Pope Benedict on conscience

In this article Robert Bowie, author of the textbook Ethical Studies discusses the views of Pope Benedict (as Cardinal Ratzinger) that conscience is not necessarily infallible, and that Aquinas should be adapted for our modern age. For the full article see http://bobbowie.com

Obedience to conscience is necessary as it sustains human dignity, and human beings are judged by it. Yet, as Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote, this can lead us into difficulty.

“It is of course undisputed that one must follow a certain conscience or at least not act against it. But whether the judgment of conscience or what one takes to be such, is always right, indeed whether it is infallible, is another question.”

If conscience is taken to be infallible, then there is no absolute truth. People’s conscience leads them to different conclusions. If what we are saying is that people are right to follow their conscience even if they are told different things by it, we are effectively saying there is no objective truth. Morality is relative to your individual conscience. I may sincerely believe what I am doing is right, but does that mean my sincere belief makes it right. How do we think about those Nazis who sincerely believed the right thing to do was to kill Jews? Do we say they were being good because they were following their consciences? If conscience is infallible, there is no connection to the wider world of objective truth.

If we believe there is something which is objectively right, such as killing small babies who are weak, as they did in Sparta in the fourth century BC, what is the connection between that truth and your conscience? Given that consciences differ, there can be no necessary connection between conscience and objective truth.

To conclude: the idea that conscience is infallible raises a host of problems. We seem to be relativising truth and morally praising those who commit atrocities.

The Bible implies strongly that there may be such a thing as objective truth, laid down by God, and that we are to be held accountable to this truth, even if we are unaware of it. Psalm 19:12-13, says: “But who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from my unknown faults.” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

“No longer seeing one’s guilt, the falling silent of conscience in so many areas is an even more dangerous sickness of the soul than the guilt which one still recognizes as such. He who no longer notices that killing is a sin has fallen farther than the one who still recognizes the shamefulness of his actions, because the former is further removed form the truth and conversion.”

Remember that the tax collector with all his undisputed sins stands more justified before God than the Pharisee with all his undeniably good works (Lk 18:9-14), this is not because the sins of the tax collector were not sins or the good deeds of the Pharisee not good deeds. Nor does it mean that the good that man does is not good before God, or the evil not evil or at least not particularly important. The reason for this is that the Pharisee no longer knows that he too has guilt. He has a completely clear conscience. But this silence of conscience makes him impenetrable to God and others, while the cry of conscience which plagues the tax collector makes him capable of truth and love. Jesus can move sinners because they ahve a conscience, whereas the righteous Pharisee doesn’t.

So, while my responsibility to make my own decisions, to do what I sincerely believe to be right, is fundamental, it is not infallible. I can make a mistake.

How then do we judge people’s moral actions?

Returning to the Two Levels Of Conscience

Anamnesis

There are two levels of conscience according to Aquinas – synderesis and conscientia. The word synderesis has an unclear meaning but Cardinal Ratzinger offers a solution – to replace this problematic word with the much more clearly defined Platonic concept of anamnesis (deep memory) which should be taken to mean exactly what Paul expressed in the second chapter of his Letter to the Romans:

“When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness …” (Romans 2:14 ff.).

The same idea is found in the monastic rule of Saint Basil.

“The love of God is not founded on a discipline imposed on us from outside, but is constitutively established in us as the capacity and necessity of our rational nature.”

Basil speaks in terms of “the spark of divine love which has been hidden in us,” Augustine says: “We could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us.”

There is an original memory of the good and true – humans are created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. In our conscience we have anamnesis of the origin, from the godlike constitution of our being, an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: “That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.”

Raztinger here identifies a connection between conscience and the Natural Law. One feeds the other.

Conscientia

Conscientia is the second level is of judgment and decision. Conscientia is the act of applying the basic knowledge of anamnesis to the particular situation. According to Aquinas this includes the three elements of recognizing, bearing witness, and finally, judging. Whether something is recognized or not, depends too on the will which can block the way to recognition or lead to it. It is dependent, that is to say, on an already formed moral character which can either continue to deform or be further purified. In other words we can make a link here to virtue theory. If Anamnesis is informed by our basic nature, Conscientia is better if the moral character of the person is better.

When I make a moral decision, I am using my moral character which has been influenced and informed, sometimes through things beyond my control such as my upbringing and environment. So it is possible that a person can be morally corrupted through no substantial fault of their own. But I can also be influenced by my own choices. If I persist in doing small, bad things, I get into bad habits, which make the next step to slightly worse habits easier. As time goes on, I influence my character in such a way that when I have to make a moral decisions, I no longer have the tools I need to make moral decisions. So I am responsible when my conscience makes a mistake. I still have to follow my conscience – I can act in no other way. My conscience is more likely to be fallible, than had I cultivated virtuous behaviour. In Ratzinger’s words,

“Criminals of conviction like Hitler and Stalin are guilty. These crass examples should not serve to put us at ease but should rouse us to take seriously the earnestness of the plea: “Free me from my unknown guilt” (Ps 19:13).” Cardinal Ratzinger

In fact Ratzinger has also talked about the possibility that the authority, the Church, could have the power to override or requisition a person’s conscience and perhaps this is the sort of example he had in mind.

Nevertheless, in terms of how we judge others, there is a different reading of the significance of conscience than that of J Raztinger. Zigmunt Bauman, writing in “Modernity and the Holocaust”(Polity Press, Oxford:1989, p.177) having examined the large-scale moral failings of humanity in the holocaust, and drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, considers the idea of a moral responsibility to resist socialization and social conformity.

“In the aftermath of the Holocaust, legal practice, and thus also moral theory. Faced the possibility that morality may manifest itself in insubordination towards socially upheld principles, and in an action openly defying social solidarity and consensus.” Zigmunt Baum

Arendt herself in “Eichmann in Jerusalem, a report on the banality of evil”, (Penguin UK:1994 p.294-296) demanded that in future,

“Human beings be capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own moral judgment, which, moreover, happens to be completely at odds with what they must regard as the unanimous opinion of all those around them ….”

Perhaps a combination of Natural Law, Conscience and Virtue Theory working together may produce a coherent moral system.

But there will be times when good people, acting according to conscience will commit moral crimes, and times when good people, acting according to conscience, will be wrongly punished for breaking the law.