Conscience, in recent decades, has been recast as an argument for relativism and a shield to cover one’s immoral choices. “I know that the Church teaches this act is wrong, but my conscience tells me that it is okay, so therefore I’m going to do it.” What people determine to be “best” for them is often a sin that they seek to justify in their lives. Of course, if this misuse of conscience were correct, moral culpability vanishes. Pushed to extremes, an accused criminal could invoke his conscience: “I can’t go to jail: I was doing what I knew to be right. Who are you to judge me?”
To correct these misperceptions, we need a clear definition of conscience and what it does.
Conscience is the inner forum of a human being’s heart where he discerns God’s law, which is inscribed within him. It contains two elements: the perception of God’s law and the judgment of whether a particular action is good or evil.
Because part of conscience includes perception of what is good and what is evil, all human beings must form their consciences over the course of their lives (CCC 1784) so they can correctly perceive the difference between good and evil. Conscience is formed through study and through prayer; the former includes reading fiction and watching films in addition to engaging educational texts. Learning and praying about God’s law through reading the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and listening to homilies and Catholic podcasts effectively develops the conscience.
Because the conscience is intimately personal, it is wrong for another person or entity to force a person to violate his conscience; it is also wrong to forbid a person from acting according to his conscience (CCC 1782). For example, the government cannot coerce citizens to worship a certain deity, nor can it coerce them to perform an action that is a sin; similarly, it also cannot forbid a person from worshipping God.
Because the conscience is the inner core of a human being, a person is obliged to follow his conscience, that is, his judgment about whether an action is good or evil; to act against his conscience would be to contradict himself. This fact does not justify the choice of an evil action, however. The person is responsible for his judgment, so if his conscience tells him to do evil, he has done evil; the judgment of conscience cannot transform an evil act into a good one.
The degree to which a person’s conscience is formed can mitigate the guilt of someone who does an evil action. For example, an adult who since youth was taught that stealing is good still commits evil if he steals something, because he acts contrary to the nature of things and to God’s law. But his guilt is less than that of someone who has been taught that stealing is wrong yet does it anyway.
Similarly, choosing to believe in and follow Jesus Christ as God is a judgment of conscience; a person is not culpable for not choosing to follow Christ if he through no fault of his own has not heard of Him. But a person who has heard of Christ is responsible for his decision not to believe in Him. In other words, “I was just following my conscience” never justifies an evil action.
Thus, the conscience is not an excuse for one’s sinful actions. Though we are called to act in accordance with our consciences, we have an obligation to form them in accordance with objective truth, as revealed by God in revelation and the natural law. Furthermore, this is a continual process of study and prayer as we grow in knowledge and love of God and practice the discernment of good and evil throughout our lifetimes.
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a chapter in 100 Tough Questions for Catholics by David Bonagura.
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