Statement on the Formation of Conscience
Canadian Catholic Conference
1 December, 1973
Reproduced with permission of the Canadian Conference of Catholic
Bishops. All rights reserved.
PROLOGUE
1. In all creation man alone of the visible world
is called by God to accept the responsibility of his
actions. Yet God did not desert him in a world of
mystery where good and evil are often interwoven and
frequently filled with complexities. We who are
Christians believe that not only did God give us his
guidance "engraved on their hearts" (Rom: 2:15)
showing us in the very depth of our being the things
which are for our good, he also intervened in
history to reveal himself in his Son, our Lord
Jesus. Henceforth, Jesus and the Spirit he was to
send from the Father would be the focal point of our
life and of our doing, "I am the Way, the Truth, and
the Life. No one comes to the Father except through
me" (Jn. 14:6).
2. Man, then, has God's clear teaching to guide
him, found in Scripture and tradition, protected and
authenticated by the teaching Church. God speaks to
us also through concrete situations, the
providential framework of our existence, our times,
our vicissitudes, events, happenings, circumstances.
"The People of God believes that it is led by the
Spirit of the Lord, who fills the earth" (Gaudium
et Spes, #11).
3. Above all, we believe that we live now in the
time of the fullness of Christ, the law of love. The
responsibility of the Christian is not only to fight
against his sinful nature in which he is assisted by
his obedience to all legitimate laws. It is also to
respond to God's call to conversion in a movement
towards Christ and his Spirit. It is the realization
of what it means to be Christian, a son of God.
"Christian, acknowledge your dignity. Become what
you are, another Christ" (St. Leo the Great, First
Christmas Sermon).
4. It is in this context that we wish to present
these considerations on conscience. We must of
necessity at times leave this high ground because
man is frail and loses himself readily. But we do so
always with the serenity and joy of those who know
that we have already triumphed in our Risen Lord.
PART ONE
I. The Meaning of Conscience
The Basic Concept
5. The signs of our times have much to say to us
even when they point to negative and harmful
dimensions. The most optimistic person could hardly
deny that our times are characterized by a
frightening confusion in regard to man's moral life
and the understanding of values which for many
centuries were taken for granted. It is to this
confusion of mind that we would like to address
ourselves at the present moment in order to provide
certain pastoral guidelines which are meant
primarily for out Catholic people, but to which we
are meant primarily for our Catholic people, but to
which we invite the attention of all people of good
will interested in preserving the best elements of
our civilization and culture. We appeal in a special
manner to those who share with us our faith in
Christ as Redeemer and as guide of our lives.
6. To be consistent, since we openly admit the
existence of confusion, we cannot even take the idea
of "conscience" for granted. It has always been a
somewhat ambiguous term and has frequently been
presented with more poetry than clarity. Conscience
is not simply some "still small voice" which is
evoke by some mysterious mechanism within us when we
are faced with a practical decision as to whether a
given course of action is acceptable or not.
Conscience is that ultimate judgement that every man
is called to make as to whether this or that action
is acceptable to him without violating the
principles which he is prepared to admit as
governing his life. If he goes against those
principles, he is said to be acting "against his
conscience."
Different Connotations
7. It follows that conscience has different
connotations for different persons. We will develop
this concept further in the following section on the
"Formation of Conscience". For the moment it
suffices to point out that for some people, the very
existence of conscience will be denied. These are
the men and women who refuse to accept that man is
subject to any laws outside himself; in a word, they
maintain that he is his own Lord and Master. In a
strict logical sense these people are consistent
even though it is hard to digest their premises that
man is supreme in a universe which he has not made.
8. For anyone to accept the idea of conscience,
as we here present it, he must begin by agreeing
that man is not Lord of the Universe and that man is
subject to a law-giver who is greater than he is. In
a word, we must begin with that very first basis of
any moral life and of any question of responsible in
our actions, the acceptance of God. And not a God
who is remote and unconcerned but a God who is our
Father, who made the Universe, who made each one of
us and who has lovingly cast our lives in a certain
framework (Gen. 1:26-27).
9. In that same love, he has made us not automata
who are led by the blind forces of the universe, but
free intelligent beings and his adoptive sons to
whom the challenge has come to adapt our conduct to
our dignity. Man, as a consequence, must search out
what is that dignity and what are the results of it
in terms of how we must accept the responsibility
that stems from it.
II. The Formation of
Conscience
10. This never-ending search which every man must
undertake for himself in order to find out what is
worthy of a man and what is not worthy of a man is
what we call the "formation" of his conscience. And
this too will be qualified by the various
assumptions which he makes at any period in his
life. For example, the formation of conscience in a
person who simply believes in God will be different
from the formation of conscience in a man who
accepts that God did intervene in history and did
send us a Saviour in the person of our Lord Jesus
Christ who as our Brother was to rehabilitate
mankind, give it a new life and lay down for us
certain revealed principles, showing the way in
which God expects us to act (Jn. 3:16; 8:12).
11. Further, a Christian who is also and adherent
of the Catholic faith and a member of the Catholic
Church must probe deeper in the refinement of what
God has revealed as our norm of conduct. As
Catholics we accept that Jesus committed to his
disciples his own power, saying, "As the Father has
sent Me, now also I sent you . . . "(Jn. 20:21),
"Whatever you bind on earth shall be considered
bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall
be considered loosed in heaven" (Mt. 18:18). We
believe that this power transmitted to his disciples
was meant to endure in the Church and now resides in
the College of Bishops under the presiding direction
of the successor of Peter. This is what we call "the
magisterium" or teaching service of the Church and
in matters of guiding our conduct, a binding rule
for those who call themselves Catholic. (See also
Mt. 28:18-20 and Jn. 14:25-26)
12. Nor must this be considered as some sort of
inhibition or limiting force. It would be wrong to
think that the persons most free are those who do
not believe at all and that we go in a descending
scale of freedom till we meet the Catholic. We
believe that the reverse is true. We believe that
knowing what God has established for the fulfilment
of man is a freeing principle, not a principle of
enslavement. The more we know about God's will for
us, the more fulfilled we are, the surer we are that
we will not destroy ourselves and wander into paths
which will not enhance our liberty but take it away
entirely. "The truth will make you free" (Jn. 8:32;
Ps. 1).
13. This is the basic context in which we would
like to talk about some of the problems of our
times.
PART TWO: PROBLEMS OF OUR TIMES
Confusion in the Church
14. Although we admit that it would be fallacious
to postulate that the changes within the Church
during the past quarter century have been unrelated
to the even greater upheavals in the world, for
clarity's sake, we distinguish between the two
areas.
15. The faithful Catholic has been disturbed and
sometimes confused during the past years by a
multiplicity of changes which have been unparalleled
in modern history. These changes have often had
implications which relate to his day-by-day actions
and conduct and consequently, at least to him,
appear to affect the very norms of that conduct. A
few years ago, the Catholic was distinguished by
external practices such as abstinence on Fridays,
fasting and various penitential disciplines, a
number of holy days of obligation, etc. The liturgy
was an unchanging structure which had remained the
same for hundreds of years. Devotions of various
sorts seemed also to be immovable and irreplaceable
and a necessary part of the practice of the
faithful. The priest appeared as the conscience of
the community and interpreted the teaching of the
Church with a voice that was considered
authoritative and usually unchallengeable.
16. Today much of this has changed. Many of the
penitential disciplines such as fasting and
abstinence are left to the judgement of the
individual, the emphasis on the liturgy is one of
participation and commitment, and a biblical renewal
has pushed a certain number of traditional devotions
into the background. As far as the priest is
concerned, his role is not less important but it is
less overwhelming. He still has the duty of teaching
his community the way of God and of morality, but he
understands better that this judgement must
ultimately be made by the person himself, as we will
try to describe later.
Confusion in the World
17. I t is rare that changes take place in the
world without influencing the Church or that changes
take place in the Church without influencing the
world. During this period of confusion, popular
morality has been shaken to the ground roots. There
is a general attitude that "I can do pretty much
anything which doesn't hurt somebody else." A
permissiveness sweeps our society. Practices which
would previously have been repudiated as absolutely
unacceptable are becoming the general rule of
conduct. We have only to look at the practice of
abortion, at a growing pressure for euthanasia and
the other manifestations against life itself to see
the truth of the statement. In the midst of this,
legislators are making the distinction between that
which is legal and that which may or may not be evil
in the mind of an individual. Even Catholic
legislators frequently take the attitude that the
law should not be guided by principles that derive
from religious conviction. Many Christians are
influenced by this and fall into the trap of
thinking that if a thing is legal, it must be
morally acceptable.
18. Another factor is the widespread propaganda
which makes all aspects of family planning and
sexual permissiveness a matter of private concern
and individualistic ethics (Gaudium et Spes,
#30). The idea has been abroad that "everybody is
doing it" and that if everybody is doing it, it must
be acceptable. Finally, the economic and political
conditions of our society are tending to bring down
our moral sense. The calm acceptance by some of
economic inequality by which some have so much and
so many have so little is combined with the
depersonalizing of society and the exploitation of
man. All of these and other factors have tended to
bring about a reversal of traditional morality or,
at the least, a great questioning of moral values.
Reaction to Confusion: Types of Conscience
19. From these factors has stemmed the confusion
of conscience to which we alluded in the first lines
of this Statement. Although it may represent some
species of oversimplification, we feel that
something can be gained by placing the types of
reaction to the general situation in three
categories. These are not totally exclusive
categories but they do sum up, pretty well, the
general possible attitudes of the Catholic today.
20. a. In the first category are those who have
developed a static or complacent conscience. These
persons have not accepted the dynamics behind the
changes in the Church and in society, and have not
seen the positive value which can come from personal
acceptance of moral responsibility. They insist that
the Church must spell out for them every obligation
down to the last detail. This attitude of conscience
is of course a denial of responsibility and can
result in negating the whole positive value of the
movement of the Spirit at the present time.
21. b. At the opposite extreme we have the
excessively dynamic and revolutionary conscience.
This characterizes the person who has totally
misread the idea that everyone must ultimately be
the judge, before God, of his actions, and that in
the ultimate decision he must make up his own mind.
The persons in this category have distorted an
appeal to intelligent decision into a destruction of
law, objective structures, and have arrived at the
conclusion that no one can tell them what to do,
including the Church. It is seldom stated this way,
but it is where this type of exaggerated
subjectivism necessarily leads.
22. c. In the middle position is the conscience
which we consider to be the proper attitude of any
human being in today's society, and particularly of
the Catholic Christian. We can qualify this as the
dynamic Christian conscience. This is the conscience
which leads us to have a responsible attitude to
someone, to Jesus, to the community, to the Church,
etc. Every person who fits into this category feels
a responsibility for a progressive search and
striving to live out a life ideal according to the
mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5).
PART THREE: FUNDAMENTAL BASIS FOR MATURE
CONSCIENCE
23. In support of this type of conscience, we
offer the following considerations.
Human Dignity
24. In the first place, this category represents
a truly acceptable and dignified human position.
Vatican Council II has clearly placed great emphasis
upon the basic dignity and value of the human being
and upon his responsibility as the ultimate judge
under God of the value of his action. "For its part,
authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the
divine image within man. For God has willed that man
may be left 'in the hand of his own counsel'
(Ecclesiasticus 15:14) so that he can seek his
Creator spontaneously, and come freely to utter and
blissful perfection through loyalty to Him. Hence
man's dignity demands that he act according to a
knowing and free choice. Such a choice is personally
motivated and prompted from within. It does not
result from blind internal impulse nor from more
external pressure" (Gaudium et Spes, #17).
Consequently, it is the proper dignity of every
human being to feel the responsibility which is
postulated by God himself in the manner in which He
has created us. This is the basis for the argument
which St. Paul presented in his letter to the
Romans, where he so clearly enunciates the fact that
every human being, in coming into the world, has
God's law in his heart. By this he means two things.
First, that man is responsible for his acts, and
secondly, that he cannot take it upon himself to act
according to the whims of the moment without
reference to his Creator, to his fellow men and to
himself (Rom 2:14-16).
Responsibility
25. In our times we welcome the growing maturity
of our people who understand this first element, but
we remind them that so to judge does not dispense
them from the second element of referring to God's
presence, variously but truly manifested in their
lives and guiding their judgements.26. "In the
depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he
does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to
obedience. Always summoning him to love good and
avoid evil, the voice of conscience can when
necessary speak to his heart more specifically: do
this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law
written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of
man; according to it he will be judged" (Gaudium
et Spes, #16).
Antidote to Denial of Sin
27. We feel that this type of mature conscience
will be the greatest antidote the to growing attack,
both explicit and implicit, upon the concept of
man's sinfulness. The exaggerated and
pseudo-autonomy of man has led us into a frame of
mind in which we have played down the concept of sin
and redemption, and have deliberately turned our
backs upon the clear teaching of God and of our Lord
Jesus Christ that while God is a loving Father, he
cannot be mocked. This does not postulate the
ancient erroneous idea that God is some sort of a
tyrant who is looking for an opportunity to punish
us. On the other hand, the very gift of our freedom
indicates that when we misuse it, we ourselves will
suffer. In this sense, possible punishment is the
necessary concomitant of the law of love. Love
cannot be forced upon anyone, but as a modern writer
has put it, "He who rejects love is in turn rejected
by it and lies howling at the threshold." The
"howling at the threshold" could hardly be blamed
upon the person who has offered love and has been
rejected. The suffering of those who reject God's
norms of life is of their own doing. Hence, we feel
that a dynamic Christian conscience is one which
recognizes all of these facts and is freed by it. It
is therefore freed from the necessity of pretending
that sin is not there and that the eventual result
of sin is not there.
Faith Dimension
28. We have already pointed out that the basic
responsibility of every human being lies in the fact
that he is God's creature and that, as a result, he
must assume responsibility for his actions over
which God has given him direct stewardship. But, we
have also pointed out that for the Christian and for
the Catholic Christian, in particular, there are
guides which he has freely accepted which are meant
to help him to discover that light of God's guidance
within him.
29. In this context, we necessarily insist first
and foremost upon the working of the Spirit in the
hearts of men (Jn. 15:26; 16:7-13). Vatican II
brought us from a somewhat widespread opinion that
the Catholic Church constituted a monolithic
arrangement in which the very voice of the Spirit
was controlled and channelled. Everything was
supposed to come from above, with the faithful, as
it were, the ultimate recipients of the straining of
the Spirit through the upper echelons. It is obvious
that nothing so crass was every officially taught by
the Church, but impressions are sometimes more
lasting and more universal than teachings. The
insistence of the Council on the importance of the
people of God and of their personal and direct
relationship to the Spirit is a clarification which
must never be lost to sight (Lumen Gentium,
#4 and #12).
30. It is under this heading that we recognize
the need of the personal conversion and acceptance
of salvation by every human being. The Council (Lumen
Gentium #13 and #48) has explicitly upheld the
scriptural teaching that God wills the salvation of
all men, but there is always the second movement to
this symphony of love and that is that man cannot be
saved without himself. Every man must turn freely to
God. For us who believe in an order over and above
that of the temporal and temporary, this turning to
God and the acceptance of his loving will for man,
even though he has revealed himself in an obscure
fashion, is called an act of faith. It is the free
decision of a man to accept as true that God has
spoke to us ". . . in former times . . . in
fragmentary and varied fashions through the
prophets. But in this the final age He has spoken to
us in the Son . . ." (Hb. 1:1-2). The guidance of
the Church is a part of that revelation.
PART FOUR: GUIDES FOR CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE
31. We are now in a position where we can lay
down certain norms for the guidance of the
conscience of the Catholic Christian. If our
positions up to this point have been accepted, it
follows that an act of conscience is an individual
thing but must be based upon certain accepted
principles and positions. It becomes, therefore, the
duty of the individual to acquire the necessary
information and attitude in order to make the right
decision.
Human Balance
32. Certain human conditions undoubtedly aid in
the balanced performance which one requires from a
Christian. Sound emotional stability, a cultivation
of self-knowledge and clear objective judgement,
even education itself, will undoubtedly help,
although we must not postulate a certain elitism
which would expect only the educated to have sound
conscience. The assistance of sound communal
attitudes and of cultural and social influences -
all of these things are sound human contributions to
the acquisition of knowledge and, above all, of
proper attitude.
33. But these fall far short of the total
necessary conditions for the formation of conscience
and their ultimate application in life.
Presence of Christ
34. For the man who had made his act of faith,
the prime factor in the formation of his conscience
and in his moral judgement is to be found in the
existence and the role of Chris in his life (Jn.
14:6-8); 12:46). A person who wishes to have a true
Christian conscience must be faithfully in
communication with his Lord in all of his life,
particularly through his own prayer a nd the prayer
of the Church. Indeed, properly understood, the
presence of Christ in his life is all-pervasive and
all-embracing. All the other aspects of conscience
formation are based on this one and stem from it.
This does not make them unnecessary or superfluous,
but simply puts them in their place (1 Jn. 4:1).
Scripture and Tradition
35. With this in mind, the man of faith draws his
inspiration from the Scripture, the very Word of God
in which he finds revealed not only the designs of
the Father in the historical context of the world,
but a refined series of ideals, precepts and
examples given to us by the same Lord Jesus. This is
communicated to him not only in the words of the
Scripture but in the Spirit of Jesus which continues
to live with us and which makes us "a chosen race
and a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation and a
people set apart" (1 Pet. 2:9).
The Magisterium
36. It is in this context that the teaching of
the Church finds its full force. We have seen
through sad historical example, the kind of
confusion that can arise from an unguided and overly
subjective reading of the Scriptures and
interpretation of tradition. The Church has been
give to us to make sure that the Word of God
contained in the Scripture and illustrated to us in
the Spirit can be authenticated in the community of
believers.
37. In this one Spirit of which we speak, we have
the service of the apostles and of their successors,
the College of Bishops, united with their head, the
Pope. The role of the apostles and their successors
was and is to bear witness to Christ, the revealer
of the Father's Will. It was and is their duty to
transmit the testimony of the original apostles
concerning Christ, to celebrate the new covenant and
to guide the people of God in the living of the new
creation of Christ (Mt. 28:18-20; Mk. 16:15-16).
Guided by the Spirit, the Church has sought to do
precisely this in the past and continues to do so in
the present world while turned toward the second
coming o f Christ. The doctrinal service of the
successors of the apostles includes the Scriptures
and tradition as described above. In the fulfilment
of this task, they do not seek to suppress the other
gifts of the Spirit but encourage all to test the
gifts according to the criteria found in Scripture
and tradition.
38. For a believer, this teaching of the
magisterium as outlined above cannot be just one
element among others in the formation of his
conscience. It is the definitive cornerstone upon
which the whole edifice of conscientious judgement
must be built. "You are built upon the foundation
laid by the apostles and prophets, and Christ Jesus
himself is the foundation stone" (Eph. 2:20). "You
are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church"
(Mt. 16:18). What must be kept in mind is that we
are in the dimension of faith. And we should be
encouraged and hopeful because we can count on the
continued assistance of the Holy Spirit in a manner
which pure reason could never give.
39. The responsible person, as defined above,
must weigh the facts before acting. This is far
removed from saying that he may act in accordance
with his whims and wishes. A believer has the
absolute obligation of conforming his conduct first
and foremost to what the Church teaches, because
first and foremost for the believer is that Christ,
through his Spirit, is ever present in his Church,
in the whole Church to be sure, but particularly
with those who exercise services within the Church
and for the Church, the first of which services is
that of the apostles.
40. Furthermore, even in matters which have not
been defined ex cathedra, i.e., infallibly,
the believer has the obligation to give full
priority to the teaching of the Church in favour of
a given position, to pray for the light of the
Spirit, to refer to Scripture and tradition and to
maintain a dialogue with the whole Church, which he
can do only through the source of unity which is the
collectivity of the bishops. The reality itself, for
example, sex, marriage, economics, politics, war,
must be studied in detail. In this study, he should
make an effort to become aware of his own inevitable
presuppositions as well as his cultural background
which leads him to act for or react against any
given position. If his ultimate practical judgement
to do this or avoid that does not take into full
account the teaching of the Church, an account based
not only on reason but on the faith dimension, he is
deceiving himself in pretending that he is acting as
a true Catholic must.
41. For a Catholic "to follow one's conscience"
is not, then, simply to act as his unguided reason
dictates. "To follow one's conscience" and remain a
Catholic, one must take into account first and
foremost the teaching of the magisterium. When doubt
arises due to a conflict of "my" views and those of
the magisterium, the presumption of truth lies on
the part of the magisterium. "In matters of faith
and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ
and the faithful are to accept their teaching and
adhere to it with a religious assent of soul. This
religious submission of will and of mind must be
shown in a special way to the authentic teaching
authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not
speaking ex cathedra (Lumen Gentium,
#25). And this must be carefully distinguished from
the teaching of individual theologians or individual
priests, however intelligent or persuasive.
PART FIVE: LAW AND CONSCIENCE
42. These positions bring us now to the delicate
question of law, which is a regulating force in
human and Christian action. The word itself is
frequently used in various senses and we recognize
the complexity of the subject.
Distinction of "Law" as Spirit and as Precept
43. Any Christian reflection on law must take
into consideration the crucial distinction between
law as precept and law as the dynamic structure of
personal being.
44. With regard to the latter concept of law, the
passage of St. Paul to the Romans quoted above (Rom.
2:12-15) illustrates this distinction by contrasting
the importance of the precepts of the Mosaic Law
with the fundamental belief of Christians that
sinful rebellion has been radically - though not
completely - healed. All forms of prescriptive law
stand under the Spirit of love released when Christ,
suffering in himself the consequences of the law,
passed from death to life. As we have already stated
(Rom. 8;1-15), any law is ultimately subject to that
influx of the Spirit by which the redeemed are
transformed into brothers of Christ enjoying the
freedom of the children of God in his Spirit (Rom.
8:15-17). This operation of the indwelling Spirit of
Christ, this conformity of our nature to Christ's
word in our hearts, is the New Law. It is
discipleship to this word which makes us free (Jn.
8:31-32).
45. This note of the freedom of the sons of God is
crucial because it establishes the ultimate priority
of personal conscience informed by the Spirit of
Christ in the case of possible conflict with
extrinsic law. God had promised that the New Law
would be written in the person's heart, not on
tablets of stone (Jer. 31:31; Ex. 36:25). Jesus
teaches that the spirit of God's laws takes priority
over the letter (Mt. 5:20-48). The great teachers of
the Christian tradition have re-echoed this
centrality of the interior law of grace. "There on
Sinai the finger of God wrote on stone tablets, here
in the hearts of men with the sending of of the
Spirit and Pentecost" (Augustine,
De Spiritu et
Littera, XVII). The whole strength of the New
Law and its specifically Christian meaning consists
in its being written in the heart of man by the
Spirit which is given through faith in Christ"
(Aquinas, S.T., I-II, 106, 1 and 2; Gal. 3:21-22).
In our day the supremacy of the voice of God making
himself heard in the depths of the personal
conscience has been reaffirmed, as already stated,
by the Second Vatican Council (
Gaudium et Spes
#16;
The Declaration on Religious Freedom,
#3).
Preceptive Law
46. Having established this as a fundamental
principle, we can ask how prescriptive laws are to
be judged by the conscience conformed to the
indwelling Spirit which gives life. The new life of
Christ in us is not yet fully accomplished. The
preceptive law of legitimate authority must be taken
into account in every moral decision because it has
the right to command our assent and stands as a
constant reminder of our sinfulness and of our
dependence upon a source of life which transcends
our individual selves. Moreover, it would be
unthinkable that the Spirit, speaking in the heart
of the redeemed Christian, would be in opposition to
himself teaching in the authority established by
Jesus.
47. It is in this context that we offer some
considerations on prescriptive "law" in our lives.
48. In a society which finds it extremely
difficult to accept any limitations upon even the
grossest perversions of freedom, law has become a
sort of whipping boy. Yet it can be said that the
law is nothing more or less than an expression of
conditions which must exist if man is to be free.
Scripture has told us, "The truth shall make you
free" (Jn.8:32). This idea could be extended to law
when it is a good law since we are thus led to our
best, liberating interests.
49. In particular, the presence of evil within us
and the ability we have to explain away our most
bizarre actions easily incline us to ignore facts
and assume a false sense of values. It is precisely
as an antidote to this sort of deception that laws
have been formulated. In a statement of this
necessarily limited scope, it is impossible for us
to make all the necessary distinctions between
divine law and natural law, civil and ecclesiastical
law. We limit ourselves in saying that any law set
up by legitimate authority and in conformity with
divine law must be taken into account in every moral
action.
50. Some, set by God in the very manner in which
he has created us and the universe, are immutable
and not subject to any exception. Such are the
prohibitions against killing the innocent, adultery,
theft, etc. Nor has basic morality changed over the
years. The fundamental points of the ten
commandments are as valid today as they were when
Moses received them on Mount Sinai. Others are
established by legitimate human authority to
regulate and regularize our human relationships and
to govern society whether civil or ecclesiastical.
These presume the great laws of God and take them
for granted as a basis for this obligatory nature.
51. In the same context, laws made for the proper
government of the Church are required for the
inter-relationships of the people of God and for the
guidance of believers. In every case, they should
postulate the law of love and be designed to assist
us in its realization. A totally mature and saintly
people would require a minimum of laws. But the
Church is a pilgrim Church and a Church sent
precisely to redeem sinners. The laws it promulgates
are specifically to guide our feet away from the
traps set by our sinfulness and our own tendencies
to sin.
The Use of Exceptions
52. In particular, we warn our faithful people
about the misuse of exceptions to the law in
particular cases (called by moralists "epikeia"),
a misuse which has now become so widespread as to
threaten the whole structure of our moral lives.
This misuse is very akin to the condition described
above where some feel exempt from being told
anything by anybody, an exaggeration and flagrant
abuse of "I must form my own conscience."
53. It is understood that every law is for
general condition and there may be situations in
which a person not only is not bound to respond to
the law but may not be able to do so. (We refer, of
course, to matters which are covered by
ecclesiastical law, by positive law, not to the
great moral laws that have been given to us by God
and, as stated, are without exception.) In
exceptional circumstances, the true believer,
understanding the law of love, has no feelings of
guilt, but a certain regret in not being able to
fulfil the law in this particular instance.
54. But the use of exceptions ("
epikeia") has
its requirements. And, as we have already intimated,
the truly sincere person uses such a device only
when absolutely necessary and regrets the need to be
an exception in the community in this particular
regard. One who understands that he has been
commanded in love will respond in love and will not
be a seeker of exceptions.
CONCLUSION
55. Such, we feel to be the major points upon
which our present concern should bear. There is, of
course, a great deal more that could be said about
the conscience of man. Much, indeed, has been said
and we refer our faithful people to the various
pronouncements of the Pope, particularly in recent
years, to the statements of a number of national
hierarchies, and to the reaching of reliable
theologians. In the present text we have striven
only to place the problem of the formation of
conscience in the contemporary situation and to deal
with the major problems facing our people here.
56. We have tried to avoid legalism and to make,
as basis of our considerations, the person of
Christ, his teachings and his Spirit. Hence, the
true Christian will far transcend these minimal
observations and go deep into that country whose
guide is the Spirit and whose sole law is love. But
he will not go there against the mind of the
Catholic Church but only in accordance with it and
after he has been freed by it for the journey ahead
(1 Jn. 4:16).