Conscience
One
Relying on a private lantern at home
In this meditation, I want to begin with an image from St. John Henry Newman, talking about the relationship between our own private judgment and the teachings of the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.
Here’s what he says, “A man out of doors uses a lamp in a dark night, and puts it out when he gets home. What would be thought of his bringing it into his drawing-room? what would the goodly company there assembled before a genial hearth and under glittering chandeliers, the bright ladies and the well-dressed gentlemen, say to him if he came in with a great-coat on his back, a hat on his head, an umbrella under his arm, and a large stable-lantern in his hand?”
That may sound kind of dated, but we can put it in contemporary terms. Imagine there’s a terrible storm outside and you’re outside, on foot, a long way from home. You’ve got a little cheapo flashlight, it’s really weak, the batteries aren’t fully charged, and it’s wavering. Plus the wind is howling and the rain is pouring down. You’re just hoping the light can be strong enough, and last you long enough, until you get home. And it does, thank God! You get home, and your family and your friends are there, and even though it’s dark and stormy outside, all the lights are on, and there’s a fire in the fireplace. Imagine everybody welcomes you, and it’s warm, and you’re surrounded by light, and you can see everything. How weird would it be if you insisted on holding on to your little, dinky flashlight, and wherever you went in your own house, totally lit up by electric light, you still insisted on pointing your dinky flashlight everywhere so you could see your way.
People would think you were crazy.
Well, to insist on relying on your own private judgment against the timeless, divinely revealed truth of the Church is kind of like that.
Two
The weakness of our private judgment
The first step to being a serious, committed Catholic, is to recognize your own staggering capacity for error. You and I, as private individuals, are unbelievably fallible. We make judgments rashly, on the basis of prejudice, preference, and unfounded assumptions – and we do that all the time.
Our judgments of conscience are no different. Remember, conscience isn’t some magical faculty. It’s just our personal judgments about right and wrong in this or that particular case. Your judgments of conscience are no more infallible than your math skills or your sports predictions. You may get it right some of the time. Or even most of the time. But everybody makes mistakes. The difference is, when you make a mistake with your conscience, you end up committing evil, even if you think it’s good.
That’s why you’re not supposed to live just according to a conscience that’s based on your personal private judgment. Because you can get into trouble super-fast. It’s like living in a perpetual storm and all you have is a cheapo flashlight that gives weak, sketchy, unreliable light. Not how you want to go through life.
Three
The storm will get the best of you
The world is a storm. It’s a constant battering of wind and rain. That wind and rain will push you in a certain direction unless you have a clear light and purpose to go the way you’re supposed to go. Rain and wind are what shape the terrain, they’re what wears away mountains.
You think it won’t shape you, won’t push your life and thinking in a certain direction? We have no idea – no idea – how many of our “personal convictions” are actually just the pressures and forces of cultural trends. The images and phrases and ideas we’ve absorbed from a culture that’s pounded them relentlessly into our heads since we were born. We all think we have clear convictions, that we have good moral instincts and sensitive consciences. We don’t.
There aren’t really any independent thinkers. What we call our conscience, our private judgment, is either formed by Christianity, by the light of the Church, or it’s formed by the force of secular culture. So which is yours?
Four
Church as the Lumen Gentium
Christ is the light of the world. He’s the one who enables us to see clearly, despite the darkness and tempestuous storms of the world. The stable, safe home where that light dwells in clarity, warmth, and fulness is the Catholic Church.
If your conscience is illuminated by the light of the Church, you will have a stable, timeless, clear understanding of what happiness is, and how to find it. If your conscience isn’t illuminated by the light of the Church, it will be that weak little flashlight, which won’t do you much good out in the storm.
One of the things about a storm is that the wind is constantly changing direction, you get buffeted about first this way and then that way. That’s what it means to be secular, to let your conscience be formed by secular values.
It means that you are just the victim of your own inconsistence and conflicting desires and the culture’s own inconsistent and conflicted set of values. As Chesterton said, the Catholic Church is the only institution that can really save us from being slaves to the combination of contemporary fads and our own impulses. But to avoid that slavery, you have to accept the light that comes from the Catholic Church.
Five
Don’t go against the Church’s teaching in the name of conscience
Conscience means your judgment about right and wrong, that’s it. That judgment can be informed and enlarged by the truth that comes from Christ through the Church. Or that judgment can be strained and diminished by the pressures of society and your own desires.
Remember that when people go against Church teaching in the name of conscience, what they’re really doing, whether they know it or not, is going against God in the name of things of this world. They’ve left the pervasive light of the home, for the turbulent darkness of the wilderness. Better to choose the light. Better to make your judgments from within the stability and clarity that is the Church’s teaching.