Church and conscience
C.H. Sisson
Conscience is a very sophisticated conception, but it can also be a very simple one. A casuist may think condescendingly of a conscience not instructed by himself; some highly instructed persons — Pascal for one — have thought some casuists rather funny and rather dishonest. But what all consciences have in common is that they have been taught, more or less. They are a product of our civilisation and barbarisms, as well as of the controverted residue which was there 'originally', whatever that might mean. So the conscience of the world, so frequently reported in the media to be 'affronted' by this or that, is a rather suspect article. Who taught it? one must wonder.
Indeed all consciences are suspect, as the Church has been among the first to point out. The mind of man is infinitely devious, and claims to purity of intention are to be taken with a pinch of salt. That of course goes for ecclesiastics as well as for the rest of the world. There is nothing more difficult to impart, surely, than the divine residuum of which they claim to be the exponents. The statement of doctrine has, traditionally, been hedged with many precautions, none of which has given universal and unqualified satisfaction. Be that as it may, the application of doctrine, the appreciation of its consequences in the field of action, has proved a treacherous one for all concerned. There is a vast area of ecclesiastical pronouncements which a reasonable man may regard with suspicion. 'The Church of Rome hath erred,' — the Thirty-Nine Articles declares — all particular churches have erred: that is certainly the commonsense of the matter as relating to all ordinary ecclesiastical pronouncements, whatever may be the case as to the ultimate residuum of doctrine. The ordinary victim of ecclesiastical guidance is in an uncertain position, like the rest of us, when it comes to taking a view on the affairs of the world, if only because information is a part of the truth and ecclesiastical information has not always been all it might have been.
Whatever may be the quality of the guidance afforded it, no one disputes that the conscience is an individual faculty, to be exercised as best we can in the face of all the evidences and instruction presented to it. How far we should listen to father before we decide — and indeed, who is father — are questions at the bottom of all the argument which has gone on on the subject in recent centuries: all that is distinctly at the soph isticated end of the range of conceptions of 'conscience' now prevailing in the world at large. The range extends far outside the world of theological conceptions — or of what is commonly understood by them.
For Machiavelli a mask of religion, on a competent politician, was likely to be — precisely — a mask; and wily men have always been suspicious of eloquence. But the great popular success of 'conscience', from the Reformation, through the vainly boasting Anabaptists and the like to Voltaire, Rousseau, the French Revolution and beyond, has delivered into the hands of politicians an armoury of a more potent kind.
For we have long arrived at Democracy, somewhat fallible in its ordinary practice, as indeed imperfect in its organisation, but generally said to be infallible in principle. If anything goes wrong, everyone agrees at once that there wasn't enough democracy. Have some more and everything will be all right. We have not been righteous enough, according to current conceptions, so the wrath of God — or some more popular substitute — is upon us. What we used to have, in this country, in the days when foreigners were misguided enough to imitate us, was a mixed government, royal, aristocratic and democratic. A mixed government is in fact not only the best sort to have, it is the only sort you can have, in the modern world. It is the right recipe for the mixture which is difficult. But the patter put out no longer says that. It says that governments—all decent governments — are `democratic'; the various mechanisms which make them work in spite of being democratic are more or less ignored, more or less concealed, more or less denied. Yet who does not know that the tiniest organisation — let alone a modern government — will not work without one or two hard-bitten people who actually do things and take account of facts, as well as the uncertain number who stand around talking and expressing opinions which may or may not take account of the facts?
The centre of this mystery is the encouragement, by those who are elected, of belief in the magical nature of the process. Who elected you? is their question, which may be counted upon to floor any nonelected person who might come near to winning an argument merely on merits. Of course, in an appropriate constitutional context this is absolutely right, for arguments have to be ended somehow, so that the work can go on. But the constitutional context seems to matter less and less, for beyond the elected person is the individual voter, whose untiring conscience is perpetually to be probed to find an answer more correct than the correct answer that was found last 'time. Moreover, since elections unhappily don't take place quite all the time, even in the most sophisticated democracy, various ways have to be found of discovering what the oracles would be saying if they were asked to speak. And the obvious way is to ask them to speak, out of season as well as in. So we get various collectors of oracles, of varying degrees of professionalism and amateurism; their Objective is to launch themselves on properly constituted governments waving documents which prove that on some point or Other the official augurs are wrong, as indeed they frequently are, though it does not follow from that that any particular set of unofficial augurs is right. 'Two things fill my mind with everincreasing wonder,' said Immanuel Kant, the highbrow exponent, if anyone ever was, of the Nordic Protestant conscience, 'the starry heavens above and the moral law Within.' Kant's wonder might have increased still more if he could have seen the excesses of conscience in our day. What he had in mind was the solitary philosopher taking a dog for a walk. What we have to think of, in the context of contemporary Politics, is a variety of persons not all in the same tradition. The old casuists had in mind a patient who would stop and listen to them, but our public will not stop to be instructed. The casuists were certainly right to make the point that the individual might often confuse what he thought was right with What he merely wanted; they omitted, in general, to add that the same might be true of the casuist. We have greatly simplified these matters, so far as politics are concerned. In democratic practice, as well as mythology, what you want and what you think should be done are one and the same thing. A conscience, ultimately, is a vote, and that is all there is to it.
In this historic migration of the conscience from religion to politics a strange metamorphosis has occurred. For the original question of conscience was, What should I do? The political question is, What should someone else do? In spite of some more unobtrusive activities going on here and there the Church, deferential as usual to the drift of the times, shows signs of following this political lead. Once we were invited to pray God `to save and defend all Christian Kings, Princes and Governors,' so that the established authorities could get on with their duties in accordance with their consciences. Now we are more likely to be asked to uphold alleged rights against the better judgment of some government or other, it may be that of the Queen's Majesty, over whom the bishops have now given themselves precedence as if they were common Anabaptists. They are making obeisance to the supreme power residing in the conscience of votes.
For the Roman church things are probably a little different. They have a long tradition of meddling in the affairs of lawful governments and take like a duck to water to the business of putting governments to rights. They even — though it is an absurdity — have their own diplomatic representatives.
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