FCL B: Conscience

Conscience

is innate to human being.

Conscience

It is through this faculty that humans become truly humans. This faculty in us helps distinguish our actions if we have done something wrong or right in a certain situations.

Conscience

Only humans have this capacity all over creatures.

Conscience

This gift given to us is a kind of power for us to choose what is right from wrong and to avoid what is unnecessary that might hurt our feeling and other. It is in this gift that we are able to get rid of the same mistakes or flaws upon learning the past mistakes.

People have in innate sense of basic moral truth.

Using human reason, we can deduce the principles of this natural law (universal moral principles).

Conscience

We use natural facility to apply the general principles of law to specific situations, judging specific actions to be right or wrong in accordance with objective law.

Conscience is a natural facility of our reason that does three things:

1. Remind us always to do good and avoid evil.

2. Makes judgment about the good and evil of particular choices in a specific situation.

3. Bears witness after the fact to good or evil that we have done.

God’s law

To have a correct conscience, one first needs to know _________ (as it is known in the natural law and revealed in the bible), the laws of the Church and also the particular duties of one’s state in life.

Prayer

It enlighten and strengthens conscience, giving it the direction of God’s Word.

Kinds of Conscience

1. Correct or True Conscience

2. Erroneous or False

   • Inculpable Conscience

   • Culpable Conscience

3. Certain Conscience

4. Doubtful Conscience

5. Scrupulous Conscience

6. Lax Conscience

Correct or True Conscience

judges what is good as good and what is evil as evil as well.

Erroneous or False

judges incorrectly that what is good is evil and what is evil is good.

Erroneous or False

• mistake in inferential thinking: deriving a wrong conclusion from a given moral principle.

• ignorance of the law.

• ignorance of the fact and other circumstances modifying human actions.

• ignorance of future consequences, especially those dependent on the free will of others.

Types of Erroneous or False Conscience

1. Inculpable conscience

2. Culpable conscience

Inculpable Conscience

An erroneous conscience whose error is not fully intended, which means that person is unaware of it.

Culpable Conscience

An erroneous conscience whose error is due to neglect, which means that person is aware of it.

Certain Conscience

subjective assurance of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of a certain act

Certain Conscience

the person is sure of is decision. It is possible; however, to be sure of something as good as when in fact it is just the opposite and vice-versa.

Certain Conscience

should always be followed to preserve the integrity reason.

Doubtful Conscience

unable to form a definite judgment on a certain action.

Doubtful Conscience

must first be allowed to settle its doubts before an action is performed.

Scrupulous Conscience

extremely afraid of committing evil.

Scrupulous Conscience

a meticulous and wants incontrovertible proofs before it acts.

Lax Conscience

one which judges more by convenience that by God’s law and leads a person to easily commit sin, slight or serious. Everything is judged carelessly, without thought of the consequences of the offense to God.

“voice of God”

Conscience is known as the ______________. He is the ultimate nor to which conscience must conform to. Conscience too is linked with human authority.

Conscience and Authority

1. Linked with the state

2. Linked with human community

Linked with the state

derives its authority from nature itself and affirmed by natural law and divine revelation.

Linked with human community

conscience depends for help in community and social authority in order to be informed of its judgments.

Law and commands

morally binding only when they are in agreement with the norms of moral.

Clamor

it is precisely the _____ to be liberated from the opressive and tyrannical human authority that people claims freedom of conscience.

Human authority

presupposes individual conscience and not the source of it.

One has the obligation to cultivate a clear and true conscience by studying for truths in the laws and in science.

In cultivating good habits. practical truths we discover must be internalized and externalized in actions.

We must learn not only to turn our backs against evil but fight against it.