"Our personal conscience is supreme"

Lots of people believe those words, of course, so they are hardly news. Sadly, this lamentable bit of philosophical nonsense is part of the message of one Father Maurice G. McNeely, who is described in this press release as

a retired Catholic priest who has written a refreshingly honest book titled Catholicism Without the Guilt to address the inordinate amount of guilt, worry, and fear that he has witnessed for almost half a century in practitioners of the Roman Catholic faith. The result, he says, of what was taught in Catechism, religious education instruction, parochial school, or in the home continues to negatively impact the lives of so many. "I think that many of the clergy," Father McNeely writes, "and even our parents thought it was a good thing for us to have guilt. They were going to get us to heaven if they had to send us to hell to do it. That kind of argument just doesn't make sense, but we were too afraid to question such things."

My first thought is: Look out, Joel Osteen! My second thought: Look out, readers of Father McNeely's book! What constitutes an "inordinate amount of guilt, worry, and fear" among Catholics? And, really, how many Catholics are being weighed down by lengthy sermons and catechetical classes that unrelentingly talk about guilt, sin, fear, punishment, judgment, etc.? My guess: very few. The press release does contain a few more clues about where Father McNeely is coming from:

Questioning is what Catholicism without the Guilt is all about. It is Father McNeely's response to the requests for answers that he has received from his parishioners over the many years of his priesthood. Through his book Father McNeely addresses all sorts of issues facing the a Roman Catholic today, even those that might be considered "taboo." He speaks about other belief systems; about sex and sexuality; marriage and divorce; gambling, alcohol, and the use of profanity. His book is also a clearly written, loving effort to bring about a greater understanding of Catholicism and its sacraments.

"I love the Catholic faith with all my heart and soul," Father McNeely says, "and I would never intend any disrespect toward it. I hope Catholicism without the Guilt will reinforce the idea of God's unconditional love for each of us and to let us know that we can always question the Catholic faith without any form of retribution, that our personal conscience is supreme, and that we should feel free to follow it."

Questioning is one thing—and it is always a good thing when done with a sincere and humble desire to know the truth—but baldly stating error is another thing. So the Catechism does say, "A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience." But it then states:

If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed. This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin." In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct. (CCC 1790-92)

There are many who would simply say, in light of this, that such notions are simply the opinions of the Church, so don't bother trying to stuff them down my throat. But there is a basic, logical problem with saying that  "our personal conscience is supreme," namely, that it inevitably leads to the conflict of different consciences and ultimately undermines any basis for common morality, thus leading to the erosion of the basic moral beliefs upon which society is built. In the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, from the newly published work, On Conscience:

It is, of couse, undisputed that one must follow a certain conscience, or at least not act against it. But whether the judgment of conscience, or what one takes to be such, is always right—indeed, whether it is infallible—is another question. For if this were the case, it would mean that there is no truth—at least not in moral and religious matters, which is to say, in the areas that constitute the very pillars of our existence. Thus there could be, at best, the subject's own truth, which would be reduced to the subject's sincerity. No door or window would lead from the subject into the broader world of being and human solidarity. (p 12)

Now, some readers might wonder: should I read Father McNeely's book or Cardinal Ratzinger's book? It is not, of course, my place to tell you what to do. I'll leave that decision to your properly formed conscience.

Comments

[Jennifer F.]

This reminds me of the quote one of your readers recently posted from Anthony Esolen, referring to "our lazy relativist world, wherein every man creates his own moral order (that is, until he suspects he has been overcharged by his auto mechanic)."

The whole "Catholic guilt" shtick just doesn't resonate with me at all. After a life as an atheist, I've found Catholic teaching to be the most liberating message I've ever heard. It seems like it's not so much the guilt that really gets people, but the message that there is clear right and wrong. Of course you're going to feel bad if you do something that's wrong. One solution is to stop doing wrong. Another (a la Osteen, McNeely, et al) is to just tell yourself that what you were doing wasn't really wrong in the first place. The latter is much easier.

[Rick]

A logical conclusion to this is “non serviam”, I will not serve. Such a remark was uttered by the likes of Satan, Adam and the certain Protestant Reformers; it places the primacy of one’s conscience over God and the Church. Ultimately, if conscience is supreme then man has made a choice to be as a god.

Its strict logical form is seen in Kant’s philosophy. Etienne Gilson says of Kant, "Having refused to hold metaphysical conclusions on metaphysical grounds, Kant had been necessarily dragged from metaphysics to ethics, and from ethics to theology." Then, he states that since young Kant thought he had proved that we know nothing about God, the older Kant was beginning to think that he might be God. Gilson quotes Kant from notes published as his Opus Posthumum (published in 1920), "God is not a being outside me, but merely a thought in me. God is the morally practical self-legislative reason. Therefore, only a God in me, about me, and over me. Kant adds, "God can only be sought in us" and "There is a being in me which, though distant from me, stands to me in relations of causal efficacy, and which, itself free, i.e., not dependent upon the law of nature in space and time, inwardly directs me (justifies or condemns), and I, as man, am myself this Being. It is not a substance outside me; and what is strangest of all, the causality is a determination to action in freedom, and not as a necessity of nature. Gilson states, "Philosopher's who have been misled by the lure of positive science always end their lives in a queer world-that is a punishment for their mistake; but it never occurs to them that is their philosophy that is queer-that is a reward for their honesty. From Kant's thought flows the supremacy of the will, and moving from Fichte to Schelling and concluding in Hegel, Gilson writes that reason is confined to the "sphere of pure science" and philosophy is "enslaved to the blind tyranny of the will." (Unity of the Philosophical Experience).

Only the blind tyranny of the human will can hold conscience to be supreme. When the will is cut away from the intellect, it loses sight of the one, the true and the good and thus God. Thus, man is left to no other choice than to become his own god. Hitler and the ubermensch of Nazi Germany are a prime example of this tyranny. Void of any true sense of guilt, humans will hide in their shame, but will then find new ways to unleash the unconscious anger stemming from that shame upon other humans.

[Cristina A. Montes]

Isn't a reasonable level of guilt healthy? Isn't it that one symptom of being a sociopath or a psychopath is the incapacity to feel guilty about one's actions?

[JCP]

Sometimes,or should I say most of the time, guilt is nothing more than a healthy sense of right and wrong.

[cranky]

Fr. McNeely's concerns about guilt hearken back to '60's humanistic psychology where "You do your thing,and I do my thing..." No objective moral guilt was allowed for there was no objective right or wrong.

Guilty feelings signaled only you were falling short of being the "fully functioning person" you were meant to be. Remember Perls? Maslow? Carl Rogers? Nude therapy at Big Sur?

I'm with Jennifer. There is a right and wrong and of course I will feel bad (guilty) when I do wrong. I'm supposed to feel guilty. Then I'm supposed to change what I was doing. If I'm not sure it was wrong--likely story--check the Catechism. It all becomes so simple when I shuffle together Grace and Catechism--and stay way far away from Fr McNeely's poison.