With the recent beatification of John Henry Newman in England, I've been reading a number of articles that highlight his writings and thoughts. These articles, unsurprisingly, have been most predominant in an English Catholic publication called The Tablet, which I personally find to be the best Catholic weekly published in English.
The part of Newman's thought that is probably most relevant today has to do with this strange piece in our makeup called our conscience; "...a certain commanding dictate, not a mere sentiment, not a mere opinion, or impression or view of things, but a law, an authoritative voice, bidding him do certain things and avoid others ... I am insisting ... that it commands, that it praises, it blames, it promises, it threatens, it implies a future, and it witnesses the unseen." Pretty well put, I should think. He says that conscience is a person's own best self. Someone "has no power over it, or only with extreme difficulty; he did not make it, he cannot destroy it."
Vatican II and subsequent church documents likewise say that the conscience is a person's "most secret core and sanctuary ... There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths". (Try to see beyond the "he" and "him" parts of these quotations.)
One might easily mistake this notion of personalism (the firm bedrock of a person's faith on that conscience-bound, intimate relationship with God) with the notion of individualism (the more arbitrary principle that a person should be free to decide whatever he/she wishes). The current pope, in a talk before he became pope, wrote: "Precisely because Newman interpreted the existence of the human being from conscience, that is, from the relationship between God and the soul, was it clear that this personalism is not individualism, and that being bound by conscience does not mean being free to make random choices - the exact opposite is the case."
So conscience is that which drives us to be bound to the truth that lies inside, outside, and around us; the truth that really should shape the substance of who we are. As William O'Malley, SJ, said in a workshop to our religion teachers many years ago, "I try to teach my students that the tree comes to me. I don't tell the tree what it is. I let it tell me what it is." And when you think about it, that's the case also for most everything else. But there's that little thing called the ego that sort of gets in the way.
So perhaps it makes good sense that the Founder advised his Brothers not to get too involved in the religious controversies of the day, but rather to know what the church was teaching and to follow that. This may not be popular in contemporary culture, but I now see it as a pretty good bet, all things considered. Today we would say that he urged them to have an "informed conscience", based on the accumulated insight and experience of the church and the Holy Spirit active within it.
Now I know that in recent times the church hasn't enjoyed much positive press, but in a sense it was ever thus. God knows (literally) how the church as an organization has survived longer than any other human institution in history. That's got to say something, along with the fact that there is no army or police force or similar "worldly" means for exerting its authority, although other dynamics are in play. But that's another topic for another day.
All I know right now is that if conscience is as key to human integrity as others say, then it's pretty clear that one should pay attention to its care and feeding. Reading, reflection, prayer, relationships, and the like all play a part, if we want our best selves to take the lead. Real life takes work, especially the life of the soul.
We have to water that tree. (I took the above picture yesterday, as I was walking. Now I know why.)
