conscience

the first long quote is from a Tumblr blod fatherangel

fatherangel

fatherangel

What is a Catholic conscience?

notunprepared responded to the post on Cafeteria Catholics: 

Just to throw a bit of a spanner in the works here:

Isn’t people picking and choosing the beliefs they have (especially on controversial issues) just them being true to their consciences a lot of the time?

I mean, my conscience tells me to disagree with Catholic doctrines all the time, yet the conscience is meant to be where we’re ‘closest to God’…so is the Church wrong? Or is my conscience wrong? Or everyone’s wrong?

Not confusing at all.

Very good questions, notunprepared. If I may, let’s go to a pretty hard example. Your friend is promoted to a very sensitive level of Homeland Security, and is overseeing a prisoner recently apprehended. He’s a 22 year old Moslem  who’s worked with Al-Quaeda and who knows of an impending attack on the American people. 

Your Catholic friend respects you more than anyone else and informs you that his superiors have ordered him to oversee the torture of this young man with even more sophisticated techniques, which are sure to gain results. Your friend says, “What should I do, as a Catholic, do in this case?”

What do you say? “You know what? Your job is security and interrogation, and your government hired you to do this, so you owe it to them to do it, do it well, and get the job done. Maybe you’ll save a lot of lives.” In other words, just do whatever is going to be good for you.

Or do you say, “Just do what your conscience tells you to do.” In that case, your friend says, “Well, my conscience tells me don’t rock the boat and I’m just torturing one person. It’s not I’m dropping a nuclear bomb.” The only thing, if the friend had a conscience that would mysteriously spit out these wise answers all on its own, they would have never come to you seeking advice!

Finally, would you be inspired, for the sake of friendship and faith, to confront your friend with the issues? “You know, I’m going to be really honest. We are Catholics. We do not believe in torturing people, first of all. We don’t poke, prod, twist, and make people do blood curdling screams at the top of their voice. Remember the Gospel of Life we learned from the Church? Remember the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human body as a temple of God? And how many times has our government told us that “this is the person who will spill the beans” only to leave a trail of scarred bodies and broken minds from our “enhanced techniques of interrogation?”

“Honestly, I think you should put your foot down and say that the law was supposed to be changed and we weren’t supposed to stand by anymore and accept this. I think you should let people know that there are certain things you just won’t to do people, because even if they gave results, which they don’t often give, these actions against handcuffed and tied up prisoners simply lowers us to the level of the evil people we are supposed to be fighting.”

Conscience is like a chalkboard. A person’s conscience takes in moral knowledge (from the Latin words, cum+scientia, meaning “with wisdom”) of right and wrong from various sources, various people writing on that chalkboard, so that at a future date it can be a beacon for doing what is right.

A conscience can be well formed with God’s Word and the infallible guidance of the Church, or it can be warped, twisted, and acting on ignorance and peer pressure.

So yes, we are supposed to pick and choose as Catholics, but guided by the wisdom of our Church’s moral heritage and the sure guidance of the saints. Otherwise, we are picking and choosing what may be erroneous, and a conscience can be severely in error and because of that, harming the person or harming others damaged by the erroneous actions.

We are not closest to God when we are following our conscience. We are closest to God when we are following Jesus. So your conscience needs to submit to Jesus and assent to the Church’s guidance, and in that assent and obedience, your conscience blossoms with wisdom and gives you the tools for doing what will make you holy. “You are my friends if you do what I command” (John 15:14). It is in finding God’s will through His revealed truth that the conscience finds the Truth and becomes worthy to command us. For if you conscience is confused from poor formation, it is like the blind leading the blind into the ditch. God bless and take care! Fr. Angel

from comment 31 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/10/roots-of-the-reformation-what-it-means-for-today/#comment-139239

 1. Am I correct in understanding that you think if the church tells someone to light the match to burn a heretic, that the person (if their conscience is fully formed) is duty bound to obey the church and do it?

No, you would not be correct. But the question is also well-poisoning (e.g. “Am I correct in understanding that you’ve stopped beating your wife?”), because I’ve said nothing that would even suggest such a thing. In fact, I explicitly distinguished (in #15) between authentic Magisterial teaching on faith and morals on the one hand, and on the other hand prudential judgments, disciplines, or practices. Individually directed imperatives would fall under prudential judgments, which, as such do not bind the conscience.

2. For someone who chose to not light the match (out of their own personal conscientious objections), how would the church view them, or view their conscience? Would that person be considered anathema for disobeying the church? Or, would the church just consider that person to be in need of additional sanctification and forming of their conscience?

See below.

3. If the person is not duty-bound to light the match, and thus disobey the Church, why not?

The Church can bind the conscience absolutely regarding an act or belief only in teaching a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church. No imperative directed to an individual is conscience-binding as such. For this reason your language of “duty-bound” presupposes a duty that does not exist.