Conscience and Compassion
The Virtues are the good actions we turn into habits that result in happiness. All good actions flow from seven virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Faith, Hope and Love. We begin with Prudence, but specifically the difference between conscience and compassion. People are always saying, “You must follow your conscience.” For most, following your conscience means “Doing whatever feels right.” This is not correct. The world conscience means “with knowledge” not “with feelings.” So following your Conscience does not mean doing what you feel is right. Following your conscience means doing what you know is right.
Prudence is the virtue that makes you excellent in knowing the right thing to do at the right time.
This is the reason prudence is the first of the virtues, because you have to know what the right thing to do is before you can do it. Prudence is also the virtue that perfects our conscience. Conscience is the application of general moral principles to particular situations.
Following your conscience, means to do what, to the best of your knowledge, is the right thing to do. Conscience comes from two words: Cum or Con which means “with”, and science which means knowledge. Conscience means ‘with knowledge’. You act according to your knowledge.
You must always follow your conscience, meaning, you must always do what you think is right, to the best of your knowledge.
That means any gap in your knowledge will be a gap in your conscience. If your knowledge is faulty, your conscience will be faulty.
Our conscience is not infallible, our conscience can be dead wrong, because our knowledge can be dead wrong.
That is why we need to form our conscience according to correct knowledge or truth. Truth is the conformity of the mind to reality. We want to make sure our knowledge matches reality. And that’s what forming your conscience means.
What you’re doing right now is forming your conscience. Any time you learn about the human person and God’s will and even the situations that we might be called upon to maneuver, that’s forming your conscience.
You can never follow your conscience against something you know to be true. Because, again, conscience just means following what, to the best of your knowledge, is true. How do we know what is true? Three ways:
Through experience - but harmful and even deadly experiences can be avoided by reason and revelation
Through careful consideration, this is reason
By learning the truths of our Catholic Faith, which is Revelation, handed down by Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, the official teaching of the Catholic Church. The best synthesis of this is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Conscience is different from compassion
Conscience is derived from two Latin words Cum + Scientia - with knowledge. Conscience is to act with knowledge.
Compassion also comes from two words Cum + Passion – with emotion. Compassion is to act with feelings or emotions.
We must be careful not to mistake conscience with compassion.
Often times, when a person rejects one of a hard moral teaching they are rejecting it our of compassion, out of emotions, They are usually not rejecting it out of knowledge and research and careful thought. They are rejecting it out of compassion, that is, with emotion. And compassion divorced from conscience is an incredibly dangerous thing. Allowing passions or emotions to dictate behavior over thinking and knowledge is always dangerous.
Compassion, just like all the passions, should be governed by reason.
Reality, truth and thinking must govern emotions and not vice versa. That is to say that compassion and conscience are two different things and conscience is the one that must lead. That’s not to say compassion is bad, all the passions can be good, but they’re only good if they push us towards what is right. The passions become dangerous when they are not governed by reason which itself has been formed by pursuit of the truth.
We can have misplaced compassion. This is what happens when people say, “My conscience tells me that women should have the right to abortion. Why, you can’t saddle the poor young woman with a kid, she can’t handle it right now. So I’m going to follow my conscience and vote to ensure abortion is available.” No. Conscience often dictates one thing, and as we saw before, all the passions are supposed to be governed by reason, not vice versa.
Value them both
In April of 2019 the Kansas Supreme Court erroneously “discovered” a nearly unlimited right to abortion in our state constitutional. Now, every pro-life law on the books will likely be struck down. This opens the door to late-term and taxpayer funded abortions. Even laws requiring that a teenage girl inform her parents before having an abortion could be invalidated; Abortions could be performed by unlicensed physicians.
The only way to correct this is by passing the Value Them Both Amendment to the Kansas Constitution. The amendment was recently debated by the Kansas legislature, but fell four votes shy of passing. We must now pray and work so that the legislature takes up the Value Them Both Amendment after the election this fall.
Please take the following actions:
1. Go to KansasCatholic.org/take-action to sign up for more information and ways you can help.
2. The website allows you to easily contact your legislator in support of the Value them Both Amendment.
3. Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day for the end of Abortion.
Finally, the evil of Abortion is not just a Kansas problem – it’s a world-wide problem – so wherever you live you can fight to protect the most vulnerable for as Jesus said, whatever you did for the least of my brothers you did for me. But he also said, whatever you fail to do for the least of my brothers you fail to do for me.