Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Conscience
Conscience
Conscience
Do each of us have a “Jiminy Cricket” as our conscience to tell us right from wrong?
NO!! Conscience is NOT an inner voice within us that is separate from who we are…Rather, it is a
reflection of our being:
Conscience is not what we have, it is something we are. It is the operation of the intellect.
“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has
not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice ever
calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil,
sounds in his heart at the right moment….For man has in his
heart a law inscribed by God….His conscience is man’s most
secret core and sanctuary. There he is alone with God voice
echoes in his depth.” Vatican II, Gadium et Spes
To define and clarify…
It is NOT an inner voice that
Conscience: a judgment of reason whereby goes untouched, unexamined
the human person recognizes the moral and undeveloped.
There are three basic components for determining whether an action is moral or immoral:
- Vincible Ignorance is that which can and should be dispelled. For example, if someone thinks it might be wrong not
to eat meat on Fridays in Lent, but purposely never asks a priest or a friend about it, then he still commits sin if he
eats meat on those days.
- Invincible Ignorance is that which cannot be dispelled. In other words, someone is ignorant of his own ignorance.
“We can sum up by saying that invincible ignorance eliminates the moral responsibility for a human act; vincible
ignorance does not eliminate moral responsibility, but may lessen it.”
Divisions of Conscience… Certain vs. Doubtful
• Certain: one which dictates a course of
True (correct) vs. Erroneous action in clear terms without fear of
error
• True (correct): one which indicates correctly the
goodness or badness of a moral conduct • Doubtful: one which leaves a person
undecided as to the proper course of
• Erroneous: one which falsely indicates that a good action
action is evil, or an evil action is good
**We must always follow a certain
conscience!
A person with a false conscience may/may not be guilty of an evil act
depending on whether his ignorance was vincible or invincible. Lax vs. Scrupulous
Did he try to know the truth and yet remained in error?- invincible; he • Lax: forms moral judgments on insufficient
is innocent. grounds; may be persuaded that great sins are
OR Was he negligent in seeking the truth or tried NOT to seek the truth?-
permissible
vincible; not innocent
• Scrupulous: when someone sees evil where
there is none
When our conscience is honestly and correctly formed, we MUST follow it in every circumstance!
But, in order to follow our conscience, we must always seek to FORM our conscience…