My dear parishioners,
Peace! Under headings of Judgment, Formation, Choice in Accord, Erroneous Judgment and In Brief, the Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses “conscience” in twenty-nine passages. Here we consider CCC, 1786.
Conscience makes choices concerning morals, this is good, this is bad (evil, sinful).
There are two different choices conscience can make. We can choose well or not. There are different influences which can influence our choices. With whom do we associate? If we run with a “wild crowd” we may similarly act wildly. If we run with a virtuous crowd we may be led to virtue. From my own life, my mother always saw that I made it to Sunday Mass but I never went to daily Mass before I went to college. With the witness, encouragement and example of friends I began and have now gone to daily Mass for thirty years. Here the moral issue is to worship or not to worship. While keeping holy the Sabbath and worship of the One True God are found in the Decalogue, going to daily Mass is not required.
When the choice of conscience is according to reason and the divine law it is said to be a right judgment. Because law is an ordinance of reason, as Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (+1274) has taught (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 90, A. 4) all the more so is the divine law. While there are some who may object, the perennial teaching of Mother Church is that there need not be any contradiction between faith and reason (cf. Summa Theologiae I Q. 1, A. 5; Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith of the First Vatican Council, 24 April, 1870, Dei Filius, ch. 4; Encyclical Letter of Saint John Paul II Fides et ratio 14 September, 1998). We know the Decalogue to be a revealed, yet complementary expression of the Natural Law.
When the choice of conscience departs from reason and the divine law it is an erroneous judgment. The ‘poster boys’ for erroneous judgments of conscience, sadly, are many. If Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goring, Joseph Goebbels et al all judged their Nazi crimes to be no crimes at all, their judgements of conscience that Jewish people have no right to exist were in error. To kill Jewish people because they are Jewish is at least contrary to the fifth Commandment, you shall not kill. If Joseph Stalin (Russia), Pol Pot (Cambodia), Mao Zedong (China), et al. all judged their Communist crimes to be no crimes, their judgments of conscience that human rights do not exist were in error. To disallow due process or private property are similarly violations of justice – giving each their due, and the seventh Commandment, you shall not steal. Religious liberty is sorely lacking in modern day Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, which according to the U.S. State Department (2015 Report) disallow conversion to Christianity or the practice of a different form of Islam other than the locally dominant form.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr