Conscience Invaders

Abuse of conscience happens when a human being presumes to speak on behalf of God in an unmediated way.

It’s an invasion of the inner sanctuary where we should be alone with God.

It makes it difficult for the person abused to discern the voice of God and the voice of the invader.

This doesn’t just happen in church contexts either. It can absolutely happen in marriages/families, especially where there’s the belief that husbands are the primary meditator between their wife (and kids) and God.

Fr. Samuel Fernández, professor of Theology at the a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, writes:

“According to Christian revelation, the social character of the human being develops through its ecclesial dimension. The believer, as a human being, is linked to humanity and, as a Christian, is part of the People of God. Therefore, the believer is called to listen to the voice of God through different forms of mediations, one of which is the Church.

The human beings created by God and called to communion with Him must be open to their own foundation, i.e., to God who reveals Himself as the loving authority. The will of God, the only absolute authority, is revealed to human beings in various ways: through nature, history, reason, the Church and personal conscience. Given that these are mediations of God’s will and not the will of God itself, they are partial, ambivalent and ambiguous. Therefore, they must be discerned, because they do not always coincide mutually and, thus, could clash with each other.

Thus, the problem of abuse of conscience in the Catholic setting is framed within the complex relationship between the mediation of conscience and the various mediations of ecclesiastical authority. Therefore, to understand the abuse of conscience, it is crucial to distinguish the legitimate influences of ecclesiastical authority, which do not impede but rather illuminate human conscience, from those that are abusive influences, which obstruct or nullify it. In this context, the expression ‘ecclesiastical authority’ should be understood in a broad sense, which implies both the power of governance and all other forms of influence, institutional or charismatic, that are exercised in the Church.

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The vocation of ecclesiastical mediation is to re–present the voice of God before the believer, while its temptation is to identify itself with the divine voice, which it is called to re–present.

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Abuse of conscience is the type of abuse of power that damages the conscience as the seat of freedom of judgment and as the place of encounter with God and with oneself. Abuse of conscience occurs when the ecclesial mediation transgresses its limits, so that it gains control of and replaces it.

For instance, it is perpetrated when representatives of the Church impose the will of God on the followers who have opened their conscience to them. In fact, when ecclesiastical mediation becomes absolute, it transgresses its limits and contradicts its aim and meaning. The leader no longer represents God, but supplants Him, and makes wrongful use of the name of the Lord (Ex 20:7).

Thus, conscience loses its freedom to judge and the follower can no longer be alone with God in his or her conscience. The hallmark of this type of abuse is that the faithful’s conscience can no longer fulfill its proper function because the abuser has replaced it.”

Fr. Samuel Fernández (2021). Towards a Definition of Abuse of Conscience in the Catholic Setting. Gregorianum, 102(3): 557–74.