by Joseph Stoutzenber
I recently ran across a quote that spoke to me about my own ventures into writing about religious topics. In his book The Enthusiast, Jon M. Sweeney quotes religion scholar Wendy Doniger as saying: “It’s hard to imagine how you could write about any subject as sensitive as religion or history without outraging someone.” I have found that one subject area sure to bring on outrage in Catholic circles is the Catholic teaching on morality, and one topic likely to bring on more heat than light is that of conscience. Is there potential for common ground among factions who have strong opinions about the question: In moral decision-making, should people follow their conscience?
Much of the problem in answering this question is the lack of a clear definition of the term. In my recent book that provides an overview of Catholicism, I point out that the Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies three elements that make up conscience, or, more accurately, conscientious decision-making: awareness, discernment, and judgment. In a Commonweal, February 2023, review of the book Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics, by Todd A. Salzman and Michael Lawler, Bernard Prusac comments about the book’s discussion of Pope Francis’s Amoris laetitia that “the document’s potential is lost if its teaching is reduced to the claim that individuals have the right in conscience to do the good as they see fit.” Prusak suggests that the document is better understood as “the way that persons discern how objective norms apply to them in their concrete, complex circumstances.” Are these actually two conflicting understandings of conscience, or is there a possibility of common ground between them?
As the Catechism points out, an essential element of conscience is discernment, including discernment of objective norms. Then conscientious decision-making means applying discernment of norms to “concrete, complex circumstances” (judgment). An example of discernment and judgment applied to a concrete but complex question is minimum wage legislation. An objective moral norm is that all people have a right to life. How can that principle be applied to circumstances in which some people are working but not making sufficient income to provide for the health and well-being of their families? St. Thomas Aquinas has an interesting interpretation of the moral norm “Do not steal” that comes into play here. He says that when one person does not have enough to survive while other people have wealth well beyond their needs, then the rich person is the one who is actually guilty of theft. In Gaudium et spes, Vatican Council II enshrined this teaching into modern Catholic social doctrine: “If a person is in extreme necessity, he has the right to take from the riches of others what he himself needs” (#69). How’s that for a statement that, at face value, would outrage many and calls for much thoughtful discernment!
When the minimum wage is looked at in light of the right-to-life norm, the complexity that Prusak talks about is readily evident. How exactly do we determine the minimum needed for a worker to provide for a family? Should there be national legislation, or should it differ from state to state, community to community? Are there alternatives to increasing the minimum wage equally or that are even more effective in achieving the goal of providing for the well-being of people struggling to survive? Should wages differ by occupation? What impact would an increased minimum wage have on businesses—would it result in an overall negative impact on all people involved? Might businesses close in one place and open in another place where workers would work for less? Surely there is much room for thoughtful judgment when it comes to this one moral decision that affects so many. Discernment of moral norms is clearly called for in conscientious decision-making, but when faced with concrete, complex situations such as assuring a living wage for workers, thoughtful decisions (judgment) about what it means to do the good are called for. It is not a rejection of moral norms to say that people have the right and the responsibility “to do the good as they see fit.”
