A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Primacy of conscience August 23, 2010

One of the doctrines that seems to cause a great deal of confusion in the Church is the ‘primacy of the individual conscience.’  This was a statement, perhaps not very well worded, that came out of a Vatican II document entitled Dignitatis Humanae, “On Human Dignity”  There have numerous people in the Church, many of them I think striving to live some kind of faithful life, who take this idea that the individual conscience trumps all other considerations as the core part of their Catholic belief system.  In practical terms, what one frequently sees portrayed as a result of this is a statement that a certain person prayed about an issue, and came to the conclusion that Church doctrine on (abortion, gay marriage, contraception, et cetera ad infinitum) was something they could not accept.  But did Vatican II really “change” Catholic doctrine on the personal conscience, and could it even do so?  What does the Church really teach regarding how one should align one’s conscience with the Truth revealed by Christ? 

My friend Steve B happened upon a site that goes into this issue.  A first link provides a quick, allegorical sort of discussion of how to properly view the role of conscience:

God loves us and wants man to have great freedom.  However, he has mandated that man must not eat the fruit of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.”  Gen. 2:16.  Man must not establish the moral law.  If he does, history has proven over and over that he gets it all messed up.  So, man’s freedom under God’s plan for life has a definite limit.  This limit is for our benefit, our survival and our prosperity.  God knows full well that our enemy, Satan, is constantly trying to deceive us in order to destroy us.  To prevent that from happening, God instructs us to allow him to use His infinite wisdom to establish the moral law.  For example, he wrote the Ten Commandments.  He did not inspire Moses to dream them up.  He did not ask Moses to call a council of the elders and prophets to create them.  He wrote them himself in stone – twice, because the first tablets became broken.  Then, he says to us “choose.”  We have free will to choose what is good or what is evil.  If we over-step our boundary and decide to try to re-establish morals, we immediately participate in evil, which leads to more evil and finally destruction………

This author defines primacy of conscience as a heresy, arguing:

In order for a teaching or belief to be a heresy (heretical), it must simply and directly contradict a dogma.  The Primacy of Conscience Heresy is a heresy because it simply and directly opposes the dogma that man is not permitted to nullify, formulate or change the moral law.  The term “Primacy of Conscience” does not mean judgment of conscience, (which is permitted).  It does not mean obedience to conscience or to choose according to one’s conscience, which is necessary for a healthy Christian life.  It does not simply refer to the importance of conscience.  The Church supports the importance of conscience, exhorts man to follow his conscience and even declares that man should not be prevented by external factors from obeying his conscience.  (CCC Article 6 of Part III Life In Christ.)  However, the Primacy of Conscience Heresy goes much further.  To understand its full implication, it is necessary to look at the meaning of the word “primacy” in our culture and our time. The word “primacy,” according to Webster’s Dictionary means the state of being first in order, rank or importance.  It means chief.  So, the meaning of Primacy of Conscience goes much further than just freeing one’s conscience to act in accord with the demands of human dignity.  Primacy of Conscience is a heresy because it purports to place one’s conscience first in rank.  It is placed first before the Word of God, the Magisterium, the long-standing teaching of the Church and the witness or advice of others.  With this doctrine, conscience ranks first before the moral law with the inevitable intent to nullify or alter the moral law.  That makes Primacy of Conscience heretical.

 Pope John Paul II writes about this elevation of conscience to first rank in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor:

“Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and “being at peace with oneself”, so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment…” Veritatis Splendor #32

“…In the Book of Genesis we read: “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’ ” (Gen 2:16-17).

With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone.

There is more at a different link at the same site, here.  Fr. Darryl Jordan, who comments here, adds that the freedom of a Catholic’s conscience is founded on an a priori acceptance of all Catholic moral teaching (and, I should add, on all teaching on Faith and Morals).  So, one cannot legimitately form one’s conscience to come to a position antithetical to that of the Church and at the same time claim that position is somehow faithful to the Church’s doctrine!  Those who claim “I/we prayed about <contraception, abortion, etc> and we just found that the Lord was leading us to reject what the Church teaches” are improperly asserting their personal preferences above the Divinely revealed Truth. We cannot tell God “Sorry buddy, you it wrong on homosexuality, you’re out of date” anymore than we can say “Yeah, there was a guy named Jesus and he said some cool things, but, I don’t buy that he rose from the dead.”  Both are rejections of fundamental Church doctrine, and no appeals to claims of ‘conscience’ can somehow make these statements expressions of fealty to the Church.

Another link, posted by Fr. Jordan: http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/wmay_authority_nov06.asp