An informed conscience

SIR, I read Cait Ni Chartaigh’s letter (The Kerryman April 11) on the Catholic Church’s teaching on conscience with sheer amazement. I think her article is poorly informed, and could mislead conscientious Catholics with regard to how to vote in the upcoming referendum.

To follow one’s conscience when making decisions of a moral and ethical nature is, the Church teaches, indeed paramount. But that’s only part of the story. To follow one’s conscience is one thing, to inform one’s conscience may be an altogether different thing. In other words, one’s subjective conscience can be wrong and can therefore lead one away from the right way of acting.

But where does one go to inform one’s conscience? The Catholic Church’s position is as follows: a mature conscience is first of all, an informed conscience. And being a mature and informed conscience it imparts the ability of the individual to make up one’s mind for oneself about what one ought to do or ought not to do.

The crucial point here – and it’s the point that Ni Chartaigh appears not unaware of – is that the criterion for a mature and informed conscience says ‘for oneself’, not ‘by oneself’. That is to say, a mature conscience is always open to an ongoing dialogue with other sources or authorities of moral wisdom. For a Catholic that means an openness to, and honest engagement with, the teaching authority/tradition of the Church. To dismiss such a source would be to succumb to what has become one of the pathologies of our time: namely the idea that there is no such thing as any other kind of authority other than my own authority.

To conclude, to follow one’s conscience is paramount in the Catholic tradition but this conscience has to be informed; and an informed conscience is never done in isolation. Rather Catholic teaching favours relying on the accumulated wisdom which the Church, with her teaching authority articulates. A denial of this is simply misleading and fake. Do not fall for it. Sincerely,

Philip Cremin, Scrahan, Knocknagree.