THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIENCE

In the first place it is necessary to point out what is not meant by the primacy of conscience. In our decision making we cannot claim to be completely independent of any outside influence. As persons in community we do not enjoy absolute autonomy. It is true that many people believe that they are entitled to make up their own mind without reference to any outside authority, whether of church or state. Perhaps ideas like this about morality are in measure due to cultural changes and other social factors. Our secularised society is marked by a growing disillusionment with established structures and in consequence, with little reliable external guidance to rely on, people tend to fall back on an exaggerated moral autonomy. So conscience is made a law unto itself.  

The primacy of conscience, as understood in our western moral tradition, is not a handy saying that pretends to make conscience a purely arbitrary judgment tailoring the morality of our decisions to our personal wishes. It certainly is not an invitation to a lax attitude towards morality or a downplaying of the truth. It is rather a challenge to live in accord with the truth and to act responsibly in all we do. It involves a serious obligation to work at developing a mature conscience, that is, a conscience rightly formed by the cultivation of the moral virtues under the aegis of the virtue of wisdom of the heart, and informed about what we need to know in order to choose the right thing for us to do in the circumstances.  As Vatican II puts it: 'The more a right conscience holds sway, the more persons and groups turn aside from blind choices and strive to be guided by objective norms of morality' (Gaudium et Spes, n.16).  

The principle of the primacy of conscience is deeply embedded in our western moral tradition. The expression is sometimes used explicitly, sometimes equivalent expressions are used. John Henry Newman in his Difficulties of Anglicans speaks of conscience (and he means right conscience) as 'the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness'. Twenty years ago, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the present pontiff recalled the signal contribution John Henry Newman made in his life and work to the question of conscience and the famous sentence in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk: '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'. Against the prevailing opinions of the time, Newman wanted to make no bones about his avowal of the authority of the pope whilst at the same time making it clear that the papacy can be rightly understood, 'not in opposition to the primacy of conscience but based on it and guaranteeing it'.  

Ratzinger also likened Newman to Britain's other great witness of right conscience, St. Thomas More, 'for whom conscience was not at all an expression of subjective stubbornness or obstinate heroism. He numbered himself, in fact, among those faint-hearted martyrs who only after faltering and much questioning succeed in mustering up obedience to the truth, which must stand higher than any human tribunal or any type of personal taste' (from his paper Conscience and Truth).  

While the primacy of conscience does not mean and has never meant liberation from objective truth (in this sense objective truth holds a certain primacy), no objective formulation of truth or moral law coming from outside ourselves can take the place of conscience, because 'it is upon the human conscience that these obligations fall and exert their binding force....hence in all one's activity one is bound to follow one's conscience faithfully' (Dignitatis Humanae, n.1 and 3). Properly speaking, it is our right conscience that determines the morality of our actions. The judgment of conscience about what we ought to do or refrain from here and now is the immediate measure  of the morality of our human actions.  

This is a most important point that has often been overlooked by moral theologians and others. The goodness or badness of our actions is in the concrete made known to us according as it is grasped by conscience, that is, as personalised and interiorised. In this key moment of personal interiorisation of the course of action to be taken the whole person implements or denies the thrust of his/her being towards the goals of human living, and ultimately to our final goal, which is God. The goodness or badness of our act in the abstract, which is considered in ethics and which is often expressed in laws or codes of acting, is goodness or badness only potentially, 'materially' as the moralists say; it is pre-morality and is an almost always flexible indication of the line to be followed.  

Since conscience under the influence of the virtue of practical wisdom is the formal and immediate measure of morality, we may say that at this level conscience does enjoy autonomy – and this is what is true in the instinctive feeling of people today. This kind of autonomy both flows from and protects our human dignity as free persons. Speaking of the help which the Church strives to bring to individuals, Vatican II makes the strong point that 'the Gospel announces and proclaims  the freedom of the children of God, rejects all slavery which in the last analysis derives from sin, and honours as sacred the dignity of conscience and its free decision. All this corresponds with the fundamental law of the Christian dispensation', by reason of which 'the rightful autonomy of the creature, and especially of the human person, far from being taken away, is rather re-established in its own dignity and strengthened in it' (Gaudium et Spes, n.41).  

As already mentioned, this normative autonomy of moral conscience does not exclude either God or law and cannot morally justify purely arbitrary decisions or unprincipled and ill-informed choices. By the same token it does not lessen the legitimate teaching authority of the magisterium of the Church in relation to moral questions. Rather such teaching is given its true role.  

In sum, the primacy of conscience means that one not only may but must follow the right judgment of one's conscience even when through no fault of one's own it is mistaken (provided of course that this does not impinge upon the rights of others or conflict with the common good). St Paul had occasion to address this issue in regard to what Christians should do about food that had been sacrificed to idols and was therefore thought taboo (1Cor 8 and Rom 14): 'Consider the man fortunate who can make his decision without going against his conscience. But anybody who eats in a state of doubt is condemned, because he is not in good faith' (Rom 14, 22-23). The morality of what one decides is thus for Paul essentially dependent upon one's clear conviction of being right or 'in the truth. In this he affirms the primacy of the person (and of conscience), even when he or she is objectively mistaken in good faith (as influenced by the virtue of wisdom of the heart).