Mastering Moral Decision-Making

Understanding Conscience: A Guide to Moral Decision Making

• Conscience is the inner voice that moves individuals to do good and avoid evil, and it is the ability to distinguish between the two, where God speaks to man.
• Moral conscience is a judgment of reason that recognizes the moral quality of an act that one is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed.
• Conscience has three functions: awareness of good and evil, desire of good and evil, and a feeling of joy and peace at having done good and of unease and guilt at having done evil.
• St. Thomas Aquinas believed that anything done against conscience is a sin, and John XXIII believed that to do violence to people's conscience is to harm them seriously and deal an extremely painful blow to their dignity.
• No one may be compelled to act against their conscience, provided they act within the limits of the common good, and anyone who overlooks the conscience of a person ignores it and uses coercion, violates that person's dignity.
• There are four types of conscience: certain, doubtful, righteous, and erroneous.
• An erroneous conscience is due to ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad examples given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion, and charity.
• Only the true and certain conscience is the right proximate rule of morality, and man has the obligation to make sure his conscience is "true," i.e., sufficiently formed and informed.
• Man has the obligation to follow not only his true conscience but also his erroneous conscience if it is invincibly erroneous.
• Doubts can be resolved by means of sincerity, upright intention, the desire to seek the will of God in everything, and a sense of responsibility in consulting the right person.
• While ultimately one must follow their conscience, it must be kept in mind that people have swindled, murdered, tortured, and betrayed others on the basis of what they wrongly suppose to be their conscience.
• Individuals must form their conscience into an increasingly fine-tuned instrument for acting rightly.

Test your knowledge on conscience and moral decision-making with this informative quiz! Learn about the different functions of conscience, the types of conscience, and the views of influential philosophers and religious figures. Challenge yourself to understand the importance of forming a true conscience and following it while avoiding the pitfalls of an erroneous one. Take this quiz to become an expert on conscience and its role in guiding our actions towards the good.