What is conscience?

God created man, free and responsible, and wanted man to cooperate in the creation and development of relationships between one another.

For this to take place, God gave man his conscience, to help him learn to live in conformity with God’s will. Thus the voice of man’s conscience becomes the announcement of God’s word to every human.

The Second Vatican Council, in its teachings emphasises heavily on conscience and using it in every area of our lives that are related both to religion as well as other life matters, but makes it clear that conscience is not the prerogative of Christians alone, but all people, thus everyone has the duty to obey their conscience. But in such a world as we are living in, where so many are living in darkness, few are those who truly follow what God tells them through their conscience.

As defined by the Second Vatican Council, “Conscience is man’s most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.” In a wonderful way conscience reveals that law which reaches its climax in the love of God. So for Christians to align themselves with God’s will, they need to welcome the law which then becomes a rule as their conscience dictates. At the heart of man’s conscience a law is formed, that is not self imposed, but which is yearned for and which man seeks to obey. The voice of conscience is constantly calling man to love and do good as well as to escape evil.

If we look at our daily life, God calls us everyday through our conscience to follow His plan. So moral conscience is an order that guides Christians, to faithfully apply, the law, constantly asking and enquiring about his personal existence and that of the community. The choice made through our conscience both when we accept as well as when we live God’s plan, interests the person as a whole in a special way his freedom. From here we see the dignity of our conscience, and from here the need for it to be respected. The Council also continued to teach, that man must follow his conscience as by so doing he will be obeying God’s law.

This shows that the Council maintains that which Christian tradition always taught, that in every moral choice the decisive rule remains conscience, in fact conscience does not do anything other than convey the divine precepts to those who have use of rational reasoning. Therefore when Christians live in union with their conscience, they are bound closer together to seek the truth and to solve the problems that arise in their lives in relations among themselves and with God.

How should we form our conscience?

Conscience as God’s voice leads us to make choices and decisions that require a great sense of responsibility, so we as Christian believers, are bound to form a mature conscience by means of wisdom and experience, and above all, through the light of the Holy Spirit that leads us to have better judgment. To reach this point, one needs to work tirelessly to better form their conscience.

The Second Vatican Council gave us many aids in order to be able to do this, in fact in one of the documents of the Council we find written: “In order for individual men to discharge with greater exactness the obligations of their conscience toward themselves and the various group to which they belong, they must be carefully educated to a higher degree of culture through the use of the immense resources available today to the human race.” But to do this he needs to study carefully what his conscience tells him and follow it when he knows it is correct.

As we know that conscience is built on natural law and evangelical principles, we must always bear these two precepts in mind. In this way man can be certain that he is forming a good conscience when in practice he is living as Jesus taught us.

From here we see the dignity of our conscience, and from here the need for it to be respected.