CONSCIENCE

THE SUBJECTIVE NORM OF

MORALITY
 Various notions of Conscience
Etymology: con (with) + scientia
(knowledge) [From scire (to know)].

• Feeling of guilt, worry, dissatisfaction,

restlessness or a feeling of “shame” when
one does something wrong.

• What “authorities” tell one to do: the laws

of the government, the Church, the parents,
the “peer group.”
As a subjective norm of morality,
• Conscience is our lived knowledge of
good and evil, our judgment about how
we should act, and our commitment to
do so.
• A moral faculty or feeling prompting
us to see that certain actions are
morally right or wrong.
• Conscience is the person’s moral faculty,
the inner core and sanctuary where one
knows oneself in confrontation with God
and with fellowmen. (Bernard Haring, CSsR)

• “An inward moral impression of one’s

actions and principles… as the inward
faculty of moral judgment… as the inward
moral and spiritual frame” (Analytical Greek Lexicon)
CONSCIENCE has the final say in
making moral decisions. It helps a
person make the final judgement on
how to act in a given situation.

Along with LAW, which is the objective

norm of morality, conscience helps a
person determine whether one is doing
the right or the wrong.
 Images of Conscience
• It is the inner voice summoning us to love
the good and avoid evil, by applying
objective moral norms to our particular acts,
and thus commanding: “do this, do not do
that”.
• Basic tendency toward the good (CFC 701)
• Conscience is man’s most secret core, and his
sanctuary. There he is alone w/ God whose
voice echoes in his depths (GS 16)
• a law inscribed in our hearts by God and
recognized as our own; its voice calls us “to
love and do what is good and avoid evil”
(Catechism #1776; Romans 2:14-15).
• our moral compass that directs us to good or
evil.
• our moral sensory faculty: capacity to see,
feel, hear, smell, and touch the good;
• moral appetite us as we judge moral
questions (whole person includes intellect,
feeling, imagination, and will).
 CONSCIENCE IN THE SCRIPTURES

• OLD TESTAMENT
• Limited interest in conscience; inner moral
authority
• Stress is direct relations with God; listening
to the Word of God is primary
• “Syneidesis” – a Greek word for conscience
appeared only in the Book of Wisdom
Some expressions related to conscience:
• “ Mind” “Loins” “Heart”
• Examine me, O LORD, and try me; Test my mind and
my heart. (Psalm 26:2)
• But, O LORD Almighty, you who judge righteously
and test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance
upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.
(Jer 11:20)
• Conscience condemns man after sin is known. (Gen
3:7-10 – Adam and Eve, Gen 4:9-14 – Cain and Abel)
• Conscience praises man for justice. (Job 27:6, Ps
17:3, 26, ff, 139:23 – ff)
 NEW TESTAMENT
• St. Paul used the word “syneidesis”
• A Greek concept; a negative judge of
completed or at least initiated action.
1. A God-given capacity for human being to exercise
self-evaluation (Acts 23:1, 24:16, 1 Cor 4:4)
• Paul refers to his conscience as “good” “clear”,
“blameless, his values and standards in conformity
with God’s standards; conscience a faculty to
evaluate good and evil.
2. A witness
• Romans 2:14 –15 = God’s law written in hearts of
Gentiles
• Romans 9:1 = His conscience as witness he is telling
the truth
• 2 Cor 1:12 = he conducts self with holiness and
sincerity
3. A Servant to the individual’s value system
• Romans 14, 1 Cor 8 – the issue of the Church of
Corinth eating food sacrificed for idols; Paul
instructing not to eat from the disputed food in the
presence of the weaker brothers so as not to seduce
them from acting against their conscience and sin.
4. A universal endowment of all human beings
• Romans 2:14-ff : Gentiles have the possibility to
fulfill the moral law even without the knowledge
of the written law; their conscience bears witness
and shows what the law requires; everybody has
conscience, endowed with a faculty for moral
judgements
• Conscience receives a growing attention in the
Bible
• In the Old Testament, the emphasis is more on
man listening to the Word of God rather than an
inner moral authority – conscience.
• In the New Testament, conscience is described as
an endowment embedded in the context of faith
and oriented by it.
• conscience is also seen as a reality with limitations
owing to man’s limitations a a creature; a reality in
need of cleansing and purification
• For the Bible, the key words in ethics is not the
concept of conscience experienced as something
subjective and individual. The distinctive words
are: obedience and love or service, always give
expression of a transcendental relationship.
 AQUINAS on CONSCIENCE
• Two Essential parts of Conscience:

• ‘Synderesis’ discovers very basic moral

principles; the use of right reason by which we
learn basic moral principles and understand that
we have to do good and avoid evil. (the starting
point)
• ‘Conscientia’ (conscience) = practical reason
which tells us what to do in particular situations
(end – judgement of concience)
• Role of Conscience
1. Investigate
2. Judge
3. Pass judgement on one’s moral action

• Approves Commends
• Reproaches Condemns
• Forbids Commands
• Accuses Absolves
– Judge and Arbiter
• Conscience as a practical moral judgment: the
“dictate of conscience”
• Conscience
• is a practical moral judgment (ultimate practical
judgment) on the morality of a particular action
commanding to do what is good and to avoid
what is evil.
• When in doubt to obey or not
• Inferential reasoning using principles of natural
law
• Connecting link between law and individual acts
 Two basic elements of
Conscience
1. Moral judgment that discerns
what is right and wrong.
2. Moral obligation or command to
do good and avoid evil
Augustine and Franciscan School
• Conscience is the place of the innermost
encounter between God and man; the voice
of God;

• A divine center of the person where he is

addressed by God and in it he is aware of
God and the soul.
• Bonaventure and great mystics
• Conscience as the scintilla animae, the
spark of the soul
• Peak of the soul; the center of the soul
where man encounters God and is at least
accessible to the contamination of sin.
 VATICAN II
• “In the depths of his or her conscience, the
human person detects a law which she or he
does not impose upon themselves, but
which holds them to obedience. Always
summoning them to love good and avoid
evil, the voice of conscience when
necessary speaks to their heart: do this,
shun that.
• Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in
the Modern World, #16
• We are not the source of our own
conscience.
• We cannot manipulate or silence our
conscience.
• It will never leave us peace unless it is
obeyed.
• a law within us that always commands us
to do good and avoid evil
• For man has in his heart a law written by
God; to obey it is the very dignity of man;
according to it he will be judged.(9)
Conscience is the most secret core and
sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with
God, Whose voice echoes in his depths.(10)
Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World, #16
• The source of our conscience is GOD.
• To obey it is our very dignity as true
images of God.
• The core or sanctuary where God speaks
to us/ meets the person as a free and
intelligent being who has the capacity to
make choices.
 THREE SENSES OF CONSCIENCE
Conscience 1 (Synderesis)
 The sense of the fundamental characteristic of
being human which makes it possible to know
and do the good.
 Our general sense of value and fundamental
sense of responsibility which makes it possible
for us to engage in moral good.
 The fundamental condition which serves as the
presupposition to moral agreement on a
particular issue.
 Conscience 2 (Moral Science)
 The sense of our way of seeing and thinking.
 The realm of moral disagreement and error,
blindness and insight.
 The proper realm of the formation and
examination of conscience.
 Follows moral truth which it seeks to grasp by
making use of sources of moral wisdom
wherever they may be found.
 The goal of its tasks is to reach “evaluative
knowledge,” personally appropriated,
interiorized knowledge.
 Conscience 3 (Conscience)
 The concrete judgment of what I must do in the
situation based on my personal perception and
grasp of values.
 The primary object of this judgment is not
simply this or that object of choice, but being
this or that sort of person through what I
choose.
 This act of conscience makes a moral decision
“my own” and the moral action expressive of
“me” by realizing and expressing my
fundamental stance.
CONSCIENCE in the PROCESS of TIME

1. Antecedent Actual Conscience

• This refers to the whole process of making a
judgment in conscience before performing a
moral act. The moral content of a particular
act may come under various degree of moral
urgency or obligation.
• a) The Stage of Moral Discernment - This means
that I try to discern the relationship of a particular
value possessed in my habitual conscience to a
particular act that I am considering, trying to discover
the demands of the value in reference to the act that I
am considering.
• b) The Stage of Moral Dictate - In view of the con-
clusion reached in the preceding discernment, my
conscience formulates for me a concrete moral dictate
• c) The Stage of Moral Decision - Having gone
through the previous two stages, I now come to the
decision about how I will act: in conformity with the
dictate of my conscience, or in violation of it?
2. Concomitant Actual Conscience

• This refers to my actual awareness of being

morally responsible for the goodness or the
badness of a particular act while I am
carrying it out. In effect, my conscience
informs me that “I am acting in a good way,”
or “I am doing something that is morally
reprehensible.” And this awareness contains
within it a sense of my being responsible for
the morality of the act.
3. Consequent Actual Conscience

• Evaluates an act already done or omitted.

• It is the process of looking back to review
and evaluate the morality of what we have
done.
• It approves, excuses, reproves or accuses.
QUALITIES of
CONSCIENCE
 Qualities which refer to
Objective Value
• 1. Correct, that is, one’s subjective perceptions,
discernment, dictates and decisions of conscience
are in conformity with the objective moral values
and demands that one is striving to possess and to
express in one’s own personal actions.
• For the Christian conscience, it means that one’s
own subjective values are in fact in conformity
with the objectively revealed values that form the
basis for an authentic Christian way of acting.
• 2. Erroneous, that is, there is a lack of
conformity between the objective values and
the moral demands that they carry with them,
and one’s subjective moral perceptions,
discernments, dictates and decisions which an
individual has or makes in the habitual or
actual levels of conscience.
• The error may enter at any point in the whole
process of the formation or exercise of
conscience.
• The error itself may be qualified as being:
• a. Culpable, that is, one is in error through one’s
own fault, and is therefore responsible for such an
erroneous state of conscience. Culpable error implies
“bad faith” on the part of the one making it, in that
such a one is not sincerely seeking the truth, or else
is taking positive steps to avoid finding out what the
truth, together with its moral demands, really is.
• b. Inculpable, that is, one is in error through no fault
of one’s own, having erred “in good faith,” while
making reasonable attempts to form a correct
conscience.
• The error itself may be considered to be:
• i. Vincible, if it is such that by reasonable efforts it
may be overcome or corrected, or
• ii. Invincible, if it is not possible to correct the
error. One who is in such a condition may, at times,
be “left in good faith,” wherein such a one is, in
fact, acting contrary to objective moral values and
the demands that they should make upon him or
her, but he or she is capable or perceiving them
properly, and so is not subjectively bound by them.
 Qualities which refer to
Moral Attitude.
• 1. Lax, that is, it is remiss or careless in its efforts
to clearly perceive and interiorize particular moral
values, or in the process of making the transition
from the awareness of value to expressing them in
act. It is inclined to judge a thing to be lawful
which is sinful. Laxity of conscience may be the
result of lukewarmness in the service of God.
• 2. Strict, or better perhaps, overly strict, when the
conscience tends to judge moral obligations too
harshly, especially in an excessively legalistic
way, adhering more to the letter than the spirit of
the law, as it were. A person possessed of this form
of conscience would seem to be constantly
burdened by its demands, rather that finding in it a
peaceful way of living a correct moral life.
• 3. Scrupulous, that is, a conscience which tends to
judge sin to be present where, in fact, there is
none. It is not merely the burdensome conscience
described in the previous number, but it is, in its
more severe form, a type of pathology making
moral demands on a person which are not only
difficult but impossible to satisfy, and forcing one
to live in fear of committing sin even unwillingly
and unwittingly.
• 4. Pharisaical, that is a conscience which may gloss
over even important moral demands that should
make a claims on a person’s conscience, such as
the demands of charity, while giving undue
emphasis to the minutiae or small details in
fulfilling the demands of the law, for example the
prescriptions of the old norms for fasting. In the
words of the Gospel, from a moral point of view, it
is like “…straining out a gnat, and swallowing a
camel.” (Mt 23:24.)
• 5. Clear, that is, a conscience which confidently
and freely, and with due regard for perceiving,
appreciating and interiorizing true values, is able
to achieve sound moral awareness of values and
their demands at the habitual level, and make the
proper transition in one’s actual conscience when
confronted with a moral decision regarding s
particular way of acting.
 Qualities Which Refer to
Degree of Certitude
• 1. Perplexed, that is, one judges it to equally wrong to
act in a particular way, or to refrain from acting; or
when confronted with only two possible ways of
acting, one finds that neither one presents morally
acceptable way, and therefore one cannot make a
morally good choice.
• 2. Doubtful, that is, the conscience, in its efforts to
form a clear conscience on a particular attitude or
way of acting, lacks sufficient evidence to make
secure judgment.
• 3. Probable, that is, the conscience arrives at the
point where it finds security in its own formation
of moral attitude at the habitual level, or of a
practical judgment at the actual level, even while
still admitting the possibility that the opposite may
be true.
• 4. Certain, that is, the conscience is able to reach a
degree of certainty in its own formation and moral
judgment so that all practical doubt is resolved,
and the conscience is unhesitatingly clear in the
actual process of making a sound discernment,
dictate and decision in the actual conscience
 LEVELS OF CONSCIENCE
1. INSTINCTIVE LEVEL – Dominated by
fear of punishment & desire for approval
or reward.
• Natural level, normal for children.
• Focuses
• on the command,
• on the material breaking of the command,
• on escaping punishment, and
• on being restored to the good graces of the
authority figure.
2. MORAL / PHILOSOPHICAL - Operates
on the ethical level, that is, not just on what
is commanded by some “authority” but now
from awareness of the inner good or evil of
an act.
a)looks beneath the command of the authority
to the inner moral good or evil of the act
b)The inner good or evil is judged in terms of
the value of the human person in
community.
3. CHRISTIAN LEVEL – One’s Christian
Faith illumines, clarifies & deepens what we
perceive as truly worthy of being a person. It
places moral striving as a personal call to
wholeness & holiness.
We become conscious of the healing &
liberating grace present in our very moral
struggle & striving, as we are called to greater
& fuller conversion into the persons that God
has created us to become.
 Some moral principles
involving the use of conscience
 Only the certain conscience is the correct guide to
moral behavior.
 A person who follows an erroneous conscience
without causing injury to others should not be
prevented from acting , unless the person objects
unreasonably against one’s own welfare like in the
prevention of suicide or an injury to one’s health.
 A person who follows one’s erroneous conscience
and injures others should be prevented from
performing one’s external deeds.
 One may not morally coerce or persuade another
to act versus one’s conscience.
 One is obliged to form a right and unerring
conscience.
 Everyone is obliged to follow one’s conscience.
 One is not permitted to follow an erroneous
conscience; so the error must be corrected before
one acts upon it.
 If the person with a perplexed conscience finds it
impossible to ask for an advise, one should choose
what seems to be the lesser evil. The person
follows the Reflex principles.
 REFLEX PRINCIPLES
• Reflex principles are rules of prudence
which do not solve doubts concerning the
existence of a law, moral principle, or fact
by intrinsic or extrinsic evidence; instead,
they only indicate where, in cases of
unreasonable doubts, the greater right is
usually to be found and the lesser evil is to
be feared, and which side therefore is
favored as long as the doubt persists.
Reflex principles wherein doubt presumption stand:
• In doubt, the condition of the possessor is the better.
• In doubt, favor the accused; or (which comes to the
same): Crime is not to be presumed, it has to be
proven.
• In doubt, presumption stands on the side of the
superior.
• In doubt, stand for the validity of the act.
• In doubt, amplify the favorable and restrict the
unfavorable.
• In doubt, presumption stands for the usual and the
ordinary.
• In doubt, favor the customary and hitherto approved.
• A doubtful law does not oblige.
 CONSCIENCE
• SINCERITY • CORRECTNESS

It is not enough to be sincere.

It is important to be correct.
Objective Moral
Order

Conscience judges a moral act

Objective as it relates to the objective
Pole moral order “outside” of the
person.

The Person
The resulting judgement of the
faculty of conscience can be
either right or erroneous. Subjective
Pole
Objective Moral
Order
The adult conscience
“interiorizes” the external
Objective voice of the objective norms
Pole directing or constraining the
person.

Interiorization arises from the The Person

conviction of the inner value of the
moral obligation which enables
Subjective
human person to answer God’s call. Pole
 Form

Reform Inform

Discern

Reconsider Conscience in Action

Decide
Reflect
Act
• Everyone is obliged to use serious diligence to
possess on all occasions a true conscience.

• Overcome ignorance and error by applying

ourselves to the study of our moral, civil and
Church’s laws and regulations.

• Overcome doubts in moral matters by forming

good habits of reasoning or by consulting
prudent and virtuous persons.
 FORMATION OF
CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE?
The education of Conscience is a lifelong task
 Formed gradually in faith and through personal &
ecclesial PRAYER LIFE:
 Studying the WORD of GOD & the Teachings of the
 Church (Seek the moral guidance of the Church)
 Responsiveness to the indwelling Holy Spirit.
 Examination of one’s conscience which is a critical
reflection on our concrete moral choices &
experiences in daily life.
• In the formation of their consciences, the
Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to
the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church.
(35) For the Church is, by the will of Christ,
the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give
utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that
truth which is Christ Himself, and also to
declare and confirm by her authority those
principles of the moral order which have their
origins in human nature itself. Dignitates Humanae #14
THE COMPULSORY NATURE
OF CONSCIENCE
• In so far as conscience operates within the
realm of truth and sound reason, following it is
compulsory. It is infallible, it should be
followed.
• It is truly the voice of God when it impels us to
act according to our rational insights
• When error creeps in, one has the responsibility
to trace the roots of error and eradicate it.
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE
• Human beings have the right to freedom of
conscience; human dignity demands that the
human being acts to a knowing and free
choice.
• Vatican II declares that man is not to be
forced to act in a manner contrary to his
conscience nor is he to be restrained from
acting in accordance with his conscience.
• Man ought to be fully free in his moral
decisions, gearing towards authentic self-
realization and self-donation in love...a
response of love to a call of love.
• If the dictates of his conscience is in
conflict with rights of others or the common
welfare, he must re-examine his conscience
and suspect that it can be erroneous and
needs revision.