I read with a bit of interest the Holy Father’s comments on the first day of his visit to Croatia. He spoke of conscience, and Europe’s future.
Here is what he said, as reported by The Catholic News Agency.
“If, in keeping with the prevailing modern idea, conscience is reduced to the subjective field to which religion and morality have been banished, then the crisis of the West has no remedy and Europe is destined to collapse in on itself… If on the other hand, conscience is rediscovered as the place in which to listen to truth and good, the place of responsibility before God and before fellow human beings — in other words, the bulwark against all forms of tyranny — then there is hope for the future.”
There are so many who think today that the tyranny lies in the camp of those of us who know there to be a truth to which we aspire, a truth besides ourselves, a truth that has objective validity and reality. These people are misled to believe that freedom can only be found in an absence of outer restrictions and obligations and the ability to “do what I desire to do.” What they mistake for freedom is in all reality a true slavery and an invitation to diminishment, even annihilation of the human person.
Freedom comes from knowing the truth, and being able to pursue and accomplish what we ought. Inner freedom arises from moving beyond ourselves and toward an embrace of the other who is truth.
Conscience is that God-given gift which directs us out of ourselves and to that which we come to know as the true, good and beautiful.
As goes Europe, so goes, eventually, the Americas. That is why the pope’s warning is so pointed.
