This hit me hard. https://t.co/TmOo8Ug6rB
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 9, 2023
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| Corruption leads to destruction ‒ Hatay, Turkey, February 8, 2023 |
However great the contrary evidence, this modern myth of the eradication of evil through ‘enlightenment’, leaving only a few minor mopping up operations (preferably in far-away places) before Utopia finally arrives, has taken such a hold on popular imagination that any idea of God having to do anything powerful and destructive to address the problem is regarded as far too drastic, far too dramatic.
But none of the early Christians, and certainly not Jesus himself, would have colluded with this glossing over of the seriousness of evil.
— N.T. Wright in Revelation For Everyone (2011)
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| Mr Guterres in Tripoli, Libya. UN Photo/Florencia Soto Niño |
Mr Guterres began:
Excellencies,
We have started 2023 staring down the barrel of a confluence of challenges unlike any other in our lifetimes.
Wars grind on.
The climate crisis burns on.
Extreme wealth and extreme poverty rage on.
The gulf between the haves and have nots is cleaving societies, countries and our wider world.
Epic geopolitical divisions are undermining global solidarity and trust.
This path is a dead end.
We need a course correction.
As a vivid judgement on humanity he cites the example of the Doomsday Clock:
That symbolic clock was created 76 years ago by atomic scientists, including Albert Einstein. Year after year, experts have measured humanity’s proximity to midnight – in other words, to self-destruction.
In 2023, they surveyed the state of the world – with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the runaway climate catastrophe, rising nuclear threats that are undermining global norms and institutions.
And they came to a clear conclusion. The Doomsday Clock is now 90 seconds to midnight, which means 90 seconds to total global catastrophe.
This is the closest the clock has ever stood to humanity’s darkest hour – and closer than even during the height of the Cold War.
In truth, the Doomsday Clock is a global alarm clock. We need to wake up – and get to work.
The manner of behaviour promoted by some ideologies, institutions and political leaders are not only self-defeating but also immoral, Mr Guterres says:
What is immoral, sinful from a religious perspective, will by its very nature be opposed to true human well-being. Pope Francis, in his encyclical letters to world has implored everyone to welcome rather than despise the bonds that tie us together. His encyclicals have been described this way:The good news is that we know how to turn things around – on climate, on finance, on conflict resolution, on and on. And we know that the costs of inaction far exceed the costs of action. But the strategic vision – the long-term thinking and commitment – is missing.
Politicians and decisionmakers are hobbled by what I call a preference for the present. There is a bias in political and business life for the short-term. The next poll. The next tactical political maneuver to cling to power. But also the next business cycle – or even the next day’s stock price.
The future is someone else’s problem. This near-term thinking is not only deeply irresponsible – it is immoral. And it is self-defeating.
In 2015, Pope Francis completed the encyclical Laudato Si’ on May 24 on the care for our common home which has been foundational for Catholics in relation to listening to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, highlighting that all of creation is interconnected and emphasizing climate change and the acceleration and injustice of the ecological crisis and climate emergency.The most recent encyclical issued by Pope Francis on October 3, 2020, was Fratelli Tutti on fraternity and social friendship, in a global context of uncertainty due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
Mr Guterres stresses the need to go back to the civilizational heritage that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expresses:
Excellencies, we have an obligation to act – in deep and systemic ways. After all, the world is not moving incrementally. Technology is not moving incrementally. Climate destruction is not moving incrementally. We cannot move incrementally. This is not a time for tinkering. It is a time for transformation.
A transformation grounded in everything that guides our work – starting with the UN Charter [the foundational treaty signed on June 26, 1945] and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration – the distillation of our shared mission to uphold and uplift our common humanity.
It was bold, ambitious and audacious. We need to take inspiration from its spirit and its substance. The Declaration reminds us that the “inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace.” When I look at human rights in the broadest sense – with a 21st Century lens – I see a roadmap out of the dead end.
To work for peace is the first step because the shame of humanity is that "two billion people who live in countries affected by conflict and humanitarian crises".
Excellencies, if every country fulfilled its obligations under the Charter, the right to peace would be guaranteed. When countries break those pledges, they create a world of insecurity for everyone.
So it is time to transform our approach to peace by recommitting to the Charter -- putting human rights and dignity first, with prevention at the heart. That requires a holistic view of the peace continuum that identifies root causes and prevents the seeds of war from sprouting.
The nuclear threat has become real again with the war in Ukraine:
It is also time to bring disarmament and arms control back to the centre – reducing strategic threats from nuclear arms and working for their ultimate elimination.
Nuclear-armed countries must renounce the first use of these unconscionable weapons. In fact, they must renounce any use, anytime, anywhere. The so-called “tactical” use of nuclear weapons is an absurdity.
We are at the highest risk in decades of a nuclear war that could start by accident or design. We need to end the threat posed by 13,000 nuclear weapons held in arsenals around the world.
At the same time, no Agenda for Peace can ignore the dangers posed by new technologies. It should include such measures as international bans on cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, and internationally agreed limits on lethal autonomous weapons systems. Human agency must be preserved at all costs.
The world's financial system shows how poor-sighted societies are through a lack of moral vision:
Let’s be clear.
When we see poverty and hunger on the rise around the world….
When developing countries are forced to pay five times more in borrowing costs than advanced economies …
When vulnerable middle-income countries are denied concessional funding and debt relief…
When the richest 1 percent have captured almost half of all new wealth over the past decade…
When people are hired and fired at will, but lack any form of social protection…
When we see all these gaping flaws and more…
Something is fundamentally wrong with our economic and financial system.
He continues:
The global financial architecture is at the heart of the problem. It should be the means through which globalization benefits all. Yet it is failing. The global financial architecture does not need a simple evolution; it needs a radical transformation.
It is time for a [...] new commitment to place the dramatic needs of developing countries at the centre of every decision and mechanism of the global financial system.
A new resolve to address the appalling inequalities and injustices laid bare once again by the pandemic and the response.
A new determination to ensure developing countries have a far greater voice in global financial institutions.
And a new debt architecture that encompasses debt relief and restructuring to vulnerable countries, including middle-income ones in need [...].
Without fundamental reforms, the richest countries and individuals will continue to pile up wealth, leaving crumbs for the communities and countries of the Global South.
Mr Guterres' desperation over the world's ignoring the threats to human survival is clear when he points to "fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits", this in a week when leading oil companies have reported record profits and a reluctance to forge ahead with renewable sources of energy. It is for that kind of reason, he says:
We must end the merciless, relentless, and senseless war on nature. It is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5-degree temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8 degrees.
Meanwhile, humanity is taking a sledgehammer to our world’s rich biodiversity – with brutal and even irreversible consequences for people and planet. Our ocean is choked by pollution, plastics and chemicals. And vampiric overconsumption is draining the lifeblood of our planet – water.
This is the year of reckoning: "No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers." The suggested immorality of the greed of managers and investors is coupled in Mr Guterres' plea with his call for the end to deceitful clean and green claims with regards products but also the heralding of what in reality are "fake carbon credits".
Respect for each other is a further moral quality that Mr Guterres deems necessary to draw to our attention. He calls on "Governments, regulators, policymakers, technology companies, the media, civil society", with the last including individuals. Our moral obligation, personal as well as civic, is this:
Stop the hate. Set up strong guardrails. Be accountable [...].
All this is familiar territory for those imbued with an understanding of the history of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where Judeo-Christian concepts of how God-given dignity of each person demands respect for their rights and freedom were carried into those documents that were meant to lay the foundation for the world society after two horrific world wars and where communism loomed as a dark cloud over eastern Europe.
In his 2015 letter Laudato Si' Pope Francis writes:
Sobriety and humility were not favourably regarded in the last century. And yet, when there is a general breakdown in the exercise of a certain virtue in personal and social life, it ends up causing a number of imbalances, including environmental ones. [...]
Once we lose our humility and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment.
It is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude god from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.
A humble attitude toward other people and our common home, an attitude arising from the knowledge of the evil in our own heart, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn pointed out, is expressed powerfully in a prayer Francis offers at the end of his letter:
A prayer for our earth
All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.
Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.
Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognise that we are profoundly united with every creature
as we journey toward your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.
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Zoom in on the Andromeda Galaxy with Hubble. What looks like a smudge of light to the unaided eye is actually a vast galaxy containing an estimated 1 trillion stars.
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) February 3, 2023
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Full HD version on Youtube: https://t.co/uE6XQiyJ5e pic.twitter.com/NXK3LBQkM1
Galaxies can contain as many as 100 trillion stars. Astronomers believe there are about 170 billion galaxies in our universe.
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| Source |
This from Bishop Robert Barron in his video sermon for last
Sunday’s gospel. He titled the video The Key to Happiness. Catch his insights on the video or by reading here.
Friends, we have one of the great passages in the New Testament today for our reading, namely, the Beatitudes, taken from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthews, the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
Beatitudo just means happiness. I don't care who you
are, what your background is, that's the one thing we all want. Everyone has
that in common. We all want beatitudo. We all want to be happy.
Well here's [Jesus, God] telling us how to be happy. So we
should pay close attention.
He says, first, “How blessed, happy … are the poor in
spirit. The reign of God is theirs.” Why is this the first beatitude? Well,
because pride's the greatest sin. What does pride say? Basically, I gotta fill
myself up to be happy. I've got to aggrandize my ego. I've got to fill myself
up with good things.
The basic spiritual principle is no, it's actually by emptying the self out that …
I become happy. It's by letting go, emptying out, living for the sake of the other.
Not filling up the cage with all sorts of things but rather giving oneself.
So being poor in spirit means – don't think of it primarily
in sort of monetary terms – it's a spiritual idea. Poor in spirit [means] the
more I give my life away the happier I become.
Next, “Blessed are the sorrowing. They will be consoled.”
I know this can sound a little odd, like is this sort of a masochistic idea or
sadistic idea…[but] the great spiritual tradition read it this way: How happy
are those who are sorrowing for their sin.
We feel bad about all kinds of things. We feel bad because
our dreams haven't come true. We feel bad because we didn't get the job we
wanted. We feel bad because this relationship fell apart. But what's the one
thing we should really feel sorrow over? Our own sins.
What do you mean? I'm okay and you're okay; I'm beautiful in
every single way. Our culture today is telling me never to be sorry about my
sins, never feel bad about myself. No, affirm myself at every turn. How's that
working out for you? Look around the culture. How's that working out for us? Affirming
ourselves at every turn, never admitting any kind of problem, to make you happy.
It makes you miserable!
The key to happiness is being sorrowful for the right thing.
Sorrowing for our sins – “they shall be consoled” the Lord says. Quite right. That's
the first step toward repentance and toward the acceptance of forgiveness. How
often do we think that the key to our beatitudo is being forgiven for
our sins? Our sins are like a great burden, our sins are like chains.
The first step in losing those chains is to be sorry for our
sins and thereby be open to forgiveness.
Third beatitude: “Blessed are the lowly. They shall inherit the land.” Again, it's so counterintuitive. Who inherits the land? The last time I checked it was powerful people, self-assertive people, those with no concern for the other. The Nietzschean Superman, the “I”, the “will to power” and “Don't get in my way. I'm the one that will inherit the earth”. Powerful nations willing to wield great weapons of destruction against their enemies. They're the ones who inherit the land.
No! says Jesus, rather the lowly. Think of it this way. Those
who have emptied themselves, forgotten about themselves, are the ones who
actually are closest to the earth. They're closest to reality. We're talking here
about humility.
Don't think of that phony humility – someone who's humble
says, “I'm not preoccupied with my own ego, how I'm doing, what impression I'm
making. Rather I forget about all that. I get that monkey off my back and I lose
myself in whatever I'm doing.
Notice, please, I'm lowly and therefore I'm close to the earth.
Humble is from the Latin hummus and humilitas. Hummus means the
ground, the earth.
When I'm preoccupied with my ego and my status, and how I'm
doing, I'm divorced from reality. But when, in the simplest way, I forget about
myself and I give myself to a book, or a person I'm talking to, or a task I
have I become happy. Isn't it true? Think about it: The best moments in life are
when you're least aware of yourself, least aware of your hang-ups and preoccupations.
How happy are the lowly. They, indeed, will inherit the land.
“Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst for holiness. They shall have their fill.” We're
hungry and thirsty for so many things, aren't we? I'm hungry for success. I'm hungry for more
power. I'm hungry for material goods. I'm physically hungry for food. I'm
hungry for attention.
Right. All these things we have – these hungry hearts, as
Bruce Springsteen said. Everyone's got a hungry heart. We're always looking for
what's going to satisfy us.
One of the most important questions to ask about yourself is
this: what are you primarily hungering for? So amidst all these different
hungers is there one that you really want? Is it success, money, power, fame?
The Lord says none of those will make you happy. They won't
give you beatitudo. Now they're not bad in themselves… but the primary thirst
of your life should not be for those things but should be for holiness.
What's holiness? Friendship with God. That's the one thing
you should want above all as you're facing a decision in life. “Hey if I decide
this it'll make me richer”. Yeah, but will it make you more of a friend of God?
“If I choose that, it's going to make me more famous, for sure.” But will it
make you a friend of God? “Boy, that's going to make everyone like me.” Yeah, I
know, but will it make you more a friend of God? That's all you should be
worried about.
So how happy are those who hunger and thirst for holiness? Listen,
they shall have their fill because every other thing you hunger for in life you
get it and it's fine, but it wears off. It goes away. It effervescences. But your hunger and thirst for holiness, friendship
with God, doesn't fade away, it intensifies.
“Blessed are they who show mercy. Mercy shall be theirs.” Mercy is hesed in the Hebrew, misericordia
in Latin. Mercy is what God is. He's
marked by tender mercy as in that beautiful translation of hesed that's
in the King James Version of the Bible – the tender mercy of God.
What is that? Well, it's compassion. Look at that word compassion
from compassio in Latin. That means to suffer; misericordia means
the pain in your heart. It's the suffering that you feel in your own heart when
you identify with the suffering of somebody else. That's what love, willing the
good of the other, looks like in this world of suffering. You enter in a
sympathetic way. Look at that word again – sympathia means to suffer
with. You enter in a sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, way into the
suffering of the world.
You know how many of us want to run from the suffering of
the world: “Take me away from that”, “Make me immune to that” “Give me
something that will drug me so I don't experience
it.”
Says the Lord: “The happier you will be if you identify in
love with the suffering of the other.” Wait, trust me everybody! Your whole
life will change if you let that sink in. If you say my task today is to, when
I see suffering, to enter sympathetically into it. That to be merciful.
“Blessed are the single-hearted for they shall see God.”
That's lovely. The single-hearted…That great
line from Kierkegaard, the philosopher, [that] the saint is someone whose life
is about one thing. That means he's a gathered person; he's involved with all
sorts of things, might have a very busy life, but all of it is centered around
one thing. It's the anchor in the rose window, around which the whole design is
arranged.
If you can't name what that is for you, you won't be happy.
If you say, “I'm a busy guy. I'm doing this and this, and [I’m] all over the place
and, boy, I'm admired and look at all that [I’m] accomplishing.” Yeah, but if there's
no anchor in your life, there isn't one thing that gathers all the things that
you do, then you'll be like the demoniac
in the gospel: “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy
us?” Right. That's a single person talking but he speaks in the splintered plural.
How blessed are the single-hearted! What's the one thing you
want amidst all the desires of your life? It should be to please God. Again it's
related to what I said earlier: If you're doing X Y and Z, but in all that am I
pleasing God? That's the one thing that matters: a single heart.
“Blessed, too, are the peacemakers. They shall be called the
children of God.” Shalom, that lovely word that echoes up and down the
scriptures. The risen Christ says it to his disciples: “Shalom, peace.” God
makes the world in a great non-violent act, not suppressing some rival power. The
crucified and risen Jesus returns not in avenging violence but in forgiving
love.
God is peace. One of the great marks of his followers is
that they are makers of peace. Not only are they peaceful themselves but they
produce peace. Try it sometime if you find yourself unhappy. How much time do
you spend in the course of the day making peace. Not just tolerating wickedness,
or not looking the other way, not walking away from it but entering mercifully into
it and making peace.
Trust me. It'll make you happy too. That's Jesus’ point.
“Blessed are those persecuted for holiness’ sake, the
reign of God is theirs.” Again, how counter-intuitive! Who wants to be
persecuted? But if you're persecuted for righteousness sake that means you're
walking the right path. We're living in a fallen world. We're living in a
compromised world. If nobody ever criticizes you, you are not in a good
spiritual space. Woe to you if all men speak well of you, says the Lord. They
treated the false prophets in just that way.
One of the great marks that you are on the right path, the
path of happiness, is that you [have to] endure persecution. Do it as a happy
warrior, not falling into resentment, but saying “Hey, that's a sign that I'm
on the path the Lord wants me to be on.”
Go to Matthew Chapter 5. Walk through these. They are the key to what we all want – beatitudo.
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Thanks to Bishop Barron for unveiling God's word for us in such a penetrating way.
Ω Another inspiring consideration of the Beatitudes can be found on the Living Space website here. These eight statements are key to being not only a good Christian, but also a human being who knows how to live one's life fully, to live abundantly. Read these principles and learn how to enjoy the adventure that is life in response to God's call to grow closer to Him.
Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.
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Anything cute brings out the women in their colourful clothing saved for this time of year so they look gorgeous in the photos that go on to fill social media. Most urban centres cater for this eruption of photo-taking by providing an array of flowers and vivid displays appropriate to the the lunar year's animal. 
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Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.
When someone tells you they are doing what they believe is right, in most cases you know the proper response is to take cover! This blog often refers to the need to have an "examined life" and regrets the superficiality of much of the reasons supporting the life or death choices —literally— thrust upon society, especially impacting the young and the old and sick, but also employees of businesses led by managers, investors or owners who believe they have no responsibility for the wider welfare of their workers and their families.Therefore, when a person argues they must follow their conscience, they also have to acknowledge that when they believe some line of thought or action is morally right, in reality, it could be completely the opposite.
Conscience is a fundamental anthropological structure in a person's essence, in our ontological constitution, that is, inherent in each person's innermost being. It pervades all cultures. None has been found in which it is not recognised as a fact or—in the present age—as a problem. It found formal recognition in ancient Greece and it has been the bone of contention with successive philosophies and understandings of the person since. Socrates spoke of his indwelling divine monitor. The Greeks gave it a name, and a definition that has stood the test of time as: The self-consciousness exercised in making moral judgements in respect to human action.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this:
Conscience is defined by its inward looking and subjective character, in the following sense: conscience is always knowledge of ourselves, or awareness of moral principles we have committed to, or assessment of ourselves, or motivation to act that comes from within us (as opposed to external impositions).
The problem over the standing of the conscience in this age is the widespread notion that a person's conscience is infallible, that there is a justifying power to a conscience's judgement so that it must be accepted by others without challenge. This would mean, in effect, that Hitler or Stalin should not be held guilty for their murderous policies, that one should expect to see them in heaven.
But most upholders of the "infallibility" view go on to admit that people should not be free to do whatever they want—murder, steal, lie—even if the "offender's" conscience had approved of the act as the right thing to do in their situation. This points to the reality of moral truth, and that we can discover this truth given the necessary deliberation.
This from the Catholic perspective (the non-inclusive language reflects the 1960s' vintage of the document):
In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor. In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of men in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals from social relationships. Hence the more right conscience holds sway, the more persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and strive to be guided by the objective norms of morality. Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for a man who cares but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sightless as a result of habitual sin. — Source: Gaudium et Spes paragraph 16
In this light, conscience is the faculty that examines what is good and evil subjectively while manifesting the objective moral law known from our own innate awareness of moral truth. Assaults on this understanding have come within the last 200 years or so from the likes of Kant, with his concept of moral obligation, and from Freud with his "superego". But such conceptions have been recognised as lacking the essential elements of the conscience. For example, the superego misses the mark because the moral conscience does not rest on finding love, or approval, rather it's often the opposite. The conscience does not look to any authority other than the values that arise from the person's own being and will have an individual stand up for some principle in the face of opposition or worse from family, employer, community or nation.
A person must deliberate on the circumstances surrounding a situation of concern to arrive at the highest possible certitude about the morality involved. Simply being personally certain about the morality relating to that situation is not a sufficient basis for action as subjective certitude marks a retreat from the search for truth. So a certain conscience can be false, can manifest error, and a false conscience can be certain, but also make an erroneous judgement.
Therefore, we come back to the idea of an examined life. It is the responsibility of each person to correctly form their conscience, having in view objective truth. A conscience is wrongly formed when the person does not care sufficiently to arrive at objective truth. A lax conscience is that which, for weak motives or to support one's own mean motives, judges something as legitimate or not serious when it is, in reality, not right and it is of a serious character.
In a paradox, while we have to accept that our moral judgement may be in error we should always follow the prompting our that distinctly human faculty. All the same, the notions that one's "conscience is infallible", that it is the "ultimate authority and cannot be appealed", are wrong because they bring us back to the principle of the justifying power of the erroneous conscience, that is, granting us licence to do whatever we desire simply because our conscience approves.
In this case, truth would be reduced to one's own truth, the subject's own satisfaction of certitude. Of course, the outcome would be that judgements of conscience within a community could contradict one another, and we know this does happen. It's clear a purely subjective judgement is not what gives conscience it's authority. In fact, the alternative to self-will in pursuing desired ends, and the poorly performed intellectual effort to inform one's conscience, is to strive to know truth, which in itself is the absolute that governs any judgement. Truth, as the absolute, is the objective standard by which to assess moral responsibility for the outcomes flowing from the judgements of conscience.
How we get to the truth is through guilt. From here, I will follow the analysis of Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, in his book On Conscience (2007). He states that guilt disturbs the false calm of conscience. It is as necessary for each person as the physical pain that signifies disturbances in normal bodily functioning. Whoever is no longer capable of perceiving guilt is spiritually ill.
We get a clear idea of how guilt renders a valuable service from scripture. Psalm 19:12-13 states, "But who can detect his own failings? Wash away my hidden faults."
Ratzinger notes that the falling silent of conscience—no longer seeing one's guilt—is an even more dangerous sickness of the soul than the guilt one still recognises. This is because guilt is signalling that the truth is at hand, whereas experiencing no shame signals being at a great distance from the truth. Our consciences accuse us, as well as give us the satisfaction of approval.
The letter of Paul to the Christians in Rome also provides us with a guiding text. It says:
So, when gentiles, not having the [Jewish] Law, still through their own innate sense behave as the Law commands, then, even though they have no Law, they are a law for themselves.
They can demonstrate the effect of the Law engraved on their hearts, to which their own conscience bears witness; since they are aware of various considerations, some of which accuse them, while others provide them with a defence . . . on the day when, according to the gospel that I preach, God, through Jesus Christ, judges all human secrets. (Rm 2:14-16 NJB)
Ratzinger takes this key text relating to the natural law that Christian teaching holds as central to understanding the moral demands humans face, as it was for the ancient Greeks, as it is in the Vedic concept of the Rita and in the immutable principles of dharma. Paul posits that pagans, even without the revelation the Jews had, knew with useful clarity what God expected of them, that there is present in the human person "the truth that is not to be repulsed". Not to see the truth about right and wrong comes about because the human will hinders recognition, giving rise to guilt.
The fact that the signal lamp does not shine is the consequence of a deliberate looking away from what we don't want to see. We have to accept the fact that the necessity to obey the truth arrived at by our study, consultation with the traditions of the community, and prayer, is of a greater priority than attaining our own preferences. In discussing the pre-eminence Socrates awarded truth, and his confidence in the human's capacity for truth, Ratzinger holds that what characterises the person as human is not that the person asks about the "can" but about the "should". All this is set against a worldview of many of the ancients, as it is again of post-modernists, that the person alone sets the standards for themselves.
It is if an original memory of the good and the true has been implanted in us, so that there is an essential tendency within each person, who is created in the image and likeness of God, toward the divine attributes of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. It's as if we have a memory of ourselves as god-like creatures in the constitution of our being, which does not mean we have a store of knowledge, but we have an inner sense, a capacity to recall, what God has given us. We hear an echo, not from outside, but from within.
Paul's experience as a missionary to those who were not Jewish illustrates the ontological depth of conscience in the human person, Ratzinger says. He continues:
[Paul's] proclamation of the message of the gospel answered an expectation. [His] proclamation encountered an antecedent basic knowledge of the essential constants of the will of God ... which can be more elucidated the less an overbearing cultural bias distorts this primordial knowledge.
Augustine, too, had noted that the sense for the good has been stamped upon us—that we could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us.
The neglect of both the ontological level of conscience and the centrality of the search for the objective truth led eventually to the scourge of the prevailing relativism, which arose from the Enlightenment's fallacies, the autonomy of the subject and the absolute claims of reason, having reduced reason to empirical or quantitative rationality. These two closely related perversions of the notion of conscience leave a large part of society floundering in uncritical conformity to convention.
That pervasive subjectivity reduces morality to personal preference, something ultimately irrational. Ratzinger finds that in such a relativistic context, in a world without "fixed measuring points" there is no direction, and "no one can be of much help to the other, much less prescribe behaviour to him".
"It is never wrong to follow the convictions [of conscience] one has arrived at—in fact, one must do so," Ratzinger states. But those convictions can be wrong because the person has "stifled the protest" of the memory of good and evil in their being, because of "the neglect of my being that made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth."Taken in isolation, each of the four leave questions unanswered. But when they are taken in combination, the path of moral knowledge opens up before us. The formation of conscience demands attention to all four.
Adherence to a set of moral standards is of little importance in many societies globally. Uppermost among the causes for this is the pervasive permissive culture, " that does not recognise anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists of one's own ego and desires." We see the "dictatorship of relativism" and "the right to choose" giving little acknowledgement to the norms, values and lifestyles of the civilisation that made possible the world of today.
An inner apostasy against tradition has occurred in the hearts of cultural leaders and ordinary people alike. That has extended to alienation from objective truth and from God. Ratzinger draws a disturbing conclusion:
Whether a person is able to attribute reason to being and to decipher its moral message depends on whether he answers the question about God. If the Logos of the beginning does not exist, neither can there be any Logos in things...When there is no God there is no morality and, in fact, no mankind either.
In the formation of conscience the word of God is the light for our path (see Psalm 119). Prayer and openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit are essential if we are to cultivate a heart sensitive to the movements within our conscience.
Cultivation of familiarity with the inner voice of conscience is a lifelong endeavour. First, the family circle has to be the setting for the development of human virtues, which govern our actions, order our passions and guide our conduct. There the child's effort to overcome selfishness and pride, human weakness and faults, and feelings of complacency, can be supported. The adult continues to work on their own life of virtue:
Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Paul to the Philippians 4:8)
Ignorance that affects right judgement can be blameworthy or not. When a person takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or is blinded by bad habits or self-centred lifestyle, that person is guilty over the wrong action or omission, even though the action was taken in the belief that their conscience approved of it.
Again, a person must not be forced to act contrary to their conscience. This is a hot issue today in the fields of healthcare, education, government, and business practice. Nor must a person be prevented from acting according to their conscience, except when the exercise of their conscience offends against one of these three rules:
💢 One never do evil so that good may result from it;
💢 The Golden Rule: Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do so to them;
💢 Charity always proceeds by way of respect for one's neighbour, and of care for their conscience so that we do not prompt the neighbour to stumble into evil.
Therefore, this post will conclude by stressing the importance of our giving deliberate attention to forming our conscience well, and conversely, by accepting that though we must always follow our conscience in doing what what we believe is right and true, and in rejecting what is morally wrong, our conscience may direct us on a path that is morally erroneous. Our conscience is not infallible, but with effort involving our whole lifestyle and our process of reasoning, we can turn aside from what is blinding us and grow in right judgement of moral conduct.
𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶
This post is indebted to the author of the work below in that much of the text here is from that book.
A Reflection on Ratzinger's Analysis on the Infallibility of Conscience by Thierry M NDime, Bambui, Cameroon, 2017. Published on Amazon, Kindle edition, 2022.
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