Case 1. The Authority of Conscience

To Titius, who applies himself to the study of moral theology, theologians seem to speak with little consistency about the obligation of following conscience and the obligation of submitting one’s own judgment to the judgment of the Church. For they say that conscience is the voice of God, the herald of God, and that a man is bound to follow conscience whether it is right or erroneous. Indeed, Cardinal Newman has these words: “That divine authority, the voice of conscience, on which in truth the Church herself is built. . . . Did the Pope speak against conscience he would commit a suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground from under his feet.”¹ Hence a certain modernist says: “When authority is dumb or stultifies itself, private conviction resumes its previous rights and liberties. It sent us to authority in the first instance, not by a suicidal self-contradictory act; but in basing our trust upon reasons and sentiments it thereby assigned a limit to that trust which is reached as soon as authority would seem to violate those reasons or sentiments.”² And another writer says: “To our own mental and moral conscience all doctrines and laws must make their last appeal, and we have a distinct as well as a corporate personality.”¹ But, if this doctrine is admitted, Titius does not see what is to be condemned in the Protestant theory of private judgment. Hence it is asked:

1 Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 60.

2 G. Tyrrell, A Much-abused Letter, p. 57. This was a fundamental point in the late Fr. Tyrrell’s teaching. He developed that teaching more fully in the last essay published in his book entitled Through Scylla and Charybdis. The following extracts are taken from that essay.

1 M. D. Petre, Catholicism and Independence, p. xi.

1. What is a norm of morality, and what is the norm of morality?

“We have long since not merely resigned ourselves to a silent and a hidden God, but have come to recognize our seeming loss as a priceless gain. For now we have learned to seek Him where alone He is to be found, and seen, and heard; near and not far; within and not without; in the very heart of His creation, in the center of man’s spirit; in the life of each; still more in the life of all. It is from the Sinai of Conscience (individual and collective) that He thunders forth His commandments and judgments; it is from the heights of His holiness that He looks down in pity upon our earthliness and sinfulness; it is in His Christ, in His saints and prophets, that He becomes incarnate and manifest, and that He tabernacles with the children of men.”

“Thus it is in the widest, the most enduring, the most independent consensus that we possess the fullest available manifestation of that divine spirit, partially and imperfectly manifested in our own individual mind and conscience—the spirit of Truth and Righteousness, the source of all moral power and authority—God revealed in man. Authority, then, is not an external influence streaming down from heaven like a sunbeam through a cleft in the clouds and with a finger of light singling out God’s arbitrarily chosen delegates from the multitude, over and apart from which they are to stand as His vicegerents. Authority is something inherent in, and inalienable from, that multitude itself; it is the moral coerciveness of the Divine Spirit of Truth and Righteousness immanent in the whole, dominant over its several parts and members; it is the imperativeness of the collective conscience.”

In an article contributed to the Hibbert Journal, January 1910, Baron F. von Hügel wrote concerning this doctrine of Fr. Tyrrell: “In substance he [Fr. Tyrrell] was maintaining, as to the Popes’ powers, nothing but what Cardinal Bellarmine, the greatest of the anti-Protestant theologians, and what Cardinal Newman, so emphatically a lover of authority, teach concerning conscience and the Pope—the latter in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk—backed by countless theologians, saints, and councils.”

2. Can a conflict arise between conscience and an infallible judgment of the Church?

3. In the case of a real conflict between conscience and the Pope, which would have to be obeyed?

4. What is to be said concerning the difficulty of Titius?

1. What is the norm of morality ?

Because we are free we can choose whether we will do good or evil. We ought to do good, but how are we to know what is good? There should be some rule or norm which tells us what is good and what is evil. Catholic theologians agree that the proximate and subjective norm of morality is conscience, or a practical judgment of the reason which tells us that such a particular action must or may be done or omitted. Conscience applies the objective norm of morality which is law, and all law is based on the eternal law of God, which bids us observe right order and forbids us to violate it.

2. Can a conflict arise between conscience and an infallible decision of the Church?

No, this is not possible. For an infallible decision of the Church has for its subject-matter some truth of the faith or some rule of morality, whereas conscience is only concerned with the application of general rules to a particular action which I am contemplating here and now. The field of infallible decisions and that of conscience are different, and they can no more come into collision with each other than can two trains on different lines. It is true that conscience may conflict with a particular command of a Pope, but the Pope is not infallible when he gives a particular command.

3. In case of a conflict between the Pope and conscience, which must be obeyed?

All Catholic theologians agree that in case of a real conflict when a certain conscience tells me that what a superior commands is wrong, I must obey conscience and disobey the superior, whoever he may be.¹ Of course before disobeying the command of a lawful superior in such a case I must make sure of my ground. I must use all available sources of information so that I may be sure that my conscience is right and not erroneous. If this is done, conflicts between the Pope and the individual conscience will very seldom occur.

1 St. Thomas, De Veritate, q. 17, a. 5.

4. What is to be said about the difficulty of Titius?

From what has already been said it will be clear that theologians by no means contradict themselves when they teach that conscience is the voice of God and that it must be obeyed as such, and at the same time insist on the duty of submitting one’s own judgment to the authority of the Church. Conscience is indeed private judgment, but its sphere is not that of ecclesiastical decisions. Private judgment is supreme when it tells me that this particular action must be done or not done. On the other hand the Pope is supreme for Catholics when he teaches from the chair that some doctrine belongs to Catholic faith or practice. Conscience says nothing about the truth or falsehood of such propositions as constitute the sphere of infallible decisions; it is restricted to questions whether this particular action which I am contemplating is to be done or not, and with this the Pope’s infallible authority can not conflict. What Cardinal Newman said is true; if the Pope spoke against conscience, he would speak against God, from whom all his authority is derived, and thus he would cut the ground from under his feet. The modernist doctrine is pure Protestantism, inasmuch as it asserts that private judgment is the final court of appeal in matters of Catholic faith and practice, and not the Church. It is plain that the authority of Cardinal Newman can not be invoked for this Protestant theory.