An Introduction To Moral Theology, 2nd Edition. William May
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that this act here and now is the good that I am obliged to do or the evil that I am obliged to avoid if I am to be faithful to the “me” that I am in virtue of being human to begin with, is our own personal way of knowing what we must do if we are to answer the call or summons to become what we are meant to be. Moreover, we make the judgment about what we are to do here and now in light of the basic norms of morality of which we are aware. Thus, all three levels of conscience are inherently interrelated, and their interrelationship helps us to see why we are obligated to act in accordance with our own best reasoned judgment. The Catholic theological tradition and, as we have seen, the Fathers of Vatican Council II emphatically affirm that this indeed is a serious moral obligation.52 “The judgment of conscience,” John Paul II stresses, “has an imperative character: man must act in accordance with it. If man acts against this judgment or, in a case where he lacks certainty about the rightness and goodness of a determined act, still performs that act, he stands condemned by his own conscience, the proximate norm of personal morality. The dignity of this rational forum and the authority of its voice and judgments derive from the truth about moral good and evil, which it is called to listen to and to express” (Veritatis splendor, no. 60).
Yet our own judgments about what we are to do can be mistaken. There is thus the serious obligation, stressed by the Fathers of Vatican Council II and John Paul II, to seek the truth. Our judgment of conscience does not make what we choose to do to be morally right and good; in other words, we are not, through our judgment of conscience, the arbiters of good and evil. Our obligation is to conform our judgments of conscience to objective norms of morality, norms that have as their ultimate source, as Dignitatis humanae put it, “God’s divine law — eternal, objective, and universal” (no. 3). It is for this reason that the Council Fathers spoke of a “correct” conscience, declaring, “the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by objective standards of moral conduct” (Gaudium et spes, no. 16).
If the error or mistake in one’s judgment of conscience is not attributable to the person, then acting in accordance with such a judgment of conscience does not make the person to be an evildoer or an evil person, for the person has not, in his or her conscience, ratified or endorsed the evil in the course of action that is chosen. The action will still be wrong, and one who learns later that his or her judgment of conscience was erroneous will have cause for regret (not remorse), and must, of course, reorder his or her life in accord with the knowledge of the truth. Speaking of errors of this kind, the Fathers of Vatican Council II noted: “It often happens that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity” (Gaudium et spes, no. 16). But, as they went on to say, “this cannot be said of the man who takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin” (ibid.). As John Paul II says, “Conscience, as the ultimate concrete judgment, compromises its dignity when it is culpably erroneous.… Jesus alludes to the danger of the conscience being deformed when he warns: ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’ (Mt 6:22-23)” (Veritatis splendor, no. 65). In such instances, remorse, not regret, is called for, or what the gospels call metanoia or repentance.53 In their pastoral letter on the moral life, To Live in Christ Jesus, the bishops of the United States put the matter this way:
We must have a rightly informed conscience and follow it. But our judgments are human and can be mistaken; we may be blinded by the power of sin in our lives or misled by the strength of our desires. “Beloved, do not trust every spirit, but put the spirits to a test to see if they belong to God” (1 Jn 4.1). Clearly, then, we must do everything in our power to see to it that our judgments of conscience are informed and in accord with the moral order of which God is creator. Common sense requires that conscientious people be open and humble, ready to learn from the experience and insight of others, willing to acknowledge prejudices and even change their judgments in light of better instruction.54
Here the bishops speak of the obligation to have an “informed” conscience. Thus, to bring to a close this discussion of conscience, it will be necessary to offer some observations on the meaning of an informed Catholic conscience.
The purpose or goal of particular moral conscience, or conscience in the sense of one’s best judgment about what one is to do here and now, is true knowledge of what ought to be done in this particular situation. If one is to make a true judgment of this kind, one needs to be aware, first of all, of the basic principles of morality and how these relate to the situation at hand. One thus needs to know the facts of the situation. Thus, forming one’s conscience involves the following: first, one must grasp the implications of the basic principles of morality; second, alert to all the morally significant features of the situation, one must learn how to apply these norms so as to form reasonable judgments of conscience.
The person eager to make true moral judgments will, of course, be anxious to learn what he or she can from moral advisers who can be trusted. Thus, the person who is seeking to make a truly informed judgment of conscience will be willing to listen to the truth and to seek it from sources where it is most likely to be found. The Catholic, aware that the Church is God’s gift to him or her, that it is indeed the pillar of truth, will therefore be ready to accept the moral teachings of the Church, for the Catholic realizes that Christ speaks to him or her through the authoritative teaching of the Church that is the bride and body of Christ. Indeed, as the Fathers of Vatican Council II remind us, “in forming their consciences the faithful must pay careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of the Church. For the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. It is her duty to proclaim and teach with authority the truth which is Christ and, at the same time, to declare and confirm by her authority the principles of the moral order which spring from human nature itself” (Dignitatis humanae, no. 14). John Paul II, after citing this important conciliar text, has this to say: “It follows that the authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom ‘from’ the truth but always and only freedom ‘in’ the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith. The Church puts herself always and only at the service of conscience, helping it … especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it” (Veritatis splendor, no. 64).
The Catholic, therefore, will be connaturally inclined to embrace as true what the Church teaches in the moral order. For the Catholic, the moral teachings of the Church are not some kind of legalistic code imposed arbitrarily upon the Catholic from without. Rather, the Catholic regards, or ought to regard, the moral teachings of the Church as truths intended to remind us of our dignity as beings made in the image and likeness of God and called to shape inwardly our choices and actions in accordance with the truth. The moral teachings of the Church are meant to help Catholics walk worthily in the vocation to which they have been called as children of God and adopted brothers and sisters of the Lord, whose reign makes sovereign claims upon them, requiring them to love even as they have been and are loved by God in Christ.
Today some look upon the moral teachings of the Church as a set of legalistic and arbitrary norms, imposed on persons from without. They regard these teachings as a “party line” that the “official” Church proposes. This way of looking at the moral teachings of the Church is totally erroneous. When a person becomes, through an act of living faith, a member of the Church, Christ’s bride and body, that person commits himself or herself to a life in unity with Christ and his Church. The Catholic accepts, as part of his or her own identity, the identity of a Catholic, of one to whom life in Christ is mediated through the Church. And central to this life is the moral teaching of that Church. The Catholic, thus, will be eager to embrace as true what this Church proposes and will be anxious to shape his or her life in conformity with the moral