MAN’S SANCTUARY

CONSCIENCE
AS A SANCTUARY
• Conscience is a God-given capacity and
attribute of man.
• This is the inner “voice” of God that guides
man toward the election of the good and
obliges him/her to be faithful to his/her
dignity.
• This is not the voice of an angel or the devil
that confuses a person to act or not to act.
BIBLICAL BASIS OF THE
DOCTRINE OF
CONSCIENCE
BIBLICAL BASIS OF THE DOCTRINE
• The Book of Deuteronomy 30:11 “For this law
which I am laying down for you today is
neither obscure for you nor beyond your
reach. It is not in heaven..nor is it beyond the
seas…No, the word is very near to you. It is in
your mouth and in your heart for you to put
into practice”
BIBLICAL BASIS OF THE DOCTRINE
• The book of the Prophet Jeremiah 31: 34-
“But this is the covenant which I will make
with the house of Israel after those days says
the Lord, I will place my law within them, and
write it upon their hears: I will be their God
and they shall be my people. No longer will
they have need to teach their friends and
kinsmen how to know the Lord.”
BIBLICAL BASIS OF THE DOCTRINE
• St. Paul Letter to the Romans (2:15). “They
can demonstrate the effect of law engraved on
their hearts, to which their own conscience
bears witness; since they are aware of various
considerations, some which accuse them,
whole other provide them with a defence.
DOCUMENTS AFTER THE
SECOND VATICAN
COUNCIL
DOCUMENTS AFTER THE SECOND
VATICAN COUNCIL
• GADIUM ET SPES (The Church in the Modern
World): “Conscience as man’s most secret
core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with
God, whose voice echoes in his depths. By
conscience, in a wonderful way, the law is
made known which is fulfilled in the love of
God and one’s neighbour.
DOCUMENTS AFTER THE SECOND
VATICAN COUNCIL
• Declaration of Religious Liberty, “It is through
his conscience that man sees and recognises
the demands of the divine law. He is bound to
follow this conscience faithfully in all his
activity, so that he may come to God, who is
his last end.
DOCUMENTS AFTER THE SECOND
VATICAN COUNCIL
• Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth): In
addition to the definition of conscience of the
Declaration n Religious Liberty VS said that
“Conscience is also a witness for man, a
witness of God’s caring love that directs a
person’s activities toward his or her own
flourishing.”
DOCUMENTS AFTER THE SECOND
VATICAN COUNCIL
• Catechism for Filipino Catholics (CFC 723): “It
is the norm of personal morality, our ultimate
subjective norm for discerning moral good and
evil, with the feeling of being bound to follow
its directive. It is summoning us to love the
good and avoid evil.
 CONSCIENCE
ACCORDING TO ST.
THOMAS
ST. THOMAS
• Conscience is not a power but an act.
Conscience, according to the very nature of
word, implies the relation of knowledge to
something: For conscience may be resolved
into “cum alio scientia,” i.e. Knowledge
applied to an individual case. But the
application of knowledge to something is
done by some act. Wherefore from this
explanation of the name it is clear that
conscience is an act.
ST. THOMAS
• For St. Thomas, Conscience is not a mere
reason, because it is more than a mere
executive agent of pre-existent moral laws,
whose only task it is to apply the laws to
concrete situations here and now. Otherwise
persons with the sharpest intellect ought to
posses the best consciences.
AS A MORAL FACULTY
AND AS A PRACTICAL
MORAL JUDGMENT
DISTINCTIONS
• According Karl Peschke, a distinction must be
made between conscience as moral faculty,
which manifests to men their moral
obligations and impels them to fulfil them,
and conscience as a practical moral judgment,
which tells men in the concrete situation what
their moral obligations are.
• However, it must be clear that conscience as a
moral faculty and as a practical moral judgment
are distinct but not completely separate.
DISTINCT BUT NOT SEPARATE
• As St. Thomas would say, conscience is the
process in which the GENERAL NORMS OF
THE MORAL LAW are applied to a concrete
action which a person is about to perform or
has performed, telling the person what his
obligation.
CONSCIENCE AND
THE SUPEREGO
CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO
• In some studies, conscience can be
paralleled to what we call the SUPEREGO of
Sigmund Freud. This idea is rooted in the
concept of personality structure of Sigmund
Freud where he used the iceberg analogy to
demonstrate the different ways by which a
person’s perspective is shaped and
influenced.
ID or the LIBIDO
• This is instinctive
basic, unconscious
sexual energy in
each individual.
This is the
“Pleasure
Principle” which
always pushes for
the immediate
gratification.
EGO
• It is the portion of
the personality that
organizes, plans, and
keeps the person in
touch with reality.
This is the “Reality
Principle,” and it is
usually expressed
through the language
we use. EGO is
greatly influenced by
the SUPEREGO.
SUPEREGO
• This is called the
“Ought Principle”
which contains the
parental and societal
values and attitudes
incorporated during
childhood. This
definition starts the
confusion between
superego and
conscience.
SUMMARY
CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO
• According to Fr. Richard Gula, a Sulpician
Priest, superego is like an attic, where all our
childhood experiences are stored.
Subconsciously, those experiences somewhat
become the ‘voice’ that tells the person to
do and believe in something.
• Our need to be the center of attention, to be
successful and to be loved. These behaviour
and goals in life is a manifestation of our past
experiences when we were a child.
 SUPEREGO VS CONSCIENCE
• Authority-figure oriented, • Value oriented; responds
command that an at be to value regardless of
performed for the sake of whether the authority has
approval commanded for.
• Is selfish; its main concern • Conscience is other
is to experience oneself as oriented; it is a radical
being lovable and invitation to love God in
accepted loving others.
• It is static; does not grow • It is dynamic, creative, risk
and develop; cannot taker, it develops and
function creatively in a grows; it is able to deal
new situation but merely with a new and
repeats a command challenging situations.
 SUPEREGO VS CONSCIENCE
• Concerned with past acts and • Primarily concerned with
sometimes seeks punishment the present and the future.
in order to regain favour with It seeks to make up for the
authority figure. past mistakes only as part of
• Always looks backward with living out the value and
feelings of guilt over past commitment in present and
misdeeds. It tends to act the future.
independently, without • Is always forward looking in
modification of reason and order to improve the
experience. present and make the future
• It tends to act independently, brighter.
without modification of • Acts with prudence based
reason and experience. on reason experience in the
light of faith.
 SUPEREGO VS CONSCIENCE
• Tends to look at the • Look at the small action
small actions as in relation to a bigger
important value in question
• Reparation comes
• Punish is the sure through structuring the
guarantee of future orientation
reconciliation. The toward the value in
more severe the question. Creating a
punishment, the new future is also the
more certain one is way to make good the
past.
being reconciled
 SUPEREGO VS CONSCIENCE
• The transition from guilt to • Self-renewal is a gradual
self-renewal comes fairly process of growth which
easily and rapidly by means characterizes all dimensions
of confessing to the of personal development.
authority.
• Experience of guilt is
• Often finds a great proportionate to the
disproportion between degree of knowledge and
feelings of guilt experienced freedom as well as the
and the value at stake, for weight of the value at
extent of guilt depends stake, even though the
more on the significance of authority may never have
authority figure ‘disobeyed’ addressed the specific
than the weight of the value
value.
of stake
DIFFERENT TYPES
OF CONSCIENCE
CORRECT OR TRUE CONSCIENCE
• This conscience
judges what is really
good as good and
what is evil as evil
objectively
according to the
principles of
morality.
CERTAIN CONSCIENCE
• This conscience, unlike
the correct conscience,
bases its judgment on
the state of subjectivity
of the person. This type
of conscience has
excluded all fears or
error about rightness
and wrongness of the
act.
DOUBTFUL CONSCIENCE
• This conscience
suspends judgment to
an action. If possible,
the action should be
omitted if the action
should be necessarily
performed.
ERRONEOUS CONSCIENCE
• This conscience is the one that mistakenly
judges somethings as morally good which is
objectively evil. These are things that appear
to be good but actually in reality they are
not. There are different types of erroneous
Conscience, namely scrupulous Conscience,
perplexed conscience and lax conscience.
FALSE OR ERRONEOUS
CONSCIENCE
SCRUPULOUS CONSCIENCE
• It is the type of erroneous conscience that
for little or no reason, it judges an act to be
morally evil when in fact, it is not. It also
tends to exaggerate the gravity of sin where
it does not exist. This inclination can be very
dangerous since all human beings are prone
to sin due to concupiscence.
PERPLEXED CONSCIENCE
• The perplexed conscience is
a type of erroneous
conscience which, in a
conflict of duties, fears sin
in whatever choice it
makes.
• The gravity of sin is not the
outmost concern of this
conscience, it focuses more
on the presence of sin in
the actions.
LAX CONSCIENCE
• This type of erroneous
conscience judges on
insufficient ground that
there is no sin in the
fact, or that the sin is
not as grave as it is in
fact.
• This conscience tends
to make excuses for
omissions and mistakes.
FORMATION OF
CONSCIENCE
FORMATION OF CONSCIENCE
• Conscience as a
practical moral
judgment is not
completely infallible.
Hence, there is a
need to form our
conscience.
THINK OF ALTERNATIVES
• The Church offers a lot of
options on how to form
conscience. There are
different spiritualities
that approach life in
various ways that fit the
lifestyle of the different
persons. May it be
Benedictine, Jesuits,
Augustinians, Dominicans,
Carmelite and many more.
DISCERNMENT
• Discernment is simply
finding the will of the Lord
in a certain situation.
• It is choosing between
two goods.
• In general, discernment is
the process which
chooses and decides
whether or not the action
is good or bad.
PRAY
• As a moral faculty we need
the help of the divine being
to guide us towards the path
of goodness.
• Prayer strengthens our
relationship with God.
• There are many forms of
prayer, but it is highly
recommended that one
must learn silence
meditatively and
contemplatively.