1. What is conscience?
Conscience is a judgment of practical reason by which the human person recognizes the moral quality (goodness or evil) of a concrete act. For example, a person says: “I am conscious that this act of kindness toward my parents is morally good.”
2. What is required to have a conscience?
To make a judgment of conscience concerning the moral good or evil of an action, two things are needed: an intelligence capable of judging, and prior knowledge serving as the foundation upon which that moral judgment rests. Something similar happens when the intellect pronounces upon the factual truth of a statement. For instance, upon hearing “cows can fly,” human reason makes an immediate judgment: “false.” This judgment is rooted in our prior knowledge regarding cows and aerodynamic flight.
3. What is the foundational basis for conscience?
The judgment of conscience is founded upon knowledge of human nature and of what genuinely fulfills it. This moral wisdom is acquired from two complementary sources:
- On the one hand, human nature itself inherently demands a manner of acting known as the natural law. The Creator made us in a specific way, inscribing upon the human heart a fundamental awareness of what is good and evil.
- On the other hand, the Lord willed to reveal His design with divine clarity through the Ten commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ, which enlighten and form our conscience.
4. How do we properly form our conscience?
The moral judgment of the intellect becomes sharper and more reliable as a person grows in knowledge from both sources:
- To understand human nature more deeply, one must cultivate an honest love for truth and a persistent desire to do good. Living uprightly is essential, for persistent moral failure corrupts the intelligence, blinding its clarity of judgment.
- To learn and assimilate the teachings of Jesus Christ, one must avail oneself of solid means of Christian formation: spiritual reading, homilies, catechism courses, doctrinal study, etc.
- For the practical application of these truths to daily decisions, it is invaluable to seek spiritual direction and counsel from wise, upright mentors.
5. Why is having a well-formed conscience so important?
It is vital to distinguish good from evil accurately in order to act rightly. Major criminals possess a profoundly deformed conscience, which is why people colloquially say they act “without a conscience.”
6. What are the essential qualities of conscience?
- Conscience does not invent the moral law; it applies God's law to concrete situations.- Man does not create good and evil arbitrarily, but judges according to the natural law written into his very nature. A thief may convince himself that stealing is justified, but it is not; he is simply in moral error.
- Conscience is inseparable from authentic human acts.- Human acts are deliberate, free, and conscious—conscious both of their sensory appeal (“I like this”) and their moral quality (“this is good and right”).
- Conscience instructs the person and moves him to act.- The judgment of conscience is eminently practical: “I ought to do this; I must avoid that.” Through repeated upright actions, moral wisdom and virtue are acquired.
- Conscience either approves or rebukes.- The primary role of conscience precedes action, prompting or warning. But conscience continues to reflect after an act is done, conferring peace and interior approval if we acted well, or remorse and restlessness if we acted wrongly. For this reason, man bears inescapable moral responsibility before God and himself.
7. What is meant by freedom of conscience?
The freedom of conscience must always be respected, but this does not mean that conscience is autonomous or independent of divine truth. In moral life, genuine freedom means immunity from external coercion when seeking the truth, not independence from the truth itself. A person may convince himself that stealing is virtuous, or that Beijing does not exist. In both cases he exercises subjective freedom of choice, but he is completely mistaken regarding objective truth—whether geographical or moral (relativism).
8. A terrorist murders in accordance with his conscience. Why is his act evil?
He does evil not because he follows his subjective judgment in that moment, but because he is guilty of having grossly deformed his conscience to that point. (In reality, in the face of acts so violently contrary to natural human dignity, conscience never completely ceases to protest, and the terrorist must continually suppress his own moral nature whenever he strikes).