A Critical Error in the Understanding of Conscience

Though I am about to criticize the popular orientation to conscience that is operative within the Catholic Church today, I want to be clear from the outset that the truth regarding man's conscience can most readily find a home within the domain of Catholic spirituality. Many religions would be in violation of their own core tenets if they were to embrace the truth regarding man's conscience.

To understand the conscience is to understand the intimate relationship that exists between man and God. Jesus Christ revealed this relationship to the world and established his Church upon it. However, mankind's grasp of it was far from instant. With the help of the Holy Spirit the understanding of Christ's revelation has developed over time.

The most common orientation to conscience, within the Catholic Church, is what I sometimes call the black box model. This model treats the conscience like a "black box," or computer, that must first be programmed (formed or educated) before it can function properly. According to this approach, if you acquire the right education, preferably a Catholic education, you will then have a "well-formed" conscience, which you can trust. If you lack the necessary education, however, you will have a poorly formed conscience, which will lead you astray. In this approach, proper education is considered to be the key to having a trustworthy conscience.

God has written His law upon the hearts of all people, and all people have the capacity to discern this living law, regardless of their educational or religious backgrounds. In other words, everyone has a working conscience. This fact provides us with the foundation for a truly universal spiritual vision. The Catholic Catechism states, "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey." Though we are obliged to obey our conscience, we are also free to do something else. That something else is how we resist our conscience.

The reason we resist our conscience is that it interrupts our self-made plans, which may seem to be necessary, responsible, and even virtuous to us, our spouse, our friends, and our family. No wonder we feel no guilt even though we may be chronically avoiding the guidance of our conscience. Through the "voice" of our conscience, God is literally trying to save us from our self-made plans, because no matter how good they seem, they always lead to alienation.

The video clips that follow this essay are of a Catholic priest giving a talk on conscience. He is presenting the black box perspective that I mentioned above. The sections in red have been transcribed from the priest's talk.

"Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. . . . 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." - Here, the priest is quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The transcribed section above conveys the true spirit of Catholicism and reveals the intimate nature of God's relationship to all men.

8 minutes, and 10 seconds into sermon the priest states the following:

"It is by following our conscience that we either move toward the heavenly Jerusalem, . . . or we move toward spiritual death and hell. Our conscience will take us one way or the other."

Here the priest makes a critical error, which will taint everything else he says about conscience. While it is true that we face two roads in life, our conscience will never lead us toward spiritual death and hell. It will always guide us away from alienation and toward the state of authentic relationship with self, others, and God. Resisting our conscience is what leads us into alienation or spiritual death. Hell is said to be the ultimate state of alienation. To suggest that our conscience can lead us into spiritual death is to strike a blow at the very core of man's relationship to God.

The priest then tries to explain how conscience works:

"Conscience seeks the truth, through our reason and then commands it to be done. Conscience is about our reason. Conscience does not invent the truth; rather, conscience involves our reason, whereby we seek out the truth, and recognize it with our intellect and then choose it with our will, so that it will be done in our life."

Theologians and philosophers are prone to dissect human nature into parts such as reason, intellect, memory, emotions, sense, imagination, will, and so on. They weave unbelievably complex descriptions of man, which only those with a specialized education can understand. This gives the impression that spiritual life requires such an education. In this particular case, the priest speaks of conscience, reason, intellect, and will. I can assure you that when a person is actually surrendering to his conscience he is not concerned with such intellectual distinctions.

The sermon continues:

"And of course, a conscience can be wrong. We're supposed to follow our conscience, but if we do not form our conscience correctly it is going to lead us to hell. "

I have already explained how our conscience cannot possibly lead us to hell. The following is a hypothetical example of how we could make a practical error while following our conscience: A police officer might interpret events incorrectly and arrest an innocent man. A jury might then accept the officer's testimony and wrongly convict the innocent man. This would be a very serious mistake even though the officer and the jury are only doing what they think is right. Human beings can make honest mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are costly. Honest mistakes, however, are not the real cause of the problems that threaten our world.

Now, let's say that the police officer discovers new information about the case and realizes that he has made a horrible mistake. If he is a man of conscience he will admit to the error he has made and try to free the wrongly accused man. You can see that man's conscience does not give him a crystal ball. While this may seem like an easy case to understand, imagine if the police officer thought that he would lose his job if he confessed to his mistake, and he has a family to feed. Now, the situation changes. Now, he will have to have more trust if he is going to follow his conscience.

Early in the second video clip the priest states the following:

"A racist does not feel guilt about having racist thoughts about another person. . . . . Why? Because he has formed his conscience badly. His conscience won't tell him it's wrong. He can't hear the voice of God saying it's wrong in his heart. "

It may be true that the racist feels no guilt, but many apparently upstanding people feel no guilt even though they are chronically resisting their conscience too. The problem is not that they have formed their conscience badly. The problem is that they are resisting their conscience. Have you ever wondered why doctors regularly prescribe medications that cause dreadful side-effects and why "death by doctor" is now recognized as one of the leading causes of death in our country. You would think that the medical profession would immediately correct the situation, but it does not. Many doctors are following standard protocol, and they feel no guilt. They feel no guilt for the same reason that the racist feels no guilt.

Doctors are given a place of honor within society. We are willing to forgive their mistakes to an extent that we would not think of granting to an accountant or receptionist, even when the mistakes made by doctors ruin people's health and even cause death. Doctors who dare to question standard treatment protocols are not looked kindly upon by their peers. Doctors do not want to lose their place of honor, so they do not make waves. Some who do make waves are drummed out of the corps. There is a cost to following our conscience. If the racist changed his ways he would probably be rejected by his friends. Like the doctors, the racist does not want to lose his status among his peers. It's easy to pick on the racist, because he seems distant from how most of us view ourselves, but we are all inclined to do something other than what our conscience calls us to do.

I once knew a farmer. He was a big strong guy who was often racist in his speech. He was white and critical of non-whites. One night he witnessed a car go off of a rural road. The car rolled over into an irrigation canal. It was upside down and submerged in the water. The car had several occupants, all of whom were Native American, an ethnic group that the farmer often derided. He entered the water, in the dark of night, and pulled each of the occupants out of the car. He saved their lives at the risk of his own safety. Clearly, his conscience was working just fine.

I'm not saying that the farmer's life changed thereafter and that he became a champion of civil rights, but I am saying that in the moment his conscience worked perfectly well, and he was willing to obey it. His conscience was not defective or badly formed.

Jesus criticized the scribes and Pharisees. Scribes were learned in the Mosaic law, and they taught the law. Some scribes were also Pharisees. The Pharisees were members of a Jewish sect that emphasized strict interpretation and observance of the Mosaic law in both its oral and written form. Surely, if anyone had an adequate religious education for their time, the scribes and Pharisees did. Yet, Jesus said to them, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." Their extensive religious education offered no assurance against hardheartedness.

The priest's sermon continues:

"Following our conscience will not necessarily get us to heaven. Following a well-formed conscience will. . . ."

The same error crops up again and again.

"How do we form our conscience? Well, we have the duty and responsibility to form it rightly. It's formed by the people we associate with, the books we read, the television we watch, the schools and our church, . . . , and most especially our conscience is formed by the actions that we choose. If I'm in the habit of choosing good actions it will form a good conscience, if I'm in the habit of choosing badly its going to form the conscience badly. "

You could read only the most wholesome books, avoid television, attend the best religious schools, never swear, and go to church regularly and still be unaware of how you chronically resist your conscience. We don't need to "form" our conscience. We need to discover what it is that we want so badly that we will habitually resist our conscience in order to get it.

What follows are two YouTube clips of the sermon. It takes about 16 minutes to view both clips.