My dear parishioners,
Peace! In other bulletins (4 December, 2016-11 June, 2017) we have considered the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on “conscience.” We then turned to Saint John Paul II’s encyclical letter Veritatis splendor (6 August, 1993) which addresses fundamental moral issues, including “conscience” more than one hundred times. These reflections were begun earlier (6 April, 2018-30 May, 2018). Here we now consider a passage from Veritatis splendor, 63.
Saint John Paul II (+2005) when considering the “seeking what is true and good” reminds us that “it is always from the truth that the dignity of conscience derives.”
As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ we know the importance of the truth. He Himself said: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6)), and that “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32). This is not some sort of gnostic hidden mystery. It is rather, Christian realism. The freedom of which the Lord speaks is freedom from sin, the slavery of sin (cf. John 8:34; Romans 6:20). A well-formed conscience which corresponds with the truth of our human nature, the truth about God and His Commandments, Beatitudes assists in this very liberation and magnifies our very human dignity (cf. Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21; Matthew 5:3-11).
Philosophically, the importance of truth is no less significant. Our friends at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy include nearly three thousand articles related to the truth, e.g. axiomatic theories of truth, the coherence theory of truth, the correspondence theory of truth, the pragmatic theory of truth, logical truth… The ancient pagan Aristotle (+322BC) highlighted fallacious ways of reasoning so as to avoid untruths, even leading to “necessary truths” which ultimately lead to an uncaused cause, identified as God by believers. Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP (+1274) wrote various commentaries on the works of Aristotle and even a three volume treatise on Truth (Robert W. Mulligan and James V. McGlynn, trans. Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1994).
There are some one hundred ninety-nine references to “truth” in Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), some concerning “the truth about God” (cf. Romans 1:25; VS, 1.2), “absolute truth” (VS, 1.2), and “truth itself” (VS, 1.2). The well-formed conscience, corresponding to the truth, might even be called a “true conscience.” There are some forty references to “true” in addition to those of truth in the Holy Father’s opus.
When the Holy Father highlights the link between truth and dignity, it is not about pomp and riches. Hans Christian Andersen (+1875) showed that even great wealth is not able to overturn the truth in his tale about The Emperor’s New Clothes, where an innocent child is able to point out what is obvious. Saint Teresa of Calcutta, MC (+1997) got it right when she would recognize the human dignity of the poorest of the poor, caring for those whom the world disregards, allowing life to be lived and even death to be faced with dignity and respect in truth.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr