Brian Lewis on Primacy of Conscience... (Main Forum)

by Letter to the Editor , Saturday, May 05, 2012, 18:09 (384 days ago) @ Brian Coyne

Peter Wilkinson writes:

Dear Brian - My first response is to point you to this article recently published at www.v2catholic.com. Brian Lewis is a former Redemptorist and erstwhile professor of Moral Theology. If you have not seen it you will find it most interesting. Max Charlesworth also writes on 'conscience' in his booklet 'A Democratic Church: Reforming the Values and Institutions of the Catholic Church' published in 2008 by John Garrett (pp,44-49). He leans heavily on John Stuart Mill and Cardinal Newman. Peter

Here is a sample of the article on Primacy of Conscience by Brian Lewis:

In the first place it is necessary to point out what is not meant by the primacy of conscience. In our decision making we cannot claim to be completely independent of any outside influence. As persons in community we do not enjoy absolute autonomy. It is true that many people believe that they are entitled to make up their own mind without reference to any outside authority, whether of church or state. Perhaps ideas like this about morality are in measure due to cultural changes and other social factors. Our secularised society is marked by a growing disillusionment with established structures and in consequence, with little reliable external guidance to rely on, people tend to fall back on an exaggerated moral autonomy. So conscience is made a law unto itself.

The primacy of conscience, as understood in our western moral tradition, is not a handy saying that pretends to make conscience a purely arbitrary judgment tailoring the morality of our decisions to our personal wishes. It certainly is not an invitation to a lax attitude towards morality or a downplaying of the truth. It is rather a challenge to live in accord with the truth and to act responsibly in all we do. It involves a serious obligation to work at developing a mature conscience, that is, a conscience rightly formed by the cultivation of the moral virtues under the aegis of the virtue of wisdom of the heart, and informed about what we need to know in order to choose the right thing for us to do in the circumstances. As Vatican II puts it: 'The more a right conscience holds sway, the more persons and groups turn aside from blind choices and strive to be guided by objective norms of morality' (Gaudium et Spes, n.16).

The principle of the primacy of conscience is deeply embedded in our western moral tradition. The expression is sometimes used explicitly, sometimes equivalent expressions are used. John Henry Newman in his Difficulties of Anglicans speaks of conscience (and he means right conscience) as 'the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness'. Twenty years ago, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the present pontiff recalled the signal contribution John Henry Newman made in his life and work to the question of conscience and the famous sentence in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk: 'Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink – to the Pope if you please, - still to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards'. Against the prevailing opinions of the time, Newman wanted to make no bones about his avowal of the authority of the pope whilst at the same time making it clear that the papacy can be rightly understood, 'not in opposition to the primacy of conscience but based on it and guaranteeing it'.

Ratzinger also likened Newman to Britain's other great witness of right conscience, St. Thomas More, 'for whom conscience was not at all an expression of subjective stubbornness or obstinate heroism. He numbered himself, in fact, among those faint-hearted martyrs who only after faltering and much questioning succeed in mustering up obedience to the truth, which must stand higher than any human tribunal or any type of personal taste' (from his paper Conscience and Truth).

While the primacy of conscience does not mean and has never meant liberation from objective truth (in this sense objective truth holds a certain primacy), no objective formulation of truth or moral law coming from outside ourselves can take the place of conscience, because 'it is upon the human conscience that these obligations fall and exert their binding force....hence in all one's activity one is bound to follow one's conscience faithfully' (Dignitatis Humanae, n.1 and 3). Properly speaking, it is our right conscience that determines the morality of our actions. The judgment of conscience about what we ought to do or refrain from here and now is the immediate measure of the morality of our human actions.

The FULL ESSAY by Brian Lewis can be found at the VII Blog:
http://www.v2catholic.com/blewis/2012/2012-04-30the-primacy-of-conscience.htm