Conscience goes silent in truckers’ blockade
Self-centred freedom becomes absolute while moral truth is shunted aside
The word “conscience” has lost its bite, its verve, its association with the courage to stand for good in the face of evil. In our self-centred universe, it has taken on the opposite meaning. Many now feel free to say they are following their conscience when what they mean is that they will do what they please, the needs and rights of others be damned.
Martyrs gave their lives, not because they proudly upheld a minority opinion, but because they believed moral and religious truth to be more important that their personal desires, more important than even their lives.
Pope John Paul II repeatedly deplored the debasement of conscience into personal freedom with no reference to moral truth and law. “Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist,” he wrote in his 1993 encyclical The Splendour of Truth.
Lose our sense of sin, and we will become deaf to the voice of conscience. Conscience can become deadened and decay into subjectivism. In subjectivism, freedom, not truth, is the absolute. The self turns itself into an idol, rejecting moral law, turning its back on the needs of others, and declares that it alone can determine right and wrong. Moral law becomes an impediment, rather than a guide to determining what is right and just.
Subjectivism is front and centre in the demonstrations and blockades by the minority of truckers trying to extort political change from governments. Waving the banner of freedom, they wage an adolescent rebellion against democratically elected governments. They act as though the deaths of Canadians from the Covid virus – 34,721 at this writing – have no relevance. What matters is me and what I desire.
Pope John Paul attributed the deadening of conscience to “the grave spiritual crisis looming over man today,” the loss of any sense of the transcendent. In a consumer society, freedom of choice means the banal freedom to choose from 37 types of laundry detergent. It means the “right” to take the life of an unborn child or to ask for help in committing suicide.
This debased notion of choice influences our moral sensibility. We see no connection between freedom and truth. But without such a connection, conscience becomes meaningless. The Second Vatican Council declared, “Deep within his conscience, man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he himself must obey.”
Law? Isn’t freedom the absence of law, we ask. Isn’t law just an arbitrary constraint on freedom? Isn’t freedom the source of human dignity?
But freedom does not exist without adherence to the moral law. Conscience, in fact, is a surrender to moral truth, a surrender which rises above the erratic ebbs and flows of personal desire. A person acting in conscience has reflected on moral truth – the law within – and discerned a course of action based on that reflection. One who is indifferent to moral norms is incapable of following their conscience.
If we want to be a free people, we must reflect on whether our actions reflect obedience to a higher power. We ought to do that daily. How have I treated others? Do I put my own desires above the needs of the community? Do my actions reflect love? Love is not a feeling but the active willingness to serve others.
Unless we do that reflection, we are bound to lose our way. Our moral conscience becomes clouded. We elevate self above others and think we are doing good. But for good to thrive, we need to cultivate an awareness of the good. Christians cultivate that awareness through self-examination, prayer and worship.
When we lose that, we decay and society decays. Western society is in a state of moral collapse, and one of the clearest signs of that is the Canadian truckers’ blockade. We won’t begin to reverse the decay until we realize that the evil we can effectively fight is the evil within. We may not see our own sin, but others can. We will not be free until we respect moral truth and place that truth above our self-centred notions of freedom.
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