What conscience is

What Conscience Is – The Nature
of our Conscience

1. Conscience is subjective:
o Every person has his own conscience –
every person has the capacity to discern
the good from the evil.
o All persons have a conscience – we all
have the human capacity to use our reason
(1) to discern and judge the moral
goodness or evil of a particular act (2) with
the feeling of being morally obliged to do
what is good and avoid what is evil.

2. Conscience is acted upon by the
Holy Spirit, giving us an ability to
know what the Lord wants us to do:

o Our conscieence enables us to discern the
acts by which we can concretely live out
being a Christian: to love God and to love
others.

o Christ Himself taught and showed by His
very life the core of Christian moral living:
loving God and loving ithers.

3. Conscience may indeed result to
the feeling of guilt when we do
wrong, and the feeling of peace
when we do good:
o Conscience is often described as leading to
feelings of remorse when a human commits
actions that go against his/her moral values
and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when
actions conform to such norms .

o Hence, the feeling of guilt is an outcome of
the realization that the person had done
something wrong.

4. Conscience is objective:

o Our conscience is formed and informed by the
environment, therefore, it is relational.
Example: As teenagers - our friendships, exposure to media, and
religious education continue to shape our moral formation.

o Our conscience is formed by the universal
values and norms we learn from others.
Example: Only through our interaction with others do we
understand the fundamental human values and objective
norms that guide our conscience in making moral
judgments.

What is
conscience?
Conscience is an aptitude (natural
ability), faculty, intuition or judgment of
the intellect that distinguishes right from
wrong.

 Essentially, conscience is a
practical judgment that evaluates
whether an action, word,
thought, desire, or omission is
good and to be consented to or
evil and to be avoided.

The Relation of Conscience to
Values and Moral Laws
Values
•Are attitudes/virtues/characteristics to which we give
importance, which we prize as significant.
•Protect our basic human needs
Moral Laws
•Protect human values which spring from our basic human
needs
•Simple life rules that protect promote and protect our
values.

Values
(protect basic The Relation of
Basic human needs -
Human Are Conscience to
Needs (food, attitudes/virtues
shelter, / to which we Values and Moral
clothing, give importance,
dignity) which we prize Law
as significant)

Simple Life
Conscience Rules
guided by the (moral principles
objective moral that are formulated
laws, judges that promote and
whether a specific protect values -
act is moral or not specific application
of the universal
moral laws)

Moral Laws
(objective/
universal moral
laws - like the Ten
Commandments)

Examples to illustrate the relation:
Example One:
Basic Need : Shelter
Value : To give importance to an owning
property (the value that has developed
because of that need of shelter)

Rule : No one must take away from you
without consent that which you own
(simple life-rule formulated in order to protect that
value)

Moral Law : You shall not steal (a moral law
that formalized and universalized that rule)

Example Two:

Basic Need :
Value :

Rule :

Moral Law :

Example Three:

Basic Need :
Value :

Rule :

Moral Law :

Example Four:

Basic Need :
Value :

Rule :

Moral Law :

What conscience is

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What conscience is