Getting to the Point

I would like to spend Wednesdays on the blog looking at some of the gnarlier questions of Catholic teaching and theology. I realize from both my priestly ministry of spiritual direction and my presence on Catholic social media that there is quite a bit of misunderstanding of Catholicism, even among Catholics. And of course some of the issues I hope to treat are hotly contested, widely rejected, and bitterly opposed. As those who know me and have read me for years know, that sort of thing only encourages me to keep writing about it. I don’t mind being disagreed with, but fiercely resist efforts to silence me.

Let’s start with something a bit less juicy, but fairly central in many of the hard questions of our day. Let’s talk about conscience. Now, in a single blog post I cannot do justice to the whole theology and philosophy of this matter, but let’s talk about why the Church insists on the primacy of conscience (cf Catechism of the Catholic Church 1782) and what that really means.

Conscience is the practical intellect, that part of our reasoning faculty by which, examining a decision that is to be made, we determine what is the good course of action, also known as the moral good. We determine the right thing to do, and we determine this right thing to do by the exercise of our conscience.

This is not moral relativism. Those Catholics and others who bridle at the mention of the word conscience are hearing it in a morally relativistic way, but that is simply not what the Church means by it. Using one’s intellect to determine what is the right and moral course of action is no different in essence from using one’s intellect to solve a math problem. You indeed have to do the solving (or, if you are using a calculator, you can have someone else do the solving for you), but nobody claims you can decide that 2 and 2 are five or that you can divide by zero and come up with a rational number.

And if you are doing math in the service of some practical project—building a house or paying your taxes—making mistakes in the numbers will have practical effects in the world. The house will fall down and kill you and your family; the taxes won’t get paid properly and there are legal consequences to that.

Conscience is much like that; we use our intellects to determine the right course of action. If we determine wrongly, and do something that is in fact morally wrong, we may be innocent in intent, but the wrong is still done. And actions are morally wrong, not by some arbitrary law given by a heedless Lawgiver, but because they are harmful to us. Some harms are immediate and obvious (reckless driving causes a crash) and some are long-term and gradual (smoking causes lung cancer), but the harm is done nonetheless.

It is absolutely vital that people exercise their consciences freely. Sometimes it comes up in pastoral ministry that a person wishes they didn’t have free will, that God would just tell them directly moment by moment what to do and even completely take over their volition. This is not the deal God has with us, though. The reason we must exercise our conscience is rooted in the very purpose and goal of God’s creative and salvific will for us. He made human beings so that there would be creatures of flesh, material creatures, who could freely choose to know Him and love Him, who could make a free choice to enter communion with Him and so give glory to God.

There is much more that can be said on that front (I hope to write a book about it some day). But that is the fundamental reason why conscience is primary and free will absolutely necessary. God does not violate us, does not force Himself on us, does not make us know Him and love Him (this is also why He hides Himself from us, painful as we find that hiding).

Conscience being free and primary does not do away with the moral law and with moral doctrine or teaching. That is really quite silly if you think of it. If I have a really hard math problem to solve, I am actually grateful to have a calculator, both to save time and to protect me from costly errors. And I trust the makers of the calculator to have created an instrument that provides reliable calculation.

Well, it is no different with conscience and morality. The ‘Maker’ of the moral law has provided us with a sure and trustworthy instrument to provide us with helpful guidance and answers, to save us from needlessly laborious moral reasoning and preserve us from deadly errors. And that instrument is the Catholic Church in its teaching office.

People often bridle at this. “So it comes down to just do whatever the Church tells you, then? Phooey!” Well, calm down there. For one thing, the Church is not telling me right now to write this blog post, nor is it telling you to read it. There are vast swaths of life we all live each day where we are making free choices that the Church offers us at best general principles to decide with (e.g., I should use my writing and intellectual gifts to help people, you should read helpful things).

The Church simply tells us that 2 + 2 = 4 and not 5. Sex is for marriage. Don’t steal - other people’s property is to be respected. Don’t tell lies. Don’t kill people. That kind of thing. Most of us can find quite a bit of freedom in our lives within the walls of the moral law; those walls enclose quite a vast estate of human action and choice.

Well, there is much more to be said about conscience – I wrote a whole series about it a while ago that you can access by clicking on the ‘talking about conscience’ label at the bottom of this post. But that’s more than enough for one day. My conscience is telling me to post this up and move on with the next duties of my state of life, and I guess I’d better obey it!

Trusting another means taking one’s stand on someone else’s intelligence and embracing as true what one has not decided for one’s self… it implies a recognition by the mind of its own limits, an acceptance of dependence, a surrender of my absolute sovereignty…

The rejection of the truth comes down to the choice of self affirmation and rejection of affirmation of God… acknowledging what is, submitting to the real, means acknowledging something that I have not decided for myself and therefore already saying yes to God…

What we get now is instead of acknowledgment of a sovereign Law by which all will be judged, individuals and society, is the arbitrary decision of one particular will, which decrees good and evil, and against which there is no longer any appeal… here at the end of the line the perverse roots of the rejection of truth are stripped bare. The will to power appears in all its inexorableness.

Jean Danielou, The Scandal of Truth

Reflection – The theme of our summer program this week has been ‘Show Me God: Finding God in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness’. We have had a variety of presentations along these lines, many of them leaning rather heavily in the direction of the latter two of the transcendentals, beauty and goodness. We have had some good teachings on the nature of truth, as well, but I have noticed over the years, not particularly in Madonna House but in the world at large, a tendency to shy away from the word truth or the notion of truth.

Relativism of one sort or another seems to be the operative system for many today. It doesn’t make huge amounts of sense, of course. How can it be absolutely asserted as true that there is no such thing as truth? How can we say it is certainly true that we cannot know for certain what is true? The whole thing collapses under its weight before it gets off the ground.

No, it fails as an intellectual system, miserably and utterly. But it succeeds, or seems to succeed, as a sociological system, as a way of ensuring social harmony and peace. You have your truth and I have my truth and it’s OK because there is no actual truth or nobody knows what it is and so everybody dance! Clap along if you know that happiness is the truth! Whatever that means. Who cares – it has a good beat!

All of this put me in mind of this very fine book by Danielou published in the 1960s. It has lost none of its relevance today. Truth does scandalize us; that is, it is an obstacle we trip over (the original meaning of the word scandal), something awkward, in the way, something we would like to do away with so we can do as we please, go as we please.

The rage on the political left in the aftermath of the Hobby Lobby case in the US is instructive in this regard. For one thing, it puts a lie to the claim that relativism is the path to social peace and harmony, and lays bare the inherently totalitarian and dictatorial nature of relativism.

One group holds that it is true that there is an absolute right to free contraception (a strange claim, in my mind, one I have never seen really argued for, but assumed as a dogma, I guess). Some in society believe that contraception, or at least some forms of contraception, are morally evil, and while having no interest in coercing other people from committing those evil acts, do not want to actually be cooperating in them by paying the bill for them. 

Now in a genuinely tolerant society, it would be a no-brainer to work out some accommodation whereby if the government really believed that the first group was justified in its claim, it could meet their ‘right’ without violating the beliefs and conscience of the second group. And, to their credit, Congress in the 1992 RFRA, and the Supreme Court in its interpretation of that law and its present application to the current matter of Hobby Lobby, etc., came to that very conclusion.

And… all hell broke loose among the first group. Strange, that. Apparently it is not acceptable to work out some compromise that respects everyone’s beliefs and lets everyone alone. The second group—people who sincerely believe they would be doing a grave evil if they paid for these products—must be forced to capitulate, must have their consciences crushed, obliterated, wiped out.

And so the will to power shows itself. When there is no greater truth—even the simple truth that people should be allowed to follow their consciences so long as doing so does not harm the social fabric—then what is left is not freedom but rather a naked power struggle in which whoever has the upper hand can ruthlessly suppress those who are in a weaker position.

Well, all I can say to those who are fine with that is, watch out. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, and today’s winners may not be tomorrow’s. If might is right is the only relevant principle, then nobody’s rights are secure, not in the least.

The [modern] journalist begins with a worship of success and violence, and ends in sheer timidity and mediocrity. But he is not alone in this, nor does he come by this fate merely because he happens personally to be stupid. Every man, however brave, who begins by worshipping violence, must end in mere timidity.

Every man, however wise, who begins by worshipping success, must end in mere mediocrity. This strange and paradoxical fate is involved, not in the individual, but in the philosophy, in the point of view. It is not the folly of the man which brings about this necessary fall; it is his wisdom.

The worship of success is the only one out of all possible worships of which this is true, that its followers are foredoomed to becomes slaves and cowards. A man may be a hero for the sake of Mrs. Gallup’s ciphers or for the sake of human sacrifice, but not the sake of success.

For obvious a man can choose to fail because he loves Mrs. Gallup or human sacrifice; but he cannot choose to fail because he loves success. When the test of triumph is man’s test of everything, they never endure long enough to triumph at all. As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.

It was through this fatal paradox in the nature of things that all these modern adventurers come at last to a sort of tedium and acquiescence. They desired strength; and to them to desire strength was to admire strength; to admire strength was simply to admire the status quo. They thought that he who wished to be strong ought to respect the strong. They did not realize the obvious verity that he who wishes to be strong must despise the strong.

They sought to be everything, to have the whole force of the cosmos behind them, to have an energy that would drive the stars. But they did not realize the two great facts---first, that in the attempt to be everything the first and most difficult step is to be something; second, that the moment a man is something, he is essentially defying everything…

When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating oneself to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is more and more the situation of modern England.

GK Chesterton, Heretics

Reflection – Not just modern England, either, big guy! The tendency which GKC observes here, the use of phrases like ‘being modern and up to date’, ‘getting with the program’ and such and so has only become more acute in the century since he wrote this.

The chapter this is taken from is called “The Mildness of the Yellow Press”, how what is supposed to be hard-hitting and shocking journalism is fundamentally a cynical toadying to the powers of the moment in service of the agenda of the moment. Uh, yeah – that hasn’t exactly gotten any better lately either. I will spare you what I actually think of our modern media, as I don’t think I could do so whilst still using language befitting a reverend member of the clergy.

But since most of us are not, in fact, journalists, let’s think about this larger point GKC is making: the worship of success as a certain path to mediocrity and failure, the worship of strength as a certain path to weakness and timidity and cowardice.

I am reminded of a very funny bit from a Lily Tomlin routine where her character says “I always wanted to be someone, but I realize now I should have been more specific.” The truth of the matter is, we have to be more specific. We have to decide, not to be successful or strong or catch the wave (unless we are, in fact, surfing). Rather, we have to choose to be something real, do something that matters, some good thing outside ourselves that we care enough about to pour our whole heart and soul into it, whether we succeed or fail.

I remember full well making my final promises in Madonna House in 1998, acutely and painfully mindful of my weakness and inability to live this vocation well at all, yet deciding simply that I would rather fail at MH than succeed somewhere else that I didn’t care about. I would rather give my all in some ‘hopeless’ endeavor that meant the world to me than be all rational and canny and calculating in something that I didn’t actually care two cents for.

And it’s the same dynamic at play with all the trends and issues and preference cascades of the day. Whatever you think of, say, same-sex marriage, the last thing in the world you should think is ‘Well, everyone is getting on board with this, so I guess I should, too.’ Cowardice, that is—rank, mediocre, craven, cowardice. Be a Man, or a Woman, and think your own thoughts, and come to your own conclusions—don’t be bullied or rushed by the mendacious ninnies in the media-entertainment business who don’t know anything about anything and whose only concern is to accommodate themselves to a trend that isn’t there and to make everyone as mediocre and compliant as they themselves are so they can sell you whatever product they’re shilling (oops, there I go telling you what I think… better stop for today!).