July 9, 2012              Brian Lewis, Ballarat, Australia

UNTO THYSELF BE TRUE

In this bit of advice Shakespeare's Polonius says something very profound.  Morally the moment of truth occurs in an actual concrete situation when the individual person makes a good decision. The actual situation is the ultimate reality which has to be confronted and judged on its merits. It is here that moral truth has to be found. It might be said that in the actual situation objectivity and subjectivity meet together. In the following reflections I will try to explain what is meant by this.

 Pope John Paul II made the point that the formation of conscience requires more than just knowing the moral law and the teachings of the Church. 'What is essential is a sort of “connaturality” between man and the true good. Such a connaturality is rooted in and develops through the virtuous attitudes of the individual....prudence and the other cardinal virtues, and even before these the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. This is the meaning of Jesus' saying: “He who does what is true comes to the light”' (Veritatis Splendor, n.64).

 The formation of conscience requires, then, not only theoretical knowledge of moral truths, but more importantly growth in real virtue. What is altogether essential is a sort of instinctive harmony between the individual person and genuine personal values. To live rightly, virtue outweighs knowledge. St. Thomas Aquinas says that concrete moral truth, for example, about an issue of justice or of chastity, is more readily grasped by a person who is just or chaste (that is, a virtuous person) than by one versed in 'moral science'.  

Vatican II in is Declaration on Religious Liberty (n.1-3) explains further that the two basic principles underlying the question of moral truth are: first, the right and the duty of all to seek the truth, especially (but of course not exclusively) in what concerns God and God's Church, and to embrace it once it is known, and second, regarding the way the search is done, these obligations with their binding force fall upon human conscience and 'the truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth' as it is grasped by the person at once quietly and with cogency. So it is the role of conscience to seek and discover the truth in the actual situation; to bring pressure to bear on conscience is against truth itself, for freedom is a fundamental human right demanded by the very dignity of the human person. 'This freedom means that all are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups or of any human power', so that a person's conscience is sacrosanct and no one is to be forced to act against their conscience.  

Furthermore, no one is to be restrained (within due limits) from acting in accordance with their conscience. Our duty as human persons to seek the truth and adhere to it once it is known requires, therefore, 'immunity from external coercion as well as psychological freedom'. This is demanded by the very fact that God has made us free and so empowered us to 'come to perceive ever increasingly the unchanging truth. From this comes the right and duty to seek the truth, in order to be able to form right and true judgments of conscience. In other words, ethico-religious obligation is the domain of conscience, which may not  be superseded by any previously given formula or law, however objectively true. The human person 'perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience', which must be followed faithfully in order to 'come to God, for whom (the human person) was created'.  

The virtue of responsibility, which St. Thomas Aquinas knew as prudentia and which I prefer to speak of as wisdom of the heart, ensures that we make a practical decision which is morally good and right. This virtue operates in two stages. First of all, under pain of ceasing to be a virtue, it must ensure that the action proposed is objectively morally good as far as this is possible in contingent matters. Given the infinite variability of human action, the degree of certainty about objective truth is necessarily limited. Certainty in practical moral decisions such as this cannot be put on the same footing as speculative or even scientific certitude. The kind of certainty which rules out the reasonable fear of being wrong is usually the best we can expect – and this is all that is needed.  

The judgment of conscience is of course practical and obligatory, but it has truth more of the speculative type, by conformity with reality, with what actually is.  It can therefore be true or false, for conscience in complex questions is a fragile and fallible guide. We commonly speak of an erroneous conscience, arising either from voluntary or involuntary ignorance. People are sometimes responsible for their own ignorance and false, even anaesthetised conscience. In that case they are not justified in following their erroneous conscience and their obligation is to correct it. Otherwise they are not acting virtuously.

 Wisdom of the heart, then, is certainly in no way opposed to the objectivity, and therefore the truth, of the judgment of conscience. Rather, it postulates and demands it. However, this does not discharge the function of the virtue. We must consider its second and more important stage of operation.  

For Aquinas, and he has often been misunderstood on this point, wisdom of the heart is even more concerned that what is chosen is in harmony with one's own better self, with one's deeper desires and truly human aspirations.  For it is wisdom of the heart which realises in practice the pattern of the loving, faithful, just, generous, courageous way of life and that sorts out the priority among the various demands of virtue in particular concrete situations. Aquinas says this in the philosophical language of his time when he speaks of an act chosen being 'in accord with right appetite', that is, with one's affective nature rightly directed towards those goals that enable one to live as becomes a person forming part of the human community. This for him is moral truth in the strict sense. It is practical truth, the truth of life and action in all its human complexity. It is being true to oneself.

 Morality does not have an abstract objectivity like a mathematical truth but an objectivity mediated by reason in the judgement of conscience. It is transformed into a truth of life and of action in the moral decision which is the fruit of the virtue of wisdom of heart. So we can say that objectivity and subjectivity coalesce. The insights contained an an objective appraisal of a particular situation and the individual person seeking moral truth 'encounter one another' and lead to a new understanding, both of the self and of the situation.

 All this may seem abstruse and idealistic. A practical example is provided for us by Alphonsus Ligouri, saint and Doctor of the Church, founder of the Redemptorists and very wise spiritual director. A staunch follower of Aquinas, he  learned from his experience working among the shepherds and goatherds scattered through the rugged mountain country behind the Amalfi coast to trust in the moral goodness of the ordinary, often uneducated, peasant. In the light of this he taught in his Moral Theology that confessors not only may, but indeed must, leave honestly mistaken people in peace without disturbing them, unless of course the common good or the rights of innocent parties are at stake. Not only are they not guilty of any moral fault in following their invincibly ignorant erroneous conscience, but on the understanding that they are acting out of love for God and neighbour and gifted with wisdom of heart Ligouri judged that their actions are morally good and meritorious. This is an instance of what it means to trust in the goodness of normal, good living, human beings, who are true to themselves.