Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Conscience leads the human person to seek a covenant with God by means of worship which is “logical”, that is, religion which conforms to reason. What does this mean? The entire person, the entire being is implicated in this relationship with Him; offering of self, is the act of worship of real religion. Religion which is foreign to life or evasive of life is neither real nor reasonable. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy issued by the Second Vatican Council, presupposes this 'awareness of self' when it calls for conscious participation of the faithful in the liturgy. However it would appear that when the tackling the question of participation in the liturgy, this is rarely the point of departure, instead concern focuses mainly on outward behaviour.
The Acts of the Apostles demonstrate that conscience comes into motion when mere subjectivity is overcome and there is an encounter between the interiority of the human person and the truth which comes from God; Peter, thanks to his encounter with Christ, decisive for his human maturity, can affirm that, rather than his own taste he is obliged to obey the truth he recognises,
in contrast to the constituted authorities and even to his own sentiments and old human bonds. The primate of truth above all virtues, and especially with regard to social consensus, was underlined by the famous English theologian, Cardinal John Henry Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. Even in the present day crisis man has not entirely renounced to being a 'martyr' for the truth, the fact is that, in the meantime, the idea of the truth has been replaced with that of progress. For example, we hear about ethical values but not about conscience, something like the dispute between Socrates, Plato and the sophists: the former were confident that man can know the truth, the latter were of the opinion that man creates his own criteria for life. What happens is described by Joseph Ratzinger, in a lecture given at the University of Sienna and cited in the above mentioned book: “In many circles today what man thinks is rarely discussed. Instead there exists ready made opinions on of the thought of man, in as far as the human person can be catalogued with a formal label: conservator, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressivist, revolutionary. Cataloguing in a formal schema is enough to render superfluous confrontation with the contents. The same can be seen even more clearly with art: what a work of art expresses is indifferent it can exalt God or the devil - technical-formal execution is the only criteria ”.
But human persons are only truly persons if they are open to the voice of truth and to its demands. The quest of Socrates and the witness of the Baptist demonstrate that man is “by nature” capable of the truth, which constitutes the clamp for all power, and proves the divine similarity of every person
The faith of the simple minded person, even in these present critical times, demonstrates this capacity to discern spirits. It is in fact in relation with the Christian conscience that the directives of the hierarchy and indeed the primacy of the Pope can be understood, as Newman's famous “toast” confirms. Memory works decisively with conscience to configure a reasonable religion.
The One who makes us free to listen to the “voice” of conscience is, Jesus Christ, the Truth in person, who renders the burden light (Mt 11,30), coming in the flesh, out of love, in order to heal our sin he offers himself as nourishment in the sacrament. The human conscience and worship of God are the core of religious freedom. It is in the human conscience that the covenant between man and God of which man has such extreme need, is established. (Agenzia Fides 30/7/2009; righe 41, parole 597)
