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(Introduction)

Rules Of Conscience

224. The two preceding books serve as an introduction to this third book devoted to answering very serious questions on conscience which have been discussed in the Church only in recent times, and to which solutions that command the full agreement of modern moralists and Catholic schools of thought have yet to be found. Before any review of problems and conclusions of such importance for the Christian people, some attempt had to be made to indicate preliminary notions which would help to clarify the subject matter of the discussion and remove all ambiguity about its content. This we think we have achieved.

We also saw that the solution of these questions depends upon discovering certain rules or principles by means of which we can safely know how to carry out every one of our actions without failing in our duty. These rules will have to be valid whether we have formed a conscience or not, or having formed it, whether it is true or erroneous.

225. When the understanding is sufficiently developed, we become used to acting only after judging whether our actions are licit or illicit, good or evil. This judgment, or conscience, becomes the necessary norm of our behaviour (cf. 118-140).
Sometimes, however, we are unable to form this judgment with certainty. In such a case, our spirit lacks a norm necessary to its action (cf. 201-225 [205]).

Nevertheless, whether we have been successful or not in completing our judgment and thus forming a conscience, we have to act, and in acting be guided by some rule. We ask therefore what are the special rules to be followed in our various states of judgment on the morality of the actions we are about to do. Whatever form these norms take, they are what we call rules of conscience.

226. Having established what we understand by rules of conscience, we now have to formulate them, and in doing so rely upon sure guides. As we have said, these guides cannot be other than the principles accepted by the Church from the beginning. We have to show that the rules of conscience are logically connected with principles as true as the Church herself is true (cf. 210-214). This is not a question of prudence, as some authors suggest, but of truth.

In fact, it seems to me that the search for what is prudent instead of what is true explains why this extremely relevant study of rules of conscience remains confused and undeveloped.

227. Authors who follow the more favourable opinion offer a clear example of this wrong approach to difficulties when they defend their doctrine on the basis of effects desired from their teaching. According to them, proposing the rigid opinion would have the effect of alienating and frightening people, who could not be persuaded to undertake such a burden. 'The world has little desire to change,' says Fr. Paolo Segneri, an author of some prestige. 'If you attempted to confine it to the limits just described, the world would not be satisfied with showing that painting or dancing or racing or going to the theatre on days of obligation was a sound opinion. It would go on to show that such an opinion was sounder than its opposite. The effect would undoubtedly be a laxer attitude amongst Christians. Great numbers, who now abstain from following such teaching because it is less probable than its opposite, would follow it without difficulty when they heard that it was more probable.'(123)

It is sad to find such a person writing like this. Whatever his views, it is not right that he should search for a moral rule on the basis of 'The world has little desire to change', or go on to say that if the more probable opinion were proposed as a rule of action, people would soon come to take the laxer opinion as the more probable. They would do this, he affirms, not because 'they were deficient in the fear of God, but because, being human beings like everyone else, and strongly inclined to what is less upright, they would have no difficulty (and this is especially true of educated people) in persuading themselves about the uprightness of their own opposite opinion. "Each easily believes according to his desires," says St. Thomas very clearly.'(124) But if 'each easily believes according to his desires', does this justify people before God in their erroneous belief that what pleases them is to be preferred to the truth? If, because I am inclined to what is less upright, I persuade myself that wrong is right, can I be said to do this with an upright conscience? Scripture declares blessed the person who speaks truth in his heart,(125) and can we, as teachers of the gospel, connive with our own wrong desires? My true responsibility is to shake off my deception and view things rightly.

We are not surprised to find pagan philosophers, who also knew that 'the world has little desire to change', hesitating to proclaim the more difficult aspects of truth. Pagan thinkers have always suppressed the truth about God by their wickedness.(126) Terrified by the inclination to evil which they saw in human beings, and despairing of making their voices heard and their example followed if they promulgated virtue in its entirety and truth unmixed with falsehood, they compromised with the vice present in corrupt humanity. They preached virtue, but simultaneously fawned over and flattered human passions. Lacking generosity and moral strength themselves, they despaired of imparting it to others.

This is not the case with Jesus Christ, nor with those who are prepared to learn from the only-begotten Son who came down from the Father in order to save Adam's children. Human timidity, vileness and lying are unknown to the one Teacher who has no part in human weakness. Our divine Master, and all those sent by him, proffer truth in all its purity, just as it is.(127) The Lord is fully aware of his power to make the truth he proclaims the ruler of souls. 'The world has little desire to change' is certainly not the starting point of his reasoning. The Master of the universe, and his representatives, know that once the world has heard the word of God it will want to change a great deal and become what it never desired to be. This has happened, and continues to happen every day. Only overwhelming ignorance and error can make us think that the present world is what it always has been. Christianity has overthrown from the foundations the world that once was, and renewed it in the depths of its being. Adam's offspring, buried in the blood of Christ, has risen as the offspring of God, who lives and reigns for ever.

We cannot imitate the pagan philosophers and ask ourselves whether people will listen to us or not. Our business is simply to ensure, with all our strength, that we speak the truth. We need not trouble about the consequences which God has foreseen from all eternity, and in which he finds his good pleasure.

As Christian philosophers or, more appropriately, theologians, we should think it unworthy to propose as the sole aim of our teaching rules of conduct that help people simply to quieten their conscience. What would be the consequence of false rules of conscience? We would have formed human beings who, while they do what is wrong, blindly believe that they are doing good. But to be far from the truth and yet at peace, without making any serious attempt to amend, is the greatest of all deceptions. Such a state is reproved in words similar to those with which Christ condemned the sin against the Holy Spirit, and the condemnation is frequently repeated in scripture. For example:

We are not helped if we imagine we are doing what is right, but form a confused, false conscience that betrays us. There was a time, unfortunately, when outward religious conventions were the order of the day, and we can only hope that in those times God did not take too different a view from that of the world. Let us hope that God did not see, deep in the heart, vice that appeared to the rest of us as virtue, disguised even under ecclesiastical dress and religious habits, and shielded from condemnation by the subtleties of human theology.

228. I am not alluding in any way to the worthy person who has prompted these remarks of mine, but I am sure that they are true and can be seen to be true. What I am affirming is that an investigation into the rules of conscience cannot fittingly begin by deciding what is useful or not, in its effects. We can search only for what is true, because this is a question of truth and falsehood alone. If we find the truth through living faith in God who, loving us and wishing us to be saved, saves by giving us his truth, we shall most certainly have found what is useful, whether we have looked for it or not.

Notes

(123) Lettere del P. Paolo Segneri sulla materia del probabile, 1, pd2 (W. Metternich, Cologne 1732, reprinted at Benevento).

(124) ibid.

(125) 'Who speaks truth from his heart' (Ps 14 [15]: 3).

(126) 'That detain the truth of God in injustice' (Rom 1: 18 [Douai]).

(127) 'All the truth' (Jn 16: 13).

(128) Prov 14: 12.