Francis Berger

The Most Honest Man I Know

9/26/2022

For the first time in years, I have developed an appetite for fiction. I decided to begin satiating my rediscovered hunger with Dickens's Great Expectations, which I last read over thirty years ago. While reading Chapter Ten, I was struck by Joe Gargery's firm - well, as firm as a simple, kindhearted, gentle man like Joe can get - reprimanding of Pip for lying:

"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some rumination, "namely, that lies is lies, However they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em."

The passage brought two things into sharp focus for me -- the rampant, unrepented dishonesty saturating the world today, and a memory of the most honest man I know. I'll skip commenting on the former and concentrate instead on the latter in this post.

Ross is a simple, kind-hearted, gentle man who lives in a tiny settlement in northern Ontario in Canada. A mutual friend once told me of a peculiar incident involving Ross and an Ontario Provincial Police officer.

Ross was returning home from a hunting trip and was clocked driving 110 kilometers in an 80 kilometer zone. Apparently, he only realized he was speeding when he noticed the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. Muttering under his breath, he promptly pulled over and waited for the police officer to approach the car.

"Thirty clicks over the limit," the cop said sternly as he inspected Ross's driving license. "That's nothing to sneeze at. Do you know what the fine for that is?"

"I have no idea," Ross admitted. "Must be a lot. And I don't know how it happened. I guess I got lost in thought."

"Yeah. Could cost some points, too. So, were are you headin' in such hurry, eh?"

"Just headin' home. Coming home from a hunting trip. But I wasn't in a hurry. Like I said, I must have just got lost in thought." Ross paused for a moment. "But I'm not tryin' to make excuses or nothing. I should've been more mindful."

Noting Ross's conciliatory tone, the cop took the driver's license and ran it back at the cruiser. He returned a few minutes later, withdrew his ticket book, and nodded his head. "All right," he said. "I can see you didn't mean it. And you haven't been drinking, and you got a clean record, so here's what I'll do. I'll drop the speed to fifteen over the limit on the ticket. That'll keep you from losing points, and it will cost a whole lot less."

Ross raised his head and looked directly into the police officer's eyes. "I appreciate the offer, but I can't let you do that."

To say the cop was beside himself would have been an understatement. "I don't think you understand," the officer said. "I'm trying to help you out here."

"I get that, officer, but I can't let you do it because if you did it, you'd be lyin' and I'd be lyin' and nothing good could ever come of it."

The cop could barely keep himself from guffawing. They were literally in the middle of nowhere. Walls of pine forest ran along the side of the road on either side. There wasn't another car in sight anywhere, neither in front of them nor behind them.

"No one will know. Just you and me. I'm trying to help you out here."

Ross remained adamant, "And I'm trying to help you out. Please write the ticket for thirty over because thirty over was what I was doin'. That's the truth, and I don't want neither of us to wander away from the truth."

The cop looked like he wanted to say something, but he simply scratched the back of his neck. After a moment of scratching, he placed the tip of his pen to his ticket book and began issuing a ticket to Ross for thirty over the speed limit.

When he handed Ross the ticket, he said, "You know, I've never in my twenty-three years on the force met a man like you."

"Is that a good thing?" Ross asked.

The cop clicked his pen and slipped it back into his jacket. "Yeah, I think it is," he said.

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Note added: I once brought this speeding ticket incident up with Ross during a hunting trip years after the fact. Fittingly enough, he cut the subject short by stating that he did not understand what there was to discuss.

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Autumn Mood

9/25/2022

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Woman Carrying Loppings - László Mednyánszky - exact date unknown (c. 1880s)

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Religious is Not Enough

9/23/2022

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Vox Day has drawn attention to an interesting point concerning discernment. Referring to a Karl Denninger blog post -- in which Denninger insists that, despite everything, the global elite are NOT attempting to kill everyone -- Vox notes:

Karl is a genuine American hero. His courageous work on the vaccine front saved many lives and families. He always tells the truth as best he sees it, and I regard his blog as one of the very few must-reads on the Internet.

He is a smart, observant, and rational man. But he is not, to the best of my knowledge, a religious man.

Which, I think, makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for him to connect the events that he analyzes so well today with the pattern of historic manifestations of the same evil that is ascendant today. Because the wicked elite are not rational, their motivations are difficult to comprehend, and their inspirations are inhuman.

But the one thing we do know about them is that they celebrate death and seek to create more of it everywhere they go and in everything they do.

So, yes, with all due respect, they are trying to kill you.

Vox is on point here. At the same time, the past three years or so have also taught me that when it comes to matters of personal discernment about purposive evil, being religious -- more specifically, Christian-- is not enough.

If it were enough, then it would be difficult to explain why so many Christians have revealed themselves to be such moral and spiritual retards when it comes to making connections between events and evil motivations over these past three years.

And yes, I mean retard in both the literal and the offensive sense of the word.

Being Christian (religious) is vital -- but not enough. The past three years have revealed that one must be a certain kind of Christian to engage in the sorts of discernment Vox mentions. At the risk of being presumptuous, I think Vox would agree.

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The Line Separating Good and Evil Passes Through . . .

9/22/2022

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. . . The Old Fisherman (1902) by Hungarian painter Tivadar Kosztka Csontváry (1853-1919); see painting below:

Now, watch what happens when you place a mirror vertically up the middle of the painting and reflect the left side back upon itself:

Now do the same for the right side and you get . . .

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More Thoughts About Mature and Immature Christians

9/21/2022

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The following is from a comment I left in response to yesterday's post on mature and immature Christians (some editing added):

The irony of the mature-immature attitude framework is that Christians who believe in and emphasize the simplicity and clarity of Jesus's gift, the creative reality of God's divine purposes, and the personal "friendship" nature of the divine-human relationship appear to be the "immature"ones, while Christians who bury all of this beneath heaps of rational abstraction appear to be the "mature" ones.

Yet on closer inspection, the clarity of Jesus's gift, the creative reality of God's divine purposes, and the personal "friendship" nature of the divine-human relationship all entail a great deal of hard work, dedication, discipline, and tough choices, all of which stem from love.

In a nutshell, the friendship attitude toward God demands an ultra-high degree of commitment, discernment, and personal responsibility. For example, the need for repentance becomes infinitely more pressing and meaningful if one knows he has betrayed or disappointed a loving friend.

On the flip side, the abstract, rational philo-theological attitude toward God takes a great deal of discipline and hard work to study, learn, and internalize, but once it has been internalized, the real hard work, discipline, and tough choices inherent in being a Christian can be largely avoided and eschewed.

Moreover, this lack of commitment to personal responsibility makes rationalization much more accessible.

After all, it is much easier to withhold repentance from an abstraction than it is from a friend who loves you and whom you claim to love.

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The Distinction Between an Immature Christian and a Mature Christian Lies in the Answer to "Does God Believe in You"?

9/20/2022

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Being a Christian entails professing a belief in God, but it also involves professing whether God believes in us; more precisely, how and why God believes in us.

When a Christian outlines if God believes in him, he reveals a great deal about his attitude toward God and his attitude about man. More significantly, he discloses his core beliefs about the divine-human relationship and the ultimate purpose of Creation.

This leads to many platitudes about God’s infinite love for man, which are then sharply contrasted by the insistence that God does not need man. It also leads to grand proclamations about God’s personal nature, which are then juxtaposed with descriptions of a great mystery one can never truly hope to know. And so on . . .

And don’t even get me started about Jesus.

I have categorized and described Christians in many different ways on this blog over the years. In addition to focusing on several denominations, I have written about liberal Christians, conservative Christians, traditional Christians, orthodox Christians, mainstream Christians, conventional Christians, System Christians, solitary Christians, mystical Christians, and Romantic Christians. I consider some of the Christians noted above to be serious Christians; others, far less so.

Though I will likely continue to refer to these categories in the future, I am becoming increasingly convinced that after 2020, serious Christians can and should be placed into two distinct, overarching categories:

Immature serious Christians and mature serious Christians.

The simplest way to distinguish immature serious Christians from mature serious Christians is to ask them why and how God believes in them.

Answers that mention love but then focus exclusively on human fallibility, human depravity, submission, fealty, fallen-ness, contingency, unworthiness, doctrines, worship, sin, rebelliousness, churches, obedience, authority, bending the knee, and the like are hallmarks of an immature serious Christian.

Not necessary a bad Christian, or an evil Christian, or a stupid Christian, or a wayward Christian, or a heretical Christian, or an apostate Christian, but an immature Christian – as in unripe, undeveloped, unformed, half-grown, callow.

Answers that mention love and then go on to describe something similar to what William Arkle outlines below are signs of a mature or, at the very least, a maturing serious Christian (bold added):

We can realise for ourselves that love can be passive or active. We can know for ourselves that it is possible to sit down and simply radiate love, like a light bulb radiates light, in all directions but not directed in any particular way to any particular thing. This is passive love.

We can feel that love becomes more active if we begin to direct it onto an object, say a stone; but we can feel a difference if we direct this loving attention onto something more fully alive, such as a plant or a flower.

This time we recognise a relationship which has a wider range of responses in it, and it is easier and more satisfying to love such a responsive thing. But now, if we look at how we feel if we direct our loving attention to even more living objects such as pet animals, human beings and children we realise that our love and relationship can grow again and become even more valuable.

And if these human beings are of a more deeply beautiful and gracious order, then the activity of our love leaps into higher and higher expressions which are more valuable and delightful. Finally from the experience of our love directed actively to a most valuable human being, we can move again to a situation in which we are able to love a perfectly beautiful and gracious person, and this is our God of love.

Because our God is the most alive and responsive being, this experience of actively directed love can be the most sublime.

In this highest form of active love we must therefore have the one who loves and the one who is loved in order to arrive at a responsive situation. So we have two individuals, our God of love and the one who loves God. In this situations, the one who loves God enters into a Divine relationship in which both individuals are of the same order, even if God is far more mature than the individual who is loving him.

So, at the moment that the individual really loves God as another individual who can be loved, then the two of them become friends in the Divine nature to which they both belong.

This means that God no longer has to be God, but can become a friend to the one who loves Him and can love his friend back again in the way that love must if it is to express the fulfilment of its nature.

The one who loves God also gradually realises that he is loving a real responsive individual with whom he is now a friend, and this experience is confirmed by all the other experiences of love to be different from worship. For worship is a sort of one-sided love which does not allow for a response and therefore cannot move into friendship, because in worship we do not relate to God as a living being but we idealise God in a fixed image that we have in our own understanding and thus we prevent Him coming alive.

We do this, no doubt, out of a diminished sense of our own value and adequacy and out of a sense of modesty. But we only have to look at the nature of love for a moment to realise that the truest form of love does not have to behave in this manner. In fact it is unkind to worship others, rather than to love them, because it fixes them in a mould they do not wish to be fixed in; in fact by worshipping people we imprison them.

But love does not wish to imprison the one it loves, above all, love longs to give expansion and enhanced beingness to the one it loves. Love longs to be in a creative and growing relationship with the one it loves.

Love is the highest expression of life itself, and life is never static, but always wishes to be aspiring and developing towards new and untried possibilities ties.

So what I feel the term a loving God really means, is that this God is trying to develop us to a stage where we can become His friends in this deeply loving, active, personalised way which allows the creative fruits of a friendship to arise between them which constantly keeps pace with the liveliness and creative aspiration of the living spirit of our common Divine nature.

Note added: As far as I am concerned, the distinction between immature and mature Christians is the only one that matters in this time and place. I firmly believe that immature Christians will find it increasingly hard to remain immature Christians in the coming months/years. They will either choose the path of maturity or they will become stunted and, eventually, cease being Christians altogether.

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Long Time Running

9/19/2022

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An Example of a Traditionalist's Take on Responsibility For Personal Discernment

9/18/2022

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Dr. Charlton left an interesting comment on my post about conscience and personal discernment from yesterday. Citing a video (see below) that appeared on Ann Barnhardt's blog a few days ago, Dr. Charlton made the following observations (bold added):

Another aspect might be to discuss - with specific examples - 'how to do it' - suggestions of how, for example, to be a Roman Catholic who puts personal responsibility for discernment first.

I don't mean as a checklist! but more like the fundamental assumptions and aspirations of such an approach to the problem.

For instance, this Roman Catholic priest Fr James Mawdsley is inspiringly clear about how Catholics should approach the problem when current church authorities order behaviour contrary to the dictates of conscience, and of the deeper truths of the church:

I found this video, strongly endorsed, on Ann Barnhardt's web pages - and she certainly regards herself as an (ultra!) traditionalist, devoted to the church - yet able to make personal discernments when the current church authorities take the side of purposive evil.

All that divides this approach from Romantic Christianity is an explicit *awareness* of the personally-based nature of these primary discernments.

Note added: It is noteworthy that in the video Fr Mawdsley mentions "a profound problem with people's understanding of the law and obedience". This ties in well with the brouhaha over authority and obedience my Altar-Civilization post inadvertently stirred up.

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What Are Christians “For” When They Go Against Conscience?

9/17/2022

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Simple answer – they are “for” something that goes against God and Creation.

Anyway, many conventionally-minded Christians are suspicious of the Romantic Christian call for the necessity of assuming personal responsibility for discernment in this time and place.

Some dismiss it as a radically individualistic, “go your own way” approach destined to lead one away from God rather than toward Him.

Others fear the fallibility of personal discernment, especially if it ventures too far from tradition and church teaching.

Whatever the concern, most conventionally-minded Christians openly acknowledge that responsibility for personal discernment is indeed a key element of the Christian faith. At the same time, they are often apprehensive, confused, or obstinate when it comes to the matter of delineating the “boundaries” of that Christian responsibility. Much of what qualifies as Christian conscience barely rises above social conscience.

Though this may sound harsh, I sense that Christians have fallen into the rather dangerous habit of doing everything they can to avoid personal responsibility for their discernment, and I believe this dangerous habit reveals itself most perceptibly when it comes to matters of conscience.

Conscience is a core component of Christian discernment. No Christian tradition treats the matter of conscience lightly or timidly.

Even the Catholic Church, which other Christian denominations are usually quick to criticize as “authoritarian” and the least “free”, approaches conscience with an assuredly clear conception of the role and significance of conscience in an individual’s discernment and personal responsibility.

I focus here specifically on Catholic views on conscience primarily because it is the tradition with which I am most familiar, and secondly because the followers of the Catholic tradition are often the most resistant to the notion of personal responsibility for discernment.

The Second Edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church dedicates an entire section to conscience. Interestingly enough, most of what the Catechism notes is in complete alignment with the supposedly “radical and individualistic” Romantic Christian take on responsibility and discernment (bold added throughout).

PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION ONE
MAN'S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT

CHAPTER ONE
THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ARTICLE 6
MORAL CONSCIENCE

1776 - Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."

I. THE JUDGMENT OF CONSCIENCE

1777 Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

Note the emphasis on the heart, on internals, on the call to love, on the call to do Good, on alignment with God’s purposes, all of which happen within – not outwith – the individual. Note also the definition of conscience as a conduit through which “a prudent man can hear God speaking.”

I could quibble about the implications of concepts like law and obedience, not because I am innately opposed to these concepts, but because the words are often misunderstood and misapplied, most frequently as means through which to avoid personal responsibility. In any case, what the Catechism outlines parallels the Romantic Christian notion of heart-thinking, almost to a T.

1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:

Conscience is a law of the mind; yet [Christians] would not grant that it is nothing more; I mean that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise. . . . [Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.

Once again, perceiving and recognizing the prescriptions of divine law echoes the Catholic emphasis on authority, but the implications of personal responsibility are resoundingly clear nonetheless. Conscience is primarily “about” an inner mode of thinking and acting that aligns with God and Creation.

Describing the conscience as the aboriginal Vicar of Christ is Cardinal John Henry Newman’s stroke of beauty and genius. Aboriginal means primordial, primeval, and original, implying that man’s connection to God via conscience supersedes man’s connection to the Vicar of Christ who heads the Church.

Catholics naturally qualify this distinction and are quick to criticize Protestants who basically wielded the distinction to separate themselves from the authority of the Church.

I do not wish to wade too deeply into such matters in this post. All I can say is that the role of conscience as a conduit for hearing the voice of God and the assumption of responsibility for conscience both align with Romantic Christian assumptions about personal responsibility for discernment.

1779 It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection:

Return to your conscience, question it. . . . Turn inward, brethren, and in everything you do, see God as your witness.

Stressing interiority, reflection, self-examination, and turning inward accords with the Romantic Christian call to place internals before externals – to distance oneself from the external distractions of the given world and focus instead on the internal realities of the Created World with the understanding that the reality of the Created World exists in the internal, even when it is perceived as being external.

1780 The dignity of the human person implies and requires uprightness of moral conscience. Conscience includes the perception of the principles of morality (synderesis); their application in the given circumstances by practical discernment of reasons and goods; and finally judgment about concrete acts yet to be performed or already performed. The truth about the moral good, stated in the law of reason, is recognized practically and concretely by the prudent judgment of conscience. We call that man prudent who chooses in conformity with this judgment.

1781 Conscience enables one to assume responsibility for the acts performed. If man commits evil, the just judgment of conscience can remain within him as the witness to the universal truth of the good, at the same time as the evil of his particular choice. The verdict of the judgment of conscience remains a pledge of hope and mercy. In attesting to the fault committed, it calls to mind the forgiveness that must be asked, the good that must still be practiced, and the virtue that must be constantly cultivated with the grace of God:

We shall . . . reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything

Without the uprightness of moral conscience, the dignity of the human person is threatened. Aquinas’ teachings about synderesis are a testament to this principle, and they underscore the unavoidable need to think and act in good conscience. Note also the weight the Catechism places on personal responsibility, and the unquestionable need for repentance whenever an individual Christian goes against his conscience. A Christian who does not repent going against his conscience condemns himself. Attesting to faults committed is the foundation of spiritual learning, which Romantic Christians define as the primary purpose of mortal life.

1782 Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions.

"He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters."

Traditionally-minded Christians inevitably insist upon the primacy of authority over freedom, but 1782 in the Catechism seems to suggest that this notion is not necessarily set in stone. The Catechism qualifies this, as we shall see, but taken here in isolation, 1782 affirms the Romantic Christian assumption that freedom always enjoys primacy over authority.

Nikolai Berdyaev went as far as to proclaim that he could never accept anything that went against his free conscience “not even God himself since God cannot be violence over me. My humility before the Highest can only be enlightenment and transfiguration of my free conscience from within, as my communion with a Higher Reality.”

Traditionally-minded Christians tend to regard following conscience as an act of obedience to an external command of God who communicates with the individual within via conscience. Viewed this way, conscience is reduced to free will – to the matter of choosing right over wrong and good over evil.

I submit that the Romantic Christian belief about conscience accepts free will but attempts to expand beyond it into the realm of spiritual freedom, into the enlightenment and transfiguration Berdyaev mentions.

For a Romantic Christian, the ultimate purpose of conscience does not reside in choice but the rendering of choice irrelevant.

A conscience that aligns with God does not agonize over choices; it sees the best and only course of action and then takes it.

I am not suggesting that Romantic Christians have attained this conscience in any consistent manner, but it is within Romantic Christian motivation to recognize the desirability of spiritual freedom and strive toward it.

II. THE FORMATION OF CONSCIENCE

1783 Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.

1784 The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience. Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear, selfishness and pride, resentment arising from guilt, and feelings of complacency, born of human weakness and faults. The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.

1785 In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path, we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience before the Lord's Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church.

The passages above reveal a demarcation line between the traditional and Romantic Christian understanding of conscience. Unsurprisingly, the Church insists upon the necessity of its authoritative teachings in 1783, whereas the Romantic Christian understanding is better reflected in the last sentence of 1785.

Romantic Christians are open to being guided by authoritative teachings but also understand that truth can only be disclosed and received in freedom and not through authority, which inevitably suffocates thought.

III. TO CHOOSE IN ACCORD WITH CONSCIENCE

1786 Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.

1787 Man is sometimes confronted by situations that make moral judgments less assured and decision difficult. But he must always seriously seek what is right and good and discern the will of God expressed in divine law.

1788 To this purpose, man strives to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times assisted by the virtue of prudence, by the advice of competent people, and by the help of the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

1789 Some rules apply in every case:
- One may never do evil so that good may result from it;
- the Golden Rule: "Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them."
- charity always proceeds by way of respect for one's neighbor and his conscience: "Thus sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience . . . you sin against Christ." Therefore "it is right not to . . . do anything that makes your brother stumble."

The matter of making a moral choice “either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them” has become a real sticking point for many traditionally-minded Christians.

Without going into extensive detail, I’ll just say that many of the contrary, erroneous judgments I have witnessed traditional Christians make in the past three years or so can be directly attributed to muddled ideas about what constitutes “divine law”.

When it comes to matters of conscience, traditionally-minded Christians rarely draw deeply enough into the interiority the Catechism noted earlier.

Instead, they often fall into the trap of allowing externals to dominate and rule over the internal. Hence, “divine law” is experienced externally rather than internally. Instead of the voice of God, conscience hears the voice of the external Church, or the voice of society, or the voice of secular law.

The spiritual is obscured as the conscience responds to the external. Most traditional Christians are either oblivious to this or rationalize this misuse of conscience as an indicator of their humility before and obedience to authority.

IV. ERRONEOUS JUDGMENT

1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

That is about as clear and straightforward as can be. A human being *must* obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he doesn’t, he condemns himself. If he has condemned himself, he should repent.

1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin." In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

Ignorance is no excuse, especially after ignorance has been revealed. Also, ignorance cannot be used to justify and rationalize wrong choices. Personal responsibility and discernment are indisputably unavoidable.

1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

According to this criteria, all Romantic Christian discernment is an error of judgment, which is understandable given the context.

1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.

Plain English – if you are an incurable moral and spiritual retard who really cannot tell right from wrong even though you are sincerely trying your best to figure out, you get a pass . . . sort of. The same applies to people who are forced into committing evil without knowing they are committing evil. Nevertheless, evil is still evil and needs to be acknowledged as such.

1794 A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time "from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith."

The more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by objective standards of moral conduct.

To sum up, the Romantic Christian insistence upon the gravity of personal responsibility for discernment echoes the tenets prescribed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Yes, some key differences exist – particularly when it comes to matters of law, authority, and obedience – but the core Christian principles overlap.

The biggest difference between the two approaches to conscience could be summed up by the following question – What for?

Salvation aside, the “what for” of conscience in conventional Christianity can be summarized as obeying God and keeping his law to ensure the stability and continuity of divine order.

When a Christian obey his conscience, he is “for” these things. When he goes against his conscience, he is “for” everything that opposes these things.

This is nothing to sneeze at. Whenever a traditionally or conventionally-minded Christian goes against his conscience, he goes against God’s divine order and is “for” disorder, which means he is actively choosing to weaken and undermine what God has divinely created and put into place. He is essentially “for” evil.

Hence, in addition to working toward salvation, a traditionally-minded Christian is motivated to conserve and preserve the order Divine Law has instituted.

Romantic Christians understand and appreciate this approach, but also view conscience as a conduit for creativity.

The Romantic Christian intuitively understands that every alignment of his conscience with Creation does more than maintain order – it enhances and adds something to the Reality of Creation. Romantic Christians are “for” this creativity.

Thus, for the Romantic Christian, conscience is not limited to the choice between good and evil – it spills over into the creative possibilities that arise after an alignment with good is in place. Without awareness of the possibilities that alignment brings, there is little or no participation in God’s creative purposes.

Conscience extends beyond keeping God's moral order.

It is also about participating in the ongoing creation of Creation.

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The Spiritual, Supernatural Principle in Man

9/14/2022

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Conscience is the spiritual, supernatural principle in man, and it is not of social origin at all. It is rather the perversion and confusion of conscience that is of social origin.

- Nikolai Berdyaev

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