An Introduction To Moral Theology, 2nd Edition. William May

Grisez indicates the proper relationship between virtues and moral principles: “What,” he asks, “is the connection … between moral principles and virtues? Do we have two distinct, perhaps even competing, approaches to morality — an ethics of moral truth versus an ethics of virtue? Not at all. Take the Golden Rule. One who consistently chooses fairly and works consistently to carry out such choices is a fair person — a person, that is, with the virtue of fairness or justice. A virtue is nothing other than an aspect of the personality of a person integrated through commitments and other choices made in accord with relevant moral norms derived from the relevant modes of responsibility. In other words: living by the standard of fairness makes a person fair. Moral norms and virtues are not separate standards of morality; virtues grow out of norms in the lives of people who consistently live by them; righteousness and holiness are fruits of truth in hearts recreated by God’s grace (see Eph 4:24).”³⁷ The same truth can be expressed by saying that “virtues do not constitute moral norms distinct from the basic principle of morality and its ‘modes of specification.’ ” Quite to the contrary, virtues embody this principle and its specifications. For “virtues are aspects of a personality integrated around good commitments, and the latter are choices in accord with the first principle of morality and the modes of responsibility.”³⁸

Some of Grisez’s critics have complained that he ignores the role of virtue in the moral life and is “Kantian” because of his emphasis on normative principles. I believe that here it has been shown that he does not neglect the role of virtue, and more of his thought on this matter will be considered in later chapters.³⁹

      Moreover, at times virtuous persons disagree, and disagree in a contradictory way, with regard to specific moral issues on which the magisterium of the Church has not made a firm judgment. For example, some (including bishops) argue that ordinarily one is required to provide food and hydration to persons in the so-called “persistent vegetative state” unless it is clear that doing so fails to nourish the person or imposes unnecessarily harsh burdens, whereas others (again including bishops) vigorously maintain that there is no moral duty to do so. One of the parties to this debate must be wrong and the other right, insofar as contradictory views are championed. One presumes that the parties to the debate are equally virtuous (or are the bishops of Pennsylvania, who hold the first view, morally more virtuous than the bishops of Texas, who hold the second? — and this seems impossible to prove). Hence, the debate can only be resolved by examining the arguments advanced and the moral norms invoked to support the different views.

      I will conclude this chapter with an examination of conscience and the moral life.

      The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives an extensive treatment of virtues and the moral life in Article 7 of Chapter One, Section One, of Part Three, “Life in Christ,” nos. 1804-1829.

5. Conscience and Our Moral Life

Today the term “conscience” has many meanings, among them, that of a “psychological conscience.” When conscience is understood in this way, it is frequently identified with the Freudian superego, which is, as it were, the distillate of parents’ influence upon their children. The superego is described by Freud in the following way: “The long period of childhood during which the growing human being lives in dependence on his parents leaves behind it a precipitate, which forms within his ego a special agency in which this parental influence is prolonged. It has received the name of ‘superego.’ The parents’ influence naturally includes not only the personalities of the parents themselves but also the racial, national, and family traditions handed on through them, as well as the demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent.”⁴⁰

      Conscience understood in this sense is essentially related to feelings of moral approval or disapproval. In this sense, conscience is the result of a process of psychological conditioning; and the spontaneous reactions, impulses, and feelings associated with conscience understood in this sense may be either realistic and healthy or illusory and pathological. Conscience in this sense is shaped largely by nonrational factors, and it is frequently found to condemn what is not wrong or to approve what is not right. “Psychological conscience,” therefore, cannot of itself provide a person with moral guidance, and there can be no obligation to follow conscience understood in this sense.

      Obviously, the Fathers of Vatican Council II, in using the term “conscience” to designate the agency whereby human persons participate in God’s eternal and divine law, were using it in a much different sense. For them, conscience designates first and foremost our awareness of moral truth. The documents from which passages have been cited, moreover — namely, Dignitatis humanae and Gaudium et spes — make it clear that there are different levels of our awareness of moral truth. These documents use the term “conscience” to designate different levels of our awareness of moral truth.

      In order to grasp properly the different levels of awareness of moral truth to which conscience, as used in the documents of Vatican Council II, refers, it will be helpful, I believe, to take into account some perceptive comments on conscience made by the noted Scottish theologian John Macquarrie and to relate his observations to the Council documents’ use of the term “conscience.”

Macquarrie, after noting the ambiguity that at times surrounds the term “conscience,” observes that it is possible to distinguish several basic levels of conscience when the term is used to designate a person’s awareness of moral truth. At one level, it refers to a practical judgment terminating a process of moral deliberation. At this level, it designates one’s personal and reasoned judgment that a particular course of action is right and therefore morally permissible or that a particular course of action is wrong and therefore morally excluded.⁴¹ Gaudium et spes uses conscience in this sense when it says that at times the voice of God’s law, made known to us through our conscience, tells us “to do this, shun that” (no. 16). Conscience in this sense does not refer to one’s “feelings” of approval or disapproval, nor to some mysterious nonrational agency; rather, here it refers to reflective moral judgment that serves to bring to a conclusion a process of moral deliberation. Since the judgment of conscience is the result of a person’s reasoned and thoughtful evaluation about the morality of a particular course of action, conscience in this sense can be called “particular moral conscience.” The judgment that one makes can be about an action that one is considering doing or not doing (and in this instance, some theologians rightly speak of antecedent conscience); or it can be about the morality of an action that one has already done (and in this instance, it is referred to as consequent conscience).⁴² As John Paul II points out, “the judgment of conscience is a practical judgment, a judgment which makes known what man must do or not do, or which assesses an act already performed by him” (Veritatis splendor, no. 59).

Here it is important to stress that conscience, understood at this level of moral awareness, is a judgment or an act of the intellect. It thus cannot be a mere subjective feeling or option to act and live in a certain way. In saying this, I am in no way denying the importance that affections and feelings can have in our moral life, nor am I saying that they are irrelevant in making judgments of conscience.⁴³ My point is simply that upright moral life requires one’s personal conviction that given acts are or are not in accord with correct moral standards. Concern for the truth is essential here. Intelligent judgment, not nonrational feelings or preferences, should direct human choices and actions. A person is obliged to act in accord with his or her conscience precisely because one of the central meanings of conscience is that it is one’s own best judgment about what one ought or ought not to do.⁴⁴ This matter will be taken up more fully after other legitimate meanings of conscience have been examined.

At another level, Macquarrie writes, conscience can mean a “broader … more generalized knowledge of right and wrong, of good and bad.”⁴⁵ In this sense, conscience is one’s personal awareness of basic moral principles or truths. Vatican Council II refers to conscience in this sense when it affirms that it is through the mediation of conscience that man comes to perceive ever increasingly the unchanging truth and comes to recognize the demands of God’s divine and eternal law (Dignitatis humanae, no. 3). It is