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, 62.21.
Saint John Paul II (+2005) when considering the “seeking what is true and good” reminds us that “in order to have a ‘good conscience’ (1 Timothy 1:5), man must seek the truth and must make judgments in accordance with that same truth.” Two passages of Sacred Scripture again come to mind here, namely: John 8:32 “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” and John 14:6 “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.” Our skeptical age which denies the existence of truth or that it can be known finds this all very confusing at best.
The Greek word used by Saint Paul in 1 Timothy 1:5 is suneidesis and is not unrelated to the term he used in Romans 2:15; 9:1; 2 Corinthians 1:12 (syndideseos) and is the same as 1 Corinthians 8:7. Saint Paul uses syneidesin in 2 Corinthians 4:2; 5:11. These are three variants of the same term which translates into English as “conscience” and conscientia in Latin. It is found more than thirty times in Sacred Scripture.
The Holy Father places before us the imperative to actually seek the truth. Not only are we to seek the truth but then we are to act accordingly. The Holy Father does not specifically mention here the philosopher Immanuel Kant (+1804) who famously wrote about the “categorical imperative” whereby we are to always act in such a way that we can also will that the maxim of our action should become a universal law (cf. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals, 1785, 4:421). The Holy Father does address Kant by name and the categorical imperative elsewhere (e.g. Person and Act, The Lublin Lectures).
A “good conscience” can be juxtaposed to a “bad conscience.” If a good conscience judges in accord with the truth of the matter at hand, a bad conscience disregards the truth about God and about ourselves made in His image, redeemed by His blood (cf. Genesis 1:27; Ephesians 1:7; Romans 5:9; Colossians 1:20). The truth(s) sought here are not historical (e.g. who was first to walk on the moon) or geological (e.g. which rocks contain diamonds and which contain gold) or literary (what is the difference between verse and rhyme and meter in poetry) but moral and ethical. Our friends at Stanford University remind us that morality refers to rational codes of conduct which regulate behavior, while our friends at University of Tennessee Martin remind us that ethics systematizes, defends and recommends certain behaviors as right or wrong.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr