reason why a superficial sincerity is not the whole picture. In my free choices I respond, positively or negatively to the invitation of God which is expressed in God’s creation of me as a person addressed by him. The human person, in those profound depths, beneath the eyes of God cannot simply be identified with what one sees in the first glance of introspection. I have often reflected on the point made by Karl Rahner in a meditation about the last judgement. I believe it is a point that we would all do well to reflect on when we make a conscience judgement, particularly if others, and especially the Church, are telling us that it is wrong. It is a disturbing point, but the most disturbing thing about it is that one only has to hear it to know that it is true:

The judgement of God will uncover the hidden recesses of our heart and will confound mere introspection; while our heart will admit that at bottom it always knew what now comes to light (10).

The truth which conscience seeks is the deepest truth about ourselves and our response to God in the depths of our hearts. A superficial sincerity is not the end of the matter for several reasons:

Even assuming total honesty and sincerity, the action may in fact violate the dignity of others. Sincerity is not some magic spell that will avert the evil effects for me and for others of an action which is based on a false assessment.

There is a kind of tranquillity of conscience which is the result of constantly ignoring and acting against one’s conscience or of employing rationalisations to avoid facing the uncomfortable truth. Somebody once remarked that conscience is very well bred and soon stops speaking to someone who doesn’t wish to listen! The end of that process is actually in some ways worse than the person who is consciously acting against his or her conscience:

The person who is no longer able to recognise that murder is a sin is more completely fallen than someone who can still recognise the evil of his or her behaviour, because the former is further removed from the truth and from conversion… [The Pharisee] is completely at peace with his conscience. But this silence of his conscience renders him impenetrable to God and to people. In contrast, the cry of conscience which gives no peace to the tax collector makes him capable of truth and love (11).

If one makes sincerity the overriding thing then one risks falling into the nonsensical conclusion that one would be better off not to know about the moral truth because then one would not have to fulfil it! This fails to recognise that morality is about doing justice to our own humanity and the humanity of others.

The commandments of God, our moral obligations, are not arbitrary impositions; they are consequences of the kind of beings we are, the dignity we share, our relationship to our Creator and to creation. It is hardly conceivable that a judgement which utterly and fundamentally contradicts that truth, such as the crimes of Hitler, would not be reflected in an unease at some deep level of a person’s being. But however much the deep sense of unease about a horrendous evil may be suppressed, it never entirely disappears:

Just as it is impossible to eradicate completely the sense of God or to silence the conscience completely, so the sense of sin is never completely eliminated (12).

Another way of saying that might be that we can never entirely lose touch with the reality of ourselves.

The way we evaluate human actions has to take account of the full richness of what is happening when we exercise our freedom.

Any assessment that views the action solely, or even primarily, as a mechanism for producing results fails to do it justice. This is one of the basic concerns at the root of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Therefore the encyclical begins by recognising that the question is not primarily about rules to be followed but about the full meaning of life – the full meaning which is to be responded to by the whole person.

CHOICES

The encyclical insists that certain kinds of choice are intrinsically wrong. It is important to understand what is being said here. It is not that any particular physical event can always be labelled immoral. Rather it is that the choice to behave in certain ways is incapable of being reconciled with the ultimate purpose of human life. Certain kinds of choice deny human dignity, reject universal communion, and refuse the truth of one’s own being.

If a rock falls, crushing a person to death, one cannot say that his fundamental rights have been violated. If, however, the rock was deliberately made to fall and crush him to death, then he has been deliberately, or directly, killed. In other words, somebody has chosen to kill him. It is the choice deliberately to kill a person that is morally wrong, not the simple fact that someone has died or even that someone has died as the result of someone else’s action:

The object of the act of willing is in fact a freely chosen kind of behaviour… By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world (13).

That is why, when we try to formulate absolute moral rules, you will always find in the formulation the word ‘directly’ or its equivalent: “It is always wrong directly to take an innocent life”; “Direct abortion is always wrong.”

The word ‘direct’ means that we are talking about something that a person has freely chosen to do, whether as an end or a means, whether by action or by omission of something that he or she could and should have done. It is, in other words, something chosen either for its own sake or as a way of achieving some further goal. Nor does it matter that the choice may be made with the greatest reluctance. A reluctant choice is still a choice; it is different from and unwelcome side effect which one does not choose but simply foresees as a consequence which is possible, likely or even inevitable..

So, when we say that a particular choice is always wrong without exception, we are not saying that it is absolutely and always wrong to be the cause of a particular outcome – even the death of an innocent person. This might occur as a side effect of one’s choice, perhaps an unforeseen and unwanted side effect. Otherwise you could never drive a car, never have electric wiring put in your house, since either of these actions could result in someone’s death. What is wrong to choose to bring about a person’s death, whether as an end in itself or as means to some other goal.

It is true, of course, that some side effects are so serious and/or probable that it would be very difficult to justify knowingly running a significant risk of bringing them about.

It would also be immoral to welcome the evil side effect even if it is not something you have chosen: “I give this morphine to ease the patient’s pain, but I am glad to know that it may well free up a bed for someone who is more deserving.” In that case, the aim you welcome has become part of what you are choosing.

ABSOLUTE TRUTH

Those rules cannot be understood simply as rules. They come, as the Catechism says about the commandments, in the second place (14). In the first place comes the truth which we seek, which we are always seeking – the truth about ourselves, about other people, about the world and about God. This is what Pope Benedict called the fundamental decision of the Christian life :”We have come to believe in God’s love” (15).

The search does not find its goal simply in a real or imagined equilibrium within one’s own heart, but in an understanding of ourselves, of the world and of God, which is never fully achieved in this life. Our search for truth and our search for God are one and the same, because God is absolute truth. One may define the human being, therefore, “as the one who seeks the truth.” (16)

In the end, we are not the measure of reality. We need to be aware how limited our insight into the truth is. There is a reality greater than we could imagine or hope for. We find the moral law written on our heart, in our conscience, not because we make it up but because we are created for God and our hearts are restless till they rest in him.

The most profound threat to the kind of culture in which we live is in the danger of abandoning the idea that we seek the moral truth together. If we settle for the idea that there is no accounting for moral taste and that there are only a great variety of equally valid opinions, it will become impossible to have any common vision. That would lead to the danger that the only way we can avoid, unproductive and bitter arguments will be to refuse even to discuss contentious, divisive, but fundamentally important issues.

The attempt to achieve social harmony by suppressing public moral discussion is doomed. A harmony which made us unable to discuss how to build a society in which people can flourish as human beings would be an empty and ultimately unsustainable harmony.

In the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, the key idea is that human freedom must be understood in the light of the whole picture of who we are:

… freedom is not only the choice for one or other particular action; it is also, within that choice, a decision about oneself and a setting of one’s life for or against God. (17)

In other words, implied in our moral choices is a picture of the truth about who we are and want to be, how we relate and how we want to relate to others and particularly to God. Those choices are made in our conscience which Vatican II describes as the most secret core and sanctuary of a person and the deep interiority where we are alone with God and where we decide our own destiny beneath the eyes of God. (18)

That is where we have to begin thinking and talking about Gospel morality. I chose to look at the question from the angle of conscience because that is where we face the question of the full meaning of life – in our secret core, in our conscience or, in more biblical language in our hearts.

The Catechism talks about the human heart:

The heart is our hidden centre, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as the image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant. (19)

The search for truth is demanding and it is a sacred duty, but the truth which we are seeking is the truth that sets us free, the truth for which we are made:

Here lies the specific newness of Christianity: the Word, the Truth in person is at the same time reconciliation, the forgiveness which transforms beyond all our personal capacities and incapacities… The burden of the truth became light when the Truth arrived, and loved us, and consumed our faults in his love. (20)

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Footnotes

• JOHN PAUL II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 18.
• 2 VATICAN II, Dignitatis Humanae, 1.
• 3 JOHN PAUL II, Message for the World Day of Peace, 1991.
• 4 JOHN PAUL II, Veritatis Splendor, 57.
• 5 VATICAN II, Gaudium et Spes [GS]16.
• 6 VS 64.
• 7 RATZINGER, J., Elogio della Coscienza, in Il Sabato, 16 March 1991, p.85 (my trans.)
• 8 Gaudium et Spes, 24.
• 9 Gaudium et Spes, 14.
• 0 RAHNER, K., On Prayer, Collegeville 1993, p. 113.
• 1 RATZINGER, op. cit.
• 2 JOHN PAUL II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia 18.
• 3 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor: 78.
• 4 Cf. CCC 2062.
• 5 Deus Caritas Est, 1.
• 6 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 28.
• 7 VS 65.
• 8 GS 16, 14.
• 9 CCC 2563.
• 2 0 RATZINGER, p. 93

+Donal Murray
Bishop of Limerick