Debates about primacy of conscience show the need for truth and freedom

At the core of the debate is the understanding of how Catholics find God’s authoritative guidance for their conscience within the church. This takes us into the language and structure of Catholic theology and illuminates national issues, particularly the relationship between government and its citizens.

Archbishop Pell uses the image of God revealing previously unknown knowledge. “Christ is the son of God who came to redeem and save us and explain to us the secrets of this life and the next. His teaching has a unique authority. We regard it as divinely revealed rather than simply the work of human intelligence.” This image of revelation naturally leads to explanation of how God’s revelation is communicated and preserved intact. The apostles and teachers of the church are entrusted with these tasks, and so to them Catholics should look first for guidance about how they are to live their lives. In this image of revelation, the part played by human beings is relatively passive.

I believe that in Judaeo-Christian tradition, the image of relationship offers a more seminal account of God’s dealings with human beings than does the image of revelation. It suggests that God invites human beings into a loving relationship that shapes them into a community. For Christians, Christ is present within the community, and his guidance for their lives is found through a variety of conversations, including prayer, worship, shared reflection, engagement with their world and culture, and formal teaching. In accepting the authority of God and of Jesus Christ, therefore, Christians commit themselves to this varied conversation.

In the conversations that shape the Catholic Church, there are many authorities. Among them are the assurance of prayer, the lives of good Christians, the consensus among committed companions, good theological reflection, and informal and formal teaching. The overarching authorities, of course, are the teachers of the church, the bishops with the Bishop of Rome at their head, who guide this varied conversation and declare authoritatively on occasion what faith and church life demand.

The complex and delicate structure of Catholic conversation is protected by many slogans. The authoritative character of teaching is enshrined in such phrases as the church is not a democracy, and Rome has spoken. The participatory nature of conversation is protected by axioms that stress the importance of the sense of the faithful, of the reception of doctrine, and of the connection between prayer and teaching.

To be a Catholic, then, entails seeking Christ’s authoritative guidance in the structured conversation that shapes the life of the church. It would be inconsistent to appeal to the primacy of conscience in order to dismiss in principle the claims made within that conversation whenever they conflicted with our interests or prejudices. That would be to accept a claim with one breath while denying it with the next. Where the appeal to the primacy of conscience entails that self-contradiction, Archbishop Pell is right to reject it.

But I know of few Catholics who dismiss in principle the claims entailed in their membership of the church. Many, however, find it hard to accept all the claims made in conversation, particularly the conversation involved in teaching at its different levels.

Catholics, for example, who have a practical decision to make about methods of family planning or about receiving the Eucharist in a Reformed church, often have some idea of the church position and of the reasons supporting it. But many, reflecting on the circumstances of their own lives, do not find church teaching compelling enough to outweigh other reasons. In terms of my previous analysis, they do not recognise church teaching as true when they make their decision. But they do not withdraw from the various forms of conversation, including that involved in teaching, and remain open to persuasion.

In cases of this kind, any implicit pressure to choose between truth and conscience is too brutal. Each case needs to be judged on its merits, and for this task subtle and close tools of analysis have been developed within Catholic discussion. They touch such questions as the centrality of particular teaching in Christian faith, the different levels of authority of church statements, how the teaching has been received, and the conditions under which teaching becomes authoritative and under which its authority may be known with certainty.

The complexity of these questions suggests that to take due account of Catholic teaching in the formation of conscience is not always a simple matter. It suggests, also, that unanimity and harmony flourish when the various conversations that shape Catholic life are aligned, with the result that there is a clear and transparent relationship between the conclusions drawn in prayer, shared reflection, and informal and formal teaching.

Historically, in periods when these conversations have not been aligned, there has been conflict and uncertainty. So the conflict today should not be surprising, particularly given that the methods by which the teaching authority tries to align the conversations within the church are themselves at issue. This discord does not weaken the claims to truth, but it does argue the need for time, patience and mutual respect—the conditions under which truth is refined and recognised. Slogans and pressure to conform narrow that necessary space.

Where truth is in dispute, open conversation is needed. Truth requires freedom both to be recognised and to be credible. It is as counter-productive to withdraw topics like women’s ordination and contraception from public conversation as it was for communist regimes to ban advocacy of political systems different from their own. In any conversation where only one side may be argued, we instinctively assume that those who publicly defend the official position are motivated by ideology and not by an interest in truth. The outlawed position is then assumed to be true, and wins by default.

The debate about conscience plays out, in Roman Catholic terms, the issues that face Australia as a nation, and particularly the relationship between the government and citizens in the conduct of national policy. The common insistence among Catholics that truth has primacy is important, for after Tampa and Iraq it needs to be said that decisions about war and refugees are moral decisions in which truth and reality matter. Truth is not to be manufactured as expedient. The debate also asks how authorities should relate to their people in times of uncertainty. It is natural for governments to assume that they and their chosen know the secret truth about war and public affairs, and so to impose their view by abuse, ridicule, the stacking of committees with like-minded people, and the suppression of informed conversation. The necessary space for conversation shrinks and the citizens become alienated. Against that construction of government stands the importance of a varied national conversation that is motivated by a desire to establish the truth and to act upon it.

To enable that kind of conversation, it is important to defend the primacy of conscience over coercion, to defend within conscience the primacy of truth over will, and within the search for truth, the primacy of freedom over closure.