This is the seventh part of a series on the true nature of human freedom, as explained in the encyclical letter Libertas of Pope Leo XIII.
The first part discussed man’s natural liberty, by which he is free to choose how he will act. The second part examined moral liberty, by which man freely acts in accordance with his own nature. The third part explored the ways in which God assists us, so that we might attain moral liberty. The fourth part explained how just laws made by the state can help man to attain true liberty. The fifth part examined the nature of liberalism, and its incompatibility with the Catholic faith. The sixth part treated of the modern error of “separation of Church and state.”
In this installment we will examine the concept of “liberty of conscience” and extent to which it is compatible with authentic human freedom.
(LifeSiteNews) — We have seen in the previous installments of this series that God directs human beings to their final end by imprinting His eternal law on their souls. This is called the “natural law.”
This imprinting consists in a habitual disposition to “see” fundamental moral principles by intuition. This habit is called synderesis. Our intellect judges then how to apply these moral principles to concrete actions here and now. This practical judgement is called conscience.
Therefore, conscience is the judgement of the intellect as to what the eternal law of God requires or forbids here and now. For this reason, one must always act in accordance with one’s conscience. To act against one’s conscience is to act contrary to one’s own certain judgement as to what God requires and is, therefore, always a sin.
Must man always be permitted to follow his conscience?
Given that man has an obligation to always act in accordance with his conscience, it might seem to follow that man must always have the right to follow his conscience, without being hindered by other human beings.
After all, how could it be acceptable for one man to take it upon himself to prevent another man from following the voice of God, as made known to him by his conscience?
On the other hand, a moments reflection will reveal that a man may consider himself bound to follow his conscience in a way which is in fact harmful to another human being. For example, a terrorist may regard it as his moral religious duty to carry out particular acts of violence.
In such cases everyone accepts that it is permitted for the state to use its coercive power to prevent a man from acting in accordance with his conscience.
The necessity for the state to possess the power to coerce human acts follows from the reality that our judgements of conscience – however binding they may be – are not infallible.
The judgements of conscience will often be erroneous because our human nature bears the effects of original sin. We lack the prudence to consistently apply moral principles correctly because of our lack of appropriate knowledge and experience. And our capacity to judge can be affected by sinful habits, or by the influence of emotional appetites that are not sufficiently directed by reason.
Sometimes our erroneous judgements are due to our own neglect – vincible ignorance – and sometimes not – invincible ignorance.
In any case, our consciences can be erroneous, and we do not have the right to act in ways that are objectively wrong, because of our subjective judgement that they are right. Indeed, the state, parents, teachers, and others in authority, may have an obligation to protect others from our morally disordered actions.
We can therefore conclude that there can be no absolute “liberty of conscience,” if that means always being free to do whatever our own conscience dictates.
‘Liberty of conscience’ in religious matters
The practical conclusions of the section above would not raise much opposition in modern society, even if the philosophical underpinning would not be widely accepted.
But, while modern man may accept that the state has the duty to protect the public from certain kinds of immoral human acts, he also holds that there ought to be “liberty of conscience” in a wide range of other areas, including in the area of religious belief.
This is expressed very clearly in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
This idea is almost universally accepted by people today, including by many who wish to be faithful to the Catholic Church. Yet, this kind of liberty of conscience has been specifically condemned many times by the Sacred Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
The Church condemns ‘liberty of conscience’ in religious matters
In his encyclical letter Mirari Vos Pope Gregory XVI condemned the:
[A]bsurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say.[1]
The pope recognized that this erroneous understanding of “liberty of conscience” derived from the error of indifferentism. He taught:
Now We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained.
He urges the bishops of the universal Church to “drive this deadly error far from the people committed to your care.”
He continues, in words that are very relevant given the recent statements by Francis:
With the admonition of the apostle that ‘there is one God, one faith, one baptism’may those fear who contrive the notion that the safe harbor of salvation is open to persons of any religion whatever. They should consider the testimony of Christ Himself that ‘those who are not with Christ are against Him,’and that they disperse unhappily who do not gather with Him. Therefore ‘without a doubt, they will perish forever, unless they hold the Catholic faith whole and inviolate.’
Let them hear Jerome who, while the Church was torn into three parts by schism, tells us that whenever someone tried to persuade him to join his group he always exclaimed: ‘He who is for the See of Peter is for me.’ A schismatic flatters himself falsely if he asserts that he, too, has been washed in the waters of regeneration. Indeed Augustine would reply to such a man: ‘The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit for it is the form, if it does not live from the root?’
And he concludes:
When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin. Then truly ‘the bottomless pit’ is open from which John saw smoke ascending which obscured the sun, and out of which locusts flew forth to devastate the earth.
Thence comes transformation of minds, corruption of youths, contempt of sacred things and holy laws — in other words, a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other.
These condemnations were repeated by his successors.
In Immortale Dei, Pope Leo XIII taught:
Doctrines such as these, which cannot be approved by human reason, and most seriously affect the whole civil order, Our predecessors the Roman Pontiffs (well aware of what their apostolic office required of them) have never allowed to pass uncondemned. Thus, Gregory XVI in his encyclical letter Mirari Vos, dated August 15, 1832, inveighed with weighty words against the sophisms which even at his time were being publicly inculcated-namely, that no preference should be shown for any particular form of worship; that it is right for individuals to form their own personal judgments about religion; that each man’s conscience is his sole and all-sufficing guide; and that it is lawful for every man to publish his own views, whatever they may be, and even to conspire against the State.[2]
And in his encyclical Libertas, on true human freedom, he writes:
Another liberty is widely advocated, namely, liberty of conscience. If by this is meant that everyone may, as he chooses, worship God or not, it is sufficiently refuted by the arguments already adduced.[3]
The arguments already adduced are those which we have presented earlier in this series, particularly in the article on the fundamental difference between Catholic and liberal approaches to morality.
The essential differences between the two approaches to morality can be summarized briefly, but for more detailed explanation, it is recommended that you read the earlier article.
Liberal vs. non-liberal morality
The liberal approach to morality is to regard man as the measure of all things. Man’s natural liberty, for the liberal, is not ordered towards anything outside of himself. If a man has the intrinsic power to do something, then it must be acceptable, in and of itself, to do it. However, the liberal recognizes these actions could infringe on the ability of other men to exercise their natural liberty. Thus, he arrives at his conception of morality: men must be free to do whatever they choose, unless those actions unduly clash with the rights of others.
The Catholic approach to morality regards the eternal reason of God as the ultimate measure of whether an action is morally good or morally bad. God has created the whole universe and directs it by his eternal reason, which he has imprinted on the heart of man, and which man apprehends by his intellect. Man’s actions are morally good if they are in conformity with this rational order, and they are morally bad if they conflict with it.
For the Catholic, every human act is a moral act. Every human act is either rational – and therefore morally good – or irrational – and therefore morally bad. There are no morally indifferent acts, in practice.
For example, drinking wine is indifferent in and of itself. But in practice it will either be rational, such as when drunk moderately at dinner with family and friends, or it will be irrational, such as when drunk in excess leading to drunkenness. Every freely chosen rational act is morally good, and every freely chosen irrational act is morally bad.
This is why we can “offer up” even the smallest actions of the day to God. No act of his rational creatures, however small, is “indifferent” in the sight of the Creator.
To summarize: The liberal recognizes only man’s natural liberty and demands for him the full exercise of its power, as long as it doesn’t unduly conflict with the natural liberty of others. He fails to acknowledge that all acts must conform to the eternal law of God, and therefore he fails to acknowledge the existence of moral liberty. He remains morally unfree, enslaved to sin, that is, to irrationality.
The Catholic sees that man’s natural liberty must be exercised in accordance with truth, it must conform to objective reality, and in this way, man will attain moral liberty. Only the man who possesses moral liberty lives in accordance with reality and is truly free.
We can now see why liberals and Catholic disagree on the matter of “liberty of conscience” in religious matters.
The liberal recognizes man’s natural liberty to believe in a wide range of ideas and concepts and demands that he be granted the full exercise of that power, as long as it doesn’t conflict with the natural liberty of others to believe whatever they choose to believe.
The Catholic, on the other hand, sees that man must make use of his natural liberty to seek that which is true in religious matters, and that he has a moral obligation to accept the truth, once he has found it.
Indeed, it follows from the concept of morality outlined above, that the Catholic holds that no one can ever have a moral right to act in a way which is not in accordance with reason. That is to say, it is never morally justifiable to act against the objective order of reality, even if a person who is invincibly ignorant may not be guilty of personal sin when they follow a subjectively erroneous judgement.
But no one can ever have the moral right to a false opinion, on a religious question or on any other, because God has made our intellects for truth. And because our acts follow the choices presented by our intellect, as explained at the beginning of this series, assent to error is incompatible with the fullness of human liberty. As Leo XIII teaches:
If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses andfollows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption.[4]
And to affirm a moral right to error, would be to affirm a moral right to misuse the faculties which God has given to us. The absurdity of this can be seen if we imagine someone to claim “I have the moral right to hold that 2 + 2 = 5.”
Some liberals may be found who would defend even this but for the Catholic – and any man of good sense – it is impossible to affirm a moral right to assent to an erroneous proposition. On the contrary, we have a moral obligation to seek truth, and to assent to it when we find it.
It is for these reasons that the Catholic holds firmly to the traditional dictum “error has no rights.”
As Pope Pius XII taught:
[T]hat which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality objectively has no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.[5]
Having established that there is no moral right to hold opinions that do not correspond to truth, we must now ask what the role of the state is with regard to that which “has no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.”
Does the state have the right to use its power of coercion in religious matters, as it does with regard to certain other human acts contrary to reason? And if so, in what manner and to what extent?
I will address these questions in the next installment.
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