Conscience, The Church... and Conflict?

I was recently scrolling through my Facebook news feed, and I was particularly struck by an intriguing dichotomy that someone had set up between “being swayed by the church” and “deciding with their conscience.” This is ultimately wrong, and quite unfortunate- here is why:

The human conscience, which is independently formed in each human being, is an interior voice that helps morally govern choices in our daily lives. It is what speaks up when something is wrong, and affirms our choice when we do what is right. When formed, it is the interior voice of Divine Law for each and every person walking the face of the earth. It has been constantly shaped and molded by what we have been taught and instilled with from the time that our minds began to take shape. Hopefully, through the good formation of our parents, teachers, priests, catechists, and friends, we have received solid formation of conscience. Thus, we will be equipped to make good moral choices in accordance with our conscience.

However, the dichotomy presented above does not relay that particular ideal. In fact, if this dichotomy is purported to exist at all, this moral formation seems to have strayed, and in a major way. A good moral conscience should always be in accord with the Church, and not separated from it. The Church provides Holy Scripture, doctrine, and tradition, all of which play a key role in formation of our consciences and thus rendering good, holy moral actions and judgements. We know that we can trust the Church for our moral formation, since Christ gave it to us to help us in making good choices that allow us to love God, others, and ultimately, gain eternal happiness with God. If we are setting our conscience (something that can both be formed and malformed) above the Church, we have a major problem, since it is supposed to be formed by the Church.

It is indeed unfortunate that we live in a culture and time where the conscience is so often intellectually and morally malnourished. It seems that our culture so often screams for independence of voice, but when a viewpoint comes from some particular universal moral authority, say the Catholic Church, it is almost instantly discarded. We must ask ourselves though: is the human race meant to be a series of morally autonomous islands, or a community, surrounding itself with Christ? Why is the Church, the world’s largest community, something Christ Himself founded, even here in the first place- to send us on our way to make up and figure things out on our own? Absolutely not! It was put here for our own formation- not to be ignored in the name of a faulty conscience! It is here to feed and nourish our consciences, especially when we are wrong! It has stood for thousands of years to do just that, and we will stand for a mere fraction of that!

If we find ourselves at odds with the Church for any particular reason, we really need to figure out why- and not just say that “I differ from the Church” and walk away. If there are differences, there is a good chance that we are lacking some truth that is rightfully ours through the Church! The Church is the very source of Divine Law for us, and that it is the very thing that is going to form our consciences correctly! How can we expect to rely on the rest of our conscience’s formation, if we separate ourselves from its very source? We are given the fullness of Truth through the Church. She desires to share that with us, and help us to form our consciences well, so that we can make good choices, and by those choices, enter into eternal happiness with our Lord! Our conscience, and the Church, will work together to get us there, but only if we see how they compliment each other, and allow ourselves to be formed!

“Deep within his conscience 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. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

-CCC 1776