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, 63.2.
Saint John Paul II (+2005) when considering the “seeking what is true and good” reminds us that Jesus Himself warns us of the danger of a deformed conscience in Matthew 6:22-23: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
Of course the Holy Father regularly cited Sacred Scripture throughout his twenty-six plus years of pontificate. The Holy Father is not the only Saint to have considered this passage of Sacred Scripture (Matthew (6:22-23). Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP (+1274) in his Catena Aurea gathers the reflections of Saints John Chrysostom (+407), Jerome (+420), Hilary (+368), Augustine (+430) and Gregory the Great (+604). A well-formed conscience allows us to understand the difference between right and wrong not only abstractly but practically. A corrupted understanding of right and wrong leads to a life filled with many evils. We experientially know how hard it is to move around or do anything without light, so when our conscience is darkened by sin and vice it is no less difficult to move about or do anything morally right. As blurry vision may result from excessive eye discharge, so too, our moral vision is clouded by anything less than a clear moral vision. The physical or biological eye which can be closed or covered is contrasted with the spiritual eye which may be obscured by sin and evil in the will. The intentions with which we do things are a sort of vision or view we have of things which may be 20/20 accurate or more obscured. Doing evil with evil intent is all the more evil. When Saint John Cassian (+435) cites this same passage (Matthew 6:22-23) in his Conferences (2:2), he does so in light of “discretion”, contrasting sound judgment, knowledge with deception, error and presumption. These last three are able to “darken all our mental vision and our actions, as they will be involved in the darkness of vices and the gloom of disturbances.”
By conforming our spiritual vision of morality to that found in Sacred Scripture, especially the Commandments (cf. Exodus 20:1-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21) and the Beatitudes (cf. Matthew 5:3-11; Luke 6:20-23), Sacred Tradition and the sure and certain moral teachings of Mother Church we will maintain a sound and well-formed conscience full of light and truth (cf. Dei Verbum, 10.3).
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr