Here is a great article I found on Zenit.org discussing the role our consciences should play in our relationship with God. It's a little long but I edited it down a bit. (my emphasis)
"Struggling to Recover a Catholic Sense"
"Struggling to Recover a Catholic Sense"
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 3, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, Australia, delivered at the conference sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life and held in the Vatican last Friday and Saturday. The theme of the conference was "The Christian Conscience in Support of the Right to Life."
* * *
The moral conscience in ethics and the contemporary crisis of authority
1. The voice of conscience
1.1 What conscience is not
It might scandalize you to hear that I keep a lady in my car to instruct me on which way to go in life. "In three kilometers turn left," she commands. "Turn around," she pleads. "Coming up, on your right, you have arrived," she advises. She is, of course, a global positioning satellite navigator and I would be lost without her calm voice telling me where to go. She can be wrong at times, due to mechanical faults or wrong information. Sometimes I ignore her or switch her off. But usually I obey her; and if I don't I am usually sorry later.
In lots of ways conscience might seem to function like my satellite navigator and so we might call her Conscientia. Though I will argue that conscience is not like a satellite navigator, many people think it is a sort of angelic voice distinct from our own reasoning which comes, as it were, from outside us, even if we hear it in our heart; it is generally trustworthy, but we must decide to obey it or not. There is more than a hint of this at several points in our theological tradition. But whatever these texts mean, they clearly do not mean a divine or diabolical voice intrudes into our ordinary reasoning processes, commanding or complaining, a rival with our own moral thinking. If we experience such voices we should probably see a doctor or an exorcist! Were conscience really a voice from outside our reasoning it would play no part in philosophy and there might be some kind of double truth in the moral sphere.
... Moral tax lawyers...try to find ways around the moral law, or ways to "sail as close to the wind as possible" without actually breaking the moral law. Can you do a little bit of abortion or embryo experimentation or euthanasia without breaking the moral law? Can we reclassify some of it as something else and thereby avoid the law? What both approaches have in common with the late schoolmen is a view of the magisterium as a voice external to conscience which commands things to which conscience is not naturally disposed.
In my written paper I trace what became of conscience in liberal modernity. By the 1960s it meant something like strong feeling, intuition or sincere opinion. To appeal to conscience was to foreclose all further discussion and to claim immunity to reasoned argument or the moral law. "Follow your conscience" came to be code for pursuing personal preferences over and against Church teaching, especially in sexuality, bioethics, remarriage and communion. Conscience was now the highest court of appeal: it had "primacy" or infallibility. Sophisticated consciences yielded judgments in accord with the New York Times rather than L'Osservatore Romano. Conscience became, as the then-Cardinal Ratzinger put it, "a cloak thrown over human subjectivity, allowing man to … hide from reality." (some try to say that Father Ratzinger during Vatican II advocated unlimited conscience-case in point: false)
1.2 What conscience is: a little history
In my written paper I trace the origins of the Christian conception of conscience in the universal experience of agency and the Old and New Testaments, especially in Pauline literature, and thereafter in the Fathers and the scholastics. While the concept of conscience played only a minor role in Aquinas' moral theory, in the early modern period it was "hoisted to new heights" and a whole, lengthy tract devoted to it in the manuals, with practical reason and prudence accordingly diminished. Soon "all roads, in the moral world, led to conscience." (a well formed conscience plays a part, but to ignore a well-formed conscience is sinful- ex: being in the military while one's superiors tell the soldier to kill innocent civilians; to ignore one's conscience which says 'that's bad don't do it' would be sinful)
Conscience featured especially often in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The Council declared that:
-- all are bound to seek, embrace and live the truth faithfully;
-- conscience is experienced as an inner sanctuary or tribunal, rather than something external, yet it mediates a universal and objective moral law which is given rather than invented;
-- conscience summons us to seek good and avoid evil by loving God and neighbor, by keeping the commandments and all universal norms of morality;
-- conscience is common to all human beings, not just Christians, and it is the very dignity of man, a dignity the Gospel protects;
-- we will be judged according to how we formed and followed our conscience;
-- the moral law and the particular judgments of conscience bind the human person;
-- agents may experience anxiety, contradictions and imbalances in conscience; and conscience may err out of "invincible ignorance" or by being blamefully corrupted;
-- claims of personal freedom or of obedience to civil laws or superiors do not excuse a failure to abide by the universal principles of good conscience;
-- conscience must be properly formed and educated by ensuring it is "dutifully conformed to the divine law and submissive toward the Church's teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel"; and (at the same time- one's conscience is not a 'gut feeling' or 'emotional reactions' but based on reason. Since the Magisterium is the Body of Christ, led by the HS, and because "the gates of hell (error/falsehood/lies) will not prevail against it," we have an obligation to form our consciences in accordance with the Magisterium) (St Thomas Aquinas says: Since conscience is a kind of dictate of the reason (for it is an application of knowledge to action, as was stated in the I, 19, 13), to inquire whether the will is evil when it is at variance with erring reason, is the same as to inquire "whether an erring conscience binds.")
-- freedom of conscience, especially in religious matters, must be respected by civil authorities and people not be coerced into any religious practice.
...
The Catholic view of conscience presupposes an optimistic view of human capacities to discern the good, even after the Fall. But if conscience is reduced from objective principles to subjective sincerity or from shared principles to private ones, it is hard to see why we would take people's consciences so seriously. Too often in recent years those desperate for moral education or advice have been fobbed off with "follow your conscience" or indulged with "do what you think is best." Too often human rights documents have become weapons against the rights of some people. Without shared objective principles, "conscientious" belief becomes window-dressing for raw preference or power and we have no way of knowing whether our conscience is well-formed or not, well-functioning or not, accurate or disastrously off-course.
1.4 The authority of conscience
Thus when Vatican II uses the term conscience 52 times and its Catechism also, both texts presume a long history and complex content not necessarily shared by users of the word conscience or spokesmen for the Council's "spirit." Nor does the phrase "primacy of conscience" appear anywhere in the Council's texts. On the contrary, the word conscience is always qualified with adjectives such as "right," "upright," "correct," "well-formed," or "Christian" -- allowing, by implication, that not a few consciences are confused, deformed or otherwise misleading. So some other standard (by which conscience is judged) has "primacy.' The Council pointed out that conscience often goes wrong, sometimes "invincibly" (i.e. by no fault of the agent and so without losing its dignity), but at other times "voluntarily" (i.e. due to negligence or vice, in which case conscience is degraded). Conscience, like any intellectual ability, can err because the human mind can be more or less mature, experienced, trained, healthy, sophisticated, imaginative, prudent, integrated with passion, etc. Conscience is only right conscience when it accurately mediates and applies that natural law which participates in the divine law; it is erroneous when it does not. Thus, as I suggested earlier, it may be more helpful to think of conscience as a verb (a doing word), describing the human mind thinking practically towards good or godly choices, rather than reifying it as a noun, a faculty or voice with divine qualities.
Despite the tendency of conscience to error, the Church maintains its high view of the dignity of conscience. From this several things follow:
-- that we must do our best to cultivate a well-formed and well-informed conscience in ourselves and those we influence;
-- that we must take responsibility for our actions and thus always seek seriously to discern what is the right choice to make;
-- that we should seek to resolve doubt rather than act upon it;
-- that we must follow the last and best judgment of our conscience even if, unbeknownst to us, it is objectively in error;
-- that we must do so in all humility, aware that our choice may be wrong and so be ready, if we later realize it is, to repent and start afresh;...
Such reverence for persons and their consciences is perfectly consistent with denying that conscience is infallible or has "primacy" over truth or faith or the teachings of Christ and his Church. As we will see, the magisterium seeks to enable conscience to achieve a more reliable mediation and application of moral truth: It is always objective moral truth that has primacy and only this which can be infallibly true.
The teaching authority of the Church, restating or unfolding the implications of Christ's teaching is called "magisterium." In my written paper I trace some of the history of and theological warrant for this idea. Interestingly Jesus' departing promise to be with His Church to the end of time was attached to a charge not to teach the nations Christology or Soteriology or even Fundamental Moral Theology, but to teach them His commandments! By the time of Vatican II the Church could assert that Christ's faithful ought to give the unconditional obedience of faith (obsequium fidei) to all that it proposes as certainly true and could express several ways in which this magisterium is operationalized infallibly.
* * *
The moral conscience in ethics and the contemporary crisis of authority
1. The voice of conscience
1.1 What conscience is not
It might scandalize you to hear that I keep a lady in my car to instruct me on which way to go in life. "In three kilometers turn left," she commands. "Turn around," she pleads. "Coming up, on your right, you have arrived," she advises. She is, of course, a global positioning satellite navigator and I would be lost without her calm voice telling me where to go. She can be wrong at times, due to mechanical faults or wrong information. Sometimes I ignore her or switch her off. But usually I obey her; and if I don't I am usually sorry later.
In lots of ways conscience might seem to function like my satellite navigator and so we might call her Conscientia. Though I will argue that conscience is not like a satellite navigator, many people think it is a sort of angelic voice distinct from our own reasoning which comes, as it were, from outside us, even if we hear it in our heart; it is generally trustworthy, but we must decide to obey it or not. There is more than a hint of this at several points in our theological tradition. But whatever these texts mean, they clearly do not mean a divine or diabolical voice intrudes into our ordinary reasoning processes, commanding or complaining, a rival with our own moral thinking. If we experience such voices we should probably see a doctor or an exorcist! Were conscience really a voice from outside our reasoning it would play no part in philosophy and there might be some kind of double truth in the moral sphere.
... Moral tax lawyers...try to find ways around the moral law, or ways to "sail as close to the wind as possible" without actually breaking the moral law. Can you do a little bit of abortion or embryo experimentation or euthanasia without breaking the moral law? Can we reclassify some of it as something else and thereby avoid the law? What both approaches have in common with the late schoolmen is a view of the magisterium as a voice external to conscience which commands things to which conscience is not naturally disposed.
In my written paper I trace what became of conscience in liberal modernity. By the 1960s it meant something like strong feeling, intuition or sincere opinion. To appeal to conscience was to foreclose all further discussion and to claim immunity to reasoned argument or the moral law. "Follow your conscience" came to be code for pursuing personal preferences over and against Church teaching, especially in sexuality, bioethics, remarriage and communion. Conscience was now the highest court of appeal: it had "primacy" or infallibility. Sophisticated consciences yielded judgments in accord with the New York Times rather than L'Osservatore Romano. Conscience became, as the then-Cardinal Ratzinger put it, "a cloak thrown over human subjectivity, allowing man to … hide from reality." (some try to say that Father Ratzinger during Vatican II advocated unlimited conscience-case in point: false)
1.2 What conscience is: a little history
In my written paper I trace the origins of the Christian conception of conscience in the universal experience of agency and the Old and New Testaments, especially in Pauline literature, and thereafter in the Fathers and the scholastics. While the concept of conscience played only a minor role in Aquinas' moral theory, in the early modern period it was "hoisted to new heights" and a whole, lengthy tract devoted to it in the manuals, with practical reason and prudence accordingly diminished. Soon "all roads, in the moral world, led to conscience." (a well formed conscience plays a part, but to ignore a well-formed conscience is sinful- ex: being in the military while one's superiors tell the soldier to kill innocent civilians; to ignore one's conscience which says 'that's bad don't do it' would be sinful)
Conscience featured especially often in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. The Council declared that:
-- all are bound to seek, embrace and live the truth faithfully;
-- conscience is experienced as an inner sanctuary or tribunal, rather than something external, yet it mediates a universal and objective moral law which is given rather than invented;
-- conscience summons us to seek good and avoid evil by loving God and neighbor, by keeping the commandments and all universal norms of morality;
-- conscience is common to all human beings, not just Christians, and it is the very dignity of man, a dignity the Gospel protects;
-- we will be judged according to how we formed and followed our conscience;
-- the moral law and the particular judgments of conscience bind the human person;
-- agents may experience anxiety, contradictions and imbalances in conscience; and conscience may err out of "invincible ignorance" or by being blamefully corrupted;
-- claims of personal freedom or of obedience to civil laws or superiors do not excuse a failure to abide by the universal principles of good conscience;
-- conscience must be properly formed and educated by ensuring it is "dutifully conformed to the divine law and submissive toward the Church's teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel"; and (at the same time- one's conscience is not a 'gut feeling' or 'emotional reactions' but based on reason. Since the Magisterium is the Body of Christ, led by the HS, and because "the gates of hell (error/falsehood/lies) will not prevail against it," we have an obligation to form our consciences in accordance with the Magisterium) (St Thomas Aquinas says: Since conscience is a kind of dictate of the reason (for it is an application of knowledge to action, as was stated in the I, 19, 13), to inquire whether the will is evil when it is at variance with erring reason, is the same as to inquire "whether an erring conscience binds.")
-- freedom of conscience, especially in religious matters, must be respected by civil authorities and people not be coerced into any religious practice.
...
The Catholic view of conscience presupposes an optimistic view of human capacities to discern the good, even after the Fall. But if conscience is reduced from objective principles to subjective sincerity or from shared principles to private ones, it is hard to see why we would take people's consciences so seriously. Too often in recent years those desperate for moral education or advice have been fobbed off with "follow your conscience" or indulged with "do what you think is best." Too often human rights documents have become weapons against the rights of some people. Without shared objective principles, "conscientious" belief becomes window-dressing for raw preference or power and we have no way of knowing whether our conscience is well-formed or not, well-functioning or not, accurate or disastrously off-course.
1.4 The authority of conscience
Thus when Vatican II uses the term conscience 52 times and its Catechism also, both texts presume a long history and complex content not necessarily shared by users of the word conscience or spokesmen for the Council's "spirit." Nor does the phrase "primacy of conscience" appear anywhere in the Council's texts. On the contrary, the word conscience is always qualified with adjectives such as "right," "upright," "correct," "well-formed," or "Christian" -- allowing, by implication, that not a few consciences are confused, deformed or otherwise misleading. So some other standard (by which conscience is judged) has "primacy.' The Council pointed out that conscience often goes wrong, sometimes "invincibly" (i.e. by no fault of the agent and so without losing its dignity), but at other times "voluntarily" (i.e. due to negligence or vice, in which case conscience is degraded). Conscience, like any intellectual ability, can err because the human mind can be more or less mature, experienced, trained, healthy, sophisticated, imaginative, prudent, integrated with passion, etc. Conscience is only right conscience when it accurately mediates and applies that natural law which participates in the divine law; it is erroneous when it does not. Thus, as I suggested earlier, it may be more helpful to think of conscience as a verb (a doing word), describing the human mind thinking practically towards good or godly choices, rather than reifying it as a noun, a faculty or voice with divine qualities.
Despite the tendency of conscience to error, the Church maintains its high view of the dignity of conscience. From this several things follow:
-- that we must do our best to cultivate a well-formed and well-informed conscience in ourselves and those we influence;
-- that we must take responsibility for our actions and thus always seek seriously to discern what is the right choice to make;
-- that we should seek to resolve doubt rather than act upon it;
-- that we must follow the last and best judgment of our conscience even if, unbeknownst to us, it is objectively in error;
-- that we must do so in all humility, aware that our choice may be wrong and so be ready, if we later realize it is, to repent and start afresh;...
Such reverence for persons and their consciences is perfectly consistent with denying that conscience is infallible or has "primacy" over truth or faith or the teachings of Christ and his Church. As we will see, the magisterium seeks to enable conscience to achieve a more reliable mediation and application of moral truth: It is always objective moral truth that has primacy and only this which can be infallibly true.
The teaching authority of the Church, restating or unfolding the implications of Christ's teaching is called "magisterium." In my written paper I trace some of the history of and theological warrant for this idea. Interestingly Jesus' departing promise to be with His Church to the end of time was attached to a charge not to teach the nations Christology or Soteriology or even Fundamental Moral Theology, but to teach them His commandments! By the time of Vatican II the Church could assert that Christ's faithful ought to give the unconditional obedience of faith (obsequium fidei) to all that it proposes as certainly true and could express several ways in which this magisterium is operationalized infallibly.
