Erroneous Conscience

Question: The Catechism says, in part, of venial sin: “. . . in a less serious matter, . . . or when he disobeys the moral law in a grave matter but without full knowledge or without complete consent” (CCC, #1862). Does a person in the habit of practicing artificial contraception or masturbation (both grave) commit “at least” a venial sin when he or she receives Holy Communion without sacramental absolution, since they don’t know these actions to be sinful (“without full knowledge”) or they are not totally free, e.g., pressure from a spouse or habit (“without complete consent”)?

Answer: Several different points intersect here so it might be best to try to sort them out individually. To the basic question, as posed, it seems to me “at least” a venial sin to receive Holy Communion with an unrepentant practice of contraception or masturbation. Indeed, it is surely unworthy reception of the Eucharist and probably more grave than venial (more on that below).

First, I don’t think anyone questions that sacrilegious reception of Holy Communion is itself grave matter (CCC, #2120). The traditional citation from Scripture is 1 Cor. 11:27-28: “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.” While that text can admit of a specific imperative to unity, it has generally and traditionally been accepted as a biblical standard for the worthy reception of the Eucharist.

Next, it is the received and normative teaching of the Church that both artificial contraception (CCC, ##2368-2372; esp. #2370) and masturbation (CCC, #2352) do involve grave matter. Individual factors can lessen or diminish subjective responsibility (cf. the same #2352, second paragraph) but “grave matter” remains what it essentially is — grave.

There have been emphases, even moral theories, that so maximize subjective mitigating circumstances that the truth of the objective moral order functionally disappears or becomes practically unobtainable. One of the clarifying points of John Paul II’s, Veritatis Splendor (8/6/93) clearly repudiates this drift: “If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it. They remain ‘irremediably’ evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person.” . . . “Consequently, circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act ‘subjectively’ good or defensible as a choice” (VS, n. 81).

Now, the language of the Catechism deserves some close attention here. It is true, as you quote the Catechism, that venial sin is described in terms of “less serious matter” or “. . . in a grave matter, but without full knowledge (sine plena cognitione) or without complete consent (sine pleno consensu)” (CCC, #1862).

These adjectives (full or complete = plenus-a-um) are consistent with the prior description of mortal sin: “Mortal sin requires full knowledge (plenam cognitionem) and complete consent (plenumque consensum)” (#1859). But, that prior reference adds the important standard: “It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice” (#1859).

“Personal choice” is what moral theology calls a human act — i.e., an act that proceeds from the will with a knowledge of the end (#1732). The qualifiers “full” and “complete” when used of knowledge and consent can admit, I suppose, of a maximal or minimal interpretation. I take the correct meaning to be one of sufficiency — sufficient knowledge and sufficient consent to qualify as a truly human act. Thus, sufficient knowing and sufficient willing that the act is of your doing — for praise or blame, merit or reproach (#1732).

Thus, in your specific example “without full knowledge” seems to translate “they don’t know these actions to be sinful.” If this is so, and I find it hard to believe it is so, this person certainly has an erroneous conscience.

Again, your question equates “not totally free” — because of pressure from spouse or habit — as “without complete consent.” Many factors can lessen or lower human responsibility but “complete consent” does not mean 100% complete, otherwise every evil act out of or with pressure from another or habit would become venial.

There surely is a range of responsibility but knowledge does not have to be 100% “full,” nor consent 100% “complete” — the meaning and standard is one of sufficiency rather than 100% perfection. This standard is one of human reasonableness. If the bar of responsibility is raised too high — to the level of near perfection — we might eliminate most blame and fault, but we remove most praise and merit as well. Most of us do not operate anywhere near perfection level most of the time. Any theory that explains away most fault also explains away most virtue and that is not a standard of human reasonableness.

It is my personal opinion that no one can keep doing what is objectively wrong (knowingly or unknowingly) without real consequences in their life. Single evil acts are not hermetically sealed off from the rest of life. The first casualty is a correct conscience; indeed, the opposite is the result — an erroneous conscience. The moral sense and search is then dulled; true virtue is not pursued; and the truth about the good is first neglected, then irrelevant. This is not a program for spiritual growth; it is rather a spiritual illness that needs serious and immediate correction.

My presumption, in view of this, is that unworthy reception of the Eucharist is itself a sacrilege and gravely wrong. By exception, there may be cases where knowledge is so lacking and consent so absent that formal grave sin is not engaged. But in these one might begin to wonder what kind of knowledge and consent is engaged in the personal reception of Holy Communion as well.

It may well be that some over emphases on mortal sin have the unintended result of reducing venial sin to a non-entity or non-event. The same Catechism, cited above, rightly presents the great Doctor of Grace, St. Augustine, for his helpful and needed reminder: “While he is in the flesh, man cannot help but have at least some light sins. But do not despise these sins we call ‘light’; if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fills a river; a number of grains makes a heap. What then is our hope? Above all, confession. . . .” (CCC, #1863).

Cardinal Newman on Conscience

Question: I sometimes read the remark attributed to Cardinal Newman: “I shall drink, — to the Pope, if you please — still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.” Is this accurate?

Answer: It is true that Newman wrote that. It is the final sentence of his famous “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.” In full it reads: “Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink, — to the Pope, if you please, — still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.” (J. H. Newman, Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching [London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1876] p. 261).

Some seem to give more attention to this final sentence than to the entire effort. Again, some try to convert this — in what may well be the most profound discussion of obedience and sovereignty in the English language — into making Newman some kind of modern dissenter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost all of Newman’s adult intellectual effort was to refute autonomous individualism in religion.

Indeed, in Newman’s famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, the learned Cardinal was truly prescient in repudiating in the 19th Century a favorite distortion of conscience that began to reign in the 20th Century and into this one.

Newman wrote: “The view of conscience, I know, is very different from that ordinarily taken of it, . . . It is founded on the doctrine that conscience is the voice of God, whereas it is fashionable on all hands now to consider it one way or another a creation of man” (p. 247).

“Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, Who, both in nature and grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives” (p. 248).

“Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a license to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self will” (p. 250).

What Cardinal Newman utterly rejected in 1876 — the spurious “right” of self will: the autonomy, even infallibility, of my own self judgment — is precisely what so many dissenters have embraced as their very birthright and self-validation. No, Cardinal Newman was neither a modern nor even a modest dissenter. 

Please address questions to Msgr. Wm. B. Smith, St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, Yonkers, NY 10704. 

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