{"id":153176,"date":"2020-03-03T10:30:33","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T15:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/ask-a-priest-is-conscience-supreme\/"},"modified":"2024-10-22T15:07:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T19:07:19","slug":"ask-a-priest-is-conscience-supreme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/ask-a-priest-is-conscience-supreme\/","title":{"rendered":"“Ask a Priest: Is Conscience Supreme?”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Q: You hear so many in the media, in government, in academia, etc., use their conscience as an excuse for their poor decisions. For instance, \u201cMy conscience tells me it\u2019s OK to have an abortion\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m following my conscience by voting for this law.” Can you please explain the term conscience and where your conscience comes from? And without its foundation in God, how will your conscience be uninformed or, worse, ill-informed? Thank you for taking my question. \u2013 Julie<\/address>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Answered by Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC<\/em><\/p>\n

A:\u00a0“Deep within his conscience,” says the Catechism in No. 1776, “man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. …\u00a0For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.”<\/p>\n

So the conscience comes from God. We can think of as a capacity to discern between right and wrong.<\/p>\n

Conscience is a bit like a muscle. We need to eat the right things to keep it healthy, and we need to exercise it well.<\/p>\n

To eat the right things means that we have to inform ourselves about Church teaching. We can’t just feed on ideas and opinions from anywhere.<\/p>\n

A conscience can become weak, either from a person’s lack of formation or from a person’s tendency to start ignoring it. Over time, a conscience can become deformed and virtually dead.<\/p>\n

We have a duty to follow our conscience, but not when it’s in clear violation of Church teaching. John Henry Newman famously wrote, “Conscience has rights because it has duties” (see his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk<\/a>).<\/p>\n

A person who has allowed his conscience to be deformed won’t necessarily be vindicated because “I’m following my conscience.” In fact, the person bears guilt for allowing his conscience to be corrupted. Politicians and others who claim absolute supremacy of conscience are on thin ice.<\/p>\n

For a masterful summary about the topic, see the Catechism section on the moral conscience, beginning at http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/archive\/ccc_css\/archive\/catechism\/p3s1c1a6.htm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Keep learning more with Ask a Priest<\/a><\/h3>\n

Got a question? Need an answer?<\/h3>\n

Today\u2019s secular world throws curve balls at us all the time. AskACatholicPriest is a Q&A feature that anyone can use. Just type in your question or send an email to AskAPriest@rcspiritual.wpenginepowered.com<\/a> and you will get a personal response back from one of our priests at RCSpirituality. You can ask about anything \u2013 liturgy, prayer, moral questions, current events\u2026 Our goal is simply to provide a trustworthy forum for dependable Catholic guidance and information. So go ahead and ask your question\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q: You hear so many in the media, in government, in academia, etc., use their conscience as an excuse for their poor decisions. 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He was an assistant publisher of the National Catholic Register and Faith & Family magazine and an editor of the Zenit news agency\u2019s English edition. He has written for\u00a0SpiritualDirection.com\u00a0and\u00a0ePriest. Fr. McIlmail also worked in spiritual retreats in the Northeast, New England, the Midwest, and the South\u00a0and assisted with mission work in Mexico. Born in Philadelphia, he worked in journalism and was active in the pro-life movement before entering the novitiate of the Legion of Christ in 1992. His contributions to RCSpirituality include responding to\u00a0Ask A Priest\u00a0questions and sharing his insights in our\u00a0Weekly Newsletter.","url":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/author\/emcilmail\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153176"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=153176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}