CONSCIENCE: NECESSARY BUT DIFFICULT FRIEND

JuLY 22, 2007

The legendary American frontiersman, Davy Crockett, who died, as all good Texans know, at the Alamo, once famously said, "Be sure you're right; then go ahead." Yet, sooner or later we all ask, "How do I know I'm doing right?"

General George Patton had a different approach to action. Recognizing the importance of bold, decisive leadership in times of war, he said, "It is far better to execute an imperfect plan now than to wait to develop a perfect plan at some future time."

In moral principle, we want to be like Davy Crockett, but in moral practice, most people sooner or later act like General Patton.

Most people sooner or later experience ambiguity in moral choice. They may be uncertain about what the right thing to do might be. The tendency then is to make a decision and forge ahead, even while remaining uncertain about the course chosen. They may judge their plan of action to be morally imperfect, but think at the same time that living a morally perfect life is humanly impossible. As a result, people often live in moral pain and guilt for having proceeded before they were sure they were right.

Is it possible to live by Davy Crockett's counsel, or are we doomed to act in moral matters the way General Patton acted on the battlefield?

I offer two points. The first and most important answer to the question, "How do I know I'm doing right?" is, "by listening to the voice of conscience".

To help us judge what is right and wrong, and to guide us in doing good and avoiding evil, we all are bound to listen to our conscience.

Our conscience, simply put, is our inner sense of right and wrong. Inside us is a voice, the "voice of conscience", that speaks to us, if we but listen. Our conscience, we know from personal experience, does not suggest, but commands. Nor does it usually tell us what we would like to hear. Our conscience often enough speaks against the wrong we want to do, or against avoiding the good we are obliged to do.

So important is conscience in choosing rightly that Aristotle was able to say: “Be true to yourself, you can be false to no one.”

The Church, for her part, affirms that God will ultimately judge us according to whether or not we obeyed our conscience.

My second, equally important point is this: conscience is not enough. Anyone who has ever tried to balance himself on one leg knows how difficult it is. The same is true in the moral life.
Trying to remain morally upright while balancing our whole lives on conscience alone is virtually impossible. Sooner or later there will be a great fall. We need a second leg to stand on, something to steady and support our conscience. We need a second moral authority outside ourselves to confirm or question the voice of conscience.

Each of us learns, or should learn, in the process of growing up, that we must allow our conscience to be formed and guided by wise and morally upright teachers, first our parents, then other important moral teachers - the priest, the religion teacher, perhaps the school teacher, and other adults in a position to influence our development. Without guidance, we discover, our subjective judgments can easily be erroneous. We may, for example, develop an overly sensitive or scrupulous conscience that is unnecessarily troubled by needless guilt over matters which the conscience considers wrong but which actually are not. Or we may develop a lax conscience that is not troubled, as it should be, when we are guilty of real moral transgression.

The bases of the Church's moral teaching are the commandments given in God's revelation, as recorded in Sacred Scripture. These provide a very firm and stable foundation for the formation of the Christian conscience.

When we stand before God in judgment, we will be judged not just according to whether or not we followed our conscience, but also according to whether or not we formed it responsibly. It is never enough simply to listen to the voice of conscience. One must seek to know the moral truth of the matter to be decided by also taking into account the other ways by which God has made the truth known.

So for example, Christians must search Scripture, and the teaching of the Church on Scripture, for knowledge of the truth made known by God. The Church has pronounced on all the primary moral issues of life, and set forth sound moral principles based on God's revelation. These pronouncements may serve as a moral compass to guide individual, daily decisions. It may also be necessary on occasion to personally consult a competent moral teacher of the faith, such as a member of the clergy, to allow God the opportunity to give enlightenment through the Church's minister.

Everyone must also turn to God in prayer, asking for guidance.

Discretion must also be exercised in proportion to the gravity of the decision to be made. Big decisions, obviously, call for more careful and patient consideration than do little ones. You don't "launch your ships" and go to war, or make any other major commitment in your life, without first trying, as best you can, to weigh the foreseeable consequences, or without considering any existent alternative courses of action to attain your desired goal.

We need not live in moral pain, guilt, or ambiguity. But the moral truth of things is not always immediately evident, and coming to know the truth is often not easy. Yet God has provided the means to attain it. It is only necessary to want to know and live in the truth earnestly enough to struggle patiently until it is found. Then it is only necessary to embrace it and cling to it.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap