Conscience Formation Chapter Five

Definition of Conscience Good Conscience vs. Bad Conscience Payoff – we live a moral life, and a joyful life as well Conscience – a practical judgment of reason that helps a person decide the goodness or sinfulness of an action or attitude. It must be formed properly and followed.

What Conscience is Not? Conscience as a majority opinion. Conscience as a feeling. Conscience as a superego – guilt based from upbringing or psychological conditioning. Conscience as a gut-instinct. Conscience as a “Jimminy Cricket” or an internal voice Conscience as a myth or creation of religion

What Conscience is? An awareness of God’s call to be transformed in His image and likeness. A call to know and do the good, a call to love. A practical judgment of intellect – do good, avoid evil It is personal in nature It is a search for truth and applying those truth to daily living.

How Conscience Works? We have acquired values and attitudes. A good habit is a virtue, and a bad habit is a vice If you cultivate a virtue, then you will instinctively choose good. Conversely, a vice can make us careless and haphazard.

Must I Always Follow My Conscience? Yes – because through your conscience God calls and instructs you to be the person he made you to be. When you ignore your conscience , you are guilty of sin and you condemn yourself.

Can my conscience ever be wrong? This is why we need to form and inform our conscience – by study and prayer. Failure to do so can lead to a serious error of conscience. That is why we cannot say: “I must always follow my conscience, therefore I need to do whatever I want to do.”

What factors contribute to an erroneous conscience? Ignorance of Christ and His Gospel Bad example of other people Being enslave by our passions Being stubborn and holding on to the idea that our conscience is always right. Rejecting Church authority and teachings on matters of morality Lack of repentance Lack of love

Peer Pressure and Conscience The pressure to conform affects all of us. It affects our perspectives, values, and behaviors. Caving in to negative pressure can make us go against our conscience. We start to rationalize things. Going with the crowd destroys individual personality and can lead to personal tragedy.

Fortitude To do what is right requires courage or fortitude – firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of good. Fortitude can moderate fears and false sense of bravery; prompts us to do God’s work, but also to be patient in our suffering in doing what is right. Readiness to ready or to suffer and even die for what is right has often led many to be martyrs. Self-denial, prayer, and helping others can help us to be more spiritually courageous and have a moral backbone. Ways to resist negative pressure: resolve to be your own person, know your standards, use humor to say no, stay away from tempting situations, and remember the power of prayer.