Chapter One: Love - Catholic Teaching

CHAPTER ONE LOVE St John Paul II on 16 October 1978, five months after his reception of the chair of St Peter gave the outline of his pontificate in his Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis. He addressed his encyclical letter to all believers and men...

CHAPTER ONE LOVE St John Paul II on 16 October 1978, five months after his reception of the chair of St Peter gave the outline of his pontificate in his Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis. He addressed his encyclical letter to all believers and men and women of good will and presented the catholic faith under his care as “the Church as responsible for truth” (Redemptor Hominis, n. 19). In it, the new Pope traced the major objectives of his pontificate, that is, on the Church's mission to promote the truth that Christianity holds for men and women who are social and relational beings, independent of the act of faith. “man in the full truth of his existence, of his personal being and also of his community and social being... is the primary route that the Church must travelin fulfilling her mission...” (Redemptor Hominis, n. 14). At the summit of his shepherding of the church his writings on the Catholic Moral Life echo his stress on this urgency of truth. His ethical encyclical entitled Veritatis Splendor clearly manifests this. He talked about the need to base all ethics of love on truth. Indeed there is a tradition in Catholic norms that clearly express, “the minimum of love is the truth in Justice” (St John XXIII). Later to be echoed by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI himself in saying, “the soul of justice is commitment to the truth.” Reacting to this manifest program of St Pope John Paul II, moral theologians and teachers of ethical theory have been manifesting preference on either of two, for freedom or truth, as regards Christian Ethics. Simply put, one gives emphasis on the person and the supremacy of the individual conscience while the other more on moral principles that ought to guide the flourishing of the person. When Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he in turn promulgated his encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love) on 25 December 2005, the first Christmas of his pontificate. In doing so, he treaded a middle path in between the camps of the theologians debate on either truth or freedom; Benedict XVI made it clear that the point of departure of his teachings is Caritas, love. In the opening paragraph, he summarizes his interest in making an encyclical on love his first one. In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in  turn must share with others. Indeed overly stress on individual freedom and the supremacy of the personal conscience may lead one to forget the need to educate one’s interiority (formation of conscience in charity). On the other hand too much preoccupation with objective standards of truth may result to the suppression or rigidity of the human person; extolling obligation and duty crushing in effect the perfection of mercy and charity. Clarifying thus the point of St Pope John Paul II in his writings as the pope’s call to again fall in love with Christ as Redemptor Hominis, Our spirit is set in one direction; the only direction for our intellect, will and heart is towards Christ our Redeemer, towards Christ, the Redeemer of man" (Redemptor Hominis, n.7) Magnifying and echoing this call of St Pope John Paul II, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in his turn writes: Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction… God’s love met in personal contact with Jesus (Deus Caritas est, 1). The primacy of love and specifically the love of God perfects and integrates both freedom and truth. Tripartite attestation to this truth thus is: the witness of scriptures, the maturity of theology, and the tradition that is rooted in human experience. First, the scriptures command it. Jesus teaches us that the two great commandments are to love God and the neighbor as oneself. Of course, Jesus is summing up the entire teaching of the law and the prophets. So, for instance, the Ten Commandments recognize the love and honor for God as the first commandment of all; upon these commandments rests all the other commandments. Knowing that the commandments were not imposed on us for God’s pleasure, but rather for our benefit and our flourishing as human persons, by insisting on God’s sovereignty, the first commandment indicates our dependency on God as the very foundation of our lives and of our happiness. Second, the love of God precedes whatever else we discuss in theology, whether we speak temporally or metaphysically. For instance, love is how we understand God, for God is love. The German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner tells us that because God is love, God is triune, for God needs to be in God’s self more than one person in order to be love, for the lover needs the beloved. Love also explains the creation. Again, Rahner tells us that because God is love, God “needs” to love more than God’s self. For that reason God creates us so as to enter into love with us, to bring us into his kingdom. Love also is the ground of our redemption, for “God so loved the world that God gave God’s one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3, 16). Love, too, is the way of our sanctification, for Jesus commanded us to love God, to love our neighbor, and to love ourselves. Finally, love is our goal, for in the kingdom we believe that we will be united forever with God and those who have gone before us. Thus, love is our understanding of God, creation, redemption, sanctification, and eschatological promise: Inasmuch as theology is the study of God, then love is the beginning and end of theology, for God is love. Listen to how the First Letter of John comprehensively presents it: Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed God’s love among us: God sent God’s one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another… God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like God… We love because God first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates one’s brother or sister, that one is a liar. For anyone who does not love one’s brother or sister, whom we have seen, cannot love God, whom we have not seen. And God has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love their brother and sister (1 John 4, 7–11; 16–17, 19–21). All these maturity in theological witness and summing up of the scriptural witness in love, occasion our assertion, loving God is the foundation of the moral life. We lastly turn on human experience as it confirms that beginning with the love of God, unlike reflection that elects freedom or truth as points of departures; drives, animates and moves unto the very perfection of freedom and truth. Not only does love look for union, but it also moves us toward freedom and truth. Love, then, makes possible our search for a freedom for greater love and a truth to love rightly. One of the most important works in moral theology in the twentieth century specifically turned to the tradition to confirm this truth from human experience. In The Primacy of Charity in Moral Theology, Gérard Gilleman insisted that we need an experience- based moral theology that starts at the depths of our being. He turned to charity, the love of God dwelling in us, and there he tapped into the notion of spiritual or devotional theology nourishing the depths of our spirit. When we think of charity, Gilleman quoted St Thomas Aquinas as saying, we must realize that the love of God is no less than the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. Herein we find the love of God, charity animating us. Gilleman also invokes St Thomas in calling charity the mother of the virtues, again because it precedes all other virtues by animating them and giving them life. Tradition constantly confirms this human experience of the love of God preceding all else. For instance, our tradition testifies, time and again, to the love of God as the foundation of the call to become a Christian. Of course, the paradigmatic conversion marked by love is St Augustine’s (354–430) own. St Augustine, who converted to Christianity in his early thirties, insisted on the primacy of love—“Love and do as you will.” He describes in the tenth book of the Confessions the deeply felt, passionate, visceral pursuit of the love of God: Late it was that I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you! And, look, you were within me and I was outside, and there I sought for you and in my ugliness I plunged into the beauties that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. Those outer beauties kept me far from you, yet if they had not been in you, they would not have existed at all. You called, you cried out, you shattered my deafness: you flashed, you shone, you scattered my blindness: you breathed perfume, and I drew in my breath and I pant for you: I tasted, and I am hungry and thirsty: you touched me, and I burned for your peace. St Augustine’s conversion was a response to the love of God already within him. Similarly, the conversion of St Paul, who also testified to the primacy of love, was a call of love. Of course, unlike St Augustine, we do not have from St Paul the description of his conversion in quite the poetry that St Augustine provided, but for the great evangelizer who wanted nothing but Christ, certainly he understood Christ’s call as nothing but love. Before reading St Paul, let us consider the painting by Caravaggio (1573–1610). To appreciate Caravaggio’s painting, we can compare it with an earlier one by Michelangelo (1475–1564). In Michelangelo’s The Conversion of St Paul (1542–1545), God, accompanied by angels and saints, erupts from heaven and parts the sky, allowing heaven’s light to fall tornado- like on the person of Paul. God intervenes directly onto a plain, sending St Paul’s horse and at least fifteen soldiers away in flight. In the lower left-hand corner of the canvas, an elderly, white-bearded, stunned St Paul shields his face as he turns toward the light with his companion helping him to his feet. The painting is clearly about the power of God entering dramatically and definitively into human history. In Caravaggio’s Conversion of Paul (1600), there are only three figures—St Paul, his horse, and Paul’s companion tending to the horse. On a fairly dark background we see a Michelangelo, The Conversion of St Paul youthful St Paul, in vibrant passionate colors of orange, red, blue, and yellow, wearing armor, very handsome on his back, legs opened, eyes closed. The conversion is an ecstatic moment in which St Paul is purely recipient of God’s love. It has a deeply erotic tone. The horse and his companion do not flee but remain standing there, neither aware of what is happening to St Paul. Only St Paul in his deep interiority is receiving the Lord. He is in union with the Lord. This deep, internalized conversion clearly conveys that God is doing something to St Paul.  Insert Caravaggio’s Conversion of St Paul In this painting, unlike Michelangelo’s, God is not visible. God is present, nonetheless, but in St Paul, because someone is doing something to St Paul. Caravaggio captures St Paul’s experience, making sure that the agent we see active is not St Paul but God. Thus, even though you see God in Michelangelo’s, still your eyes move to St Paul. In Caravaggio’s, you see St Paul, but you look for God. This move by Caravaggio is insightful. The event is not St Paul being turned around. The event is St Paul becoming deeply attuned to the presence of the love of God in his life. Of course, only one who has known that experience could insist that love is the only thing that lasts. The greatness of our tradition is that the love of God is not simply the beginning of the Christian’s life, but the whole continuum of it. Thus, in the Church of Maria del Popolo, Caravaggio’s Conversion of Paul hangs in front of his Crucifixion of Peter. Like St Paul, St Peter is on his back, but his back is on a cross, and while the stimulated St Paul is completely clothed, the aging flesh of St Peter is fairly exposed. St Peter is looking at his hands, fastened to the cross. He inevitably recalls the questioning on the beach—“Do you love me?”— and the prediction that St Peter, when he is old, shall stretch forth his hands and be led where he will not want to go (John 21, 15–19). Now St Peter is old and about to die for Jesus Christ. In two paintings, Caravaggio captures the beginning and the end of the Christian lifeas a life living out of the love of God. The Threefold Love No presentation on love can conclude without saying something about the threefold love of God, self, and neighbor. So let us consider this triad. No contemporary moral theologian has written more on love than Edward Vacek. He captures the fullness of the love of God by talking about love as agape (that is, the love for the beloved), love as philia (the love for the love or the union itself), and love as eros (the lovethat the lover experiences as lover). By bringing these together, Vacek captures the all- encompassing comprehensiveness of love. Not surprisingly, whenever we talk about our response to God’s love, we similarly use all-encompassing language. Jesus tells us that we are to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul (Matt. 22, 37–39). God expects nothing less and the tradition echoes that complete offering, whether in the prayer of St. Francis or St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Suscipe (offering of oneself) prayer. Any response to the all-embracing love of God must be as exhaustively comprehensive as the offer itself. Thus the breathless love of God that St Paul encounters is paralleled by the complete Suscipe of St Peter. Because of that comprehensiveness, Vacek argues that all persons have their flourishing in God and that if one were not to believe in God, and therefore not know the love of God, that person would be incomplete. Humans, Vacek insists, need the love of God to know the goodness of life. Without it, we are simply less.  Vacek wants to make clear, though, that the love we are to have for God is specifically for God, God’s self. He wants to counter those who see in neighbor love theonly specific act of the love of God. In a way, Vacek hearkens us back to the preacher whosees the placard that announces “God is other people.” The preacher remarks, “There is a comma missing in your sign: ‘God is other, people’!” Thus in prayer we encounter this specific exchange of divine and human love between God and the person. Prayer is about entering into union with God specifically— about experiencing that union, about encountering the love of God. Margaret Farley talks about this expression of love as an active receptivity. That active receptivity is what we saw in the Caravaggio painting of the Conversion of St Paul: St Paul is actively receiving the love of God. The great Baroque artist Giovanni Bernini (1598–1680) caught this active receptivity when he sculpted the extraordinary ecstasy of St Teresa of Avila (1515–1582). Not unlike St Paul’s body, Teresa’s body completely succumbs to the penetrating love of God that permeates and enlivens her entire body. Frederick Crowe described this active receptivity in another word: “complacency.” There he describes the first act of the beloved as resting in the love received from the lover. Complacency and active receptivity is what we see in Caravaggio’s St Paul and Bernini’s St Teresa. Sts Augustine of Hippo and Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) are always leading us in prayer to appreciate this resting in God’s love as active receptivity. They saw prayer as a way of openness to God, as being inflamed by God. As St Ignatius invites us in prayer in his Spiritual Exercises, he never lets us leave one scriptural passage for another, if there is still more fruit to savor. In his work, Vera religione St Augustine writes, In interior homine habitat veritas, that is, in the very interiority of man, Jesus who is God made man reveals himself to us as the very truth to live by. The genius of both saints is that they couple the experience of resting on God’s love with the comprehensiveness of love: they want us to get at receptivity from every imaginable angle. From meditations, colloquies, contemplations, and the applications of the senses, these saints want us to see, feel, touch, hear, and taste the love of God. Like the love of God itself, prayer is an encounter with being beloved. Thus St Thomas Aquinas had the great insight to write that the order of charity begins with God and moves to the self (II.II.26). After our encounter with the love of God, we love ourselves. God teaches us to do it, and even before we love another, we believe that by charity we love ourselves and well we should. Of course, the Gospels make this quite clear: the model for neighbor love is love of self; we are to love the neighbor as ourselves. Here is the richness of the Christian tradition on love: the love of God makes possible the love of self. And these together make possible the love of neighbor.  We need to understand here a common mistake many make. Many seem to think thatlove of self is conditioned by whether we think of ourselves as good first. I do not want to dwell here on how good or bad we are—wait until my chapter on sin to see how “bad” I think we are—but we acknowledge in faith that while we were still sinners, God loved us (Rom. 5, 8). God does not love us in our goodness; God loves us unconditionally. In a similar way, we cannot love our neighbors except for as they are. We learn, paradoxically in God’s love, the contrast between sinfulness and truthful self-love. The comprehensiveness of love is no less applicable for neighbor love. We are called to love our neighbors, not in their goodness alone but in their entirety and in their specificity. There are some today who try to love their neighbor by thinking of their neighbor as another Christ. But that is not full neighbor love: we need to love not Christ in the neighbor only, but we need also to love the neighbor. Just as we need to love specifically God and specifically ourselves, similarly we need to love specifically our neighbors as they really are. Moreover, just as we love ourselves as we really are, so too we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. We do not want to deny that Christ may reveal to us that after loving our neighbor we may discover Christ, but the tradition has always told the story of finding Christ in my neighbor as a lesson learned after the concrete act of loving the neighbor. In the Last Judgment parable in Matthew 25, we hear the sheep being told that because they fed the King, they will enter the Kingdom of God. Then they ask, “When did we feed you?” and the King answers, “Whenever you fed the hungry, you fed me.” In the Christian tradition, St. Martin of Tours gives his cloak to a beggar in need. Later, he realizes that the beggar was Christ. But in both Matthew’s Gospel and in the story of St Martin, each one acts not because they see Christ, but because they see a neighbor in need. It is one thing to love Christ in Mohammad; it is another matter to love Mohammad. We close by reflecting on prayer. For just as in prayer we encounter the love of God and the experience of active receptivity wherein we know we are loved and called to love ourselves, similarly in prayer we practice neighbor love, especially when we pray for one another. Again, in this practice we learn to love again as we enter into union with one another by lifting each other up in prayer. We learn in prayer and from the Gospels how much God wants us to love one another, and God becomes in prayer and in life the guarantor of that love. God makes thatlove possible and therefore never attempts to replace that love we have for another with our love for God. When we learn lessons in love, we learn not to reduce love, but that love’s nature is to extend itself, to reach beyond the self, to grasp the other, again and again, andanother and another. Love is, after all, union, delight and ecstasy—a deeply felt, visceral union that we keeps away from selfishness, allowing us to pursue and relishing in a multitude of ways, for it is so comprehensive and yet brings such rest.  CHAPTER TWO Conscience as the voice bidding us to love The call to be a Christian is at once a call to grow. The fullness of growth however isnot in self-fixation or self-absorption. The Actualized human person is the one who transcends the self in the fullness of love; that is in loving God and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. This seemingly obvious yet healthy commandment, however, lay quiet or unexpressed in the long history of the moral manuals that constantly warn us against sin but is quiet in urging us to grow. The commandment to grow seems to have been reserved for those seeking perfection: the religious, consecrated or those who are ordained to the holy orders. The call to grow is for all the disciples however, and this is evident elsewhere: in the scriptures, in the early Fathers, in the twelfth- to fourteenth- century Scholasticism and the concurrent charismatic and religious movements, and finally again in our contemporary era as we seek to better root moral reflection in these pillars of the faith. We seem to have come back to the realization that the moral life is not only about avoiding sins but more so about doing the good as expressive of loving God and neighbor as oneself. In the New Testament, the call to follow the Lord is always understood as a call to progress in growth and to advance. St Paul writes, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philem. 3, 13–14). The ever continuously moving St Paul finds appropriate the imagery of straining forward on the way of the Lord. To the Galatians, helaments their stumbling and comments “you were running well” (Gal. 5, 7). St Paul’s reliance on journey imagery stems from his own confirming experience of Christ, who literally manifests his love to St Paul on the road to Damascus. St Paul is a traveler, both before and after his conversion. After meeting the risen Lord, St Paul is sent on the true way; his actual journeys, narrated in Luke’s second volume of writing, the Acts of the Apostles that mirrors the Gospel journeys of Christ, who heads for Jerusalem. The Acts ends when the apostle to the Gentiles reaches Rome; Jesus and Paul are both called to their ultimate surrender to love.  Following in Jesus’ footsteps is the response to the call of discipleship: the first traveler, the Lord himself, beckons each pilgrim to grow in being a child of the Father by following him. The provocative Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) brought the journeying of Jesus to the fore in his The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. In that work, he silhouettes Jesus as Jesus moves relentlessly across the screen toward Jerusalem, with his apostles trying desperately but rather poorly to keep up with him. Jesus is on a mission, aiming without pause to attain his destiny; everything that he does, he does as he makes haste to the Holy City. Even his Sermon on the Mount becomes a sermon on the run. Of course, the notion of movement originates with the Gospels and not with the film director, Pasolini. The Gospels are replete with “moving” characters, seeking the Lord: the shepherds hurry to the stable as the Magi follow the star, Zacchaeus climbs a tree and Levi leaves his table, the woman with the hemorrhage pushes through the crowd and the paralytic finds the Lord by being lowered through the roof, the prodigal son and his father rush toward one another, Jairus and Nicodemus break ranks to see Jesus. The Gospels are filled with stories of people truly hurrying in their passage to the Lord. The scripture stories are not lost on the church. The stories are the source of a new moral imperative: to move forward and to advance. St Gregory the Great (540– 604; papacy, 590–604) writes, “Certainly, in this world, the human spirit is like a boat foolishly fighting against the river’s rush: one is never allowed to stay still, because unless one forges ahead, one will slide back downstream.” Later, in the twelfth century, St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) argues, “To not progress on the way of Life is to regress.” St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) sums up their insights: “To stand on the way of the Lord is to move backwards.” For these holy men, the Lord who leads us on the way expects us to move, to follow. To not follow Jesus in his loving movements is to move backwards or digress. This moral call to grow is not a call to make ourselves into other gods. Certainly some have erroneously believed that by their own efforts they could become perfect, like those who ate from Eden’s tree, who built the Tower of Babel, or who followed the Bishop Pelagius. But St Paul helps us again: “Not that I have obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philemon 3, 12). The call to strive, to grow, is not a matter of personal choice, effort and achievement. Rather, Christ has called us and given us the grace that commands us to respond. On God’s account, we must move forward cooperating with His grace.  All this actions would be lost on us if we do not understand it as movement animated by love. Jesus moves, obedient to the Father’s love, in Jerusalem; Mary hastens to her cousin St Elizabeth; out of love, out of love, Sts Peter and John rush to the empty tomb; out of love, St Mary Magdalene runs ahead to tell the disciples about the risen Lord out of love, St Paul races to the finish line. This call to movement, to advance, is the Christian vocation to grow, but to grow in love. Right Loving and Right Growth This vocation in love is a summons to pursue the right way for growing. For this reason, the call to growth is easily understood as an injunction to cultivate the virtues. Through character building, we attend to practices that better our pilgrimage; that is, to better dispose us to cooperate with God’s grace and heed his call. Though virtues assist us to harness weaknesses and overcome pitfalls, their overriding function is to develop strengths. The agenda of the virtues is to promote a profoundly interpersonal and positive response to the call to grow and stands in sharp contrast to the later modern moral manualsthat were so obsessed with avoiding sinful actions. Virtues enable us not only to avoid imperfection but to do the good in excellence and grace. This Gospels and teaching on virtues appear in the history of the church, not only in the patristic period but also in the great charismatic movements of the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, especially in the challenging sermons and injunctions of Saints Dominic (1170– 1221), Francis (1181–1226), and Clare (1194–1253) to walk on the way of the Lord. Unlike their predecessors, who lived in remote monasteries, these charismatic leaders left their convents to enter the newly formed urban areas and universities of the thirteenth century so as to preach the Gospel, forming religious communities precisely to help them in this task. Telling the story of God’s movement to us, they call us to move towards God on the way of virtue; cooperating with his mercy and love. The call to grow, the call to move forward as disciples, the call to exercise virtue is always a call heard in the Christian conscience. The centrality of the personal conscience as the place for hearing the call has had a long history in the church: whenever growth and virtue are especially promoted, the conscience is also defended and promoted. During these robust periods (notably the patristic period of the first five centuries and the charismatic, religious, and Scholastic movements of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries), the primacy of the conscience is consistently articulated. Not surprisingly, then, in light of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which called morals to be more rooted in scripture and discipleship, the conscience again makes a vigorous appearance in contemporary moral theology. Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, 16 has this to tell about conscience: In the depths of our conscience, we detect a law which does not impose, but which holds us to obedience. Always summoning us to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to our heart: do this; shun that. For we have in our heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of being human; according to it we will be judged (2 Cor. 6, 10). Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person. There we are alone with God, Whose voice echoes in our depths (John 1, 3; 14). In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor (Eph. 1, 10). In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of humanity in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals from social relationships. Hence the more right conscience holds sway, the more persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and strive to be guided by the objective norms of morality. Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for those who care but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sightless as a result of habitual sin. There are many elements that could be pursued in this quotation from the Vatican II teaching: the inner sanctuary of a person; the call to do good and avoid evil; the law being fulfilled in the love of God and neighbor. However, so as to better explain the centrality of conscience it is best to summarize the discussion through three specific issues: the voice of conscience as different from the superego, self-parenting and the formation of conscience, and lastly the call to love and the erring conscience. The True Conscience and the Superego In a seminal article, John Glaser distinguished two very different voices that we hear as adults: the voices of the superego and of the conscience. The term “superego” (meaning “that-which-is- above-the-I”) is how psychologists name that voice living in us, which, though a leftover from early childhood years, continues to assert itself throughout our lives. While growing up, those who reared us gave instructions on matters of safety and hygiene. Our guardians through persistent reminder kept us from running into moving vehicles, inserting our fingers into electrical outlets, fooling around with sharp objects, or playing with fire. Similarly, they taught us to keep clean, wash our hands, eat with utensils, and use the toilet. These advices were announced with voices of authority, spoken with great concern and oftentimes, understandably accompanied with tones of stress and frustration. Subsequently, these voices formed the voice of the superego. Because they could not be with us at all times, parents and guardians exerted effort to instill in us a voice that could supervise us even in their absence. Through constant warnings, we eventually felt their inhibiting presence restraining us from pushing a playmate in front of traffic or from playing with the many dangerous appliances in the kitchen. As children we learned that parents were always nearby. In fact, nothing could make parental control more palpably visible than when that horrendous sibling threat was uttered: “I’m telling Mom!” Glaser calls this internalized supervising voice “a principle of pre-personal censorship and control.” It still lives in us today. Unfortunately, inasmuch as this voice came from people literally bigger and older than we children were, we still perceive this voice as more powerful and more authoritative than we are. The superego was not, however, a moral guide. It was simply meant to restrain us, to keep us safe, healthy, and well. Despite whatever moral lessons guardians may have given us until this time, the only thing children really heard was that if we did not heed our parent’s instructions, we would get punished. The threat—unlike solid moral explanations—is what we remember. To illustrate perhaps it is good to remember our experiences of being corrected. When we were wrong, we were punished, most often by being sent to our room. This is the usual way of correcting a child. At times we feel liberated for being sent away; our rebellious feelings were also awakened by punishment. We thought as we trampled our way to our room, we may have muttered “good riddance!” As time passed, however, we would feel the harshness of the intended isolation and would negotiate or seek permission to return to wherever the family was gathered. We would bargain with our parents, promising never to be bad again, and claiming to be contrite all along the way. Of course, we were not that upset about the wrong we had done; it was the isolation we wanted to overcome. We wanted togetherness that is, to be back with everyone and feel loved again. Grown up in the present, that same fairly standardized movement has been hardwired into our adult lives. From the superego we sense reprimand, punishment, isolation, guilt, negotiation, repentance, and acceptance. Through the superego, the cycle repeats itself time and again. We violate an accepted standard of behavior, we feel “guilty” for what we did, we apologize simply to rid ourselves of the “bad” feeling, and we are welcomed back, and we find ourselves feeling better again. Such are the mechanics of the superego. Self-parenting and the Formation of Conscience Unlike the superego, which warns us and commands us to stay where we are, the conscience moves us to grow. For some of us, this call could mean a call to greater assertiveness, courage to correct others or even to stand on the side of justice and witness to compassion. Given such voices that call us to grow, we may hear another voice warning us, “You better not do it or else you will feel guilty.” That guilt-inducing voice is usually the superego. There are times when the voice of the conscience that bids us to grow is met with threats of the superego. Even if we do decide to develop in new areas, the superego still manages to make us feel guilty and, worse, terribly isolated. Some of us even go to our rooms, punishing ourselves exactly as our parents punished us years ago. It is then significantly life giving for us to be familiar with the difference between the superego and the true conscience. One bids us to develop us a human person while the other simply maintains our “nice” persona who avoids conflicts and keeps smooth interpersonal relationships. When the superego drives us, it usually does so by threatening or punishing us, compelling us into prepubescent repetitive forms of living and acting. Certainly this is not to say that whenever we “feel guilty,” it is always the superego and not the conscience that is working. However, the difference ought to alert us, that is, when we say things like “I feel so guilty,” we should ask ourselves, “Did I do anything wrong?” If the answer is yes, then the conscience is probably judging us, but when the answer is no, the superego is probably intimidating us. Consider the case that someone has repeatedly victimized the poor and violated their human rights. Our neighbor whisper, “You should not speak up keep your head low otherwise you might become collateral damage to the violence.” In conscience we recognize that keeping quiet is consenting to the human rights violations, but the superego keeps saying, “You should avoid confrontation.” Eventually we decide to speak up. Afterward, we may “feel guilty and worried.” This feeling is probably rooted in the superego: we went against its command to conform and so it punishes us. Of course, the superego is not bad. After all, it has kept us safe until this day and it has regulated even our hygiene. As adults however, our lives ought to be regulated by a higher voice (that is, the conscience) that discerns the standards of what is right and wrong. We need to be vigilant about the superego so that it does not inhibit the conscience. The superego’s dictatorship of our lives binds us to a certain form of social compliance and because we are so interested in being loved, the superego’s threats of isolation cowers us into conformity. Conscience, on the other hand, is wary of conformity, particularly when injustice is at stake. Because the conscience calls us to aim more at being the one who loves than being thebeloved, it prompts us often to reach out to the one that the more conformist society rejects. Moral growth, therefore, always comes when people heed their consciences, take steps of their own, and move forward, even at the risk of isolation and loss. Consider when Blessed William Tirry refused to take the main postulates of the Anglican Church to walk to the scaffold in 1654, when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to white preachers on scraps of paper in 1963 from a Birmingham jail, when Ninoy Aquino took his seat on the plane back to the Philippines in 1983, when the 35 Filipino Commission of Elections tabulators and programmers walked out in protest of the cheating during the snap election counting of 1986, and when the faceless Chinese student stepped forward to meet an oncoming tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989. In these events, a person pushed history and humanity forward with a conscience that calls to step forward where others fear to go. Here we should never forget that the language of conscience is the forceful language of being called to act, of being commanded. As Gaudium et Spes states, conscience “holds us in obedience”—it “summons” us. True, conscience is often used with the word “freedom,” but this is not a freedom to do whatever we want. Rather, the call for freedom of conscienceis so that we are not constrained from heeding our conscience. For this reason, Christians refer to the “dictates” or the “demands” of conscience: conscience “demands” that we love God, ourselves, and our neighbors. Conscience “dictates” that we pursue justice. In fact, Gaudium et Spes reminds us that by the conscience we will be “judged.” When we appreciate the call of conscience, the voice to hear the demands of God, of love, and of justice, then we similarly recognize the formation of the conscience as itself a command. We need to remember, however, that forming our conscience is a lifetime process. We form it based on the wisdom of parents, elders, and teachers, as well as friends and mentors; on the teachings and stories from the sacred scriptures, the church’s authority and tradition, our local culture; and finally on the lessons learned in our own life experience. Many people think that forming the conscience entails memorizing a few laws, like the Ten Commandments. These are certainly helpful and important but we need to learn life’s lessons if we want to have a formed conscience, and those lessons cannot be taught bysimple commands telling us what to do and what to avoid. The formation of conscience is more like responsible self-parenting. We can think of how our parents helped us to begin forming our consciences, since parents form their children’s consciences all the time. They teach their children to play fairly with others, to enjoy one another’s company, to tell the truth, to care for siblings and friends, to take care of themselves by not eating too much or too quickly, to respect other people’s property, and to be brave. As we get older and become adults, we take over the job of forming the conscience. We learn more about the complexities of truth-telling, of being faithful to friends, of acknowledging our faults, of working earnestly, of caring for the stranger, of being hospitable, and of becoming both grateful and compassionate. We think the formation of the conscience is really a development of our relatedness in virtue: mentored practices of justice, temperance, fortitude, fidelity, and self-care through the ministration of conscience’s own prudence allow us to learn more and more about how we are to respond to God, neighbor, and ourselves in love. Virtuous practices become the exercises for the formation of conscience. The seriousness with which the church takes the conscience is seen by the way the church addresses the possible conflict between the dictates of conscience and the teaching church. What happens if my conscience tells me one thing and my church tells me something else? This was the famous disagreement that the young St Thomas Aquinas had with the famous Peter Lombard (1095–1160). Peter Lombard’s Sentences was the most widely used textbook (after the scriptures) of the medieval university. Every budding professor lectured on them as their first university lecture appointment. In 1252, when Thomas Aquinas first arrived at Paris to teach, he did the same. St Thomas dutifully referred to Lombard as the Master, but on three occasions in his Commentary on the Sentences, he straightforwardly rejected Lombard: “here the Master is wrong” (hic magister falsum dicit). Lombard had argued that one is not obliged to follow one’s conscience when at odds with church teaching. St Thomas responded that we ought to die excommunicated rather than violate our conscience. We need to appreciate that the “debate” between Peter and St Thomas was never settled. No pope or council ever judged that Peter or St Thomas was right. Rather, in the church, we live with the tension of this debate. In fact, generally speaking, we believe that to form the conscience we should adhere to church teaching. We expect the conflict between conscience and church teaching to be rare. In fact, we could say that the only way we could in conscience disagree with church teaching is if our consciences took the matter so seriously that it commanded us to disagree with the church. Still, we believe that St Thomas understood the problem well: if we are not bound to what our conscience dictates as right, then we would be free to follow any fancy as morally right. But we are bound to the dictates of conscience. In fact, on Judgment Day, we will have to give an account of how we lived and that account will be based on conscience. We will not be able to claim we were following others, for even the act of following is itself a conscientious action. There will be no excuses; inevitably we will render the account of how we lived and why. In being true to our lives, we will have no choice but to acknowledge how our consciences guided us throughout our adult lives. Thus, even if we believe we ought to adhere to church teaching, we do that through conscience. The conscience, then, is the seat of personal responsibility. Following the conscience is not a private matter. On the contrary, as the seat of personal responsibility, it helps us to see that we are constitutively related to God, ourselves, and the neighbor. We are inescapably social, so much so that whatever our conscience guides us to do will be brought to light. Whatever we try to do in private will inevitably enterinto the very nature of ourselves. Since we cannot escape our consciences, we cannot escape our own relational responsibilities. Moreover, because conscience always binds, it binds even when it is erroneous; of course, no one in conscience would know that they were in error, for deliberately doing what we believe is wrong would not be acting in conscience. Few moral teachings of the church must be followed under pain of excommunication. Nonetheless, if the church teaches one thing and we believe in conscience something else, we are obliged to know what exactly the church teaches and whether we still have grounds for disagreement. Then we ought to know exactly what the disagreement is and how serious it is, and articulate to ourselves precisely why we are convinced that our way of acting is the more obliging way of loving God and neighbor than what the church teaches. In all of this, we must maintain a profound respect for the church’s teaching and we must avoid scandalizing others. But the only reason why in this conflict we are obliged not to obey the church is because we are absolutely not free to violate our conscience. Still, just because we follow our conscience does not mean that we are right. As a matter of fact, when we think about it, it is pretty easy to get things wrong. The recognition of the obligation to follow our conscience, then, does not mean that we become infallible if we heed the conscience. On the contrary, as Gaudium et Spes acknowledges, “conscience frequently errs.” For that reason it is important to ask the question: Do we sin when we follow a conscience in error? This question has been asked since the twelfth century, and over time, we have developed different answers. The Call to Love and Error of the conscience in Judging  We turn now to consider the history of studies on the possibility of conscience to fall into error. Looking into the insights of different thinkers, we can have a clearer notion of the primacy of the conscience and our commitment to give it formation. The different theologians allow us to understand how Catholic teaching and tradition develops. In this question of the error of a sincere conscience we see the church’s theology going forward. In this survey of different theologians, the first point to guide our moral reflection is the recognition of the significance of the motivation of love. In our consideration of conscience in the preceding chapter, we have come to recognize the call to grow as the very voice of conscience asking us to progress in the moral life. This call to growth can only be a grow to love, for as St Paul puts it, without love all striving for excellence can be liken to a noisy gong, empty in clanging for recognition (1 Cor 13,1). St Augustine’s caritas therefore, the elected point of departure of this study of Christian ethics will be the lens in which to consider the development of the history of the study of conscience. Caritas invasively asks: Do we love as we strive for the right action? Rightness refers to whether the action fulfills the standards of ethics. Loving people strive to get their actions right but do not always succeed. Consider our parents who may have hurt us by doing what they think is right, for instance, being strict. Growing up we may have been offended by their overly protective actions but we cannot fault them for loving us as the reason for their deeds. On the other extreme however, people acting out of selfish motivations (absence of authentic love) might well do the morally right action, but since they do not act out of love, we do not refer to them as loving. A candidate giving out relief goods may be doing the right thing for the victims of disasters, but if he is consciously and selfishly profiting from his actions as a candidate to be remembered, he is deplorable. With this distinction we equate badness with sin. Sin therefore in this case is the opposite of loving: we can further name it as apathy or indifference towards the call to love. St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), distrusting human judgment and believing that the root of sin was ignorance, exhorted his students to the virtue of humility and adherence to the law. Actions contrary to the law and its teaching, even though done out of ignorance, were, according to St Bernard, evil or bad. Thus, if we accept that telling a lie is always wrong, St Bernard would say, if we lie, regardless of our motivation, we sinned. Peter Abelard (1079–1142) thought differently. He taught that what mattered was whether we were willfully pursuing in conscience the truth. Thus, if we told a lie in conscience in order to protect a fellow man in difficulty, Abelard may call us and our action good. Thus, faced with our question, whether a wrong action from a sincere conscience exercising love is a sin, Bernard answers affirmatively, and Abelard negatively.  Perhaps the difference between their positions happened because they failed to clarify two completely different concerns. St Bernard failed to see that just because persons may do the wrong action out of error does not necessarily mean that they are at bad and therefore sinful. Abelard on the other hand echoes our concern above about moral motivation. Our motivations may be out of love and the conscience’s call to grow, but Abelard nevertheless lacked in further stating that although conscience and love may be present as motivations, they are not guarantees that the actions will not be erroneous or wrong. That is, perhaps Abelard is also at fault in simplistically electing that, “if we willed something precisely because we thought it to be right, it would be deemed as rightful action.” Think of a situation when a fellow student suddenly approaches you and say “ I have confess to you. Before I begin, however you should know, I did it because I am concerned about you.” Do such words bring you “comfort” or “wariness?” Are you sure that something good is about to be heard from your classmate? Acting out of love or out of following the call of conscience to grow is simply not a guarantee of freedom from error in acting. Thus, whenever we hear someone say “I did it out of love” or “I meant well,” we suspect something terribly wrong may have been done, although the person at fault did not mean for it to go wrong. On the contrary, they may perhaps be trying to find the right actiongiven a good motivation. Thus, if our conduct stemmed from a loving conscience, we may have been seeking the right, though sadly we did not find it. The other end of the spectrum is to do the right thing from the wrong motivation. Consider in this case your own experience with a beggar who’s been bothering you for alms. You may have given help to the person in need and that is the right thing to do, but inquiring about the source of the action it is good to ask, “was it out of an honest desire to help or was it simply out of wanting to drive away the person who was bothering you.? While the action may have been right, there is a lack in the engagement to love, that ought tobe the source of the action St Thomas Aquinas deepens our reflection in his inquiry regarding a person’s goodness if ever one followed a conscience that is mistaken. In responding to this inquiry St Thomas stressed two important concerns, sincerity and effort: regarding the error in judgment of the conscience, he asked, could one have known otherwise? That is if I had not known that what I did was wrong, was I responsible enough to seek to know about its wrongness or rightness? For example, I believe I should support the government and fight a war. I later learn that the war was unjust. Am I culpable? St Thomas would ask, could you have known the war was unjust before participating in it? If the answer was yes, then I was responsible for the conscience that fell into error; if no, then I was therefore not culpable. Thomas would call my action of support wrong, but whether my action may be sinful depending on whether I exerted effort to know what I needed to know. But what would St Thomas say if I sincerely tried to know and wrestled with the question of the war and then supported it precisely because, after exerting effort to investigate, I believed firmly that this was a just and necessary war? If even then with my honest striving to know my conscience was mistaken was I not good in doing what was wrong? Would St Thomas say that though my action was wrong, because I tried to know, I was good? Curiously, St Thomas did not call the person good who, despite striving to know the right, followed a conscience that judged mistakenly; rather, St Thomas argued that such a person is “excused” from blame. The Franciscan William of Ockham (1287-1347) later applied St Thomas’ argument on his teaching about the conscience but added that the one who exercises the conscience responsibly, even if it is erroneous, receives merit. Ockham clarified the concern of motivation for us and unlike Abelard on the one hand, he recognized that ignorance is sometimes blameworthy but, like Abelard on the other hand, he recognized the goodness of conscience acting in good faith. Certainly by the sixteenth century most moral theologians agreed with St Thomas— that a dictate of conscience must be followed and that an error of the conscience in good faith is, at least, excused from blame. In fact, by the end of the seventeenth century in 1690, Pope Alexander VIII condemned all those who taught that an invincibly ignorant conscience did not, at least, excuse. (Implicitly, St Bernard’s attack on Abelard is rejected.) In the eighteenth century, St Alfonso Liguori (1696-1787), later the patron saint of moral theologians, developed a new position on erroneous conscience: if a person acted out of love and/or charity when committing error, then not only is the person excused, but the person is good. Whereas Ockham described the person’s striving as meritorious, now St Liguori, in many ways the master of the moral manuals, asserts the person’s goodness. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the moral manualists endorsed St Liguori’s teaching. For instance, in speaking of when a person acting wrong from a loving conscience would be good, they gave the specific example of lying to protect someone. St Thomas hesitation to describe any wrongdoer as good was overcome by St Liguori and adopted by his successors. In 1953, Francis Connell, the dean of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., wrote that if a person acts out of a loving conscience, though the action is certainly not per se willed by God, “God will reward him for sincerely following his conscience.” This does not mean however that we are exempted from seeking the right actions. A truly formed conscience acting out of love sincerely moves in growth by seeking the right action, that which is truly loving. It may seem difficult to sort out what is right or wrongand we might fall into self excuse and convince ourselves that whatever we do is acceptable for as long as we keep ourselves properly motivated by love. The conscience, however, as defined above as a call to love and holiness invites us out of the pitfalls of mindless conformity and selfishness. Formation of conscience is a lifelong journey that truly proceeds by honest reflection, listening and self parenting. If we are truly committed to follow the conscience then, part and parcel of our call to grow is the openness to listen and learn from the teaching authority of the church, the scriptures, our culture and personal study and experiences. In the same manner that St Thomas Aquinas reminds us about the effort in knowing the good and sincerity or St Alfonso Ligouri stresses the commitment to charity and love, the truly growing conscience or progress in holiness is not closed up in self absorption and self deception. The error of Abelard haunts us, it may happen that a sincere conscience fall into error and hence is still blameworthy according to William of Ockham and St Thomas Aquinas. It is good then to remind ourselves as we close this section that thevocation to holiness as self parenting strives to do the right action from a sincere conscience exercising love. Conclusion What can we conclude about this development of theological opinion on conscience? First, the description of the sincere but ignorant conscience as bad is justly condemned by Pope Alexander VIII. Second, to describe wrong actions as “good” is likewise rejected. Trying to find the right is no guarantee of eventual success. Third, some may feel inclined to accept St Thomas’s description of the person as “excused.” But today we use “excused” to describe a person who is victimized by some external cause that diminishes the ability to will and act. Thus, under the control of mental illness, drugs, threats, and so on, a person would be “excused” from blame today, if that control resulted through no fault on the person’s part. If a person has been first acting out of love and in conscience, is searching to find the right action, then the person is good. Unlike being coerced or drugged, a person who errs in good faith is a person who has struggled to find the right, searched heart and mind, and in firm good faith and free will acted with conviction, albeit in error. This person is good, and what differentiates this person from another who strives in the same way but whose conduct is recognized as right is precisely the evaluation of the conduct as wrong. Calling the conduct wrong is the sufficient negative description for the activity of the conscience that has fallen into wrongdoing. One clear instance as we have already indicated above, when getting things always right is a difficult and unlikely, is parenting. This vocation requires getting things right for oneself as well as for one’s children, who themselves are unpredictable. Thus, in teaching children responsibility, parents often miss the mark. That may well be the case but still our foregoing discussion gives us the importance of inquiring as to the “why” of the wrongdoing. Do parents err because they were, at that moment, less loving or less conscientious? Or do they err from a lack of experience, or foresight, or, let us say, perfect knowledge? Students who were asked these questions rarely accuse their parents of a lack of love, while clearly they have also been hurt by wrong actions. When a parent tries to get things right, he or she may fail. But does that failure result from the parent loving less? The parent was wrong, admittedly, but in the care and striving to do the right, to help and instruct the child, was the parent less loving? If there was no diminishment in the striving for the right, there was no diminishment in the moral goodness. Thus calling the conduct wrong does not mean that the parent was any less good or loving than another who strove equally as much and gave the right guidance. Still you may not want to draw the same conclusions. Such hesitation may result from two objections. The first, you may be thinking: “Are you saying for instance a dictator declared martial law, and that declaration victimized many and violated human rights, because the dictator who have declared it may have acted out of conscience, was he not bad?” But we have to ask, do we really believe that such a dictator was striving as much as possible to find the right? Do we really believe that, in a country that has taught for centuries that injustice is wrong and has tried to elucidate the most minimal insights into justice and respect for rights, and then an unjust Martial law with violations of human rights was simply mistaken and sincere efforts of justice? Can we really believe a scenario in which torture and abductions are the thinking of persons who were striving to be right? Certainly the access we have to any of the discussions leading to these decisions hardly supports such a belief. In fact, such questions only prove our insight: not only was such a dictator’s conduct wrong, but his motivations were bad or evil. In this case, his evident failure to strive for justice was so appallingly clear that we rightfully call him bad. As Martial law survivors write, “we have not recovered from... the experience of oppression.” But unjust dictators aside, the contemporary reflection on conscience falling into error helps us to see something often overlooked: the failure to act rightly does not necessarily mean a failure to act out of a loving conscience. Still, some may want to keep St Thomas’s evaluation for another reason. After all, our record (as individuals and as a people) for getting things wrong is strikingly high. With such a record we are wary of any device that could diminish our efforts. We sense that if we start calling these well-meaning wrongdoers good, we’ll be lax in our ethical standards. To this second objection an observation may suffice: is it not more often the case that the last people to let themselves “get off easy” are precisely those who strive for rightness out of love and yet err? When we do something wrong, we should call our action wrong; but when we act out of love, we should realize that we are good if we remain to strive in acting rightly. Giving credit where credit is due is, after all, a step in the right direction.  UNIT I DISCIPLESHIP From the Catechism for Filipino Catholics, 715. What is “moral life” for the Christian? Christian moral life is the following of Christ: in allour daily free actions, values and attitudes, empowered by Christ’s liberating and transforming presence, through the grace of his Spirit, within the Christian community. Itis simply responding to the Gospel call to become loving persons, in the fullness of life- with- others-in-community before God, in imitation of Jesus Christ. 716. What problems does “moral life” commonly raise? We all experience numerous pressures and temptations both from inside ourselves and from without, against exercising our freedom responsibly. Strangely enough, we find it difficult to consistently “do good and avoidevil.” 717. How does Christian Faith help us understand this situation? Scripture and Church teaching help us recognize this situation as the universal human condition resulting from the “Fall” at the origins of our race. Hence our personal moral problems have a foundation that goes deeperthan anything we can handle by ourselves, without the redeeming power of Christ. 718. What is the key to Christian moral life? The key to Christian moral life is our dignity as human persons, created by God, redeemed by Christ, sanctified by the Spirit, and destined for eternal life with God. 719. How do we experience ourselves as persons? We experience ourselves as embodied spirits, conscious of our historical process of growing up and developing, in constant relation with others with whom we are fundamentally equal, yet unique in ourselves. 720. What is authentic human freedom? Authentic human freedom is a shared capacity with others in the community for choosing __ not anything at all __ but what is the good, in order tobecome our true selves. It involves both: a. freedom from whatever opposes our true self-becoming with others in community, and b. freedom for growing as full persons before God and our fellow human persons, in authentic love. 721. How is human freedom experienced? We experience freedom most naturally in our free choices to act or not to act, to do or not to do something. We accept responsibility for these acts. Beside our individual free acts there is the freedom of our very self formed gradually by our free acts. Often called “fundamental freedom” or option, it is not primarily a psychological term,but rather refers to our “moral being” as a human person. 722. What is meant by “freedom of the children of God?” It means the freedom we share by the power of Christ’s Spirit within us, that liberates us from the enslavement of sin, the law, and death, for a life of loving service of our fellowmen. This does not mean that we have no sin, no laws to obey, and we will never die; but that the grace of God offers us the real possibility of: breaking out and overcoming the slavery of sin, living in true freedom as guided by law, and transcending our physical death by sharing in Christ’s eternal life. 723. What is Conscience? Conscience is the proximate norm of personal morality, our ultimate subjective norm for discerning moral good and evil, with the feeling of being bound to follow its directive. It is the inner voice: summoning us to love the good and avoid evil, by applying objective moral norms to our particular acts, and thus commanding: do this, do not do that! 724. If we are morally obliged by our conscience to “do good,” are we any longer free? We are exercising authentic freedom in obeying moral laws and our consciences. The objection is based on the common erroneous idea of freedom as “doing what I want.” 725. How are our consciences formed? Our consciences are formed gradually through the natural educational agents of our family upbringing, our school training, parish catechesis, and the influence of friends and social contacts. 726. How do we form a “Christian conscience”? A “Christian conscience” is formed gradually infaith and through personal and ecclesial prayer- life: by attending to the Word of God and the teachings of the Church, by responsiveness to the indwelling Holy Spirit, and by critical reflection on our concrete moral choices and experiences of daily life. “Heart factors” include reading and prayerful reflection on Jesus’ teaching and actions, and our own prayer and sacramental life. “Mind factors” refer to a deepening in understanding of Sacred Scripture and Church teaching, especially Catholic moral principles, and sound moral guidance. 727. What types of conscience are there? Many different categories are used to describe the exercise of conscience, but the most functional is: “correct” conscience corresponds to objective moral values and precepts;  “erroneous” conscience, one which mistakenly judges something as morally good which is objectively evil. Our moral responsibility is to develop a properly “informed” conscience, and to correct any erroneous conscience we may have had. 728. What must our consciences decide on? To judge the good or evil of an act, our consciences must decide on its three essential aspects: the nature or object of the act, our intention as agents or doers of the act, and the circumstances which affect the morality of the act. SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. ➔ Authentic human freedom is a shared capacity with others in the community for choosing not anything at all but what is the good, in order to become our true selves. It involves both: a. freedom from whatever opposes our true ➔ Following Christ self-becoming with others in community, and - doing what is GOOD. Christian moral life is the following of Christ: in all our daily free actions, values and attitudes, b. freedom for growing as full persons before God and our fellow human O empowered by Christ Liberating and persons, in authentic love transforming presence, through the grace of his Spirit within the Christian community. It is simply responding to the Gospel call to We experience freedom most naturally in our become loving persons, in the fullness of life- free choices to act or not to act, to do or not to C with- others-in community before God, in do something. We accept responsibility for these imitation of Jesus Christ acts. Beside our individual free acts there is the freedom of our very self formed gradually by our We all experience numerous pressures and free acts. Often called “fundamental freedom” or option, it S temptations both from inside ourselves and from without, against exercising our freedom responsibly. Strangely enough, we find it difficult to consistently “do good and avoid evil.” is not primarily a psychological term, but rather refers to our “moral being” as a human person It means the freedom we share by the power of A Christ’s Spirit within us, that liberates us from the enslavement of sin, the law, and death, for a life of loving service of our fellowmen. Scripture and Church teaching help us recognize This does not mean that we have no sin, no laws to obey, this situation as the universal human condition and we will never die; but that the grace of God offers us L resulting from the “Fall” at the origins of our the real possibility of: race. Hence our personal moral problems have a breaking out and overcoming the slavery of sin, foundation that goes deeper than anything we Living in true freedom as guided by law, and can handle by ourselves, without the redeeming transcending our physical death by sharing in power of Christ. Christ’s eternal life. E ➔ Dignity as human persons created by GOD.. ➔ Can echo the voice of God ➔ The key to Christian moral life is our dignity as ➔ Proximate norm of personal morality, our V human persons, created by God, redeemed by ultimate subjective norm for discerning moral Christ, sanctified by the Spirit, and destined for good and evil with the feeling of being bound eternal life with God. to follow its directive. It is the inner voice: ➔ We experience ourselves as embodied spirits, summoning us to love the good and avoid evil, conscious of our historical process of growing up by applying objective moral norms to our particular and developing in constant relation with others acts, with whom we are fundamentally equal yet and thus commanding: do this, do not do that! (unique) in ourselves. SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. To judge the good or evil of an act, our We are exercising authentic freedom in obeying consciences must decide on its three essential moral laws and our consciences. The objection is aspects: based on the common erroneous idea of freedom ❖ the nature or object of the act, as “doing what I want.” ❖ our intention as agents or doers of the act, and ❖ the circumstances which affect the Our consciences are formed gradually through morality of the act. the natural educational agents of our family upbringing, our school training, parish O catechesis, and the influence of friends and social contacts. “The Church as responsible for Truth” C (Redemptor Hominis, n.19) ❖ A “Christian conscience” is formed gradually in ➔ POPE JOHN PAUL II faith and through personal and ecclesial prayer- life: “All ethics of love should be based on Truth” by attending to the Word of God and (Veritatis Splendor) the teachings of the Church, S by responsiveness to the indwelling Holy Spirit, and by critical reflection on our concrete ➔ POPE JOHN PAUL II The minimum of love is truth in justice ➔ ST JOHN XXII A moral choices and experiences of daily life. “Heart factors” include reading and prayerful reflection on Jesus’ teaching and actions, and our own prayer and ➔ Person and the supremacy of conscience sacramental life. “Mind factors” refer to a deepening in ❖ May lead to forget the need to educate understanding of Sacred Scripture and Church teaching, L especially Catholic moral principles, and sound moral interiority guidance. ➔ Moral Principle ❖ Many different categories are used to describe ❖ Crushing the perfection of mercy and charity E the exercise of conscience, but the most functional is: “Our spirit is set in one direction; the direction for “correct” conscience corresponds to our intellect and will and heart is towards Christ objective moral values and precepts; the Redeemer” (Redemptor Hominis, n.7) V “erroneous” conscience, one which mistakenly judges something as morally “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical good which is objectively evil. Our moral choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an responsibility is to develop a properly event, a person which gives life a new horizon “informed” conscience, and to correct and decisive direction…God’s love met in any erroneous conscience we may have personal contact with Jesus” had. (Deus Caritas est, 1) SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. \ “The primacy of love and specifically the love of God perfects and integrates both freedom and truth. ” The Threefold Love: The HOLY TRINITY It is the highest form of choosing because it is taking an option for others. O 1. Narcissism / Self Love (destructive love) C 2. Eros (passionate attraction between sexes) (Scriptures) Jesus commanded it 3. Philia (love among friends) S Theology is the study of God, therefore, love is the beginning and end of theology, for God is love. ❖ LOVING GOD IS THE FOUNDATION 4. Agape (brotherhood/sense of community, Christian love) A OF MORALITY. Love as agape (that is, the love for the beloved) Love is our understanding of God, creation, Love as philia (the love for the love or the union redemption, sanctification, and eschatological itself), and promise. Love as eros (the love that the lover experiences as lover). L ❖ LOVE IS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF GOD. ❖ Scriptures Human experience of the love of God precedes ❖ Theology (the study of God and His revelation) E all else ❖ Experience (to know Him clearly, to love Him dearly and to follow Him closely) “ Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and Charity (experience - based) soul.”(Matt. 37-39) V ❖ The love of God indwelling in us St Ignatius of Loyola – “Suscipe” (offering of ❖ St. Thomas Aquinas - Mother of all one’s self) virtues “Humans need the love of God to know the goodness of life.”(Edward Vacek) “LOVE AND DO AS YOU WILL” The love we are to have for God is specifically for - St. Augustine God, God’s self. Sts. Ignatius and Augustine- “the experience of resting in God’s love. ” Charity begins with God, moves to self, and radiates towards others. SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. The love of God makes possible the love of self This vocation in love is a summon to pursue the Many think that the love of self is conditioned by right way for growing. whether we think of ourselves as good first. The call to grow, the call to move forward as God first, moves to self, then radiates to disciples, the call to exercise virtue is always a neighbor. call heard in the Christian conscience. “WE ARE CALLED TO LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS, NOT IN THEIR GOODNESS NOR YOU CAN SEE Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, 16 on Conscience: CHRIST IN HIM/HER ALONE, BUT IN THEIR ENTIRETY AND IN THEIR SPECIFICITY.” In the depths of our conscience, we detect a law which does not impose, but which holds us to O obedience. Always summoning us to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when Discovering Christ is a “lesson learned” necessary speaks to our heart: do this; shun that. It is always the “after-effect” of a concrete act of For we have in our heart a law written by God; to loving the neighbor. obey it is the very dignity of being human; C according to it we will be judged (2 Cor. 6, 10). PRAYER - It is in prayer that we encounter the Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person. love of God and the experience of “Active receptivity.” S Active receptivity - wherein we know we are loved and called to love ourselves leading us to the practice of neighbor love There we are alone with God, Whose voice echoes in our depths (John 1, 3; 14). In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor A “Love is not reduced but its nature is to extend itself, to reach beyond the self, to grasp the other again and again, another and another.” Love is comprehensive and yet brings us rest. L Deus caritas est - Encyclical first written by Pope Benedict XVI - Meaning “God is Love” E - Conscience is the voice bidding us to love The call to be a Christian is at once a call to grow. V Following in the footsteps of Jesus This call to movement, to advance, is the Superego Christian vocation to grow, but to grow in love. Meaning“that-which-is-above-the-I” is how psychologists name that voice living in ➔ “To not progress on the way of Life is to regress.” us, which, though a leftover from early childhood - St Bernard of Clairvaux years, continues to assert itself throughout our ➔ “To stand in the way of the Lord is to move lives. backwards.” - St Thomas Aquinas SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. Thus, if we accept that telling a lie is always wrong, St Bernard would say, if we lie, regardless of our motivation, we sinned. Unlike the superego, which warns us and Peter Abelard (1079–1142) commands us to stay where we are, the What mattered was whether we were willfully conscience moves us to grow. pursuing in conscience the truth. Thus, if we told a lie in conscience in order to protect a fellow man in difficulty, Abelard may call us and our action good. SUPEREGO CONSCIENCE St Thomas Aquinas Because I’m I desire what is O deepens our reflection in his inquiry regarding a supposed to good person’s goodness if ever one followed a conscience that is mistaken. In responding to this I’ll get in trouble I choose to do inquiry St Thomas stressed two important what is right concerns, sincerity and effort: regarding the error in judgment of the conscience, he asked, INTERNAL C EXTERNAL could one have known otherwise? - Dictated by some - My choice Curiously, St Thomas did not call the person authority good who, despite striving to know the right, followed a conscience that judged mistakenly; rather, St Thomas argued that such a person is Moral growth, therefore, always comes when “excused” from blame. S people heed their consciences, take steps of their own, and move forward, even at the risk of isolation and loss. As Gaudium et Spes states, conscience “holds us in obedience”—it “summons” us. The Franciscan William of Ockham (1287-1347) later applied St Thomas’ argument on his teaching about the conscience but added that the one who exercises the conscience A responsibly, even if it is erroneous, receives Forming our conscience is a lifetime process. merit. The formation of conscience is more like responsible self parenting St Alfonso Liguori (1696-1787), later the patron saint of moral theologians, “conscience frequently errs” developed a new position on erroneous L conscience: if a person acted out of love - Gaudium et Spes and/or charity when committing error, then not only is the person excused, but the person is good E Moral manualists (19th - 20th Century) For instance, in speaking of when a person “Caritas invasively asks: Do we love as acting wrong from a loving conscience would we strive for the right action?” - St. Augustine be good, they gave the specific example of lying to protect someone. Loving people strive to get their actions right but V do not always succeed Francis Connell (1953) the dean of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., wrote that if a person acts out of a loving conscience, though the action is certainly not per se willed by God, “God will reward him for St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) sincerely following his conscience.” Believed that the root of sin was ignorance. exhorted his students to the virtue of humility A truly formed conscience acting out of love and adherence to the law. sincerely moves in growth by seeking the right Actions contrary to the law and its teaching, action, that which is truly loving. even though done out of ignorance, were, The vocation to holiness as self parenting strives according to St Bernard, evil or bad. to do the right action from a sincere conscience exercising love SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. ❖ Sin of Commission Committed by willingly not performing a certain action. taking action we should not. Willful act of doing something that - Grave matter violates God's commands in Scripture - Full knowledge - Full consent ST. THOMAS OF AQUINAS O In little parcels, we neatly package our sins and bring them for submission during confession. John Mahoney in The Making of Moral Theology considers this manner of confessing sins and describes it as the “domestication” of our C sinfulness. In the domestication of sin we end up clueless about its ordinariness and banality. We fail to recognize that it is precisely the strength of sin to deceive us about its residence in our strength S and its affinity to our own hidden humanity. A To capture the breadth, depth, and pervasiveness of sin, we propose that sin is - Two Latin Perspectives(opposite simply the failure to love. extremes/views) on salvation MASSA DAMNATA “Sin is our failure to bother to love.” ‘Damned Masses: - James Keenan L mass of perdition, condemned crowd damend masses, sinful masses, for the majority of Christian tradition, default is that most are going to hell A German moral theologian named Franz Böckle said that the effectiveness of confession lies in E MASSA BONA the very recognition of our sinfulness in the we're sinful but God's mercy overcomes very act of confession itself. this and we are all saved In Pope Francis’ words, we are sinners, but loved; miserable but forgiven. V ORDO AMORIS (Orders of Love) ➔ ST.AUGUSTINE ❖ Sin of Omission All sin even our most private one is social. Sins in which we knew we should have done something good, but refused It is in this call to love that we truly become (James 4:17) what we love, that is Christ; the order of love manifests itself as healing creativity in service Failing to do what we have been called and inclusion of the marginalized and the poor, to do or say. we become Christ for others Sin of inaction, or not doing something related to God's law. SEMESTER 2 | QUARTER 3 …. Personal sin is never just “private,” with no effect on anyone else. ➔ Missing the mark Rather, just as all “persons” are relational, always affecting others and the community in everything they do, and likewise being affected ➔ Rebellion by what others do, so personal sin is neither ➔ Transgression committed nor overcome in “private.” ➔ Complete turning away from God The grace of personal conversion and repentance always involves a community dimension. ➔ guilt/ inequity O Social sin refers to negative moral attitudes and acts or failure to act that are common to a community or particular society. C Defined as “mortal” when its nature, intention Its remedy is to change what is negative or and circumstances involve grave matter, lacking in the community’s moral acts or sufficient knowledge, and full consent of the will. attitudes into what is positive and graced. Precisely because the act involved is serious in itself and we act with sufficient knowledge, S profoundly engaging our freedom, such acts cannot be dismissed as merely superficial or as not really affecting our relation with God. They clearly involve a degree of personal commitment that touches the roots of our freedom where basic decisions about our life’s Structural “sin” is not a question of a particular person’s or a community’s