My dear parishioners,
Peace! Under headings of Judgment, Formation, Choice in Accord, Erroneous Judgment and In Brief, the Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses “conscience” in twenty-nine passages. Here we consider CCC, 1778.
Conscience is a judgment of reason. The natural light of reason is able to recognize the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. Pagan thinkers (Plato and Aristotle, and various Stoics come to mind) have developed a very clear body of moral teaching. Sacred Scripture and the sure and certain teachings of Mother Church give a supernatural aid to our natural understanding and supernatural motives to act accordingly.
Conscience allows the human person to recognize the moral quality of a concrete act. It is good to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, to clothe the naked, to bury the dead… (cf. Tobit 1:20 Matthew 25:35-42). We are called to live virtuous lives (cf. 2 Peter 1:3,5). The Greek term arete is defined variously as goodness, gracious acts, virtue, and uprightness. The virtues (and vices) help to inform our conscience so that we can recognize what is prudent, temperate, just, patient, generous, diligent, humble, chaste… Ferdinand Mount shows how disordered our times have come, rebranding covetousness “as retail therapy” sloth as “downtime”, lust as exploring our sexuality, anger as opening up to our feelings, vanity as “looking good” because we are worth it, and gluttony as “the religion of foodies”(cf. Full Circle: How the Classical World Came Back to Us. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010, 302.).
Conscience judges actions before they are done, while they are being done, and after they have been done. Here we see the wide scope of the judgment of conscience, enveloping the past, the present and the future. The judgment of conscience can help us to avoid doing what we should not do, stop doing what we should not be doing and repent with restitution for what we did that we should not have done. When the judgment of conscience follows actions already committed it is called “Sequent Conscience.”
We are obliged in conscience to follow faithfully what we know to be just and right in all that we say and do. The confiteor (I confess) of the Holy Mass is even more encompassing when we confess our shortcomings and failings: “In my thought and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do…” The Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) following World War II (1939-1945) highlight the importance of following a well formed conscience. “Just following orders” was not a sufficient defense for the likes of Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl.
We are able to perceive and recognize the prescriptions of the divine law by the judgment of conscience. The Decalogue or Ten Commandments are the revealed expression of the divine positive law. Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP (+1274) distinguishes between the eternal law, the natural law, human law, and divine law in Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 91, A. 1-6.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr