God, conscience, and the president

Have you ever stopped to think about just what, exactly, your conscience is all about? We hear the word “conscience” and we have been told by parents, priests, and even Jiminy Cricket  about how important it is to follow. But why? Why is it important to follow our conscience and what are we supposed to do if we can’t?  The Catechism tells us that ”Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, in in the process of performing, or has already completed.  In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law.”  Or as a friend of mine put it, our conscience is a gift from God to help us know right from wrong, and we are obliged to follow it. The clincher is that we also have a responsibility to make sure that our consciences are properly formed and truly does know right from wrong.  If we think it is ok to sin, then we have some work to do with our conscience to bring it up to speed.  This might include talking to a priest or doing some reading (I recommend the Catechism of the Catholic Church) so we understand not only what our Catholic faith teaches us, but also why. Everything we believe as Catholics is firmly rooted in 2000 years of unchanging teachings traceable all the way back to Jesus and the 12 apostles.  Forming your conscience may also involve a lot of humility. If we open up the Catechism and find out that we disagree with the Church on an issue like contraception, it can be very challenging to admit that we are wrong. We need the humility to admit that even though we don’t understand, we have to do things God’s way if we want to be happy, not our way. I am sure it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Gideon, who reduced his army from over 30,000 men down to 300 before he attacked the armies of Midian, but he did what God commanded and was victorious.  Joshua probably didn’t understand exactly what God was up to when he told him to march around the walls of Jericho for 7 days without attacking, but he did it anyway and the walls came a tumblin’ down.  We need to put our faith in God and follow His commands with humility, even when we don’t understand why. The whole reason I wanted to explain the idea of conscience is because, as I said earlier, we are required to follow it. No one should ever ask you to go against a properly formed conscience and to do so would be to ask you to turn your back on what you know to be truly right and wrong. It would be to ask you to betray your God and spit in the face of all that is good and holy. This is why our country has laws that protect the consciences of its citizens.  Not everyone believes exactly the same thing, but nobody should be required to violate their conscience because of someone else’s convenience. For example, no one can form a doctor who is pro-life to perform an abortion.  Even most people who are pro-abortion realize that it is wrong to force someone to go against their conscience. At least until last week. Last week our government decided that they would begin to require all health insurance companies to provide contraception (even the kind that induce an abortion and sterilization) free of charge.  This is especially distressful to us as Catholics because we believe all contraception to be intrinsically evil.  The new standard for conscience is to force all your employees to be of the desired religion (like Catholic) AND the religious group can only serve other members of their religious group (like other Catholics). In other words, if you are a good Catholic employer and don’t provide contraception for your employees, you will now be forced to fire most of the non-Catholics, and stop helping anyone who isn’t Catholic. Or you can just shut your doors.  While this may not seem like a big deal at the parish level, think about all the Catholic hospitals and doctors in our country, the groups like Catholic family and child services, all the food banks and homeless shelters run by parishes and religious orders. The government is willfully trying to force them to turn their back on God and their faith. Then question is, what are you doing about it?


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