I picked up the book On Conscience by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (that would be the Pope) and I am finding it very thought provoking. The book consists of two essays given by the Pope (though when he gave them he was not the Pope) as lectures at workshops of the National Catholic Bioethics Center (one in 1984 and the other in 1991).
I should tell you at this point that I'm not at all Catholic. Not in the slightest. However, when I was perusing the little bookstore in the airport on my last trip I just flipped through this book and I found some of it interesting. The primary thesis in the first essay (Conscience and Truth) is that the conscience is more complex than simply the subjective certainty of man regarding his own actions and is answerable to more than simply itself; and further, that if this is not properly understood then it leads to a system of ethical relativity in the culture where confidence in actions by the powerful render them morally acceptable. The Pope puts it like so:
It will not do to identify man's conscience with the self-consciousness of the "I," with its subjective certainty about itself and its moral behavior. One the one hand, this consciousness may be a mere reflection of the social surroundings and the opinions in circulation. On the other hand, it might also derive from a lack of self-criticism, a deficiency in listening to the depths of one's own soul.or again:
The identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions, and debases these with every passing day. Whoever equates conscience with superficial conviction identifies conscience with a pseudo-rational certainty, a certainty that in fact has been woven from self-righteousness, conformity, and lethargy.I agree with what he is saying here and I think we can easily see this proven in Western culture. Look at what has been "right" and "wrong" in the past 100 years in America, for example. For that matter, consider what has been "right" and "wrong" in simply the past 20 years in America. Is what was "wrong" 20 years ago that is considered "right" today "right" or is it "wrong?" Many would read that question and say that the question itself is a problem since what is "right" and "wrong" today or yesterday has no meaning and that proves the point precisely, of course. The Pope points this out like so (and attaches it to the concept of progress):
The individual may not achieve his advancement or well-being at the cost of betraying what he recognizes to be true; nor may humanity. Here we come in contact with the really critical issue of the modern age. The concept of truth has been virtually given up, and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself "is" the truth. But through this seeming exaltation, progress loses its direction and becomes nullified. For if no direction exists everything can just as well be regress as progress.To get a bearing and progress you have to have a fixed point. The Pope is here saying that there exists no fixed point to take a bearing from and actually progress so we may just as well go in a circle instead. This goes along with some thoughts I've been having lately. Modernist thinking believes that there is a science to everything and application of scientific principles to every aspect of culture and society lead to advancement in all fields. It seems fairly obvious from a cursory look at the history of biblical interpretation (and especially since it has been "modernized" by the application of the historical-critical method) to see that such a notion is, in fact, nonsense when applied to a field where a fixed point cannot be established outside of the material under study. You have to have something to put a mark on so that when you move forward you can look back and understand that you have moved forward. This is very simple with the hard sciences since the body of applicable knowledge is expanding and can be tested by experimental means, but this is much more difficult with other areas we have tried to apply science to and in many cases all we have succeeded in doing, it seems, is creating systems of scholarly jargon so that a particular field sounds scientific when it is, in fact, not. Postmodern thinking is chipping away at the roots of scientific knowledge and it is starting with the fields of endeavor that are merely myth decorated with jargon since they are clearly the most vulnerable. The job is more difficult with the hard sciences but their truth can also be undermined because too often they have allied themselves with the other systems and are unwilling to give them up therefore their hypocrisy can be pointed out and this can be used to place doubt in the mind of the culture as it regards all of the truth being propagated by all of the sciences. I wonder what will come of this. Poor folks like Richard Dawkins still believe that logic and rational debate can clear the air and find the truth but the ax of the current cultural shift that is taking place is at the roots of his tree and although it seems likely that rational atheism will suffer greatly from this its impact on Christianity will probably be an increase in the emphasis on mysticism. It is happening slowly but it seems that this shift is already taking place. People probably like all of their technological conveniences too much to allow it to progress all the way to another Dark Ages but what will swing the pendulum back in the other direction?
