Conscience

In our Catholic tradition conscience is a “voice from within” telling us what is right and what is wrong. This inner voice is usually enlightened and guided by God’s Spirit. This enlightenment and guidance comes from knowledge of God’s commandments and laws.

We distinguish three modes or ways by which conscience moves. The first is what we call The Good Conscience. This movement of the heart is guided by the Holy Spirit and grounded on one’s awareness of God’s laws.

The second is called “Scrupulous Conscience”. A person experiencing this movement of the heart is always worrying whether a thought, desire or act is a sinful or not.

The third way a conscience operates is being “laxed” or “warped”. So we have “Laxed Conscience” that is unbothered, unworried and undisturbed by an obviously and openly illegal and immoral thought, desire, word or action.

In the first and second mode there is always that subtle feeling of shame and remorse when one commits a sinful, thought, word or act. In other words, conscience is not moving, the inner voice is not or cannot be heard.

Another way of calling this inner condition is “callused” conscience. In the Cebuano religious culture this is “kubal sa konsyensya”. It is “kibul” in Ilongo.

We have many “practitioners” of this third kind of conscience among us Filipinos today. Keen observers of our behaviour in politics, economics, social relations and cultural education and entertainment say our moral values have been inverted: what was wrong before is now right; what was right before is now wrong. So they say, this is right now because everybody is doing it; that is wrong now because nobody is doing it. The crowd’s number cannot reverse the malice of sin, and neither can the crowd’s absence diminishes the value of a good act.

We need to sharpen our conscience by constant prayer, confession, and Holy Mass. God’s mercy is unlimited. However many, dirty, horrible our sins are, they cannot and will not exhaust the mercy and compassion of God.

This way of behaving purifies us and enables us to have a good sense of right and wrong. Helped by the Holy Spirit we should be able always to say, wrong is wrong even if EVERYBODY is doing it. And right is right even if NOBODY is doing it.