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, 55.
Saint John Paul II (+2005), again without identifying who specifically points out that there are “some theologians” who see “the function of conscience” as being “reduced, at least at a certain period in the past, to a simple application of general moral norms to individual cases in the life of the person. But those norms, they continue, cannot be expected to foresee and to respect all the individual concrete acts of the person in all their uniqueness and particularity.”
The rejection of “moral norms” because of the “uniqueness and particularity” of concrete individual persons and their concrete individual acts would not only disallow the continued proclamation of the Decalogue or the Sermon on the Mount going forward, but would, retroactively judge their initial promulgation as an unjust overreach of an unjust god. Even with the passing of the millennia human nature has not and does not change. The approach of John Locke (+1704) to human nature as a ”tabula rasa” (blank slate) is lacking. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (+1778) when considering human nature denied the social aspect, as well as reason and language originally and only developed these as a consequence of the “social contract” in his Second Discourse. While some of us, on our worse days, may act like savages, by nature we are not even noble savages, we are imago Deithe image of God (cf, Genesis 1:27). Saint Augustine (+430) in his On Nature and Gracerecognizes both the goodness of our nature, created by God as well as our fallen nature due to Original Sin in contrast to the heretic Pelagius (+418) who discounted our need for God’s grace. Saint Thomas Aquinas (+1274) following St Augustine and building upon his work also recognizes and teaches the goodness of our human nature as well as the sad consequences of the Fall (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 85, A. 1-6). St Thomas recognizes a threefold goodness of human nature, the constitution and properties of human nature such as the powers of the soul (to know and to love), the inclination to virtue, and the original justice in which we were constituted before the Fall.
Pope Francis (b. 1936) has invoked the “laws of nature” in his Apostolic ExhortationAmoris Laetitia, 222 (19 March, 2016), and the importance of the Decalogue. Morality is clearly more than the application of moral laws and rules, but these should also not be disregarded either (cf. AL, 304-306). None of us should ever distance ourselves from the objective requirements of the moral law (AL, 302).
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr