Conscience and Compassion

one

There are seven main virtues that lead to happiness: Prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope and love.

Prudence is the first of the virtues because it is the skill to discern what is the right thing to do, for the right reason and in the right circumstances or at the right time. So Prudence is the art of good decision making. Prudence is also first because it keeps before our eyes at all times our final goal and constantly directs all our choices toward that goal.

Prudence is a lot like going on vacation:

What is the first thing that has to be decided before you go on vacation?

Where do you want to go?

Then determine the best way to reach the destination.

Prudence is first because it places before us our true goal

Happiness through transforming union with God

Prudence directs all our choices to the goal

It can be summed up in a simple, direct question:

Will this choice lead me toward or away from God?

This activity, this use of time

This thought

This conversation, internet site, movie, song

This person, this relationship

This major, this job

Will it lead me to a better relationship with Jesus or not

two

Prudence is the virtue that makes you excellent in knowing what the right thing is for the right reason and at the right time. This is the reason prudence is the first of the virtues, because you have to know what the right thing is before you can do it. Prudence is also the virtue that perfects our conscience. Conscience is the application of general moral principles to particular situations.

Following your conscience, means to do what, to the best of your knowledge, is the right thing to do. Conscience comes from two words: Cum or Con which means “with”, and science which means knowledge. Conscience means you act ‘with knowledge’.

Now, people are always saying, “You must follow your conscience.” But for most, following your conscience means “Doing whatever feels right.” This is not correct. Conscience means to act with knowledge. Compassion means to act with feelings. You might think I am pitting thinking against feelings which I am not. So let’s recall how the soul designed to work.

There are three powers of the Soul: Intellect, Feelings and the Will. These three are supposed to work this way:

The intellect perceives (becomes aware of) reality

through the five senses, the imagination or the memory

and presents it to the feelings as “Hey, this is good for me” or “Hey, this is bad for me."

Then the feelings respond to what the Intellect presented with, “I like this,” prompting the will to choose it; or “I dislike that,” prompting the will to avoid it.

The will chooses the apparent good; avoids the evil

Feelings or emotions are have their role, to prompt the choice but they cannot see, they are blind. The Intellect is the power that can see what is good and bad. If choices are guided only by feelings then we are driving blind and you know where that will end…

three

You must always follow your conscience, meaning, you must always do what you think is right, to the best of your knowledge.

That means any gap in your knowledge will be a gap in your conscience. If your knowledge is faulty, your conscience will be faulty. Our conscience is not infallible, our conscience can be dead wrong, because our knowledge can be dead wrong. That is why we need to form our conscience according to truth. Truth is the conformity of the mind to reality. We want to make sure our knowledge matches reality. And that’s what forming your conscience means. What you’re doing right now is forming your conscience. Any time you learn about the human person and God’s will and even the situations that we might be called upon to maneuver, that’s forming your conscience.

You can never follow your conscience against something you know to be true. Because, again, conscience just means following what, to the best of your knowledge, is true. How do we know what is true? Three ways:

Through experience.

But harmful and even deadly experiences can be avoided by reason and revelation

Through careful consideration, 

this is reason

And by learning the truths of our Catholic Faith,

which is Revelation, handed down by Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, the official teaching of the Catholic Church

the best synthesis of this is found in the CCC

four

Conscience is different from Compassion.

Conscience is derived from two Latin words Cum + Scientia - with knowledge.

Conscience is to act with knowledge.

Compassion also comes from two words Cum + Passion – with emotion.

Compassion is to act with feelings or emotions.

We must be careful not to mistake conscience with compassion.

Often times, when a person rejects one of the hard moral teachings of the Catholic Church they are usually not rejecting it out of knowledge and research and careful thought. They are rejecting it out of compassion, out of emotions.

And compassion, that is emotions, divorced from conscience, in other words, thinking with knowledge is an incredibly dangerous thing. Allowing passions or emotions to dictate behavior over thinking and knowledge is always dangerous.

five

Compassion, like all the emotions, should be governed by reason. That is not to say compassion is bad, all the passions can be good, but they’re only good if they push us towards choosing what is right. Thinking must govern emotions and not vice versa. That is to say that compassion and conscience are two different things and conscience is the one that must lead.

The passions become dangerous when they are not governed by reason formed by truth. This often results in a misplaced compassion. This is what happens when people say, “My conscience tells me that women should have the right to abortion. Why, you can’t saddle the poor young woman with a kid. She can’t handle it right now. So I’m going to follow my conscience and vote to ensure abortion is available.”

No. A well- formed conscience dictates that to kill an innocent human being is gravely wrong. There is no reason or circumstance that can justify the killing of an innocent human person. And an embryo and child in the womb is a very young human being.

We must have compassion for the woman and child which leads us to help them both; but our compassion is supposed to be governed by reason, not vice versa.