Introduction

Obedience is a matter of justice. Justice is the perpetual and constant will to render to each one his right. The order of justice requires that subjects obey their superiors, else the stability of human affairs would cease. According to Aquinas, obedience to a superior is due in accordance with the divinely established order of things. We are bound to obey our superiors because of God and because of the common good.

Conscience is that seat in man’s reason, intellect where moral judgements are made and which commands the will according to its formed judgements. If the will obeys, we are living according to our dignity as humans. If it does not obey, but is bent by other factors - passion, fear, duress, etc. - we are not living according to our dignity as humans, but are living in bondage. 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. There cannot be no morality without freedom. It is only in freedom that man can turn to what is good. Hence, the need to stress the dignity of conscience. To obey conscience is the very dignity of man; according to it, he will be judged.

Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe to each other this duty of respect. the right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person. This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority within the limits of the common good and public order.

Man's dignity demands that he act according to a knowing and free choice that is personally motivated and prompted from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere external pressure. Man achieves such dignity when, emancipating himself from all captivity to passion, he pursues his goal in a spontaneous choice of what is good, and procures for himself through effective and skilful action, apt helps to that end.

It might seem there is a conflict between civil obedience and the freedom of individual conscience. What is the place of conscience in obeying civil authority? Does the social teaching of the church say anything in this regard?

Is there really conflict freedom of conscience and civil obedience?

The teaching of the Church on civil obedience is not against the freedom of conscience. Man’s freedom is manifested when he acts in conscience i.e. not according to his animal instincts and feelings. If he acts according to the latter, he is not free but is actually in fetters. He is truly free if he transcends this lower nature and act according to his higher nature, the capacity of his reason. And our practical reason tells us to obey our superiors because of the common good for what they command is for the common good. However, if they command what is against the common good, our conscience should tell us when not to obey.

There is a beautiful harmony between the dictate of our conscience and the command of our superiors if they are both formed according to reason in keeping with the natural and divine law. The harmony is that they correspond; the external command of our superiors becomes simultaneously the dictate of our conscience in that particular circumstance. Our conscience commands us to do just what our superiors are commanding us to do. The command of our superiors becomes, as it were, internalized in us; it becomes our command, our law, the law of conscience. Thus, we obey in the freedom of conscience. We obey our conscience, even as we obey our superiors. It is in this light that we talk of our moral autonomy.

Conscience is an essential part of being human. It is what defines our freedom (our free will). Thus, when we obey in the freedom of conscience, obedience becomes a personal act, a virtuous and meritorious act, not enslavement. Obedience devoid of the right and rational dialogue of the rightly formed conscience is an enslavement and devoid of virtue. To just obey because you have been commanded, whether what has been commanded is good or bad, is a misconception of obedience.

Civil laws should not reduce, much less do away with human freedom; rather, it should protect and promote that freedom. Our freedom is in doing the right thing, not doing anything we please even the wrong things. This is rather an abuse of freedom which the law should punish. Hence, there is only an alleged conflict between freedom and law. Such conflict can only arise due to a wrong conception of freedom or a misconception of civil authority or due to an unjust law. Our moral autonomy (i.e. our freedom to act in conscience) is not undermined by civil law but promoted and protected by it. However, our moral autonomy should not be mistaken for absolute sovereignty. Our rightful moral autonomy is in a sense a dependent autonomy, for our conscience should act in accord with the natural and divine law, and by extension, in accord with the civil law which ought to be in accord with the natural and divine law. The autonomy of reason cannot mean that reason itself creates values and moral norms. This becomes clearer when we grasp fully what the conscience is.

What is conscience?

Conscience is that aspect of man that discovers the law within, that helps us distinguish right from wrong. It guides us to choose the good and avoid the evil. The law that conscience helps us to discover is the natural moral law which enables the individual rationally consider his situation and act in a way that would be in accord with his ultimate end. Conscience is a summon to do what is good in a particular situation; an inner dictate for the individual. Conscience formulates moral obligation in the light of the natural law.

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 ... 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.

The judgment of conscience does not establish the law; rather it bears witness to the authority of the natural law and of the practical reason with reference to the supreme good .... "Conscience is not an independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil. Rather there is profoundly imprinted upon it a principle of obedience vis-à-vis the objective norm which establishes and conditions the correspondence of its decisions with the commands and prohibitions which are at the basis of human behaviour".

There are some false perception of human freedom, which diverge form the truth about man.

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 ... The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true MERELY by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience.

It is such notions that posit a radical opposition between moral law and conscience. Some often cultivate freedom in wrong ways as a licence to do anything they please, even evil. Man’s freedom is limited and should not be abused. The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything. By deviating from the moral law, man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighbourly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth.

Erroneous Judgement of Conscience

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. 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.

St. Thomas Aquinas himself acknowledges that a mistaken conscience is binding. Conscience is always binding. Since the object of the will is that which is proposed by the reason, from the very fact that a thing is proposed by the reason as being evil, the will by tending thereto becomes evil, for the will tends to it as to something evil. The will is evil because it wills evil, even if it turns out that the reason was wrong in its perception and what it perceived as evil was not evil after all. Every will at variance with reason, whether right or erring, is always evil. Hence, an erring conscience is binding.

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. 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.

However, if 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. Nevertheless, it remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience. Hence, we all have a huge responsibility of forming our conscience rightly. We should grow steadily towards having a mature, responsible and “autonomous” conscience.

Formation of Conscience

“Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known.” Conscience, as the judgement of an act, is not exempt from the possibility of error. Conscience, as the ultimate concrete judgment, compromises its dignity when it is culpably erroneous, that is to say, when man shows little concern for seeking what is true and good, and conscience gradually becomes almost blind from being accustomed to sin. If our conscience is clouded and culpably judges erroneously, we are not living according to our dignity as humans, thus, we have the duty as humans to rightly form our conscience. The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart. There is also need for constant examination of conscience in our moral journey.

In the formation of conscience, there are, among other things, two things that could cloud or dim our conscience. These are prejudice and the failure to be autonomous. Prejudice could result from upbringing and cultural conditioning. We all need to be aware that we bring with us a large amount of “cultural baggage”. In certain societies, some attitudes and practices are regarded as good and accepted as such without due conscientious reflection. We have to be aware of this and make efforts at rectifying them. Secondly, there is the failure to be autonomous. In other words, people are sometimes content to go along with the crowd, sometimes quite literally, allowing others to make their minds up for them and thus overriding their consciences. E.g. a soldier may claim that he is just obeying orders as was done in Nazi Germany, thus, passing responsibility onto the state or the army. But this is in effect a form of denial. Everyone is responsible for his or her own actions and is to be held to account for them, for everyone has a conscience.

In the church particularly, we have an infallible guide for the formation of our conscience. This is one of the reason why Christ came to reveal to us the truth so that we would not be confused.

Christians have a great help for the formation of conscience in the Church and her Magisterium ... The authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines the freedom of conscience of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is never freedom "from" the truth but always and only freedom "in" the truth, but also because the Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather it brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting point of the primordial act of faith. The Church puts herself always and only at the service of conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by human deceit, and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man, but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in it.

What happens if there is conflict between conscience and a civil law?

A situation might arise where there is an actual conflict between the dictate of our conscience and what our superiors are commanding. In such cases, what should be our response? There are duties for the superiors and their subjects in such cases.

The superior should re-examine his precepts to ensure it is in keeping with the natural and divine law and according to justice. If it is not, it should be rectified. Superiors have the duty to make just laws which would thereby be binding in the freedom of conscience. If the precept is, however, found to be just, the superiors should patiently help to inform the consciences of the subject by supplying all the information necessary lest the error of the conscience be due to ignorance. If after such an attempt has been sufficiently done, all dissidents should be duly and rightly punished. Superiors should provide all that is needed for subjects to rightly form their conscience. They should not hold back vital information that would help subjects form their conscience rightly, just because they want the subjects to obey in the blindness of conscience. Such an act is a vicious act and is an injustice done to the people. Also, the state should not condition the conscience of its citizens to be formed in a certain erroneous way that would be tantamount to indoctrination.

A good society is one in which people are capable of making conscientious decisions. Dictatorships, by constrast, have to rely on dulling the consciences and consciousness of citizens or else swaying their minds with propaganda and other forms of disinformation.

The subjects should re-examine the precept and try as much as possible to get all the information about the situation and the percept. The subjects should endeavour to form their consciences by asking competent guides and seeking appropriate help. Aquinas provides one of such guide. According to Aquinas, there are four reasons, for which a subject may not be bound to obey his superior.

First, on account of the command of a higher power, we are bound to disregard the law of an inferior power. Justice demands it.

Secondly, a subject is not bound to obey his superior if the latter command him to do something wherein he is not subject to him: (I) In matters touching the internal movement of his soul, man is not bound to obey his fellow-man, but God alone. (II) Since by nature all men are equal, one is not bound to obey another man in matters touching the nature of the body, e.g. in those relating to the support of his body or the begetting of his children. Thus, servants are not bound to obey their masters, nor children their parents, in the question of contracting marriage or of remaining in the state of virginity or the like.

Thirdly, no one is bound to do the impossible. If a superior makes a heap of precepts and lays them upon his subjects, so that they are unable to fulfill them, they are excused from sin. Superiors should refrain from making a multitude of precepts.

Fourthly, we are not bound to obey when the laws are unjust. Laws may be unjust in two ways: first, by being contrary to human good, either (I) in respect of the end, as when an authority imposes on his subjects burdensome laws, conducive, not to the common good, but rather to his own cupidity or vainglory, or (II) in respect of the author, as when a man makes a law that goes beyond the power committed to him, or (III) in respect of the form, as when burdens are imposed unequally on the community. Secondly, laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law.

Considering all the preceding, Aquinas posits that in order to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right, such laws as above might be obeyed except if they are contrary to the divine law, in which case, they must never be observed, because we ought to obey God rather than man.

Aquinas, further, counsels that we should act besides the letter of the law if acting accordingly would be hurtful to the general welfare. In observance of law, we always have to consider the “epikeia”, the intention of the lawgiver.

Every law is directed to the common good of men, and derives the force and nature of law accordingly. Now it sometimes happens that the observance of some point of law, which conduces to the common good in the majority of instances, can be very hurtful to the common good in some cases... In such cases, since the lawgiver cannot have in view every single case, he shapes the law according to what happens most frequently. Therefore, if a case arises wherein the observance of that law would be hurtful to the general welfare, it should not be observed. Nevertheless it must be noted, that if the observance of the law according to the letter does not involve any sudden risk needing instant remedy, it is not competent for everyone to expound what is useful and what is not useful to the state: those alone can do this who are in authority, and who, on account of such like cases, have the power to dispense from the laws. If, however, the peril is so sudden as not to allow of the delay involved by referring the matter to authority, the mere necessity brings with it a dispensation, since necessity knows no law.

Conclusion

If someone is convinced in conscience that a certain course of action is right, the state must respect that, for everyone has the right to act in conscience. Every state has to acknowledge the right of conscientious objectors, and neither has the right to force consciences. Indeed, it is the sign of a wicked state if it does not respect the inalienable rights of conscience, for the rights of conscience are given by God, not the state or any other authority. There is, however, the corresponding duty to form the conscience rightly; anyone who fails in this duty thereby is culpable for his wrong act and should be punished accordingly.

We also have to realize that the fact that our conscience chooses a thing does not thereby make the thing right. In other words, the rightness or wrongness of a thing is not dependent on the fact that our conscience perceives it to be right or wrong. Moral acts are objectively right or wrong irrespective of individual consciences. Hence, we can talk of wrong or right judgements of conscience. Conscience is not the lawmaker nor the epitome of judging the rightness or wrongness of an act. Hence, though the state should respect consciences and not oppress or suppress consciences, it retains the right to punish dissidents especially if the individual conscience is wrongly formed. The state should also help to correct wrongly formed conscience.

Anyone who disobeys the state due to his conscience, whether rightly or wrongly, should, nevertheless, submit to the punishment of the state if any. If he is right (by the standard of the Natural and Divine law), he suffers for God and it becomes meritorious. If, however, he is wrong (by the standard of Natural and Divine Law), he suffers the just punishment of his evil-deed. Hence, the need to rightly form our conscience cannot be over-emphasized.