ARGUMENT FOR GOD'S EXISTANCE
I always perk up my ears most at arguments to prove God's existance. As the daughter of two atheists I'm always looking for that key bit of logic that will open their minds just a little to even bother to wonder if God is real. I hadn't read the argument about conscience before but it really hit home. Conscience, God's little internal beacon of right and wrong, is an interesting angle and one that hadn't occured to me before.
Nearly everyone will admit not only the existance of conscience but also its authority. In this age of rebellion against and doubt about nearly every authority, in this age in which the very word authority has changed from a word of respect to a word of scorn, one authority remains: an individual's conscience. Almost no one will say that one ought to sin against one's conscience, disobey one's conscience. Disobey the church, the state, parents, authority figures, but do not disobey your conscience. Thus people usually admit, though not usually in these words, the absolute moral authority and binding obligation of conscience.
Such people are usually surprised and pleased to find out that Saint Thomas Aquinas, of all people, agrees with them to such an extent that he says if a Catholic comes to believe the Church is in error in some essential, officially defined doctrine, it is a mortal sin against conscience, a sin of hypocrisy, for him to remain in the Church and call himself a Catholic, but only a venial sin against knowledge for him to leave the church in honest but partly culpable error...
Of course, we do not always hear that voice aright. Our consciences can err. That is why the first obligation we have, in conscience, is to form our conscience by seeking the truth, especially the truth about whether God has revealed to us clear moral maps (Scripture and Church). If so, whenever our conscience seems to tell us to disobey those maps, it is not working properly, and we can now that by conscience itself if only we remember that conscience is more than just immediate feelings.
INFORMED BY TRUTH
I think its interesting that once we admit our conscience is so important our first obligation is to ensure it is informed by truth. It makes me think of a brother-in-law who left the Church and is obviously still angry at it, seeking confrontation about religion at every opportunity within the family. It also makes me think of people I know who vehemently disagree with those Church teachings that are most at odds with modern society (I'll bet you know which ones). They are constantly trying to change things to be more up to date and then complaining and disgruntled when that doesn't happen.
In these cases it seems as if they are acting based on what they want not over what they have found to be true through study and seeking. I also have a friend who is a self described "liberal" but who is an honest seeker. She disagrees with some Church teachings but couldn't bring herself to leave the Eucharist, something I am totally in sympathy with. In an effort to reconcile her conscience with her Church she started reading various apologetic works by faithful Catholic authors. Now she is much more at peace with the Church teachings. She has an understanding of the logic that led to them. She no longer rails against them but can see them more as a legitimate viewpoint, even if she does not fully agree.
God speaks to each of us in different ways but the constant is that internal beacon, our conscience. Our obligation is to make sure we give it the full truth upon which to act. That is the only way we will each find our own way of following that beacon homeward.
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