“That person is characterized by honesty and conscientiousness.” “He behaved correctly and according to his conscience.” Society still values courageous and conscientious people. Many people believe that doing good does not pay, and it is more profitable to behave according to the unwritten “laws of wolves.” But in no society, no one gets a medal for betraying the motherland or deceiving a group of people.
But what is conscience and where did it come from?
Some believe that conscience is more biological in origin. It is said to be an instinct that has developed through evolution and serves to preserve the human species. It is more beneficial for people to behave altruistically. But if we reduce conscience only to instinct, then we have to ask what happens in the case of a conflict between these instincts.
In this context, the example of a drowning person is often cited. One instinct tells me not to take any chances and the other to go and save a person in need. So there must be some objective rule that can judge the dilemma of conflicting instincts.
Conscience does not only have some biological function. However, many people deny the existence of conscience, trivialize it, and consider it a religious creation that is supposed to oppress people psychologically and keep them in the “fetters of religion.” For example, Friedrich Nietzsche once described conscience as a “terrible disease.”
Some may say about someone that the presence of conscience is absent. Robert O. Hare, an important expert on the issue of psychopathy, writes in his book Without a Conscience that “psychopaths are social predators who completely lack a conscience and the ability to empathize with others. They selfishly take what they want and violate social norms without the slightest sense of guilt or remorse.”
On the other hand, Joe Heschmeyer disagrees with the idea that, for example, psychopaths completely lack a conscience. Rather, they lack remorse for their actions, empathy and remorse.
Is conscience just an internal feeling?
A very common misunderstanding in the case of conscience is when we perceive conscience only as a set of feelings. Many people use the term conscience to represent what they subjectively feel is right and behave accordingly in specific situations.
However, this idea is wrong and often affects religious people as well. Archbishop Samuel Aquila says “Catholics today have understood conscience as listening to one’s voice, and not listening to the voice of God as revealed in Scripture and Tradition.” This is probably also the answer to the question of why some believers have a problem with certain points (e.g. the issue of contraception) in Catholic moral teaching and live contrary to it.
Therefore, conscience cannot be reduced to just a kind of subjective “inner voice”. John Henry Newman already warned against the temptation of subjectivism and exaggeration of feelings in the 19th century. He pointed out that what seems subjectively good to a person may not be objectively correct and by God’s will.
No one has his own moral standard. Newman says that “conscience is not even a sentiment, an opinion about a matter, a view, but a law and an authoritative voice that commands to do good and avoid evil.”
Saint Cardinal John Henry Newman, who in the Catholic Church is sometimes titled a “teacher of conscience”, adds: “When it comes to conscience, there are two ways in which people treat it. One is that they regard conscience as a feeling, and the other is that it is an echo of God’s voice. The first way is not the way of faith, the second is.” Newman calls conscience “the law of the mind,” it is “the messenger of God” and “the apostle of Christ.”
English Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) was canonized by the Catholic Church in 2019.
The American philosopher Peter Kreeft writes in connection with conscience that “if our feelings were voices from God, then we would have to be followers of several gods or God would be schizophrenic.”
Of course, feelings can be accompanied by conscience, but we cannot put an equal sign between conscience and feeling. Feelings are often volatile and irrational. Conscience can also bind to something that is far from pleasant feelings (for example, saving a drowning person).
Conscience as a practical judgment of reason
So what is conscience? Holy Scripture often connects conscience with the innermost thing in a person, with the human heart. In the Book of Proverbs (3:1-3) we read: “My son, do not forget my teaching and let your heart adhere to my commands because they will prolong (your) days and years of life and bring you an abundance of peace.” May love and loyalty (never) leave you! Tie (my commandments) around your throat, write them on the tablet of your heart!’
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “moral conscience is the judgment of the mind by which a person recognizes the moral quality of a specific act that he intends to perform, whether he is currently acting, or has already performed. A man is obliged in all that he says and does to adhere faithfully to what he knows to be just and right. Man perceives and knows the commands of God’s law by the judgment of his conscience.
So we see that even the catechism does not speak of conscience as a personal feeling but as a judgment of reason. Conscience testifies that we did or did not do something, prompts or obliges when we judge that something should or should not be done, and excuses, troubles, and accuses when we judge that something is done well or badly.
However, it is not quite enough to say that conscience tells us what is true and what is not, and what is good and what is bad. Karl Keating in What Do Catholics Believe? explains that “though conscience informs you that you are doing something bad, or that you are neglecting something good that should be done, it does not happen in a vacuum. First you have to learn what is good and what is bad, and that is work for your mind. If you study well, your conscience will guide you well. If you neglect learning, your conscience will not be very trustworthy.”
Keating further clarifies that “if you learn that stealing is not a sin, and if you really believe it, you won’t feel bad about robbing a bank.”
That is why the formation of conscience in the light of what the Bible teaches, the moral teaching of the Church and Tradition is important. With reason we know what is good and what is bad, we know God’s law revealed in the Scriptures and in the Tradition of the Church.
Conscience is the application of this knowledge to a specific situation, it is a practical judgment that evaluates the morality of a given act. The education of conscience is a lifelong task and is binding not only for Catholics and Christians, but for all people.
If a person does not form his conscience, it can lead him to make wrong moral judgments. For example, if a person has a warped conscience, he can overlook certain things and mistake evil for good, or consider sin as something normal.
Deformations of conscience
Today, it is statistically normal to have sex before marriage, and most people do not see it as something evil, quite the opposite. But in the light of the moral teaching of the church, it is not correct. In extreme cases, a person is no longer able to realize his guilt.
Psychologist Albert Gorres (quoted by Benedict XVI in the book Praise for Conscience ) writes about these people that they are often “monsters who, like other beasts, have no sense of guilt. Perhaps Hitler, Himmler or Stalin completely missed it. Maybe the mafia leaders don’t have it at all, but maybe they hide its remnants well. All people need a sense of guilt.’
On the other hand, many people have a scrupulous or scrupulous conscience and can see sin where there is none. A crooked and scrupulous conscience is the result of an often incorrect upbringing of the conscience. Knowledge of the Gospel, church teachings, prayer and questioning of conscience protect against distortions of conscience.
A properly formed conscience also protects against various forms of totalitarianism. Pope Benedict XVI mentions how the Nazi party denied man’s conscience and this led to enormous devastation of man. A sad example of this is the statement of leading Nazi Herman Göring: “I have no conscience. My conscience is Adolf Hitler.’
In his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Cardinal Newman writes (apparently somewhat jokingly) that if he were to make a toast to religion, he would first toast to his conscience and then to the Pope. This means that it is not possible to separate the authority of conscience from papal authority. Neither the pope nor any ecclesiastical (and not only ecclesiastical) authority can order something that would go against conscience. So our obedience to them cannot be blind.
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