The Blank-Formed Conscience

Facebook Thread

There's so much to learn and so little time to learn it. There's also so much to share, and so little time to do it. My various work commitments have been preventing me over the years from devoting much time to writing as much as I used to in my mid- to late 20's. Just as well, I've lost the luster of youth anyway.

I recently sat down with an old friend at lunch. A former seminarian, and by all measures that I could think of, he was a well-formed son of the Catholic Church. We don't have much opportunity to chat as much as we used to. I do recall a chat we had at lunch about a year ago where he asked me about my religious status, for lack of a better description. My response was to simply say that I believe there is a God, and His nature is understood best and taught best by the Catholic Church. In other words, I told him I am what I called "philosophically Catholic". There's a whole story behind what likely brought that about but for the sake of this posting, it's isn't too relevant. Back to the recent past. I asked my friend where he stands on the "Catholic thing", I called it. He basically said, he agrees with what I said back then. He said he is philosophically Catholic. I don't think I "converted" him to it. I think all I did was put a name to how I viewed the world then, and how he views the world now.

Along the course of the conversation, I shared with him the joy that teaching brings me, where I can address age-old philosophical concepts of truth, objectivity, subjectivity, relativity, etc. within the context of a psychological perspective. This is where he brought up where he agrees that there is objectivity in the realm of statements, or perhaps better said as propositions. The law of non-contradiction is about how you can't have mutually exclusive statements be true at the same time, in the same way. He believes that in the realm of morality he believes in a "personal truth" relative to conscience.

For me, it's hard to break free from old habits. I wanted to look around for some dry wood to start a fire with. :-) He quoted a second-hand lesson from a still-living famous Dominican theologian from whom his buddy took a class on theology with. He apparently said at the end of the class something to the effect of "forget about everything I taught you... your conscience, as it is, is your truth, and that's the standard you will be accountable for".

On its face, it seems like the good "doc" (I'm presuming the priest has an STD... Doctor of Sacred Theology, that is) is teaching moral relativism. But I don't think so. Said a different way, I think this is a proper Catholic understanding of the conscience and moral responsibility. Here are some things that I believe to be true, from a Catholic perspective:

1. All men are obligated to follow the natural law, which is accessible by all men with rational faculties. The natural law is written on the hearts of all men (and women). 
2. All men are obligated to follow the divine law, insofar as he is aware of the divine law, and if he is not, through no fault of his own, is not responsible to follow the divine law.
3. All Catholics are obligated to follow the ecclesiastical law, insofar as he is baptized Catholic and is aware of the ecclesiastical laws, and if he is not, through no fault of his own, is not responsible to follow the ecclesiastical law.
4. Man's responsibility for a moral transgression, aka culpability, is proportionate to the degree to which the three criteria for a mortal sin are present: 1) grave matter, 2) knowledge of the law, and 3) full freedom in carrying out the act.

As I understand it, therefore, if for whatever reason the individual received a moral formation, either by incompetent catechists, incompetent spiritual directors, or incompetent spiritual leaders/teachers, that was erroneous, and the individual could not overcome his ignorance, invincibly, then he is obligated morally to follow the dictates of his conscience, mal-formed as it may be. 

While there is an objective moral law, there is also a subjective understanding and practice of that moral law. Rather than saying, however, that this means the person has to follow their own moral truth, I would rather say that the individual has to follow his perception of the moral truth as he understands it.

I've been reading some theological reference works in my library on the formation of conscience to support what I've written here. I'll update this post as I find some helpful quotations, either in the body of the post or in the comments below.

Pax,
Laurence
10.24.17