Blue Fairy: “You must learn to choose between right and wrong.”
Pinocchio: “How will I know?”
Blue Fairy: “Your conscience.”
Pinocchio: “What’s conscience?”
Jiminy Cricket: “Conscience is that still, small voice that people won’t listen to. That’s just the trouble with the world today.”
Blue Fairy (to Jiminy Cricket, kneeling before her): “I dub you Pinocchio’s Conscience; Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong; Counselor in Moments of Temptation and Guide along the Straight and Narrow Path.”

Pinocchio and Human Conscience.
The flaws in Disney’s understanding of conscience begin with Jiminy Cricket’s description of conscience as a “still, small voice.” This phrase clearly evokes 1 Kings 19:12 where the voice of Yahweh speaks to the prophet Elijah. But the “still small voice” that “people won’t listen to” is, according to the Blue Fairy, something fundamentally external to us that imposes itself upon us in the process of moral decision-making, here, the voice of Jiminy Cricket, whom I can summon when I “give a little whistle.” This conception of conscience is reinforced by Blue Fairy’s description of Cricket’s new title, “Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong; Counselor in Moments of Temptation and Guide along the Straight and Narrow Path.” It is an understanding of conscience that depends on a mystical voice, the “word” from beyond. But if conscience can be seen as a “voice” at all (and I’ll suggest below some problems with that approach) it should at least be the voice of God (Gaudium et Spes 16, quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church 1776), in other words, a voice intrinsic to our very being.

So, why is the presentation of conscience as an independent, personalized figure such as Jiminy Cricket so inadequate? Well, for starters, experience teaches that such an exterior “voice” is frequently absent. Whenever we look back on our sins and ask, “Why didn’t my conscience persuade me to do differently?” we have shifted the blame away from ourselves and toward something outside ourselves. This “heteronomous” (an imposed outside law) understanding of conscience actually provides us an excuse to do things that are wrong because we were in ignorance (CCC 1791f.) of what was right to do at the time. We were simply waiting for the voice of conscience that never seemed to speak (or to speak loudly enough). This is especially true for poor Pinocchio, where Jiminy Cricket never seems to be around at so many crucial moments.

But this is not the traditional Catholic understanding of conscience. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “the human act of reasoning . . . proceeds from the understanding of certain things —namely, those which are naturally known without any investigation on the part of reason, as from an immovable principle” (ST I q. 79 a. 12, emphasis added). In the sphere of moral choices, moreover, this immovable principle belongs to a “special natural habit” called synderesis (ibid.), also described as the “perception of the principles of morality” (CCC 1780). It is precisely this habit which Pinocchio lacks, and that he cannot even develop as long as he relies on exteriorly imposed directions in making his choices.

In traditional Catholic teaching, conscience (Lat., conscientia), rather than being something imposed from the outside, is “a judgment of reason whereby a human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act” (CCC 1778). The source of this judgment is not to be found in something extrinsic to our being such as a list of rules or a personified voice. Rather, in the properly informed conscience, in the words of Pope John Paul II, “The primary and decisive element for moral judgment is the object of the human act, which establishes whether it is capable of being ordered to the good, and to the ultimate end, which is God” (Veritatis Splendor 79, emphasis added).

And further, this ordering of reality is seen in the “oneness of truth that governs all things” (the eternal law), our Creator’s revelation of our obligations (the divine law), those obligations evident to all without the aid of revelation (the natural law), and those norms governing the operation of a good society (human law).

How then, more specifically, is Jiminy Cricket deficient as Pinocchio’s conscience? He is separated from any conception of being ordered to the universal truth. In a central text Pope John Paul II writes:

Once the idea of a universal truth about the good knowable by human reason is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its prime reality as an act of a person’s intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and acting accordingly (cf. Veritatis Splendor 32).

To illustrate the separation between Jiminy Cricket as “conscience” and the notion of it being ordered to universal truth, it is helpful to consider the scene where Jiminy finally catches up to Pinocchio at Pleasure Island. Jiminy rebukes Pinocchio saying, “How do you expect to be a real boy? Look at yourself, smoking, playing pool . . . !” Notice that Jiminy Cricket makes no appeal to objective standards such as to divine, natural, or even human law. Instead, Pinocchio is merely supposed to follow a set of arbitrary, extrinsic rules communicated to him from an independent agent, and this is what will accomplish the realization of his ultimate end. It is heteronomy, pure and simple. The best Pinocchio can hope for is an extrinsically applied (and in his case, personal) influence, one not necessarily consistent with his nature.

Significance
Pinocchio is not irrelevant. An examination of the state of popular moral thought over the past 45 years (since the wholesale penetration of this false view of conscience into our cultural self-understanding) is revealing. Without, of course, wishing to claim that one cartoon is the single cause of our moral decline, it can still be argued that the false view of conscience found in Pinocchio is symptomatic of the secular orthodoxy that prevails in modern American culture. Given the enormous influence of films like Pinocchio in the lives of millions of American children (especially at a time in their personal development when their moral faculties are being formed), this is not an unimportant issue. According to the obvious dramatic intent of the film, we are all Pinocchio. Our endings will be happy if we do what Disney implies Pinocchio should have done, namely, follow a set of exterior rules imposed by an admittedly benign character such as Jiminy Cricket. But herein lies a real danger. There is, for real boys and girls, men and women, the danger that the “happiness” thus produced may be inconsistent with our natural ends, and contrary to the intentions of our true Creator.

Pinocchio’s story may be seen as an attempt to retell, even improve upon, the biblical story of the Fall of Man. The creator is Gepetto, Pinocchio is Adam, and the Cricket is a “better version” of the influential Serpent (recall the Blue Fairy’s designation of Jiminy as “the Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong”). But, at root, the Cricket’s message is the same as the Serpent’s: “Look elsewhere than to God for moral guidance, and you will become something you are not. And it will be an improvement on what God has made you to be.” Such advice, from a Cricket, a Serpent, or a cartoonist, is a lie.

Dr. Twellman is Associate Director of the Institute for Pastoral Theology at Ave Maria University in Michigan where he also teaches Old Testament. He and his wife Terri are raising two children.