The Formation and Exercise of Conscience in Private and Public Matters

Abstract

The Formation and Exercise of Conscience in Private and Public Matters Sebastian Walshe O.Praem Introduction The importance of conscience in human life, at the levels of both personal and public morality, is obvious from the fact that the right to act according to one's conscience is often invoked as the justifying reason for many private and public acts. The role of conscience is apparent in private matters, in the intimacy of one's own moral life. Conscience is at work in the hidden recesses of the human heart: it speaks in intimate conversation with God;1 it is consulted in a choice of vocation; it is the stimulus to repentance from a hidden sin. Conscience is the one who watches when no one else is watching, the one who speaks with the voice that only you can hear. Yet it would be a mistake to think that conscience is exercised only in private matters. Acts that have public consequences must also be weighed in the human heart and judged according to one's conscience: conscience is invoked as the reason that someone must go to war or cannot go to war, as the reason for the right to freedom of religion, as the reason for freedom from public compulsion to act, and so on. Conscience speaks in the recesses of each heart, but it often speaks about how to act in very public matters. In short, the role of conscience in morality is universal and necessary. [End Page 275] But there are times when, due to circumstances, conscience is forced to weigh acts that have both a private and a public aspect. And sometimes it happens that there appears to be an opposition between what conscience dictates about the private and public aspects of an act. For example, can a secret told in confidence be made public if revealing it will help someone? Can a lawyer who knows his client is guilty still argue for his innocence before a court?2 Can a priest who knows from confession that a certain person is guilty of a serious sin still administer communion to him? Can a judge or jury member who knows from confidential information or legally inadmissible evidence that someone is innocent pass a guilty sentence, since his sentence must be based upon the evidence before the court? Each of these acts has both private and public aspects, and what conscience dictates in the private realm seems to contradict what conscience dictates in the public realm. For example, due to his private knowledge, the conscience of the lawyer seems to dictate that he not make the guilty appear innocent, yet his conscience also seems to dictate that his public duty before the law is to make as compelling a case as he can for his client's innocence based upon the publicly available evidence. This article aims to expose and apply the moral principles by which one can rightly judge how to inform and exercise conscience in such matters. The thesis that I intend to demonstrate is the following: If the judgment of conscience based upon public knowledge is opposed to the judgment of conscience based upon private knowledge in a public act, then the judgment of conscience based upon public knowledge must be followed instead of the judgment of conscience based upon private knowledge. To show this, I will (1) first examine the nature of conscience and certain of its properties following therefrom, (2) then examine the distinction between a common and a private good, (3) then show that the consideration of conscience about public acts pertains to the common good while [End Page 276] its consideration about private acts pertains to the private good, (4) then argue that conscience binds one who acts as a representative of the community to act for the common good in a public act, and (5) then argue that one who acts as a member of the community should prefer the good of the community to his private good in a public act. Finally (6), I shall apply this conclusion to some contemporary difficulties in ethics and moral theology, specifically to the question about whether and under what circumstances communion...