Integral discourse on conscience

I must confess I was greatly disappointed by the contribution of Fr Charlò Camilleri O. Carm entitled Conscience, Authority And Divorce (August 27).

It is clear that Fr Camilleri has attacked Mgr Anton Gouder by throwing at him and also at the “over-zealous” Catholic citizens different adjectives such as “fundamentalist” and “retrograde” while he has also termed their stand on divorce as rigidly “draconian”. I remind Fr Camilleri that the pastoral note issued by the Maltese Episcopal Conference was not only aimed at the over-zealous citizens but also at priests and religious so that they might propose their views on the matter without failing to show sincere respect for those who voiced a different opinion from theirs. I think that Fr Camilleri’s contribution lacked this attitude of respect.

In my opinion, Mgr Gouder and others did not challenge the primacy of conscience. I think the real problem arises when some are giving the impression that dissent from the Church’s Magisterium and teaching can be easily accepted if not even welcomed in the name of conscience. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has stated that judgments of conscience can contradict each other at times even on the same matters. Although this discrepancy does not lessen the intrinsic dignity of conscience, it demonstrates that not all choices based on one’s own conscience are correct.

It appears to me that, by appealing to the force of conscience while dissenting from the Church’s teaching on the issue of divorce, many are advocating the right to err. The right is granted but the consequences are to be fully paid. It cannot be that all opposed judgments of conscience are equivalently right “for if this were the case, it would mean that there is no truth – at least not in moral and religious matters, which is to say, in the areas which constitute the very pillars of our existence” (Card. Ratzinger, speech on Conscience And Truth, Dallas, Texas 1991).

On the question of sin, as Augustine says in his Contra Faustum (22.27), sin is “anything done, said or desired against the eternal law”. Moreover, as Fr Camilleri’s contribution sufficiently argues, “eternal law” is made manifest to mankind through the mediation of conscience (see Gaudium et Spes 16-17). Thus, one who knowingly acts in opposition to the truth made known in conscience always deviates from the loving plan of the eternal law and, thus, offends God as Aquinas demonstrates in his Summa Theologiae (see S.Th. I-II, 71, 2 ad 4; 71, 6).

Contrary to what Fr Camilleri argued (if I understood him correctly), Aquinas gives a list of sins that “generically, whether it be contrary to the love of God, e.g. blasphemy, perjury, and the like, or against the love of one’s neighbour, e.g. murder, adultery, and such like” are “mortal by reason of their genus” (S. Th. I-II q.88 a. 2). This means that, although sin is “a matter of the foro interno”, it does not mean that one cannot designate actions that are objectively sinful.

Added to this, to clarify the role of conscience in moral issues, Fr Camilleri has only quoted a small part of Cardinal Ratzinger’s keynote speech on conscience presented at Dallas in February 1991. It is true that one “must follow a certain conscience or at least not act against it”. On the other hand, Fr Camilleri has not given sufficient weight to the possibility of one having an erroneous conscience. Cardinal Ratzinger asserts that one may fall in the trap of “hiding behind the screen” of his erroneous conscience, thus causing a “deficiency in listening to the depth of one’s own soul”. He continues that “whoever equates conscience with a superficial conviction, identifies conscience with a pseudo-rational certainty, a certainty which, in fact, has been woven from self-righteousness, conformity and lethargy”.

Although sinning or not is not to be set as the main interest throughout the current debate, if Catholic politicians could be free from sin while following the dictates of an erroneous conscience they could be committing a sin on another count. As Cardinal Ratzinger explains, “no one may act against his convictions, as St Paul had already said (Rom 14, 23). But the fact that the conviction a person has come to, certainly binds in the moment of acting, does not signify a canonisation of subjectivity. It is never wrong to follow the convictions one has arrived at – in fact, one must do so. But it can very well be wrong to have come to such askew convictions in the first place by having stifled the protest of the anamnesis of being. The guilt lies then in a different place, much deeper – not in the present act, not in the present judgement of conscience but in the neglect of my being which made me deaf to the inner promptings of truth”.

Furthermore, we have ample evidence to deduce that the Magisterium, that is to be considered as the highest authentic guidance for all Catholics for the formation of a good conscience, including politicians, perceives divorce as a disorder and as a violation that was never contemplated in the eternal law by the Creator of man and the founder of the marital institution. This is confirmed by the words of Christ himself and by countless magisterial documents (Mt 19, 3-9; Gaudium et Spes 48; CCC nn 2382-2386). If in conscience one can choose to opt for divorce he has to know that his “informed conscience” (it can be termed as such) is pretending that Christ’s teaching is not valid for the circumstances Malta is presently facing. Is this a correct judgment or a faulty one?

I also fear that Fr Camilleri’s quotation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2383) could have been very misleading because the context shows it is highly improbable that the appeal to the tolerability of a civil divorce implies also an opening to remarriage. The latest contribution by Gaetano Brimmer who quoted moral theologian Pier Giuseppe Pesce (supported also by moral theologian Karl Peschke in his work Christian Ethics, vol.2 , p.494) and the latest contribution of Fr Camilleri himself have undoubtedly shown that the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not contemplate the possibility of remarriage through paragraph 2383. I cannot understand how Fr Camilleri quoted the same paragraph so that politicians might “put their conscience at rest” if, according to their conscience, they favour the introduction of divorce.

To my knowledge, those who favour the introduction of divorce in Malta do so because they also favour the possibility of remarriage.