We paid our rent with the second category of lighter grains. In other words, we were dishonest and we cheated. At that time, I thought it was clever because we paid the rent cunningly. It was rice with a lot more husks. Just recalling what we had done, I feel ashamed even to share this.
Today, the first reading and the Gospel touch on the area which we are familiar with—conscience or maybe the lack of it. Many of us act as if our conscience were fully formed. And we commonly identify a clear conscience with good feelings.
Our therapeutic society—where we have a pill for every ill—makes conscience a difficult subject to deal with. Why? Firstly, we just want to feel good. It explains why we turn to drugs, stimulants, alcohol, sex, food or entertainment. We are gluttons for endorphin rushes. Secondly, since feeling high is an important criterion, it follows that nobody likes to be judged. Those of us who are employers will testify to how much more sensitive our younger employees are when they are “corrected”.
From these two—feeling good and not wanting to be judged, we generally take a respectful distance so that we do not come across as judgmental. Thus, the famous “who am I to judge?” of Pope Francis.
Our so-called informed society values integrity and it frowns upon a person who preaches one thing but behaves contrary to what he affirms. In short, a person who does not walk his talk has no right to pontificate. Imagine a man who has mistresses stashed away in different condo units in the city, telling his son who is about to be married how to be a good husband to his soon to be wife. The normal response, if the son has a sense of right and wrong, would be “Yeah, right! That’s rich coming from a serial adulteror”.
In this age of accountability, this credibility gap or deficit is merely a proof, not excuse, of who we are—fallen human being. Many of us are hypocrites—Cakap tak serupa bikin. In the noble quest of endorsing integrity or trustworthiness, what we may miss out is that inauthentic behaviour does not invalidate the reality of an objective moral content for an action. For example, the adulterous father may be an unfaithful husband but his advice remains good and true. Thus, conscience is dependent on what is objectively true. Something is wrong because it is objectively wrong and not because I am virtuous and therefore I have the moral high ground to label it as wrong. Of the self-righteous Pharisees, Jesus Himself told the disciples: “Do what they tell you but do not follow what they do”. If “virtuousity” is the measure of morality, then good or bad becomes relative.
Hence, not judging does not make for good ethics and conscience. Instead, it lowers our accountability and to wait until we are “credible enough” to judge, it will not be long before we sink into the morass of immorality. In other words, when we defer due to our inauthenticity, basically, our poor moral sense has become the subjective measure for behaviour. It is a form of relativism. When nobody dares to “judge” for fear of being called a hypocrite, we have, in effect, become the hypocrites we fear to be.
One may be a hypocrite but still recognises an objective moral truth. Our so-called hypocrisy actually gets us to the heart of the matter. It is true that the blind cannot lead the blind. And for those who set themselves up as the arbitrator of good behaviour, it is crucial that they should not have skeletons in the closet. All these criteria are good but they are not even close to the heart of the matter, that is, the formation of a good conscience.
The Catechism says that our conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings. (CCC1783)
The claim that one’s conscience is clear is based on the consideration that it is well formed and also enlightened. It means diligence on our part and not just being content with “feeling good”. For example, if one were to measure conscience by “clarity”, a murderer can kill and still believes he has a clear conscience. Our immediate reaction will be “there must be something wrong with his clear conscience”. This aversion is proof that conscience is not a subjective matter but that its referent is objective and that one’s action should be measured against it.
But, sadly, at the present, the Church finds herself “defensive” in the sense that her moral credibility has been weakened by the sins and failures of her children. If anything, this failure is an opportunity for us to clarify and form our conscience, aware that the failure of the members is not the failure of the Church—for she alone, in her magisterium, has the guarantee of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of faith and morals. As we realise, we are really not the best interpreters of what is right and wrong. Left to ourselves, our conscience can be erroneous. But, we are not entirely lost because we can look to the saints—they are the magisterium or conscience in blood, sweat and tears. They walked the path of conscience with no hesitation. In desiring to form our conscience it helps to look to those who have succeeded. The challenge is we possibly know St Faustina (for Divine Mercy), St Francis Assisi (he is famous) or St John (because we celebrate his beheading). Ask a youth if she knows who St Simon Stylite and you probably get a blank stare. Or St Joseph Moscati? If the Church moral teachings are our theory, then the saint are our practice.
Without the saints, the only witnesses we have are Christians behaving badly. Our individual and collective failures do make a mockery of the Church’s moral teaching and without it what remains is for people to “follow their conscience” which usually translates as a freedom of or right to self-expression—in short, a justification to do what we feel or want. To be fair, the Church herself does say “follow your conscience” because she knows that if you truly listen to God in your conscience, then what you hear will be no different from what she teaches, for the Church teaches only what God has revealed to her. There is no conflict between following your conscience and following the Church.
Unfortunately, many of us buy into this notion that everyone should know the moral injunction to do good and to avoid evil. It is true that we all know because the Prophet Jeremiah tells us that God will put His law in our minds and inscribed it on our hearts. What we may fail to understand is that the human heart has been perverted by Original Sin.—a condition St Paul described as “I do what I should not and I do not do what I should”. This perversion highlights how crucial the Church is to the shaping of the human heart.
Finally, forming our conscience is not a once and for all process—that one will have a formed conscience and it is enough. Firstly, it requires an adequate and accurate understanding of what the Church teaches. Secondly, the process is life long and like a child learning how to walk, small acts of choosing good and avoiding evil become the bricks in the building up of our conscience. Do not wait until the future but begin now with small steps and soon your conscience will be your habit, a second nature in choosing good and avoiding evil.
