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4.1
Morality: A Response to God’s Love
Chapter 4
Conscience
©Our Sunday Visitor Curriculum Division
4.2
Chapter Overview

Our dignity as persons created by God requires us
to follow our conscience.

Popular uses of the word conscience are
frequently inadequate to describe all that the term
involves.

A fuller understanding of conscience includes
three dimensions: awareness, development,
and judgment.

Scripture and Tradition emphasize the importance
of using our conscience to make informed moral
decisions.
V4.1
Vocabulary

Hero (p. 62): Someone who follows his or her
conscience in the face of difficulties.

Conscience (p. 63): A moral decision-making
ability (or action) centering on what a person has
already done or ought to do in the future. It
involves an awareness that there is right and
wrong, a process of discernment, and finally
judgment.

Lax conscience (p. 68): When a person does not
employ a process of conscientious decision
making, thereby not facing or thinking about the
morality of actions that he or she performs.
V4.2
Vocabulary

Informed conscience (p. 69): A
conscience that is educated and
developed through constant use and
examination.

Erroneous conscience (p. 70): When a
person follows a process of conscientious
decision making but unwittingly makes a
wrong decision.
V4.3
Vocabulary

Sin (p. 71): When people act contrary to
their conscience and purposely choose to
do wrong; “a deliberate thought, word,
deed, or omission contrary to the eternal
law of God.” (Catechism, Glossary)

The Splendor of Truth (p. 76): An
encyclical on morality by Pope John Paul
II.
4.3
Review
1. Who were Franz Jägerstätter and Cesar
Chavez?
2. Name three ways that conscience is
sometimes understood in popular usage.
Why is each usage insufficient to express
all that conscience involves?
3. What does the Latin root of the word
conscience mean? What does this root
meaning tell us about conscience?
4.4
Review
4. An accurate definition of conscience
includes three interrelated dimensions.
What are they?
5. What is a lax conscience?
6. What does developing an informed
conscience involve?
4.5
Review
7. Define erroneous conscience.
8. What term is used in Church teaching for
not following conscience?
9. What biblical term is the closest
equivalent of the concept of conscience?
4.6
Review
10. What attacks on human dignity was the
world facing that influenced Church
leaders to convene Vatican Council II?
11. Name two documents of Vatican Council
II that address the question of
conscience?
12. In The Splendor of Truth, what are the
four points about conscience that Pope
John Paul II offers?