295 CONSCIENCE IS A MESSENGER OF HIM WHO SPEAKS TO US BEHIND A VEIL

YOUCAT Lesson 295

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

295  What is conscience?

Conscience is the inner voice in a man that moves him to do good under any circumstances and to avoid evil by all means.  At the same time it is the ability to distinguish the one from the other.  In the conscience God speaks to man.  [1776-1779]

 

Painting: …..The Thankful Poor by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1894.....295

Conscience is compared with an inner voice in which God manifests himself in a man.  God is the one who becomes apparent in the conscience.  When we say “I cannot reconcile that with my conscience”, this means for a Christian, “I cannot do that in the sight of my Creator!”  Many people have gone to jail or been executed because they were true to their conscience.

“If…we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, and whose claims upon us we fear.”  Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

“ Anything that is done against conscience is a sin.”  St. Thomas Aquinas  (1225-1274)

1776-1779

ARTICLE 6
MORAL CONSCIENCE

…….1776  “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 his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."  (Gaudium et Spes 16.)⁴⁷ –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

I.            THE JUDGMENT OF CONSCIENCE

…….1777  Moral conscience,( Compare  Romans 2:14-16.)⁴⁸ present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil.( Compare Romans 1:32)⁴⁹ It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking. –CCC

…….1778  Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law: 

"Conscience is a law of the mind; yet [Christians] would not grant that it is nothing more; I mean that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise. . . . [Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ."( John Henry Cardinal Newman, "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," V, in Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching II (London: Longmans Green, 1885), 248.)⁵⁰ --CCC

…….1779  It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection: 

Return to your conscience, question it. . . . Turn inward, brethren, and in everything you do, see God as your witness.( St. Augustine, In ep Jo. 8,9:Patrologia Latina 35,2041.)⁵¹ --CCC