On Primacy of Conscience, Certain Conscience Judgments, and Acting in Good Faith

[[Sister Laurel, Do you think Nancy Pelosi can act out of primacy of conscience if her conscience is not well-formed? Abp Cordileone said that Pelosi needed to form her conscience further. If that is true how can she claim primacy of conscience?]]

Thanks for the question. It is not that I believe Rep Pelosi can act out of primacy of conscience; the Church teaches and I accept completely that she must act in this way and she must do so no matter the degree of formation and information that conscience has been given or achieved up to this point. To fail to act according to one's certain conscience judgment is always a sin because it means acting against the voice of God as one has discerned it in a given instance. (Note that this means one must follow one's conscience even when one is mistaken in one's prudential judgment!!) Conscience is absolutely sacrosanct. There we are alone with God. No one else can enter here, no authority, no institution, and no one can tell us what we must decide. In coming to what is called a "certain conscience judgment" we discern all of the values and disvalues present in the situation and preference these. Additionally, we pray, consider seriously what the Church and other authorities have to say which may and must be brought to bear on the situation. Even so, ultimately, the analysis, listening, discernment and deciding are our responsibility. Only we and God can know whether we act in good faith or not.

The point I made in my prior post is that one may, in fact, err in one's conscience judgment and still act in what we call "good faith". (The reference to a "certain" conscience judgment refers to the fact that one has discerned how God requires one to act at this given moment, not to the inerrancy of the judgment one has come to.)  If Nancy Pelosi, for instance, were to try to come to a certain conscience judgment and in the process decide she had not taken sufficient care in forming or informing her conscience up to this point, the certain conscience judgment she could come to would involve recognizing she was not ready to make a decision in the matter and would impel her to greater formation/information. Ideally one's conscience judgment is both certain AND correct, but a conscience judgment can be "certain" without being correct so long as one acts in good faith.

It is important to realize that our consciences can always be better formed and informed. We can only decide and act as we are able at any given time. And we must act in terms of the conscience we have! It is therefore also important to understand that even if we are in error or our prudential conscience decision runs counter to Church teaching the Church herself still teaches we are obliged to follow our conscience. Both Aquinas and Innocent III wrote on this matter. Aquinas taught that if one's conscience required one disagree with the Church in any specific situation, then one must follow one's conscience even if it meant following it humbly right out of the Church due to excommunication, etc. Again, while one must continue throughout one's life to think, pray, and generally continue to form and inform one's conscience, when the time comes to decide, one must do so and act on the certain conscience judgment one comes to. This is part of the process of further forming one's conscience -- something that truly happens only as we learn to discern, prioritize, and preference the values and disvalues present in any given situation.

One misunderstanding regarding the formation and information of a conscience is that one's conscience judgment must comport with Church teaching or one has not got a well-formed conscience. I have heard this objection a lot, and it may be that Abp Cordileone was implying this when asked about Nancy Pelosi's conscience; here he replied she needed to [continue to] better form her conscience. During Vatican II a minority of Church Fathers sought to codify this position in the documents of the Council. The majority  of Fathers rejected this as counter Church tradition, which, they asserted, had already been well-represented in the documents and Tradition. Because we make conscience judgments in the presence of unique circumstances and competing values and disvalues which may be preferenced in different ways, no one but the person themselves can truly say that the person's conscience was badly formed nor that their conscience judgments were wrong. Again, no one can second guess us in this. Primacy of conscience is still the absolute requirement. As soon-to-be Cardinal Robert McElroy (San Diego) said recently: [[We (Bishops, the Institutional Church) are not replacing the consciences of our people. We are trying to help them as men and women [to] exercise those consciences in the political sphere.]]

Here too then, is one place where the recognition that "we are (all of us baptized) Church" becomes absolutely critical. The Institutional Church does not and in fact cannot pronounce on the "right thing" to do in every situation except in the abstract. She can pronounce on what is intrinsically evil and on the gravity of certain actions and, of course, we take such pronouncements very seriously indeed. Still, it takes a person of faith on the ground to discern the situation with all its values and disvalues, apply Church teaching as best we can, and then decide in light of one's own communion with God and wisdom how one is called to decide and behave in any specific situation. We bring the wisdom of the Church and the compassion and justice/mercy of God into specific situations where the institutional Church will never go otherwise. The capacity to do this, the ability to reason morally in complex and demanding situations with competing values and disvalues, is what moralists and Catholic Tradition mean by having a well-formed conscience. 

Here again it is important to restate that while the ideal conscience judgment is both certain and correct, one can come to a certain conscience judgment and be in error. This does not necessarily mean one has a badly formed conscience or was careless in exercising prudential conscience judgment. And neither does it relieve a person from the obligation of primacy of conscience and all that entails. Primacy of conscience does not mean "do whatever you want and justify it in the name of conscience"! Primacy of conscience means that what must always come first and cannot be questioned by those outside us are the judgments we come to as we sincerely, carefully, faithfully, and intelligently attend to the voice of God in our heart of hearts. 

Given all of this, I will say I have seen no evidence that Nancy Pelosi is not continuing to inform and form her own conscience in a way that allows her to make good faith conscience judgments for which she should be disciplined in such a highly public and political situation. Neither do I see evidence that her conscience needs to be better formed any more than is necessary for any intelligent person with a developed capacity to reason morally in a complex and changing situation. My sense is Pelosi opposes abortion and she opposes foisting that Catholic position on others. She has discerned and preferenced the values (life, freedom of choice or from coercion, etc) and disvalues (the impacts of carrying the fruit of incest or rape, forcing a choice, the death of the child, etc) and decided as she has after significant consultation, reflection, and prayer. Given the sincerity of her faith and the depth of what Archbishop Cordileone called her maternal sensibilities, I have to believe she holds her positions in the matter "in good faith". She is required, therefore, to act according to those certain prudential conscience judgments. To do otherwise is, without any doubt whatsoever, to sin against God, and to do so directly and (likely) gravely.