Understanding conscience is essential for the life of faith. A solid grasp of Catholic teaching about conscience makes it possible to live a moral life. And sadly...

...a defective understanding can destroy your moral life.

This is important!

For the beginning Catholic, this is an essential issue to understand properly.

And I'll tell you plainly: conscience may be the single most misunderstood issue among Catholics today!

A natural facility to judge

Conscience is a natural facility of our reason that does three things:

1. Reminds us always to do good and avoid evil.
2. Makes a judgment about the good and evil of particular choices in a specific situation.
3. Bears witness after the fact to the good or evil that we have done. (I.e., having a guilty conscience.)

Conscience is a powerful and remarkable facility that is distinctly human.

Understand that conscience is a judgment of reason. It uses the objective principles of the moral law to judge the morality of acts in specific circumstances. Conscience is not itself the source of the moral law.

• This is a common point of misunderstanding. Many who reject Church teaching will say, "I'm just following my conscience." What they usually mean is that they're looking to their conscience as the source of moral principles, which is a serious error.
• I'll be blunt: it's likely that some other Catholics will challenge you on this point, and you'll have to defend it. (I know, it's not fair! It's a long story, but a lot of people have been taught weak or bad doctrine for many years....)

Use the Catechism to defend this point. This article will help you read the Catechism's section on conscience accurately. Also see the excellent article on conscience on the Catholics United for the Faith (CUF) Web site. Beyond that, Pope John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor contains a definitive discussion about conscience in sections 54-64; number 64 particularly speaks to this point.

Everyone has a duty to form their conscience. Formation of conscience simply means educating and training it. We do this by learning and taking to heart the objective moral law, as found in Scripture and the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church. This forms conscience in objective moral truth as taught by Christ and his Church.