Following Your Conscience
ONE
what Conscience is
a. We are all called to holiness, which means called to lives which imitate God’s goodness, which attempt to be “perfect as the Father is perfect”
b. But in order to live rightly, to live holy, moral lives, we have to know the truth about what right living is
i. In other words, we can’t do what’s right until we know what’s right.
c. As we’ve seen, God has given us all a natural insight into the basic principles of right and wrong.
i. This God-given insight is called natural law.
d. But we also have to be able to intelligently apply our knowledge of right and wrong to our own concrete situations.
i. That intelligent application of our knowledge of right and wrong to our own lives is what we mean by following our conscience.
two
What Conscience is not
a. So conscience is about applying your knowledge of right and wrong to concrete situations.
i. The word conscience actually comes from the Latin words cum and scientia.
1. Which mean “with” and “knowledge.”
ii. In other words, following your conscience is literally just acting with knowledge – doing what, according to the best of your knowledge, is the right thing to do.
b. This is very important. Following your conscience means following the best of your knowledge.
i. It does not mean acting according to your feelings.
1. Because when you’re behavior is based on feeling, instead of being based on your understanding of the truth, the results are morally and spiritually catastrophic.
three
People who follow their “conscience” against the Church
a. People who claim to be following their consciences, even against the teachings of the Church, are usually just following their sense of compassion – which, incidentally, comes from the latin word for “with feeling,” – not “with knowledge”
b. People reject the Church’s teachings on things like divorce, contraception, homosexuality, transgenderism, and even abortion out of a completely misguided, unreflective sense of “compassion” for the people involved.
i. They’re not following their consciences, their knowledge or understanding. They haven’t even thought enough about these issues to have any real understanding of them.
ii. Instead they follow a feeling, a sense of compassion, that’s been completely cut off from reason.
1. And so they end up terribly hurting the people they want to help.
four
Compassion not directed by reason causes terrible damage
a. If we act from compassion that isn’t directed by our conscience – by our knowledge of right and wrong – we’ll only make things worse.
i. Have you ever had a sick toddler, but every time you tried to give him medicine, he screamed and cried piteously.
1. A superficial compassion might say, “Okay, I don’t want to make you unhappy. I won’t force you to take this medicine.”
2. But a compassion directed by reason will say, “It’s okay, love, but you have to take your medicine. It’ll help you get better.”
b. Our world is ripping itself apart right now through the evil of a compassion not directed by reason.
i. It’s that kind of sick compassion that’s prompting doctors and lawmakers and psychologists to promote mutilating people through sex-change surgeries and killing people through euthanasia.
ii. When compassion leads you to mutilate and kill innocent people, how does it differ, in the end, from hatred?
five
Compassion directed by truth
a. Only compassion directed by truth can actually help people.
b. Only when we return to conscience, to a life lived according to a clear knowledge of right and wrong, will we be able to get our feelings in order.
c. This is why the world needs Jesus. Because He is truth, and He is compassionate.
i. He can show us how to know right from wrong, He can give us the truth that sets us free. He can help us to live not by passion but by conscience.
ii. Jesus continues to teach us through the Catholic Church – a subject for our meditation a few days from now.
iii. And then, when Jesus has formed our understanding rightly, He can show us rightly how to have pity on the multitudes, in imitation of Him.