Talking About Conscience XIII

If we look more closely, we will see that talk about ‘conscience’ in a [relativistic] world view is merely a way of saying that there is no genuine conscience in the sense of a con-scientia, a ‘knowing with’ truth. Each one decides on his own criteria. In this universal relativity, no one can help anyone else in this matter, still less lay down rules for another person to follow.

This shows us how radical the modern debate about ethics and about the center of ethics, the conscience, really is. I believe that the only parallel to this in the history of ideas is the dispute between Socrates/Plato and the Sophists, which explores the primal decision to be made between two basic attitudes, namely, the confidence that man is capable of perceiving truth and a world view in which it is only man himself who posits the criteria he will follow…

If we detach Socrates’ controversy from the contingent elements of its historical framework, we soon see that this is essentially the same controversy that rages today (with other arguments and other names). If we give up belief in the capacity of man to perceive truth, this leads initially to a purely formalistic use of words and concepts.

In turn, the elimination of substance from our words and concepts leads to a pure formalism of judgment, in the past as in the present. One no longer asks what a man actually thinks. The verdict on his thinking is readily available, if one succeeds in cataloguing it under an appropriate formal category—conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressive, revolutionary. The assignment to a formal schema is enough to dispense one from actually looking at the contents of what is being said. The same tendency can be seen even more strongly in art. It is irrelevant what it depicts; it may be a glorification of God or of the devil. The only criterion is the formal skill employed by the artist.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 88-90

Reflection – Again, Ratzinger is taking us into deep philosophical waters here. But despair not – let me make it perfectly clear to you. What he is talking about is the triumph of style over substance, form over content. In other words, it’s not what you say but how you say it that counts.

The Sophists essentially held that language was a tool to use to get what you want. Socrates/Plato and the whole tradition following this, which was taken up in Christian philosophy and theology into the High Middle Ages, held that language was about truth.

The Sophists were like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass, insisting that when he used a word, the word meant whatever he decided it meant. When Alice commented that it sounded a bit confusing, he retorted to the effect that ‘all that matters is who is master.’

Well, welcome to the Internet, Humpty! Where clever packaging, rhetorical flourish, and snazzy graphics are what really count. Rules of logic and rigorous accuracy regarding facts are old-fashioned, ignored or derided.

So we see in the current controversy over the HHS mandate in the States forcing religious groups to pay for procedures that are morally repellent to them, that the battle is being fought, not over the actual facts of the matter, not over the true meaning of religious freedom in a pluralistic democracy, not over the limits of government power, certainly not over basic facts of the price and availability of contraception in America today.

Instead, the battle is waged on how the discussion is to be framed. “The mean old Catholic Church is trying to deprive women of life-saving, absolutely-necessary-for-freedom-and-happiness birth control! Boo, hiss, to the Catholic Church!” Now, absolutely nothing the Catholic Church is doing or could do in this situation could possibly deny women access to birth control. But that fact does not matter. It’s all about ‘who is master’ – who will frame the discussion and control its flow. Humpty and the Sophists have won.

Well, they might have won or even be winning in the political sphere, where sophistry always has had its best innings. But truth has a way of asserting itself in the end. Reality has a way of having the last word. But if we flout truth, and the justice and integrity that flow from living in the truth, reality’s last word has a way of being a pretty sharp one. When truth is not welcomed and acknowledged as the master, it remains master still—just not a very nice one.

And this is the abyss America is teetering at the edge of right now. Let us pray for them, and for all men and women, that we know the truth, and the truth will set us free.

Talking About Conscience XII

I believe that when we speak of a ‘man of conscience’ we are referring to these attitudes: a man of conscience is one who never purchases comfort, well-being, success, public prestige, or approval by prevalent opinion if the price is the renunciation of truth. Here, Newman agrees with that other great British witness to conscience St. Thomas More, who did not in the least regard conscience as the expression of his subjective tenacity or of an eccentric heroism. He saw himself as one of those timorous martyrs who reach the point of obeying their conscience only after hesitation and much questioning, and this is an act of obedience to that truth which must rank higher than every social authority and every kind of personal taste.

This indicates two criteria for a genuine word spoken by the conscience: it is not identical with one’s own wishes and taste; nor is it identical with that which is more advantageous, socially speaking, with the consensus of a group or with the claims made by political or societal power.

Let us look briefly at the problems that vex our own age. The individual may not purchase his rise in society and his well-being at the price of betrayal of the truth that he has come to recognize; nor may humanity as a whole do so.

It is here that we touch on the neuralgic point of the modern age: the concept of truth has in practice been abandoned and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself ‘is’ truth. But this apparent elevation deprives progress of all contents; it dissolves into nothing. For if there is no direction, everything can be interpreted either as progress or as regress.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 87-8

Reflection – Happy Lent, everyone! Well, our reflections on conscience with then-Cardinal Ratzinger have taken us to a nice little Lenten spot today—the challenge conscience poses to us to be willing to risk persecution, suffering, loss of status or comfort, income or approval because we value the truth over all these things.

Ouch. And while Ratzinger promptly extends his reflection to humanity as a whole, society as a whole, I think it is salutary for us to linger on the individual level, given the political situation in America which has prompted this blog series.

We have to be willing to suffer for the truth. I’m sorry—it’s rough, and it’s very unfortunate that civil society is increasingly hostile to the truth claims of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, and seems bound to make us suffer for them. But we really have to summon up the courage of  Thomas More and John Fisher in our time.

More, before his eventual imprisonment and death, was reduced with his family to a state of considerable poverty as he had been forced to resign his office as Chancellor in an effort to avoid taking a public stand against the king. This was not easy for him, especially since his family themselves were far from clear about why he had to do this.

In the play A Man for All Seasons (which would make good reading right about now), the figure of More is contrasted with that of the Common Man (sadly omitted from the otherwise splendid film version starring Paul Scofield). The Common Man is the regular guy trying to make a living, trying to keep his head down and not get into trouble, trying not to rock the boat. He appears in various guises in the play. In the end, he is More’s executioner.

At one point, he is a prison guard and is dragging Lady Alice and Meg away from visiting More in the tower. When More begs him for one more minute with his loved ones, he says, “I’m just a plain man, I’ve got my orders.” More cries out, “Deliver us from plain men!” (I quote from memory, and may not have the exact words.) This is what we have to watch out for in our day. To just slide through and not make waves, to keep your head down—after all, you’ve got a family to feed, bills to pay! And suddenly, without quite knowing how you got there, you’re throwing your neighbors into jail and maybe even chopping off their heads, literally or figuratively.

I don’t think I’m being dramatic. Cardinal George of Chicago said that he expects to die in bed, his successor will die in jail, and his successor will be executed in the public square. Cardinal George is a serious, sober, measured man. These are serious times we’re living in. What are you going to do? What am I going to do?

It’s Lent. Season of prayer and fasting. Lots to pray and fast about in our world today. Happy Lent to you—make it a good one.

Talking About Conscience XI

In other words, the centrality of the concept of conscience in Newman is linked to the antecedent centrality of the concept of truth; only this latter concept allows us to understand what Newman means by ‘conscience.’ The dominance of the idea of conscience in Newman does not mean that this nineteenth-century theologian maintains a philosophy or theology of subjectivity in opposition to ‘objective’ neo-scholasticism… his attention [to the knowing subject] echoes that of Augustine, not that of the subjectivist philosophy of the modern period…

For Newman, conscience does not mean that it is the subject that has the final word vis-à-vis the claims made by authority in a world devoid of truth, a world that lives on the basis of a compromise between the claims made by the subject and the claims of a societal order. Rather, conscience signifies the perceptible and commanding presence of the voice of truth in the subject itself.

Conscience means the abolition of mere subjectivity when man’s intimate sphere is touched by the truth that comes from God… Newman’s conversion to Catholicism was not a matter of his own personal taste or of a subjective need of his soul. As late as 1844, on the threshold of his conversion, he wrote that no one could take a more unfavorable view than he himself of the contemporary state of Roman Catholicism. He was convinced that he must obey the truth that he had recognized, rather than his own taste, even at the price of his own feelings and of the ties of friendship formed with those who until then had been his companions… Newman, when listing the virtues, places truth above goodness—or, to make this point in language with which we are more familiar today, above consensus, above what is acceptable within the group.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 86-7

Reflection – OK, this is a bit heady, I grant you. I considered omitting this part of the essay, except for the small detail that this is precisely where Ratzinger develops the key point he wants to convey to us. It is this: “conscience signifies the perceptible and commanding voice of truth in the subject itself… where man’s intimate sphere is touched by the truth that comes from God.”

This is far from the modern notion where conscience puts me in the driver’s seat, so no one can tell me nothing about what is right and wrong, because I have a conscience and conscience is supreme, man! Conscience rules! The pope drools!

OK, most moderns might put it a leetle more respectfully than that. But nonetheless that’s the basic gist. My conscience means I decide and no one can tell me I’m wrong. Here, instead, conscience means that in the depths of my being, in the innermost chasms of my mind and heart, I have a voice that is telling me the truth—not my truth, not the truth I want to hear, not my likes and dislikes dressed up as truth, but Truth.

This places each human being under a terrific responsibility, if you think about it. Each one of us must give an account of ourselves to this Truth; each one of us is a true actor, a true agent, a protagonist in a great drama, a morality play if you will.

No one is simply to be borne along on the waves of social conformity; no one is a helpless victim of circumstance; no one can say ‘I had no choice! I had to go with what everyone else was doing!’

We always have a choice. Not an easy choice, not a choice that is free from suffering and even death (see the martyrs, indeed see Christ Himself), but a choice nonetheless. God is at work in every human heart, every human soul, through the faculty of conscience, calling us to seek what is true and good, not what is convenient and pleasing. And it is right here, right in the call to listen to the voice of conscience and pursue it, that we are in an encounter with God Himself, where “man’s intimate sphere is touched by the truth that comes from God.”

This is why conscience claims cannot be messed around with. For the state to put people in a position of facing jail time, heavy fines, or cataclysmic shutterings of social, charitable, educational, and health care institutions due to an insistence on a course of action that is literally (in Cardinal Dolan’s words) unconscionable, is horrifyingly wrong, really. It is striking at the very heart of the human project, the call of each human being to deep moral responsibility at the heart of their own personal subjectivity. It cannot stand.

Talking About Conscience X

Let us pause for a moment here, before we attempt to formulate comprehensive answers to the question about what conscience truly is. We must first extend somewhat the basis of our considerations, going beyond the personal sphere that was our starting point…

[I want to] begin with the figure of Cardinal John Henry Newman, whose entire life and word could be called one great commentary on the question of conscience… To speak of Newman and conscience is to evoke the famous words in his letter to the duke of Norfolk (1874): “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”

Newman intended this to be a clear confession of his faith in the papacy, in response to the objections raised by Gladstone to the dogma of infallibility. At the same time, against erroneous forms of ultra-montanism, he meant it to be an interpretation of the papacy, which can be understood correctly only when it is seen in connection with the primacy of conscience—not in opposition to the papacy, but based on it and guaranteeing it.

It is difficult for people today to grasp this point, since they think on the basis of an antithesis between authority and subjectivity. Conscience is seen as standing on the side of subjectivity and as an expression of the freedom of the subject, while authority is regarded as the limitation of this freedom, or indeed a threat to it, if not its actual negation. We must look somewhat more deeply here if we are to learn once again how to understand a vision in which this kind of antithesis has no validity.

The intermediate concept that holds these two together for Newman is truth. I would not hesitate to say that truth is the central idea in Newman’s intellectual striving. Conscience is central to his thinking because truth is the heart of everything.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 86-7

Reflection – Ratzinger now launches into his positive presentation of conscience in earnest, and takes Newman’s famous after-dinner toast as his starting point. Now, I am no expert of any kind on Newman, so I can’t provide any bigger commentary on his words here and how they fit into his whole thought.

But these words often get quoted badly out of context, as if Newman is somehow ‘dissing’ the papacy. Since offering an after-dinner toast to somehow is not normally seen as an act of disrespect, I am not sure how this interpretation can be credibly offered. Wishful thinking on the part of those who offer it, I suspect.

Newman is praising the papacy precisely as an instrument at the service of conscience. And this is the whole key to the matter. We exercise our conscience, but our conscience must be formed. We have to make up our minds about good and evil, but good and evil are objective realities ‘out there’, not constructs of our mind. We are obliged to our conscience… but our conscience is obliged to the truth, and that’s the key to the whole matter.

This is why freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are so intertwined. Both are concerned with the capacity of human beings to seek the truth and live it out. And this capacity to seek and live the truth in freedom is central to the entire human project.

This is why, and I will keep repeating this, what President Obama is doing is not so much an attack on the Catholic Church (although it certainly is that) or even on religion. He is attacking humanity, and every human being of good will should be ready and determined to resist this attack in peaceful ways: the political and legal process, and civil disobedience if necessary.

Talking About Conscience IX

The capacity to hear God’s voice in the heart of man, a capacity that is almost extinguished, must be developed anew. It is only in an initial phase that error, the erring conscience, is comfortable. When conscience falls silent and we do nothing to resist it, the consequence is the dehumanization of the world and a deadly danger.

To put this in other terms, the identification of conscience with the superficial consciousness and the reduction of man to his subjectivity do not liberate but rather enslave. They do this by making us completely dependent on prevailing opinions, indeed lowering the level of these opinions day by day. To identify conscience with a superficial state of conviction is to equate it with a certainty that merely seems rational, a certainty woven from self-righteousness, conformism, and intellectual laziness. Conscience is degraded to a mechanism that produces excuses for one’s conduct, although in reality conscience is meant to make the subject transparent to the divine, thereby revealing man’s authentic dignity and greatness. At the same time, the reduction of conscience to a subjective certainty means the removal of truth.

Psalm 19 anticipates Jesus’ understanding of sin and righteousness and asks us to be set free from the guilt of which the one who prays is unaware. It thus indicates what we have just said: certainly, one must follow the erring conscience. But the removal of truth, which took place earlier and now takes its revenge in the form of an erring conscience, is the real guilt that lulls man in false security and ultimately abandons him to solitude in a pathless wilderness.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 83-4

Reflection – Blog traffic is up since I started this series, so I assume I’m finding new readers through it. Welcome, new readers, whoever you mysterious people are! Now, that being said, this passage has to be read in light of what has gone before in order to make sense—otherwise it seems like Ratzinger is just making arbitrary statements here. We’re on number nine of the series: 1-8 flesh out some of what he says here.

What he touches on here is very important, though, in itself. If we identify the whole of conscience with ‘what I happen to think about abortion/contraception/homosexuality/car theft…’ and that is the only meaning, the beginning and the end of the matter, then we are indeed stuck in our own social norms and the opinions of the day, with no real way out.

Recently in the news there was a survey in Britain showing that more and more Brits, especially among the young, have no problem with lying, stealing, cheating on a partner. These most fundamental moral principles are being rapidly eroded in post-modern England, at least according to this survey.

If all that matters is doing what we think is right, then there can be no problem with that, right? If I think it’s right to lie, cheat, and steal, as long as I stay one step ahead of the cops, I’m fine, right?

Most people who have not already succumbed to neo-barbarism know that this is not fine. And even the neo-barbarians (I speak from personal experience!) are kind of defensive in asserting that they can do whatever they want. Something in us knows that this is not really true.

If we are not listening to God, we eventually cease to be human. This is the great paradox of our being. And we see it happening all around us—the coarsening and vulgarizing of speech and act, the loss of transcendent meaning and purpose in so many, the above noted erosion of basic honesty and decency.

This is why we have to reclaim and deepen our commitment to real conscience, the constant breaking out of mere subjective opinion into a true encounter with reality and with God. And that is why I am dedicating my blog for this couple of weeks to this series.

Talking About Conscience VIII

Paul tells us that the Gentiles knew without the law what God expected of them (Rom 2:1-16). This passage deals a death blow to the entire theory of salvation through ignorance. Truth is present in man in a manner that cannot be rejected: and this is the same truth of the Creator that also took written form in the revelation of salvation history. Man can see the truth of God in the foundations of his created being. To fail to see this is guilt. If we refuse to see the truth, this ‘no’ of the will that prevents knowledge is guilt. The warning lamp fails to light up because we deliberately avert our eyes from something we do not want to see.

At this point in our reflections, we can draw our first conclusions to help answer the question about the essence of conscience. We can now say that it is impossible to identify man’s conscience with the self-awareness of the ego, with his subjective certainty about himself and his moral conduct. This consciousness may be a mere reflex of the social environment and of the opinions widespread there. It may also indicate a lack of self-criticism, a failure to listen to the depths of one’s own soul.

In the aftermath of the collapse of Marxist systems in Eastern Europe the situation that came to light confirms this diagnosis. The most alert and honest spirits among the newly liberated peoples speak of a terrible neglect of the soul that arose in the years of false education. They speak of a blunting of the moral sensitivity, which represents and more terrible loss and danger than the economic damage that occurred.

At the beginning of his time in office, in the summer of 1990, the patriarch of Moscow emphasized this in impressive words. He lamented that those who lived in a system of deceit had lost much of their powers of perception. Society had lost the ability to feel compassion, and human emotions had withered away. An entire generation had become impervious to the good and was incapable of human deeds. “We must bring society back to the eternal moral values,” he said.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 82-3

Reflection -  Well, now we’re getting somewhere! After exploring at length (see Talking About Conscience I-VII) the inadequacy of the modern notion of conscience and its infallibility, Ratzinger now starts to develop a response, a better and deeper understanding of the word and the reality.

And this development shows clearly what a perilous condition we are all in. I started this series because of the alarming developments in America with the outright violation of conscience being imposed by the Obama administration. Some may ask me, “Well, what’s it to you? You’re Canadian, dude! Chill out.” OK, so they wouldn’t say the last three words unless they were surfers or something.

Well, first, I love America. I know Canadians aren’t supposed to do that; I don’t care. I lived in the States for two years, and it is a wonderful place with wonderful people. Also (and I know this is a very unfashionable thought in Canada), America is indeed a beacon of freedom in the world. If America collapses as a free society, the implications are global and severe.

But also, and in that, the questions and challenges raised by the Obama Administration’s assault on religious liberty are of the essence. And the above passage from Ratzinger shows that, I think. When societies turn away from the moral law, when the state and those who control it impose their own subjective certainties upon society, when the voice of conscience is silenced, then man is not only alienated from God, but from his own deepest self.

There is a truth about humanity and about life that is written in the depths of the human heart. We may struggle to read it; we may disagree about some of the things written there. But if the state can say to us, “Your heart and its moral knowledge are irrelevant—submit to me,” then the human person is crushed, annihilated, denied. And this has societal and personal consequences that I am afraid we will all have to live with, as Russia has had to live with the terrible consequences of the Soviet repression of freedom.

At the risk of sounding a bit dramatic: repent, President Obama. Repent, members of his administration. Repent, anyone reading this who may support this evil initiative. You are striking at the very heart of America, and its very survival is at stake in this issue.

Talking About Conscience VII

One who no longer pays heed to the fact that killing is a sin has fallen more deeply than one who still recognizes the abhorrent quality of his actions, since the former person is further away from truth and from repentance. It is not by chance that the self-righteous person is revealed in the encounter with Jesus to be the one who is really lost: when the tax collector with all his undisputed sins is more righteous in the eyes of God than the Pharisee with all his genuinely good deeds (Luke 18: 9-14), this is not because the sins of the tax collector were not sins or the good deeds of the Pharisee not good deeds. Jesus does not intend to say that man’s good deeds are not good in God’s sight or that his evil deeds are not evil (or, at any rate, not all that serious).

The reason for this paradoxical verdict by God is directly connected to the question we are examining here. The Pharisee is no longer aware that he too is guilty. He is perfectly at ease with his own conscience. But this silence of his conscience makes it impossible for God and men to penetrate his carapace—whereas the cry of conscience that torments the tax collector opens him to receive truth and love. Jesus can work effectively among sinners because they have not become inaccessible behind the screen of an erring conscience, which would put them out of reach of the changes that God awaits from them—and from us. Jesus cannot work effectively among the righteous because they sense no need for forgiveness and repentance; their conscience no longer accuses them but only justifies them.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 81-2

Reflection – In short, there is nothing worse than being smug. And I think we kind of know this, even if in our classic human weakness fail to spot it in ourselves. But we know that we can take a lot from a person who is quick to admit his own faults and failings… and not so tolerant towards someone who thinks he is God’s gift to humanity.

It is this whole business of being open or closed to the world outside one’s own ego. The guilty conscience, the troubled mind that reproaches us that we have done wrong—this is actually a great gift to us. There is something within us, something in our very being, that bears witness to us that we are not sufficient unto ourselves, that we are not the center of the universe, that we are not the standard of judgment for all reality.

Now of course conscience, like everything else in us, can get derailed in various ways. We can become beset with neurotic scrupulous guilt, for one thing. But I think it is far more common in our time to see the other thing, what Pope Benedict and I have been reflecting on together: the disabled conscience, the silenced conscience. And this is a terrible curse. It locks us up in the castle keep of our own subjectivity. It prevents us from adopting the basic stance of humility towards life which opens us up to God and man, to the world that is bigger than us.

The inability to admit one’s own guilt, which is held out as such a great liberation by some, actually is the deepest imprisonment possible for human beings. We become trapped in a hall of mirrors, unable to see anything but our own petty judgments and standards for life.

Guilt frees us: “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” even if part of that truth is ‘you done wrong, son!’ For the gift of guilt, then, let us thank the Lord (hey, Lent is coming up, so this is very timely!).

Talking About Conscience VI

(Ratzinger begins this section by describing a conversation in which the argument was made that Hitler, etc., were in heaven since they were following their consciences.)

…Since that conversation, I have been absolutely certain that there is something wrong with the theory of the justifying force of the subjective conscience. In other words, a concept of conscience that leads to such inferences is false. A firm subjective conscience, with the consequent lack of doubts and scruples, does not justify anyone.

Later, I read an essay by the psychologist Albert Görres that summarized briefly the insights I had slowly tried to formulate for myself and that I wish to set out here. Görres points out that guilt feelings, or the ability to recognize one’s guilt, is an essential element of man’s psychological makeup. The guilt feeling that shatters a conscience’s false calm and the criticism made by my conscience of my self-satisfied existence are signals that we need just as much as we need the physical pain that lets us know that our normal vital functions have been disturbed. One who is no longer capable of seeing his own guilt is psychologically ill, ‘a living corpse, a theatrical mask’ as Görres puts it. ‘In human persons, monsters—it is people like these who have no guilt feelings. Hitler may have had none; nor may Himmler or Stalin. Mafia bosses may have none, but it is more likely that they have merely suppressed their awareness of the skeletons in their closets. And the aborted guilt feelings… everyone needs guilt feelings… everyone needs guilt feelings.’

There is in fact a scriptural text that could have prevented the diagnoses put forward by my colleagues and shown them that the theory of justification by means of an erring conscience is untenable. Ps 19:12 contains words that deserve constant meditation: ‘But who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults.’

The wisdom of the Old Testament takes a very different line from my professorial colleagues: the loss of the ability to see one’s guilt, the falling silent of conscience in so many areas, is a more dangerous illness of the soul than guilt that is recognized as guilt.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 80-1

Reflection – In other words, guilt in itself is a good thing! So counter-cultural, this. Our whole idea is that we can or should be able to do just anything we want, and that the worst thing to do to someone is to tell them they are doing something immoral. ‘Don’t you dare call me a sinner!’ is the general attitude.

And yet once we realize that there is nothing worse than killing one’s conscience, that to do this is essentially to make oneself sub-human, than of course we can understand why one of the spiritual works of mercy is to admonish sinners. If someone (like, say, President Obama) is engaging in an evil course of action, then the bishops are doing him a great act of charity in pointing it out to him with great vigor and resolve. And I think almost anyone of good will can at least see the truth of this. If someone is doing a terrible evil and does not know even slightly that they are doing this evil, something has gone very badly wrong with them at a deep level.

Now of course the implication of this is that we live in a universe where moral behavior is not simply a matter of subjective choice. If morality simply means doing what you think is right, then the above analysis is literally nonsense. And we cannot have it both ways. If Görres is correct then we live in a world of moral order that surpasses our subjective ideas; if there is nothing to morality except our own subjective thoughts on the matter, then we are back to square one: Dexter as moral exemplar, etc…

Ratzinger is about to take this in a provocative direction—tomorrow (God willing) we will see that guilt and what it implies for us actually breaks us open from the prison of our self, and opens us up to a broader and deeper, more beautiful reality. To be continued…

Talking About Conscience V

(This is continued from the previous blog post, below)

Is the truth about the human person and God so sad and so difficult, or does truth not lie precisely in overcoming such legalism? Does it not lie in freedom? But, then, where does freedom lead? What path does it show us?..

I was initially shocked by the caricature of faith that I thought I saw in my colleagues’ argument. Further reflection suggested that he was employing a false concept of conscience.

His argument was that an erring conscience saves man by protecting him from the terrifying demands made by truth. Conscience was not envisaged here as a window that makes it possible for man to see the truth that is common to us all, the truth that is our basis and sustains us…

Conscience was not the decision made by man in favor of the foundations that supported his existence; it was not the power to perceive the highest and most essential of all realities. On the contrary, here conscience was a cloak thrown over human subjectivity, allowing man to elude the clutches of reality and to hide from it… Conscience does not reveal the road of truth, which we can take and so be saved—for either truth does not exist at all, or else it is impossible for us to meet its demands.

And this makes conscience the justification of a human subjectivity that refuses to let itself be called into question, as well as of social conformism that is meant to function as an average value between the various subjectivities and thereby enable human beings to live together.

There is no longer any need to feel obliged to look for truth, nor may one doubt the average attitude and customary praxis. It suffices to be convinced of one’s own correctness and to conform to others. Man is reduced to his superficial conviction, and the less depth he possesses, the better off he is.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 78-9

Reflection – So in this extended exploration of conscience, we are very much still in the introductory phase. Ratzinger here is continuing to look at the idea of the infallible conscience, that the only relevant moral standard is to be quite convinced that what one is doing is correct. Previously (see below) he has shown the absurdity of this position; now he shows the outcome of this position.

In praise of shallowness! That’s where this view of conscience leads us. And there is a long human tradition of this. Let sleeping dogs lie, don’t think too hard, don’t bother your head with things too deep. Why so serious?

The whole idea that the only important thing is to get along, to fit in with the crowd, and to be complacent in one’s own proper behavior—this has long been among the great strategies employed by the human race.

Well, what’s wrong with it, then? People seem to get through life OK that way, and probably don’t commit too many heinous crimes. Why not? Well, in part the problem is that it doesn’t make sense—it is predicated upon, in fact, not thinking too hard, since it actually is a wholly irrational way to live.

Second, to simply live on the surface of life and go along to get along is not commensurate with our human dignity. We are made for greatness, for a truly heroic way of life, even if that heroism is lived out in very ordinary surroundings. To bob along on the surface of things does not conform to the truth of our humanity in all its awesomeness.

Finally, and this is relevant to what has occasioned my blog series on conscience, what happens when a society and its norms goes astray? This is hardly theoretical—the past century has seen multiple human societies go badly awry in horrific ways.

Our current society believes (generally) that it should be legal to tear tiny human beings into little pieces and suction them out of their mother’s wombs. Our current society believes that the sexual acts of two men or two women are absolutely identical to the sexual intercourse between a man and a woman out of which springs new human life. Human life then is a mere accidental by-product of some other process. Our current society believes that people who disagree with this and say so are expressing hate speech and should be silenced.

And in the States, it is entirely possible that Obama will succeed in pulling the wool over people’s eyes, and religious groups will indeed be forced to pay for products we believe are evil and harmful, and in fact homicidal.

A person who has chosen to live by social convention, to not think too deeply, and to go along to get along, has no defense against monstrous evils, once they become social norms. And that’s why we cannot ignore the demands of truth and the arduous struggle to learn it and live by it.

Talking About Conscience IV

A colleague, who was deeply moved by the difficulties involved in being a Christian in our time, stated in a debate that we ought really to be grateful to God that he had given so many people the gift of being unbelievers with a good conscience. For if their eyes were opened and they became believers, they would not be able to endure the burden of faith and its moral obligations in this world of ours. As things were, since they were traveling in good conscience along another path, they could nevertheless attain salvation.

What shocked me in this assertion was not so much the idea of an erring conscience bestowed by God himself, a cunning device that allowed him to save men—as if he saved them precisely by blinding their eyes. No, I was disturbed by the idea that faith was a virtually intolerable burden, something only the really strong could shoulder.

Perhaps it would be going too far to call faith a punishment, but it certainly posed extremely high demands that were difficult to satisfy. In other words, faith made salvation harder, not easier. One should therefore rejoice if the obligation to believe is not imposed upon one, since that would mean being bowed down by the yoke of the morality of the Catholic Church. An erring conscience, which makes life easier and points to a more human path in life, would be a genuine grace, and even the normal way to find salvation. Untruth, remaining far away from truth, would be better for man than truth.

Truth would not be something that sets us free, but something from which we need to be set free. Man would be more at home in the darkness than in the light. Faith would not be a good gift of the good God, but a terrible fate.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 77-8

Reflection – Having offered clear critiques of the current idea of sola conscientia, - guidance by conscience alone, the theory of the infallible conscience, showing how it necessarily means exalting moral monsters as ideals and destroys any real notion of freedom, Ratzinger now begins to clear out another erroneous idea that lies beneath the exaltation of conscience at the expense of authority.

It’s this whole idea that the truth is a bad thing. ‘Human beings cannot stand much reality’, T.S. Eliot wrote. It is the idea that the real state of affairs of the cosmos is such a grim awful thing that we are better off not bothering with it.

Just ignore it and get back to doing whatever you want—that’s the only response possible, if we decide that the actual truth of life, God, the universe, humanity is a heavy burden that makes our lives sad and grim.

He is clear to point out in this essay that the man presenting this theory was a good and sincerely Christian man who practiced his own faith sincerely and truly wanted to help people. And this has been a common attitude in the Church in the last decades. We know priests who won’t talk about contraception or pre-marital sex precisely because they do not want to put people in bad conscience. Leave them in invincible ignorance! That’s the spirit. Often in the contemporary church, the word ‘pastoral,’ which should refer to being a shepherd guiding the flock into right paths, is degraded into ‘tell people what they want to hear, so they don’t leave the Church.’ We all know that.

We have to be clear. Did God create a universe where the truth is horrible for us? Where living a moral life is a curse? Where to obey God’s law is nothing but a heavy burden? What kind of God would that be? A God anyone should want to follow?

Questions of conscience have to start there, at the most basic level. Is there a truth to be known about how we should live, and does this truth, in fact, set us free? To put it simply, is God good? If not, then (excuse my bluntness) to Hell with the whole thing and, yes, do whatever you want. Which means that Dexter is indeed a good role model and you are indeed a slave to your desires. But hey, better that than enslaving yourself to the laws of a loveless God.

If we’re not happy with that picture of reality, then we have to carry on with Ratzinger, and see if the truth might indeed be better for us than error, if light is indeed preferable to darkness. Until next time…

Talking About Conscience III

It is indisputable that one must always follow a clear verdict of conscience, or at least that one may not act against such a verdict. But it is quite a different matter to assume that the verdict of conscience (or what one takes to be such a verdict) is always correct, i.e., infallible—for if that were so, it would mean that there is no truth, at least in matters of morality and religion, which are the foundations of our very existence.

Since verdicts of conscience contradict one another, there would exist only a truth of the subject, which would be reduced to the truthfulness of that subject. No door or window would lead out of the individual subject into the totality or into that which is shared with other subjects. If we think this through, we realize that this would also mean that there is no genuine freedom and that the supposed verdicts of conscience were mere reflexes to antecedent social circumstances.

This reflection surely shows that the proposed antithesis between freedom and authority leaves out something important and that there must be something deeper than this if freedom and human existence itself are to have a meaning.

This shows that the question about conscience leads us to the core of the moral problem and, hence, to the question of human existence itself.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 76-7

Reflection – Ratzinger is leaping along here at great speed, capacious and world-class intellect that he is, and it is just possible that some reading the above passage are not quite following his thought (hence, the existence of this blog!).

So to do a bit of slow-motion instant replay: first, it is the unanimous view of our moral tradition that one must follow one’s conscience, even if it is in fact erroneous. If I sincerely believe it is morally wrong to eat meat, I must not eat meat! If I sincerely believe I would sin if I failed to floss my teeth every day, then floss I must. Conscience must be obeyed.

But conscience can be wrong—this is the key point. If all we say is that the only salient moral principle is to follow one’s conscience, and that is the beginning and end of the matter, we are indeed locked in a radical individualism. There is, then, no morally significant universe outside of my own being and its determinations.

If there is nothing to say except ‘follow your conscience’, then that degrades immediately and necessarily into ‘do what you want!’ But if all there is to say is ‘do what you want’, and there is no relevant information about what should be done to inform our choices, then we are indeed locked in a world without freedom.

Why is that? Because all we can do is whatever we want to do. The great irony is that this is not freedom at all. If all there is to do is whatever we want to do, then we are utter slaves to our desires, and a little reflection is all that is needed to show us that our desires in any situation are formed entirely by our physical urges and our social conditioning. We are thus slaves to our bodies and to society and it dictates.

Remember—all this flows immediately and with strict logical necessity from the fundamental modern stance that says ‘no one can tell me what to do!’ The rejection of the concept of moral authority, of a teaching authority in moral matters. We saw yesterday that the infallible conscience theory leads to the exalting of serial killers and sociopaths as moral exemplars; today we see that it actually means the total destruction of any real freedom. The very theory that was supposed to secure human freedom against the tyranny of the Church instead reduces us to automatons chained to our physio-sociological programming.

Oops, I did it again, to quote the immortal words of Britney Spears. I must have taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque, to quote the immortal words of Bugs Bunny. Our reasoning has gone wrong, and this wrong reasoning strikes at the very heart of our human existence, its value and meaning. This is why questions of conscience and its violation by the state are so crucial.

Hey, I know—let’s see if this Joseph Ratzinger fella can help us put it right! Until tomorrow…

Talking About Conscience II

Today, especially within Catholic moral theology, conscience has become the core issue with regard to morality and our discovery of what constitutes moral conduct. This debate centers on the concepts of freedom and norm, autonomy and heteronomy, self-determination and determination by an external authority…

Two antithetical conceptions of Catholicism are proposed. On the one hand, we find a renewed understanding of the essence of Catholicism that understands Christian faith on the basis of freedom and sees this faith as a principle that sets people free. On the other hand, we find [an apparently] a superseded ‘preconciliar’ model that subjects Christian existence to an authority that issues norms to regulate people’s lives even in the most intimate spheres and attempts in this way to maintain its power over them.

It seems therefore that we have a conflict between two antithetical models, morality of conscience and morality of authority. The freedom of the Christian is safeguarded by the primal proposition of the moral tradition, that the conscience is the highest norm and that one must follow it even against authority. When authority—in this case the Church’s magisterium—speaks on matters of morality, is supplies material that helps the conscience form its own judgment, but ultimately it is only conscience that has the last word. Some authors express this ultimately decisive authority of conscience by saying that conscience is infallible.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 75-6

Reflection – So Ratzinger here is laying out the basic problem with conscience today (aside from coercive state violations of it). Namely, does it mean, basically, “Nobody gets to tell me what to do! Hurray!”? Is it true that the only relevant moral principle we have is ‘follow your conscience’? For Catholics, the next question would be, well, what about the Church’s teachings, then? What point do they have? What function?

But, as Ratzinger will develop shortly, this is a problem for everyone, Catholic or not. If it’s just a question of ‘follow your conscience and everything will be fine,’ then I guess serial killers are fine, right? Sociopaths are not troubled by pangs of conscience, so I guess they’re fine!

We have to be really clear about this. So many people are persuaded by the seemingly reasonable ethics of sola conscientia—conscience alone! And it is close enough to the actual state of affairs (we do, in fact, have to follow our consciences), that it can be hard to spot the error. As Ratzinger will develop, and we will develop it along with him, this is a theory of conscience that inevitably and by strict logical necessity ends up justifying serial killers, Nazi concentration camp guards, and anyone else who is cold-blooded enough to do great evil without turning a hair.

When we do a mathematical equation (say, doing your taxes, which is coming up shortly!), and the answer we yield is ludicrously wrong, we know immediately that our calculations were off. “Gee, Martha, it looks like we have to pay $100 000 in taxes this year! Guess we’ll have to sell the kids!” Maybe you forgot to carry the one…

So it is when a philosophical theory yields an untenable result. A moral theory that ends up making the most cold blooded and heartless people the truly morally justified, and that by corollary finds the people wracked with moral sensitivity and self-misgiving to be, precisely because of that, morally suspect—well, we forgot to carry the one, or left some significant deduction out of our reckoning, or something. Back to square one. And that’s where Ratzinger will take us next. Let’s meet back here tomorrow: remember, we have to understand this business of conscience, so that we can argue it, preserve it, and resist those who wish to violate our freedom of it. À la prochaine!

Talking About Conscience I

[Today in many circles the primacy of] conscience is presented as the bulwark of freedom against those who seek to narrow our lives through the use of authority.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 75

Reflection – Well, conscience is certainly the word of the day, isn’t it! In case you’ve been incommunicado the last weeks and have missed the story of the day (in which case, why are you reading this blog??), President Obama has clarified that the Affordable Care Act (popularly known as ObamaCare) will indeed force all insurance-providing employers in the States to pay for contraceptive medications and devices, including those with known abortifacient effects, with a religious exemption so narrow that, as has often been said, Jesus Christ wouldn’t have qualified for it.

In other words, Catholic hospitals, schools, and other social agencies will be forced to do something we believe is gravely evil, or be forced to pay millions of dollars in fines, or be forced to shut our doors, thus removing one of the major agents of social care of the poor from the American scene. Those really are the only three possibilities: a radical reduction in care for the poor (courtesy of the party that trumpets its unceasing compassion for the poor), heavy and probably financially unsustainable penalties specifically targeted against Catholics, or state coercion to commit acts tantamount in the judgment of our consciences to murder.

Last time I blogged about this a few days ago, a commentor was deeply troubled that I used the word ‘war’ to describe the Obama administration’s actions. I don’t know what other word is appropriate, honestly, although ‘persecution’ leaps to mind. Also, ‘grave evil’. Or ‘atrocity.’ Or ‘radical dismantling of religious freedom which is the backbone of the American way of life.’ Fortunately, there are elections coming up, and there is a Supreme Court who have shown signs of having basic awareness of what seems to elude Obama, Sibelius, Pelosi, and Biden (hint, freedom of religion does not end with the final blessing and dismissal on Sunday morning)—hopefully Americans will figure out that this whole business simply cannot stand and take appropriate democratic and peaceful measures to put a stop to this nonsense.

But back to conscience, because this is the key word. You may disagree with the Church’s teaching about contraception and abortion; you may disagree with any and all other Church teachings. But do we have a right to freedom of conscience against coercive state authority? And what is our understanding of this word ‘conscience,’ anyhow? I am going to spend the next few days going through some of Pope Benedict’s writings to shed some light on this question. By the way, the book cited above is just about the best concise source for this: a short little book, quite affordable, and he lays out the Church’s mind on the subject with his characteristic lucidity.

Interestingly, the above passage actually sets up a discussion of how conscience (i.e. the individual’s faculty of judgment regarding moral questions) is not opposed to authority (i.e. the moral teaching office of the Church). So often people hear the word conscience as a fancy way of saying “You’re not the boss of me! Don’t tell me what to do!”

It is not that, not precisely. Human freedom is an irreducible reality, but our freedom exists in a universe we did not create and we do not determine. Morally good behavior is a question of discerning the truth of things and the purpose of life, especially human life. Conscience then kicks in to guide our choices, not to what we decide is good or evil, but to what we discern as good or evil—big difference. There is an authority, or rather, An Authority, who determines good and evil, and who communicates His determinations to us. Conscience, first, is receptive, contemplative, passive in the sense of being a student, of regarding, of being given the moral law, not writing it.

Anyhow, more to follow—but we need to get as clear as we can on this question, since, as I say, conscience is the word of the day, and what we don’t understand can easily be stripped from us if we are not careful.

The Foundation of Hope

Let us say once again: we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is “truly” life.

Spe Salvi, 31

Reflection – Well, once again Pope Benedict nails it on the head. As I mentioned a few days ago, I just did a retreat for 83 teenagers of the Pembroke diocese. It was a lovely, if somewhat exhausting, experience. I love young people. I love their energy, their enthusiasm, their intensity. I love their earnest seeking and questioning, their often very serious doubts about life and faith, and their determination to figure something out about all of it in the face of much turmoil and adolescent hormonal/social/emotional/familial upheaval.

It’s an extraordinarily difficult period in life, but very beautiful, and I love to be part of it and offer whatever help to them a middle-aged dude with a Roman collar can offer. Which might be quite a lot, actually, if they’re willing to receive it… (but that’s another story).

What I also love about young people is the natural quality of hope they possess in abundance. Their lives are open before them; possibilities stretch out in all directions. Within the limits of their inherent abilities and talents, they could really end up doing and being just about anything. Hope in its natural form is super-abundant in youth, and it is a beautiful sight.

The Pope here makes the essential point, though, that natural hope is not itself virtuous. Virtues always perfect the person; a natural hope can be misguided or even wicked: e.g. “Gee, I sure hope my plan to rob the liquor store comes off OK!” Or, “I hope I end up playing for the Ottawa Senators!” Uh, no, Fr. Denis—that’s not really a realistic hope.

Natural hope has to be perfected by this mysterious virtue of hope, this hope that takes everything we desire, all our plans and dreams and yearnings and ideas about life, extracts from the heart of all of it what we really want—happiness, joy, ‘life itself’, as the Pope so well puts it—and then informs us by the closely connected gift of faith that all of that is held for us in God and God alone.

All our little hopes, our human hopes, everything we so deeply desire and dream of, is fundamentally a desire for God. And theological hope, the gift of hope, the virtue of hope, raises our minds and hearts, sets our eyes and directs our feet, on this upward path to the fulfillment of all our desires.

And Pope Benedict so ably points out that this deep hope is not only for some future kingdom of heaven that awaits us when we die (‘goin up to the spirit in the sky…’). It is found where love is found, where God is loved, and where His love comes to us. Faith leads to hope, and hope is fulfilled in love.

And in this all the energy and excitement of youth, all the dedication and commitment of young adulthood, all the long years of cross bearing and hard labor of middle age, all the latter years of surrender and letting go, all become expressions and movements of this faith-hope-love dynamic. It’s all about God, and God is all about love and life poured out for all who look to Him for the fulfillment of all our desires.

Light Came, Fear Fled

God is Logos. We must add a second point: Christian faith in God also affirms that God, the eternal reason, is love. He is not a relationless existence circling around its own self. Precisely because he is sovereign, because he is the Creator and encompasses all things, he is relationship and love…

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 112-3

Reflection – The great primeval fear of humanity is touched on in this brief passage. Namely, God is not love. The universe is a cold, dark, dead place, and at the heart of reality there is either Nothing or nothing good.

This primeval fear is the source of all our monster movies, horror stories, and much of the primitive magical practices surrounding the ancient religions of mankind. We’ve got to keep the darkness at bay—break out the garlic!

We had a priest visit MH some years ago. He was from a part of Africa that had only relatively recently been exposed to the Christian Gospel. In fact, he himself had grown up the son of a ‘witch doctor’, and his family and village had become Catholic Christians when he was a boy.

So he had a certain authority on the subject. He told us that, before the missionaries arrived, they lived in fear—fear of the dark primitive forces of the universe, fear of the ‘gods’ who had to be placated and kept at bay. When Christ came, light came. When Christ came to them, fear fled.

It’s this whole business of God revealing Himself to us as relationship, as love. That which is at the heart of all reality is not some mute implacable force, some anonymous energy, some inhuman mystery. The center and ground of the universe is a Father to us. The mystery at the heart of all mysteries is a mystery of love and gift.

In a world where there is, indeed, suffering, darkness, and terror, this is not always the easiest thing to believe. There is a reason all the primeval terrors of mankind arose and continue to abide in us. We have reason to be afraid.

It is the specifically Christian revelation that shows us God not only as some kind of loving Father ‘up there’ or ‘out there’ or… well, somewhere. God in Christ penetrates to the heart of darkness. Jesus who is God, who is the utter center of all reality, embraces us not only in some vague abstract way, but in our very encounter with death and suffering and evil.

Because of this we can, and do, have hope. And it is the martyrs (as I have said more than once on this blog) who show us the deep truth of this hope. They had the grace to enter with Christ into the very heart of the world’s pain and darkness, and even though they died, prevailed. They were not defeated, even though they suffered and were killed.

I guess my thoughts run this way because the world is losing this hope (at least the corner of the world that used to go by the name ‘Western Civilization’). Slowly, darkness and fear are seeping back into our deepest hearts. The magical rituals don’t involve garlic or witch doctors usually. Instead, ‘better living through science’! We will conquer the universe with technological mastery. We will eradicate suffering by the unfettered power of our minds and our wills.

It doesn’t work. It never works. The results are an increase in suffering a hundred-fold. And so we Christians are in a serious position. Both facing (maybe) a steady increasing pressure to compromise our beliefs in particular around sanctity of human life and the sacred quality of human sexuality, and possible persecution as we don’t, and at the same time holding out to the world the true hope and light and peace it desires.

It is a serious position, but we need to take heart in it. And the ‘heart’ we need to take is not our own—it is the Heart of the World, the heart of all reality. We do have a Father. And a Lord who has gone before us and done everything for us already. And a Spirit given to us so that we can prevail, even if (yes!) we are martyred.

Take heart, stand firm, and hope in the Lord.

Two Kinds of People

The contemporary situation is fundamentally marked by that same tension between opposite tendencies which runs through the whole of history. On the one side, there is the interior opening up of the human soul to God; but on the other side, there is the stronger attraction of our needs and our immediate experience. Man is the battlefield where these two contend with each other.

Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 100

Reflection – I think we can all easily identify with this passage. There is God, and then there is ‘what I want right now.’ Which will I choose this time? There is God and the infinite eternal reality He opens up for us, and then there is the maelstrom of immediate concrete life pulling us in all sorts of directions. Can any of us say we are never pulled of course? There is God and His constant call to us to ground our life in the depths of charity, justice, and goodness—and then there is the persistent desire to just do whatever will yield us immediate pleasure or satisfaction. The broad and easy way—and oh, that narrow and steep path is hard to stay on all the time!

Yep, it’s a battlefield. And it is right and proper to experience it as such. As one of our wise holy priests used to say here, “If you don’t know you’re in a battle, you’re probably losing.” The only way we wholly escape the ‘battle’ of life is if we capitulate entirely to the downward tug of self-seeking and shallow pursuit of the immediate and the easy. And this is a wretched state beyond wretchedness.

We are made to be more than what we are. This is the glory of humanity. We are made to transcend ourselves, a self-transcendence achieved not by our own powers (which would be a contradiction in terms anyhow), but by the gracious gift of Another. Our human nature is found and fulfilled when we open up to a Nature that is not ours, that pulls us up, broadens us out, deepens and expands us until we can embrace in Love the whole of reality.

Because it is a question of surpassing ourselves, there is always the matter of the Self, and the option always open to us to refuse the invitation. As Chesterton put it, selfishness is the necessary possibility opened up to us by virtue of the fact that we have a self. We can always close in, close up, curl into a ball, grab the prize we want and wrap ourselves around it like our life depended on it. Actually, our death depends on it.

Our life depends on the opposite. Opening up wide, letting go of everything, allowing God full scope in us to live and love and move—this is the path of freedom and life. A constant movement of opening, of holding ourselves open before God, and of detachment and dispossession from all other things. Holding them lightly, and tossing them up to God for Him to do what He likes with them.

This is the perennial battle of man in the world, and all the immediate battles, personal and cultural, are at heart expressions of this battle. Will we let God have His way with us? Or are we going to have our way? Lewis says in the end there are only two kinds of people: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, with great sorrow, ‘Thy will be done.’

Which will it be, today? For you, for me? Just for today, since that’s all we have.

I Was a Teenage Retreat Master

Or rather, I will be this weekend. Yep, me and 83 (at last count) 13-18 year olds. Posting this not so much to explain my lack of blogging the next few days as to beg prayers for all concerned. The retreat is Truth Quest, for the Pembroke diocese, and we have a great team... except for the doofus priest giving the talks. Come Holy Spirit...

A War on Humanity

The denial of the ethical principle, the denial of a capacity for insight that is antecedent to every specialization – that capacity for insight which we call ‘conscience’ – is a denial of man.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 46

Reflection – The Obama administration in the States has declared war on the Catholic Church. Yeah, yeah—strong words, I know. I usually go to great lengths to avoid mucking into current controversies, mostly because I only have a small amount of time each day to blog, and I don’t want/am not able to be one of those blogs that engenders mucho dialogue and debate and fierce arguments.

Nonetheless, there are times and issues where to be silent is irresponsible, even if you are Canadian! The Obama administration has declared war on the Catholic Church. And America is such a key nation, a linchpin of freedom and democracy in the world, that this effects everyone.

By forcing all health care providers to pay for contraception, the Obama administration is forcing all Catholic institutions to either pay for what we believe to be gravely evil products, or pay heavy fines, or be driven out of the vast fields of education, health care, and social services that the Catholic Church has always done with great skill and generosity.

This is religious persecution. This is war. And it is Barack Obama and his administration (key figures of which are ‘Catholic’, so they tell us) who have done this.

The (feeble) justification for doing it is fascinating, though. In the official communiqué coming from the department of Health and Human Services, it said that birth control is universally known to be ‘medically beneficial.’ In other words, science has spoken, and science looks upon what it has made and says ‘It is very good.’

Leaving aside the fact that the birth control pill is associated with all sorts of heavy side effects, and leaving aside the fact the it can work as an abortifacient, and therefore is somewhat less than medically beneficial to the nascent human being who is killed by its use, this claim by HHS sheds a fascinating light on the modern mindset.

It’s the whole business of ‘leave it to the experts!’ Doctors say birth control is good, and so it is good. Researchers say embryonic stem cell research is good, and so it is good. AIDS activists say condom distribution in Africa is good, and so it is good.

The whole ‘cult of the expert’ is strong today, and has been for quite a while. And it is, as Ratzinger says above, a denial of man. A denial that every human being has an ethical sense, an ability to not just accept the assurances of the ‘experts’, but to discern whether or not this ‘thing’ is good.

A scientist, a doctor, can tell us exactly what a birth control pill does, how it works, and can understand the chemical and biological processes of that far better than you or I.

They have absolutely no superior insight into whether or not using birth control pills is a good thing. None whatsoever—and we have to be clear about that.

We have to be clear about it because these waters are muddied all over the place. Steven Hawking knows all about physics; Richard Dawkins knows all about biology; neither one of them knows anything at all about philosophy and metaphysics, which provide the rational tools to discuss God and the human soul and the meaning of life. But they are considered qualified experts to opine on these matters. Why? Because they are scientists. Nonsense.

Back to contraception. When ‘science’ is used as a pretext to violate conscience, to force people to do things that they know are evil, it is not simply a Catholic issue or a Jewish issue or a Buddhist issue or a secular humanist issue. The very human project is being denied, the very nature of humanity and our dignity, our sovereign right to determine good and evil, right and wrong, and shape our lives accordingly. And this is what is at stake in the current controversy in America.

The Obama administration has not declared war on the Catholic Church. It has declared war on the human race. May God have mercy on them, and may God grant wisdom and discernment and courage to the American bishops, clergy, and all the American people to address this crisis in a suitable, peaceful, and loving fashion.

I Kant Get No Satisfaction

We must look briefly at the two essential stages in the political realization of this hope, because they are of great importance for the development of Christian hope, for a proper understanding of it and of the reasons for its persistence. First there is the French Revolution—an attempt to establish the rule of reason and freedom as a political reality. To begin with, the Europe of the Enlightenment looked on with fascination at these events, but then, as they developed, had cause to reflect anew on reason and freedom.

A good illustration of these two phases in the reception of events in France is found in two essays by Immanuel Kant in which he reflects on what had taken place. In 1792 he wrote Der Sieg des guten Prinzips über das böse und die Gründung eines Reiches Gottes auf Erden (“The Victory of the Good over the Evil Principle and the Founding of a Kingdom of God on Earth”). In this text he says the following: “The gradual transition of ecclesiastical faith to the exclusive sovereignty of pure religious faith is the coming of the Kingdom of God.”

He also tells us that revolutions can accelerate this transition from ecclesiastical faith to rational faith. The “Kingdom of God” proclaimed by Jesus receives a new definition here and takes on a new mode of presence; a new “imminent expectation”, so to speak, comes into existence: the “Kingdom of God” arrives where “ecclesiastical faith” is vanquished and superseded by “religious faith”, that is to say, by simple rational faith. In 1795, in the text Das Ende aller Dinge (“The End of All Things”) a changed image appears. Now Kant considers the possibility that as well as the natural end of all things there may be another that is unnatural, a perverse end. He writes in this connection: “If Christianity should one day cease to be worthy of love ... then the prevailing mode in human thought would be rejection and opposition to it; and the Antichrist ... would begin his—albeit short—regime (presumably based on fear and self-interest); but then, because Christianity, though destined to be the world religion, would not in fact be favored by destiny to become so, then, in a moral respect, this could lead to the (perverted) end of all things.”

Spe Salvi 19

Reflection – OK, so that’s a mouthful. Pope Benedict goes on in the next paragraph of the encyclical to describe how this revolutionary spirit and the transferring of the ‘Kingdom of God’ from the realm of eschatological hope to imminent expectation resulted in Marxism and all the horrors of communist tyranny that it engendered.

So this is all a bit complicated and historical and philosophical and… ‘I never studied all this stuff! I’m totally at sea here! I’m going to go look at cute cat videos on YouTube!’ you might be saying.

Relax. This is actually not all that complicated and not all that hard to understand. In fact, most of us can look into our own hearts and easily identify with this passage.

Why are you a Christian? (Assuming you are, oh mysterious readers who visit this blog but rarely if ever leave comments… who are all you people anyhow? But I digress…) For at least some people, and maybe a little bit for most of us, there is a little bit of the above attitude in us. I’m a Christian because I want the Kingdom of God in my life. And the Kingdom of God means that my life is going to work out just fine. I’m a Christian because being a Christian is going to yield me peace, joy, satisfaction, the good things of the earth and promise of eternal Good Things in heaven.

Almost all of this is valid… so long as we understand that it is God’s Kingdom we desire. Not ours. And that He will indeed bring us peace, joy, satisfaction, good things on heaven and earth… in His time, His way, according to His ideas of what all these are. Not ours.

When we seek to ‘immanentize the eschaton’ (big words for I want it all now!) we are set on a course that will, if we follow it, take us out of the Church, away from Christ, away from God, and straight into the realm of the anti-Christ.

That’s putting it dramatically, but so be it. Life is dramatic. Today we celebrate the presentation of the Lord in the temple. God is a baby, carried in his mother’s arms. He is prophesied to be a sign due to be rejected, and a sword will pierce his mother’s heart, too. All of this pertains directly to the life of the Christian in the world. We are not in the kingdom, yet. We are a sign of contradiction, pierced by a sword. But out of that, content to follow our crucified Lord and wait on his action of grace and mercy, we do know peace, joy, love, mercy, and rest secure in his love. And that is our share in his kingdom, now. Not ours, but His.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Politicians… take it for granted today that they must promise changes… this must surely mean that there exists in modern society a deep and prevailing sense of dissatisfaction precisely in those places where prosperity and freedom have attained hitherto unknown heights. The world is experienced as hard to bear.

Values in a Time of Upheaval, 11

Reflection – You know, my first thought upon considering this passage for the blog was that I would really have to point out that he wrote this before the current recession and economic struggles. Of course, now politicians have to promise change and reform. In fact, a politician supporting the status quo is almost criminally irresponsible, in my opinion.

However, upon reflection I rethought that. Ratzinger’s point stands quite well. We really must be aware (‘we’ being people of North America and Europe where most of my readers are) that, current recession aside, we are still in a time when ‘prosperity and freedom have attained hitherto unknown heights.’ This is still true, and is likely to remain so for the next while at least.

The ‘normal’ state of humanity, simply looked at as a historical average, is to be worried about having enough food. The ‘normal’ state of humanity is to lack adequate medical care, to have at best basic housing (four walls and a roof), to have few if any options available for one’s life regarding education and work.

This has been the normal condition of humanity since humanity has been, and by that standard most North Americans and Europeans are quite wealthy, really.

This is not to dismiss the sense of discontent that Ratzinger describes above. He doesn’t dismiss it, although he does seriously and searchingly criticize the tendency to look to the political sphere for remedy to this discontent.

Really, it all bears witness to the fundamental truth of Scripture: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Mt 4:4, Dt 8:3). We have (generally, with some exceptions) enough bread; we are not happy. We can dismiss this state of affairs contemptuously—‘we’re a bunch of whiners!’—or we can look deeper into the matter.

The truth is, we are not made for a life of bourgeois comfort in this world. And when we place all our efforts in striving to establish this comfortable life for ourselves and our immediate circle of concern, we are unhappy. We are barking up the wrong tree: no squirrel for us!

Of course the other side of the picture is that when I place all my concern into building up a comfortable nest for myself, I will inevitably do so at the expense of others. Right now, in North America at least, these ‘others’ are the future generation; North Americans have for some decades now been basically in the middle of a long-term slow motion ‘dine and dash’ – eating and drinking to heart’s content, and leaving the bill for our children and grandchildren. The trouble being that, with abortion and contraception, we simply don’t have enough children and grandchildren to continue supporting us ‘in the manner to which we have become accustomed.’ The crash, it is coming.

But I digress (not really, but let’s say I did). The deeper point is that ‘man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ And that word coming from the mouth of God is a word of love, of mercy, of peace, of joy.

We are created, not to take care of ourselves and be all fat and cozy in this world, but to spend ourselves for love in this world so as to secure treasure in heaven. And, as politician after politician entirely fails to solve the unsolvable problems of our time, we are going to need to dig deep into this deeper reality. What are we here for? Where is our hope? Where is our joy? It cannot be in material security or everything coming up roses forever and ever for us here and now. It has to be in something better, something more real, something that will survive the coming crash.

It has to be in God, in His love for us, and our call to love Him back and to love our neighbor as ourselves.