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by the Revd Canon Dr William Lamb

A Matter of Conscience

Members of Parliament have just voted on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. The Bill is to allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life. The debate has provoked strong emotions. There are some who passionately believe that this legislation will offer dignity in dying, while others are concerned about the way in which legislative safeguards may slip over a period of time, or the terminally ill may find themselves subject to undue pressure or coercion, or the costs associated with palliative care may come to be regarded as an unaffordable luxury. I listened to part of the debate and was struck by the seriousness with which Parliamentarians debated the issues. As I listened, I was alert to the fact that among members of our own community, there will be profound differences of opinion about this legislation. This term we have sponsored a number of events to stimulate reflection about the art of dying - and what insight the Christian tradition might have to offer.

One of the themes which emerged in the course of the debate today was the importance of Conscience. Reflection on the workings of Conscience is particularly prominent in the writings of a number of Anglican Divines. They include people like Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, William Law, Joseph Butler, and John Henry Newman. To Butler, in the eighteenth century, we owe a key development in Anglican reflection about the nature of Conscience. For Butler, Conscience is a reasoning or reflective principle, which operates both prospectively and retrospectively. The distinction is important as earlier thinkers tended to put more emphasis on the retrospective function of Conscience. In Butler’s view, Conscience could also guide moral action as well as reflect on past actions. He assumes that all human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong, and that the many ways of describing a sense of right and wrong all point to one and the same capacity: ‘Conscience, moral Reason, moral sense, or divine Reason… as a Sentiment of the Understanding, or as a Perception of the Heart.' But Butler goes on to describe conscience as 'the voice of God within us' or as that 'Candle of the Lord within, which is to direct our steps.' Most of the references to Conscience, by secular as well as religious contributors to  today's debate, would make little sense without Butler's reflections on its prospective function.

Some of these insights are picked up in the thought of St John Henry Newman. He writes about freedom of Conscience but also about the obligations of Conscience. This distinction perhaps gets to the heart of the ethical debate currently unfolding in Parliament. The accent on 'freedom' speaks of the personal autonomy of the individual, while the accent on 'obligation' helps us to understand that each of us, in our moral agency, needs to be accountable to others, particularly those who are most vulnerable and those who might be susceptible to undue influence or coercion. 

Newman would have been puzzled by the way in which religious commitments have been marginalised in the current debate. The assumption that a secular perspective is more 'neutral' than other perspectives is more of an appeal to rhetoric than logic. That said, there is no doubt in my mind about the critical stance which Newman would have taken in response to the current Bill (and I suspect his views would not be that different from my own), but if we are to place Conscience at the heart of our reflections about these issues, then we cannot easily dismiss or marginalise the many different commitments, including faith, which shape our moral agency, and which help us to think about the art of living and the art of dying.