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, 31.
“One positive achievement of modern culture,” according to Saint John Paul II (+2005), is a “heightened sense of the dignity of the human person and of his or her uniqueness, and of the respect due to the journey of conscience” (VS, 31.2).
How “heightened” is our “sense of the dignity of the human person”? A heightened sense of the dignity of the human person could be a result of an adequate anthropology or even better an authentic theological anthropology. To see the human person as only so many molecules, so much carbon (C) and water (h2O) is only to see some or part of the picture, discounting the soul or spiritual element which is the principle of life. In the Theology of the Body St. John Paul II provides a theological and philosophical look at the human person created in the divine image. Atheistic materialistic communism discounts or discards both God and the soul.
How “heightened” is our sense of the “uniqueness” of each human person? Pope Francis (b. 1936) has decried a “throw away culture” (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, (24 November, 2013), 53; Laudato si (24 May, 2015), 16,43, 123; Amoris Laetitia, (19 March, 2016), 191), which sees the human person a consumer good to be used and discarded, exploited, oppressed, excluded and disenfranchised. We may not all be Einsteins (+1955), Mozarts (+1791), Rembrandts (+1669) or Shakespeares (+1616)… all great at science, music, painting or writing, each of us has our place and role in God’s providence and mysterious cosmic plan. The 1942 jazz hit There will never be another you picks up on the truth of our uniqueness.
What respect do we have for the “journey of conscience”? Common law recognizes the age of reason as seven, when we are able to discern between right and wrong. All things being equal, a fourteen year old would have an even more keen sense of good and evil and a fortiori, someone who is eighteen or twenty-one… That Dred Scott (1857) preceded Brown v Board of Education (1954) by some ninety-seven years exemplifies the “journey of conscience” made in the USA. That there is an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and child labor laws exemplifies the “journey of conscience” removing us from chattel slavery and indentured servitude. Being able to distinguish between usury (exorbitant interest) and an honest rate of return (cf. Exodus 22:25; Deuteronomy 23:19; Ezekiel 22:12; Matthew 25:27; Luke 19:23) likewise did not happen overnight. Sergeant Alvin C. York (+1964) provides another marker in the “journey of conscience.”
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr