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In the Heart of the Church |
Free Will, Conscience, and Moral Choice: What Catholics Believe
Archbishop George H. Niederauer
January 13, 2010
In a recent interview with Eleanor Clift in Newsweek magazine (Dec.
21, 2009), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about her
disagreements with the United States Catholic bishops concerning
Church teaching. Speaker Pelosi replied, in part: “I practically
mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to
believe is consistent with what I profess, and that we are all
endowed with a free will and a responsibility to answer for our
actions. And that women should have the opportunity to exercise
their free will.”
Embodied in that statement are some fundamental misconceptions about
Catholic teaching on human freedom. These misconceptions are
widespread both within the Catholic community and beyond. For this
reason I believe it is important for me as Archbishop of San
Francisco to make clear what the Catholic Church teaches about free
will, conscience, and moral choice.
Catholic teaching on free will recognizes that God has given men and
women the capacity to choose good or evil in their lives. The
bishops at the Second Vatican Council declared that the human
person, endowed with freedom, is “an outstanding manifestation of
the divine image.” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 17) As the parable of the
Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov,
makes so beautifully clear, God did not want humanity to be mere
automatons, but to have the dignity of freedom, even recognizing
that with that freedom comes the cost of many evil choices.
However, human freedom does not legitimate bad moral choices, nor
does it justify a stance that all moral choices are good if they are
free: “The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do
everything.” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1740)
Christian belief in human freedom recognizes that we are called but
not compelled by God to choose constantly the values of the
Gospel—faith, hope, love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, integrity and
compassion.
It is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching to conclude that
our freedom of will justifies choices that are radically contrary to
the Gospel—racism, infidelity, abortion, theft. Freedom of will is
the capacity to act with moral responsibility; it is not the ability
to determine arbitrarily what constitutes moral right.
What, then, is to guide the children of God in the use of their
freedom? Again, the bishops at the Council provide the
answer—conscience: “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law
which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its
voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid
evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment . . . . For man has in
his heart a law inscribed by God . . . . His conscience is man’s
most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose
voice echoes in his depths.” (GS, No. 16) Conscience, then, is the
judgment of reason whereby the human person, guided by God’s grace,
recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act. In all we say and
do, we are obliged to follow faithfully what we know to be just and
right.
How do we form and guide our consciences? While the Church teaches
that each of us is called to judge and direct his or her own
actions, it also teaches that, like any good judge, each conscience
masters the law and listens to expert testimony about the law. This
process is called the education and formation of conscience.
Catholics believe that “the education of conscience is a lifelong
task.” (CCC, No. 1784) Where do we go for this education of our
consciences? Our living tradition teaches us that “In the formation
of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path; we must
assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. We must
also examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross. We are assisted
by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of
others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church.” (CCC,
No. 1785)
Our Catholic beliefs about free will, conscience and moral choice
are rooted in the Good News of Jesus Christ’s teaching and his
redemptive life, death and resurrection: “For freedom Christ has set
us free” (Gal. 5:1); “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom” (2Cor. 3:17); we glory “in the liberty of the children of
God.” (Rom. 8:17). Common caricatures of Christian morality portray
believers as living in fear of punishment or concerned only with an
eternal reward. Long ago, however, St. Basil the Great, a
fourth-century bishop and theologian, taught that the Christian, in
living a moral life according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “does
not stand before God as a slave in servile fear, nor a mercenary
looking for wages, but obeys for the sake of the good itself and out
of love for God as his child.” (CCC, No. 1828)
As participants in the life of the civil community, we Catholic
citizens try to follow our consciences, guided, as described above,
by reason and the grace of God. While we deeply respect the freedom
of our fellow citizens, we nevertheless are profoundly convinced
that free will cannot be cited as justification for society to allow
moral choices that strike at the most fundamental rights of others.
Such a choice is abortion, which constitutes the taking of innocent
human life, and cannot be justified by any Catholic notion of
freedom. Because of these convictions we commit ourselves to a
continuing witness to, and dialogue about, the Gospel values that
underlie our understanding of freedom, conscience, and moral choice.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
