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What, precisely, do we mean by "forming of conscience"? In an address to U.S. Catholic members of Congress retiring Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, quoted this remark from Pope Benedict: In applying its social doctrine the Church does not seek, according to our Holy Father, "to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insights into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve conflict with situations of personal interest…." [#28a from the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est - God is Love]
For a long time in that long period of my life when I did my thinking out of a conservative or neo-conservative frame of reference I had interpreted it as some business of learning everything the Church might have to say about any moral subject and, when the occasion arose, I would be able to make the right moral choice in some kind of "lock-step" way almost without thinking so deeply embedded in my being would be the Church teachings and thinking on all the moral subjects one might have cause to have to make a decision about. A personal re-examination of belief... My own journey away from that perspective began when a very conservative uncle of mine, whom I had long looked up to as some kind of hero, actually defamed me (and a number of other people) in a fashion that eventually led to the almost total ruination of my businesses and many, many relationships. To this day the poor man simply does not have a clue about the damage that his words caused. In my own distress I turned to a succession of priests and even a bishop for assistance and they were all completely either "out of their depth" or "didn't want to become involved". The whole saga led eventually to a long personal re-examination on my part of precisely what I did believe, precisely what all these teachings were trying to tell us and what has been a very deep re-orientation of my life. To me this work the Church engages in of "helping to form consciences" has two elements to it. The first is, yes, the Church does have a role in outlining the great moral "truths and strictures" - those things we learn from the Ten Commandments: though shalt not kill, nor steal, nor covet thy neighbours goods, or commit adultery, etc. On the positive side we are encouraged to love our neighbours, honour our parents, keep holy the Sabbath Day and love God before all else. My own personal tragedy was only a small part of a much larger tragedy. Ironically I had originally only got caught up in this when I went to the assistance of a cousin of mine who had been defamed by three public companies and their directors in a public notice published in the local newspaper. For that he had been awarded the highest damages for defamation in the State's history but the companies who had caused the damaged went to extraordinary lengths to delay settlement of the damages. (Eventually my cousin did succeed but by that time so much other damage had been done through the complexities of the whole situation that even the half-million dollars plus he received - which was even largely unencumbered by legal costs - could not retrieve the situation. That's another story though.) It was partly the complexities of that difficult legal and moral landscape that we were walking through which led me to an entirely different understanding of what this expression "formation of conscience" really means. I think we do have to learn "all the rules and strictures" as the Church teaches - and as our politically conservative brethren are so often trying to ram down our necks. But that is not even half the story of what this "formation of conscience" endeavour is really all about. An example of "moral dilemma"... So often in life we are confronted with "moral dilemmas" where only very slight changes in parameters can alter some action from being morally legitimate to being morally illegitimate. One of the common examples I often cite is of coming across some person in our family, or in our workplace who is engaged in some nefarious activity. Quite often the surrounding circumstances to whatever the infraction happens to be can be very subtle. In some instances our correct moral response is to act as a whistle-blower and dob the person in to whomever the appropriate authorities happen to be. In just slightly different circumstances our correct moral response might be to offer some kind of personal advice or assistance to the person and to not "dob" them in. And in another set of "just slightly different circumstances" the infraction, whatever it might be, is "simply none of our business" and we came across the information by accident and our correct moral response is to take no action and to put the information right out of our heads. A common situation might be a person who one finds out about is engaged in adulterous activity. A lot of the time such behaviours are a private matter and if we come across them by accident we have no right to disclose that information to anyone else. In some circumstances though the illicit liaison might have other security implications for one's family or workplace and in that circumstances some moral response is called for on the part of the person who discovers what has been going on. Now the Church does not even have enough priests to say all the masses that need to be said each Sunday let alone supplying "moral advisers" who might sit on our shoulders at all times of the day and night helping us discern what is the correct moral response in these dilemmas that arise in our lives. The "properly formed conscience" not only knows what all "the governing rules and strictures" are, they also need to be trained in this often difficult process of navigating through all the rules in order to know which rules do not apply, or which have to be bend or actually disobeyed in order to arrive at the correct moral decision for the matter at hand. I don't know if it is that conservatives simply "don't get this" - or if they think they live their lives in some sort of cotton wool where they never encounter moral dilemmas or "wouldn't know what a moral dilemma was if it hit them smack between the eyeballs". In the end I simply had to walk away from the situation with my uncle with the whole matter totally unresolved. He was a man of only elementary education and no skills whatsoever in abstract thinking. (i.e. you could not point out an example of some behaviour in one domain and then transfer the parameters of the behaviour to some different domain and expect him to be able to see the parallels and the underlying moral principle involved. For example he was of the belief that "defamation" was something only committed by rich people and somehow involved newspapers and the media. Even despite all the [excellent] teachings in the Catechism on this subject - which actually all come under the Seven Commandment, which is about stealing, funnily enough - it was like trying to talk to a block of concrete getting him to see how all these principles applied in a case of personal defamation.) The challenge, I submit, our institutional Church faces is NOT primarily one of teaching people "the Ten Commandments" — or all those other teachings that derive from the base commandments and parables of Jesus Christ. The greater challenge the Church faces in the educated world today is in teaching people how to apply all those rules and, most particularly, in learning that the particular moral decisions we have to make in life are rarely simply black or white. Rather they involve negotiation with a number of the base commandments and rules and we might actually have to disobey or disregard certain of those in order to arrive at the particular moral truth that applies in the matter exercising our conscience at that particular time.
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His
whole address is interesting and well worth the read (see link at end
of this article). But what got me thinking for this column is the question:
what, precisely, do we mean when we say the role of the Church is "to
help form consciences"?