Voltaire. "...the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]
Sounds like it’s time for Aquinas. What is conscience? “With-knowledge.” So, as Aquinas says, conscience is an action that you take, not a power of the soul that guides your actions. Conscience tells us whether a thing is done or not done; whether a thing should be done or not done; whether a thing is well-done or ill-done.
But a knowledge of right and wrong is based on an accumulation of perceptions on right and wrong. Synderesis? synteresis? is the store-house of these individual cases. Reason takes these cases and abstracts a greater unity, and perceives an overall guiding Truth, a Way that shines through the morass of decisions we make, and ultimately, beyond, a Life as it should be lived. In order that the soul be correct, it must first be guided. Formerly, this guidance was fitful, and we did not see our way clear, nor the fruits of our decisions; but as we became prepared, suddenly all was made clear.
This guidance is the burden of the Church, in its role as teaching authority (magisterium) in which we must all participate. We have been set a great commission, and its discharge requires us to take on the mantel of the magisterium, to proclaim the Truth not only to all the nations, but to those who have lost their way, or not found it yet: our children, our god-children. As they live in the Spirit, as they seek through Christ our Lord, as they reach to God our Father; we realign their misperceptions, we correct their errors in judgment, we ever show them their ultimate goal.
10:50:16 PM 
|
|
