Thoughts on conscience, iv

Don't get me wrong: our rationality, intelligence, and experiences are definitely gifts from God. But throughout salvation history, God's children have tended to put their faith in the gift rather than the Giver, and it has always caused trouble:

• In the beginning, Adam and Eve put their trust in the fruit of the tree rather than in the loving creator who instructed them to avoid it. I believe it is no accident or coincidence that the original sin involved the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Salvation history is replete with our self-deterministic missteps. Even if the story of The Fall were a mere fable, it would be the most insightful one ever told
  
• The children of Israel came to worship the bronze serpent which God instructed Moses to make to heal them from the deadly bite of the fiery serpents
• Even thousands of years ago we overvalued our own intelligence; why else would God warn through Isaiah that "as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts"
• Today, we have rampant materialism, alcoholism, and hedonism, in addition to rationalism and experientialism, not to mention the predominance of relativism - I'm sure we could come up with many more such "isms"
• Spiritually, some invest too much effort into seeking signs and wonders, or some form of spiritual high
  

Each of these represents an overzealous embracing of some category of God's good gifts. For each example above, its opposite would be the utter rejection of the gift (these lists may not correspond point-for-point . . . ):

• Refusing to consider issues of right and wrong, just going along by inertia
  
• Rejection of sound medical care or other healing
• Dismissing intelligence, rationality, and experience, blindly following what I’m told to do by some “authority,” and forcibly imposing my views of morality on everyone else
• Disdaining all comfort and pleasure
• Insisting there must be a rational physical explanation for everything, and refusing to believe God is at work in any tangible way
  

With every gift God has created, a healthy perspective seems to be somewhere in the middle, with room to err on either side. So it is with conscience. At one extreme lies Pharisaic legalism, emphasizing conformance to every jot and tittle of the law (church teaching, etc.) even at the expense of love, compassion, and mercy. At the other is our ability to rationalize whatever it is that we really want to do. In each direction lie many gradations.

And yet the Church teaches us that our conscience is to be our primary moral guide. She doesn't really want to encourage us to act independently, but only insofar as we agree with Her, does she?

I believe we’re getting there . . .

Thoughts on conscience, iii

I think there is yet another fundamental area to consider in this discussion. It lies in our beliefs about salvation and heaven, our resulting attitude toward them and, really, our basic relationship with God. On the surface, some of these might seem unrelated or tangential, but I believe these primary issues underlie every moral decision we make. And like every other gift of God, they can be misapplied in two opposite extremes.

As a child, I somehow absorbed the popular premise that heaven is a reward for those who live a sufficiently good life. When we die, we’ll approach those pearly gates, and Saint Peter will be standing there, with his keys and The Book of Life in front of him. If I've lived rightly, my name will be written there. If not, well, not even God will help me anymore. It will just be too late. So, doggone it, I'd better make sure that the scales of my life (don't ask me how this Supreme Court image got mixed up in there!) balance out in the right direction. And if we screw up along the way, well, "God's gonna getcha for that!" The resulting inquiry of my conscience becomes, as the rich young man asked, "What must I do to be saved," or conversely, "What is okay for me to do without imperiling my soul?" As long as this remains our approach to morality, we're going to continue to think of (and use) our conscience in ineffective ways, as a means of self-justification. At the same time, we may make an effort to ensure we accumulate enough good works to tip the scales in our favor.

At the opposite extreme is the popular Protestant perspective that salvation is something that happens to us in the instant in which we accept our need for Jesus’ sacrifice and put our faith in him. The potential pitfall is that I misinterpret the freedom from sin that Christ has won for me as license to do as I wish. Someone who accepts Christ sincerely will likely respond in ways that avoid the potential traps of this sort of thinking, but reading St. Paul's letters indicates that this has been a problem since the first century.

The traditionally Catholic teaching on salvation is very different from both of these. Salvation is God's gift to us, and while we don't believe it is a one-time event that occurs at our baptism or in some other conversion experience, it is nonetheless a matter of grace, which we can never, under any circumstances, earn or deserve. Rather, God works in our lives through His gifts of faith and works, to continually transform us and deliver us into His eternal kingdom. In His grace, He allows us to participate in the process of accepting these gifts and seeing them at work in our lives, as well as to be vessels through which He communicates and delivers His gift of salvation to the world.

With this attitude, conscience stops primarily having the role of asking, “What is okay?” or even (too often), “How much can I get away with?” and instead asks things like, “How can I respond to the boundless love which God has lavished upon me, despite my unworthiness?” and, “How can I best participate in the process of becoming - and helping those around me become - the person that God envisions me/them to be?”

For the record, I’m not fully there yet, but then, I don’t imagine anyone is.

This is coming together for me, I think. More . . .

Thoughts on conscience, ii

I should probably point out that this series is primarily geared for fellow practicing Catholics. I should probably also mention that this isn’t an indictment against anyone for any decisions they may have made. Rather, it’s an effort to help myself (and, incidently, anyone who reads this) grow in understanding, wisdom, spiritual maturity, and - as quaint as we’ve come to consider the concept - true holiness.

There’s likely to be some delay between these posts as I struggle through this topic. I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to develop or how long it will be. If this were an academic exercise, I’d do a formal outline and have a better idea by now how I was getting to the end. As it is, the only end I’m really concerned about is the eternal one, and so I’m trying to enjoy the exercise of just rambling a little. I’m also trying to be careful of my tendency to be a smug know-it-all. If I stumble in that regard, please let me know.

I regularly encounter people who say perfectly reasonable sounding things like "God is no respecter of man's rules," and as a basic tenet, I largely agree with them.

The problem occurs when we use this truth to arbitrarily dismiss other truth. For instance, we’ll propose, "The Church says to avoid artificial contraception, but that's ridiculous in this day and age of overpopulation. My spouse and I will decide for ourselves how many children we should have. The Church needs to wake up and move into the 21st Century!" That certainly seems logical and reasonable, but it’s full of its own suppositions, including:
a) we usually know what’s best,
b) we usually do what’s best, rather than just what we want, and
c) the Church is run by a rigid and closed-minded bunch of out-of-touch old men

Again, I’m not suggesting we turn off our own brains. Limiting the conversation (for now) to this specific topic, there are definitely specific circumstances that might call for departure from the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception. (Obviously, if we're going to act in disregard of the more basic issue of honoring our sexuality, such as by indulging it extra- or premaritally, we’d be stupid to then avoid artificial contraception, but by no means is that all. There may be specific medical indications that call for contraception, either in the short term or the long term. BTW, I seem to have chosen as an example one of my biggest mistakes.)

In general, don't we tend to rebel against perceived restrictions like a petulant teenager, and harden our hearts against that which opposes our will? We won’t try to really understand and appreciate any opposing viewpoint when we’ve decided that it is a roadblock to the path we’ve chosen, let alone one with authority. We might go so far as to ask our priest about a topic like this, but only if we view him as like-minded, so as to validate our position. But actually reading the truly enlightening documents that pertain to it – in this instance, the encyclical Humanae Vitae, or the insightful Theology of the Body series - which might serve to broaden our understanding of the issues beyond our own thoughts, circumstances, experiences, and wishes? Not likely. So we never learn how the former has proven shockingly prophetic regarding the long-term effects of the contraceptive mindset, or see the broader approach to our human dignity (in God's image) laid out in the latter. No, we’ll simply conclude that the Church has institutionalized a puritanical set of burdens which it rigidly imposes on us, when Christ came to free us.

Too often, we conclude that living according to our conscience simply means doing what we think is best. And tragically (for us and those around us), the net result is that we often end up rationalizing what we think we want in the first place.

Now, I’m not condemning couples who use artificial contraception, or live in any other way contrary to the Church’s teaching. But I’ve found that every time I’ve rejected the guidance that God has provided through the Church (note how this assumption differs from those above!), I’ve come to regret it. Those actions were sometimes driven by my own arrogance. Others arose from a failure to fully know myself and our world, which I was interpreting, of course, strictly in light of my own understanding and experiences. Still others were a matter of stubborn willfullness. And some have been a combination of all these.

But at its root, the basic problem is always my tendency to trust in myself instead of in God. “Only I can know what is best for me,” is the post-modern concept of conscience.

In short, we've embraced a sense of conscience which rejects the teaching authority of the Church, and which reduces Her to an out-of-touch, Jiminy Cricket pseudo-parent. This attitude has been been around nearly from the beginning, and has certainly flourished over the last 60 years. But it represents a distortion of the concept of conscience as it has developed throughout salvation history, and has become rooted in our embracing of the twin gods of rationalism (the world must be as I rationally understand it) and experientialism (the world must be as I have experienced it; both of these definitions are my own).

Definitely more to come . . .

Thoughts on conscience, i

I lost sleep over this last night, after having a near argument on the topic with someone I respect deeply. For me, this discussion reflects both our culture's attitude (toward so many things, really) and my experiences of growing up Catholic immediately post-Vatican II.

I have reflected often with many Catholic and Christian friends about our society's attitudes toward our intelligence. In short, I believe we have made it one of our chief false gods. Rationalism and experientialism have become our chief heresies, and they are strong partners. We (each of us) insist that things must be as I (or as we collectively, mainly including people smarter than me) are able to understand and grasp them and have experienced them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that we should check our brain at the door, or that we embrace superstition. But the the Gospel is rooted in humility, which our society disdains. We know what is best, damn it, and nobody is going to tell us any different. Further, because of the technological wonders of our age, we've come to think of ourselves as more intelligent than our forebears of previous centuries (let alone millenia). Now, it is true that we've come to know many things that they didn't, but it is important to understand that this is not because we are fundamentally smarter than they were. Rather, we have been raised under the influence of accumulated knowledge which wasn't available to them. This affects us both for good and for ill.

Having been born and baptized Catholic in 1960, I was raised in a Church struggling to cast off the shackles of blind obedience which had marked it for previous millenia. This characteristic both caused the Protestant Reformation and was hardened by the Church's response to it. When Pope John XXIII threw open the doors and proclaimed that we needed a new Pentecost, that it was important to allow the wind of the Holy Spirit to renew the Church, he recognized that we had become stifled, and were stifling the Spirit. This prayerful man recognized that we needed to allow God to move in us in new ways, and that powerful growth would result if we did. For one thing, the Church came to remember that when the Spirit spoke at Pentecost, it was in the language of the people.

I don't believe, though, that it was ever his intention to cast off the accumulated wisdom which the Spirit has taught the Church throughout salvation history. Still, many people threw out the baby with the bath water. Rejecting what they perceived as the superstition of their parents' generation, and with an attitude that it was "about damn time" the Church came into the 20th century, they embraced much of the prevailing cultural perspective, especially under the influence of the twins of rationalism and experientialism. We began to put the accumulated knowledge on par with spiritual truth, often even embracing that which was merely theoretical or suggested as if it were fact.

As a result, when I was a child, even within the Church I was taught cultural attitudes concerning a lot of things, and the fundamental one underlying all the others was with regard to my conscience. It was up to me to decide what was okay, and I had a responsibility not to let anyone tell me otherwise.

This represents a subtle but vast distortion of a mature Catholic Christian's understanding of conscience's formation and role. Because of it, I see and hear many Catholics of my generation, including too many priests, giving (to each other and other Catholics) and heeding poorly-rooted (secular!) guidance and advice in the guise of spiritual wisdom.

more to come . . .

Contemplating this here popsicle . . .

Here I am, at my second birthday party, standing in my back yard. Grandpa's been snapping pictures long enough that I'm not continually clamoring for his attention anymore. Mommy gave me this great popsicle, of which I've been making short work. It could be that I'm trying to decide if this is the best thing in the entire world, or maybe I just can't quite figure out what my cousins or my Pappy are up to over there. But I'm having a great day, and Grandpa (well, I'll be calling him Pappaw for a while longer, but I already know that starts with a "P") just loves the way the popsicle juice on my chin matches my top, not to mention this faraway look in my eyes!

A special week

Sometimes it's nice to schedule a "vacation" that's just all about our relationship.

To our surprise, our youngest daughter, for whom my wife babysits daily, informed us two weeks ago that her mother-in-law wanted to watch the kids last Tuesday through Friday. On such short notice, we didn't feel like planning an out-of-town trip, but we definitely wanted to take advantage of the unplanned opportunity to spend some time together. So we made a list of several things in the area we wanted to do. Last Tuesday we went swimming at a local family water park; Wednesday we visited a cousin and his wife a few hours away, whose company we always enjoy; Thursday we spent a few hours at a bicycle museum; Friday we went canoeing. We even managed to carry the things into the weekend, seeing a really neat movie (Stardust, which we enjoyed immensely).

It was just the recharge we needed.