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, 1790.
Erroneous judgments of conscience can be due to vincible ignorance for which we are personally responsible. Vincible ignorance can be overcome, unlike invincible ignorance. There are errors of fact (when what we think we know happens to be wrong), errors of intention (when what we want or desire is wrong), errors of execution (when what we do is wrong)… Any of these errors may be willful or not. If we have reached the age of reason and do not suffer from some mental incapacity (e.g. dementia, psychosis, retardation…) we may actually be culpable for our erroneous judgments.
The Catechism cites Gaudium et spes, 16, of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) to the effect that if we take “little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin” we are personally responsible for our erroneous judgments due to our vincible ignorance. We are responsible for our habits, whether they are good or bad. Bad habits tend to blind us to their badness.
We are not only responsible for our erroneous judgments, but also for the evil we commit based upon the erroneous judgments of our vincibly ignorant conscience. While it is not good to have erroneous judgments, it is worse to then act accordingly. Bad intentions tend to lead to bad behaviors.
The patron of moral theology, which includes considerations of conscience, is Saint Alphonsus Liguori, CSSR, (+1787). Saint Alphonsus’ main work in the field is entitled Moral Theology. When considering Saint Alphonsus, Benedict XVI reminded us how the saint “proposed a balanced and convincing synthesis of the requirements of God’s law, engraved on our hearts, fully revealed by Christ and interpreted authoritatively by the Church, and of the dynamics of the conscience and of human freedom, which precisely in adherence to truth and goodness permit the persons development and fulfillment” and how the loss of the moral conscience and a certain lack of esteem for the Sacrament of Penance in our own day are clear signs of just how timely Saint Alphonsus’ teachings still are (cf. Doctors of the Church. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2011, 261). While still a Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger wrote about the “erroneous conscience” and how the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, OP (+1274) have been commonly misrepresented as evidenced by the French Dominican Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges (+1948) (cf. On Conscience. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2007, 17-22, 37, 80; Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 19, A. 5; I-II Q. 19, A. 6. Ratzinger just alludes to a book of Sertillanges’ on Saint Thomas but does not give a specific title. Three come to mind: Foundations of Thomistic Philosophy (1931); Saint Thomas and His Work (1933); La Philosophie Morale de Saint Thomas d’Aquin (1962)).
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr