How is Your Conscience?

A man once said, “I am going to read every passage about the commandments of God in Scripture and the Catechism repeatedly until I have formed my conscience rightly”. That is actually not a bad idea. How do you form your conscience? You have a conscience, but if it is influenced and shaped by the things of the world, then you are not forming your conscience rightly as the Catechism tells us we need to do.

At times I speak to people (I am referring to outside the confessional) and hear all kinds of admissions of sin, and yet they do not always have a sense of remorse in their words. It comes across more as “that was an annoying mistake” than as “I sinned against God and must repent”. The difference is huge, and yet few people today seem to get it. Even the most well studied Catholic theologian must continue to work to form his conscience in accord with the truth of God.

If you look out at the world today it is hard to find someone with a well formed conscience. There are a number of people with scrupulous or simply guilty consciences. There are also a number of people who might not notice if they killed their best friend. What ever happened to our sense of shame and guilt? It got all confused and muddied over the last few decades, and much of this occurred because some people who work in the media decided to wage war on morality.

Ask yourself, what are you doing to keep your conscience properly formed? If you cannot think of anything, then I can pretty much guarantee your conscience is either dulled, or at worst deformed. We are constantly being attacked by the devil and the world; we must constantly be on the defense to keep ourselves in the grace of God.