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When Pope Benedict visited Britain in September of 2010 and spoke to politicians in Westminster Hall, he pondered government’s power to compel its citizens against their consciences. Recalling St. Thomas More, the patron of statesmen and politicians, he said: “Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved?”
The answer for him and for us is God’s authority, obeyed and exercised in us by our conscience.
Our conscience, according to Pope Benedict, St. Thomas More, and Catholic teaching, operates according to reason informed by and conformed with the wisdom of God. As Marc D. Guerra writes in his article, Thomas More’s Correspondence on Conscience, “. . . [I]n contrast to the modern claim that the individual can create his own moral values, More saw the ‘formation of conscience’ as ‘the fruit’ of an education ‘in the truth.’ Far from being the arbitrator and creator of its own moral order, the human conscience is in need of conforming to the truth. For More, the formation of conscience is the result of a long process in which one discovers a preexisting created moral order. . .” In short, our conscience doesn’t determine moral truth for us; it discovers God’s moral truth, and strives to make right judgments accordingly. We look to God to see what it means to be human, what it means to be good, what it means to be married, what it means to be parents, what it means to be responsible.
They also include pending NJ state legislation that will legalize and equate same-sex marriages with traditional marriage, and actions here and in other states that will penalize religious charities and organizations, including health-care, educational and adoption agencies that maintain opposition to same-sex marriage, contraception, sterilization and abortion on moral grounds. In addition, some in the NJ Legislature are working toward the suspension of the statute of limitations for civil cases involving sex abuse, which might be arguable if it were to be applied equally to all public entities and all denominations, agencies and institutions, and not, ultimately, to Church alone. For St. Thomas More, acting in good conscience brought him into conflict with the political power of his day and demanded the sacrifice of his life. As it becomes more and more difficult to practice faithful citizenship, may we exercise our freedoms and rights, and make choices and decisions, with the courage and conscience of Sincerely, Fr. Paul
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