REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING OF CONSCIENCE          

People have different ideas about conscience. Some identify it with the guilt we feel about what we have done or contemplate doing. Others think of conscience as being aware (or conscious) of one's personal beliefs and convictions and so see it as something that one has, that one consults for guidance like a private law book or dictionary of moral answers.

In the Catholic tradition conscience has been understood in a very intellectual sense as a judgment about what ought/ought no be done here and now. Vatican II breaks new ground when it defines conscience as the secret core and inner heart of the human person. It sees conscience in this fundamental sense as underlying and empowering practical judgments or decisions about what we should or should not do in particular circumstances.  

But this is not entirely new ground. Centuries ago Aquinas, although he preferred to define conscience strictly as a practical judgment, admitted that it could also be seen in a fundamental way as something deep within us which intuitively perceives the basic moral values as goals judged to be essential for human development (synderesis). Conscience in this sense is, he says, innate in us and can never be lost.  

The broad view of the Council looks at conscience in depth, in such a way as to be able to accommodate what is true in the other different perceptions. Fundamental conscience can be defined simply in this way: it is the human person as under obligation, or better, as committed to the search for what is right (moral truth), that is, for the values proper to the human spirit. In this ample sense, conscience is the centre of the person, the depth of the person where one is fully oneself, where one engages oneself and one's moral responsibility.  

From this it follows that fundamental conscience cannot be merely a series of particular acts of moral judgment but is the most profound expression of ourselves in our totality and in our desire for self-fulfilment. We have a largeness that is above and beyond the particular issues we confront. In our overture to what is beyond ourselves and which fulfils us as persons lies the foundation of morality. Understood in this way conscience is aligned with personal moral responsibility and takes on a much richer and deeper significance.  

As responsible persons, we rightly and properly activate the freedom that is rooted in the very mystery of our personhood and therefore is one of the most essential of all human characteristics. As Vatican II stated: 'a sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the contemporary consciousness. And the demand is increasingly made that human beings should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of responsible freedom, not driven by coercion and motivated by a sense of duty. This demand for freedom in human society chiefly regards the quest for the values proper to the human spirit' (Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, n.1). By genuine freedom is meant, not merely liberation from something (freedom-from), but above all freedom of self-determination (freedom-for). We determine the sort of person we are in the free choices we make.  

Although many choices we make are more or less peripheral and focus just on the particular action chosen (like deciding to get up or have a cooked breakfast), not all our actions we choose are like this. We choose careers, life-styles and vocations. The choice to marry, for example, is not just to say certain words but to be a husband or a wife. We determine ourselves to be a person who does what pertains to being a husband or a wife. It is true that the underlying commitment here involves a whole multitude of further choices down the track, many of them not clearly seen at the time, but the primary and specific focus is on the person one commits oneself to be. Clearly then there are certain overarching commitments or self-determinations that integrate many further choices demanded as the commitment unfolds.  

This suggests that there can be a fundamental commitment that can shape a person's entire life, like for instance the Virgin Mary's fiat, her free choice, which in spite of all the difficulties to follow determined what Mary was and always will be – the Mother of God. So free choices, from the banal to the most heroic, reveal that we as persons are capable of taking ourselves in hand and assuming control of our lives. These individual decisions make no overall sense except there is some point of reference which gives them coherence, a meaningful pattern deriving from something altogether basic which gives expression to the person we really are, some fundamental choice which structures our personality and links in real continuity the various decisions we take during the course of our life.  

Pope John Paul II made the same point when he said that 'freedom is not only the choice of one or another particular action; it is also, within that choice, a decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the Good, for or against the Truth, and ultimately for or against God' (encyclical Veritatis Splendor, n.65).  

Clearly, it is through this profound choice that fundamental conscience, that is, the whole person as under obligation, is manifested. It is also manifested in particular decisions about what we ought to do or avoid in a concrete situation, since what we choose to do in a particular instance will depend on the sort of person we are. In other words, fundamental conscience is brought to bear on an individual situation in a judgment on its morality which we attribute to actual or, perhaps we might call it, situational conscience.  

In this broad view of conscience, personal beliefs and convictions have a role to play but conscience involves much more than mere conformity to them. Likewise, the sense of guilt has its place, if by guilt is meant genuine guilt over perceived wrong done to other persons and not a false guilt arising from an overactive superego in the Freudian sense.  

The Vatican II conception of conscience accords with our common language usage. We say things like ' she is a warm-hearted person', 'his heart is in the right place', somebody is 'hard-, soft-, cold-hearted'. And we make this assessment of a person's character in terms of their actions, what they do or do not do. 'Manners maketh man', the adage goes, and our common speech often echoes the words of the Gospel, 'By their fruits you shall know them'. The ancient philosophers had it right when they coined the phrase 'action follows being'. It is our inner selves, our 'fundamental conscience', that fashions and shapes the moral quality of our particular choices.