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, 62.1.
Saint John Paul II (+2005) when considering the “seeking what is true and good” reminds us that the Church has developed over the centuries doctrine regarding “the erroneous conscience.”
Three high-water marks in the history of the Church’s doctrine regarding “conscience” erroneous or otherwise include Saints Augustine (+431), Thomas Aquinas (+1274), and John Henry Newman (+1890). In his famous “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk” Saint John Henry Newman wrote ‘“The eternal law,’ says St. Augustine, ‘is the Divine Reason or Will of God, commanding the observance, forbidding the disturbance, of the natural order of things.’ ‘The natural law,’ says St. Thomas, ‘is an impression of the Divine Light in us, a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature.’ This law, as apprehended in the minds of individual men, is called ‘conscience.’”
The errors of conscience may be distinguished as voluntary or involuntary, willful or not. Those errors which are not willful or are involuntary may lead to bad behavior but bear less culpability than those which are entirely voluntary or willful.
How numb have we allowed ourselves to become in the face of the “unspeakable crime” the 62 million abortions sanctioned by law in the US since the 1973 Roe v. Wade travesty (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 51.3)? Do we allow ourselves to be numb to the “grave offense” of pornography industry which is said to have grossed $520 million a year (cf. CCC, 2354; Forbes 25 May, 2001)? Are we so focused on profits and increasing our net worth as to forget Saint Paul’s inspired words: “Neither thieves, nor the greedy, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:10; cf. CCC, 2450)? Galatians 5:19-21 can also help to form our conscience, keeping it from willful error: “The works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, Idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the Kingdom of God.”
Even if we turn our backs to Sacred Scripture, or the witness of the Saints, God forbid, the voice of conscience can never be entirely snuffed out because it is nothing less than God calling us to Himself, to holiness, to shun evil and to do good. We may say to ourselves and others “I can’t hear you” but God still shouts shouting even in a “still small voice (cf. 1 Kings 19:12).
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr