Reflectons on Veritatis Spleandor by Alfred McBride, O.Praem.

Franz Jagerstatter was born in the Austrian village of St. Radegund in 1907. The Nazis beheaded him in 1943 for refusing to serve in the German army. In prison, he wrote, "If I must write with my hands in chains, I find it much better than if my will were in chains." A man of little education, he was not noticeably moral in his youth and is said to have fathered an illegitimate child. In his late twenties he had a religious conversion and began to read spiritual books and attend Mass daily. He married in 1936, fathered three children, and became a farmer.

He was the only one in his village to oppose the annexation of Austria by Germany and the only one to openly oppose Hitler. World War II began in 1939. Jagerstatter refused to be inducted in the army or to take the German army oath: "I swear by God this oath - to obey the Führer [Hitler] unconditionally."

Many religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic, believed the oath could be taken in good conscience. Jagerstatter countered, "It is impossible to fight for the German State without at the same time fighting for the Nazis--the most dangerous anti-Christian power that has ever existed. The commandments of God teach us that we must render obedience to secular rulers even if they are not Christian, but only to the extent that they do not order us to do anything evil, for we must obey God rather than man."

The chaplain who accompanied Jagerstatter to his execution said, "I can say with certainty this simple man is the only saint I have met in my lifetime."

Conscience can make us heroes and witness the heights of courage in the moral life. "Moral conscience does not close man within an... impenetrable solitude, but opens him to the call, to the voice of God. In this, and not in anything else, lies the entire mystery and dignity of the moral conscience: in being the place, the sacred place where God speaks to man" (No. 58).

How often we hear, "Let your conscience be your guide." Is this good Catholic teaching? Yes, if it means an informed, formed, and transformed conscience. Informed by the divine law reflected in the natural law, the Ten Commandments, Christ’s teachings, and those of the Church. Formed by a life of virtue and prayer transformed by the inner working of the Holy Spirit.

The formation of conscience is a process of moral conversion that continues throughout our lives. Hamlet used a play to uncover the conscience of a king who had abandoned moral conversion: "The play’s the thing in which to catch the conscience of the king." But Hamlet was even more devastating with his mother’s conscience. She had colluded with the king in the murder of her first husband, Hamlet’s father. He uses the image of a mirror to make her confront her conscience:

"HAMLET: Come, come and sit you down: / You shall not budge; / You go not till I set you up a glass / Where you may see the inmost part of you....

"QUEEN: 0 Hamlet, speak no more: / Thou turnst my eyes into my very soul; / And there I see such black and grained spots."

Training our conscience is difficult work. Facing a bad conscience is even harder. The process of moral conversion is preventive medicine. It involves the "obedience of faith" (Rom 16:26). It encompasses examination of our motives and actions and feelings. Do we understand who we are and what we are doing? Do we take time to evaluate and judge our deeds? Are we determined to transcend ourselves, go beyond where we are to where we ought to be?

"The judgment of conscience is a practical judgment, a judgment which makes known what man must do or not do, or which assesses an act already performed by him. It is a judgment which applies to a concrete situation the rational conviction that one must love and do good and avoid evil" (No. 59).

It has been said the unexamined life is not worth living. Moral conversion demands the examined life. It is worth trying.

Fr. McBride writes for Our Sunday Visitor. All quoted matter is from the encyclical, unless otherwise indicated ©1998 Our Sunday Visitor. Used by subcription. This article appeared in the August 1998 edition of The San Francisco Charismatics (ISSN 1098-4046). Member of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada.

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