What is a practical Catholic definition of conscience?
Upvote:4
Fr. John Hardon, S.J.'s Catholic Dictionary entry for "conscience":
The judgment of the practical intellect deciding, from general principles of faith and reason, the goodness or badness of a way of acting that a person now faces.
It is an operation of the intellect and not of the feelings or even of the will. An action is right or wrong because of objective principles to which the mind must subscribe, not because a person subjectively feels that way or because his will wants it that way.
Conscience, therefore, is a specific act of the mind applying its knowledge to a concrete moral situation. What the mind decides in a given case depends on principles already in the mind.
These principles are presupposed as known to the mind, either from the light of natural reason reflecting on the data of creation, or from divine faith responding to God's supernatural revelation. Conscience does not produce these principles; it accepts them. Nor does not conscience pass judgment on the truths of reason and divine faith; it uses them as the premises from which to conclude whether something should be done (or should have been done) because it is good, or should be omitted (or should have been omitted) because it is bad. Its conclusions also apply to situations where the mind decides that something is permissible or preferable but not obligatory.
Always the role of conscience is to decide subjectively on the ethical propriety of a specific action, here and now, for this person, in these circumstances. But always, too, the decision is a mental conclusion derived from objective norms that conscience does not determine on its own, receiving it as given by the Author of nature and divine grace.
More post
- 📝 What are the "correct" steps for a layman to be a Christian?
- 📝 How do Reformed Protestants interpret Matthew 18:18?
- 📝 Do we have to tithe our time as well?
- 📝 Can Catholics choose to be baptized by immersion?
- 📝 Does Cain still have descendants on the earth?
- 📝 Did the sun and the moon really stop rotating?
- 📝 Are there any remains/fossils after Noah's flood?
- 📝 Who started the Judensau image?
- 📝 How is the belief that Christians are both adopted and begotten sons of God reconciled?
- 📝 How do literalists envision the size of New Jerusalem?
- 📝 How do evangelical universalists reconcile their position with the designation for Judas that it would be better if he had never been born?
- 📝 Was St. John referring to schismatic bishops in describing the Antichrist in 1 John 2:18-19?
- 📝 What does it mean that the Believers Eastern Church (in Asia) is an "Ancient-Future Church"?
- 📝 When talking about the Trinity, what does "persons" mean?
- 📝 How do young earth creationists explain the evidence for ice ages?
- 📝 Does Catholicism Have Anything to Say About 'Physical Evil'?
- 📝 Is there a moral goodness in In vitro fertilization?
- 📝 Did the early church devote themselves to prayer or to "the prayers", and if the latter, which prayers?
- 📝 Who is Lillith?
- 📝 What purpose does the Old Testament have today?
- 📝 How do Protestants view the prophecy and birth of Jesus
- 📝 Roughly how many Christian priests, and how many 'rotten apples' are there?
- 📝 Style of referring to a cardinal
- 📝 Why didn't Jesus want the demon possessed people to tell who he was?
- 📝 Where was Jesus's soul during the three days of His death?
- 📝 Why should contraceptives not be cheap and widely available?
- 📝 According to reformed theology, how does the fall glorify God?
- 📝 Help my daughter find a childhood song from Sunday school
- 📝 Do angels possess 1) a body, soul and spirit, 2) a soul and spirit or 3) just a spirit?
- 📝 According to evangelicals, who are the Great Multitude at Rev 7:9, who come out of the great tribulation (on earth) where they are given life?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What is a practical Catholic definition of conscience?
- 📝 What is the Catholic definition of meat for Lenten Fridays?
- 📝 What is the Catholic definition of divinity?
- 📝 Why is Primacy of Conscience taught and what degree of certainty is it in the Catholic Church?
- 📝 What is the Roman Catholic view on Matthew 23:9?
- 📝 What is the origin of the Catholic apocrypha?
- 📝 What were Martin Luther's main disagreements with the Catholic Church?
- 📝 At what point is a new soul created according to the Catholic Church?
- 📝 What is the Catholic Church's answer to Nancy Pelosi's argument of a double standard between abortion and the death penalty?
- 📝 What are the steps to become Confirmed in the Catholic church?
- 📝 What effect did the Reformation have inside the Catholic Church?
- 📝 What are the practical applications of "two will become one flesh"?
- 📝 What is the Catholic teaching on the use of animals?
- 📝 What does the Catholic church teach about fate of non-Catholic christians?
- 📝 What does the Roman Catholic church teach about those who die having never heard of Christ?
- 📝 What should I expect at a Roman Catholic funeral?
- 📝 What effect did the 1897 decree regarding the Johannine Comma have on Catholic scholarship?
- 📝 What are the differences between Roman Catholic and Irish Catholic?
- 📝 What should a Catholic Religious Ed. class be taught about the Reformation?
- 📝 What is the Catholic position on Exodus 20:4?
- 📝 What are the consequences of suicide according to the Roman Catholic church?
- 📝 What is the Catholic concept of grace?
- 📝 From a Roman Catholic point of view, what should a Protestant chaplain do for a dying Catholic?
- 📝 What is the official Roman Catholic opinion on Swedenborg?
- 📝 What is the Catholic understanding of the first sin committed by Adam and Eve?
- 📝 What happened to the wives of priests when celibacy was first instituted in the Catholic church?
- 📝 What is the reasoning for Latin being the official language of Catholic Mass?
- 📝 What are the stipulations for a mixed marriage to be valid in the Catholic Church?
- 📝 What is Catholic "Gold ring mass"? What kind of liturgy it is?
- 📝 What is the Authoritative Catholic explanation of why the Magi get a pass, yet Catholics are to reject astrology?