The question of conscience is a subject that is debatable in as much as it is perplexing. Even Catholic politicians have not been spared from this embarrassing confusion circulating in practically every corner of the House of Representatives. In the present issue concerning the introduction of divorce legislation, some are saying that the will of the majority should prevail and personal conscience should be subservient to the rule of democracy. The situation becomes ironical when politicians who claim they are Catholic advance such convictions!
In what manner does the conscience of the Catholic politician sail in these troubled waters?
The Catholic notion of conscience implies a complete fidelity to moral principles given to us by God Himself. Blessed John Paul II, in his encyclical, The Splendour Of Truth (Veritatis Splendor), writes: “In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose on 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 (cf. Rom 2:14-16)” (VS 54).
The history of Catholic theology kept reiterating the total adherence of conscience to objective truth, as Veritatis Splendor has powerfully explained. For instance, Blessed John Henry Newman, in his clarification of the rapport between conscience and God, totally concorded with Veritatis Splendor’s view by saying that conscience is God’s voice instilled in the nature and heart of the human person. In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Blessed Newman states: “Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its information, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas.”
In his Grammar of Assent, Blessed Newman refers to conscience as “our great internal teacher of religion”. It “teaches us not only that God is but what He is; it provides for the mind a real image of Him, as a medium of worship.”
In Blessed Newman’s perspective, conscience is an uncompromising observer of what is right and wrong and is fundamentally tied up with the recognition of God. “Conscience has rights because it has duties”.
Conscience forces one to seek authoritative direction. Blessed Newman poignantly shows the beneficial role of the Church in fulfilling this need. In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk he says: “All sciences, except the science of religion, have their certainty in themselves; as far as they are sciences, they consist of necessary conclusions from undeniable premises, or of phenomena manipulated into general truths by an irresistible deduction. But the sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so impressible by education, so biased by pride and passion, so unsteady in its flight, that, in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous; and the Church, the Pope, the Hierarchy are, in the Divine purpose, the supply of an urgent demand.”
In doing politics, the Catholic politician is called to exercise his/her political ministry by adhering completely to the objective and universal law that emanates from God, as presented to us in the natural law. In the words of the Jesuit, Fr Joseph Koterski, professor of philosophy at Fordham University: “Catholic politicians and public officials are bound just like the rest of us (Catholics) to conform to Catholic teaching on matters of moral principle. In fact, they have a special duty in this regard, precisely by reason of the office they hold and their obligation to work for the common good.”
Catholic politicians are responsible to familiarise themselves with the Church’s pronouncement on various issues, including its position about divorce, because they may need to vote on them or draw up policies or simply to enforce the existing laws.
Since conscience becomes fallible easily, Fr Koterski went on by saying that “if Catholic politicians or public officials find themselves at odds with the Church’s teaching, they have a very strong duty in conscience to form their consciences better by careful study of the Church’s teaching on moral principles and their proper application”.
Before casting their vote in Parliament to approve or reject the divorce Bill, it would be wise and responsible if Catholic MPs seek the providential guidance of the Church’s magisterium and, hopefully, vote accordingly. To reject divorce is a question of moral principles not of judgments of fact on practical matters!