As some of you may know, Fred is going through RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) and plans to enter into the Catholic Church at Easter this year. Last Sunday Fred declared his intentions to join the Catholic Church in our parish, and this past Saturday, we, along with a few hundred other people in the community, went to the Cathedral of the Assumption for the Rite of Election/Call to Continuing Conversion led by Archbishop Kelly.
Since we have been going through marriage preparation and RCIA, there has been a lot examination into our respective pasts. We heard a speech in class last week by Father Corapi, a priest who had his share of impure living previous to taking Holy Orders, where he discussed the weakening and execution of moral consciousness. Fred and I were shifting uncomfortably in our seats as many of the things he mentioned we were only too happy to partake in when we were younger .
Conscience is not an independent entity; it does not operate in a vacuum. The Second Vatican Council mentioned conscience more than seventy times, never without a modifying term: “well-formed conscience, mal-formed conscience; you must form your conscience, etc.” Conscience is not to be construed as one’s mere ideas and opinions, or whatever vagrant and morally vacuous thoughts race through one’s mind. A lot of people would take the position that, well, if it’s good for you, fine, but there is another truth good for me, but there is no absolute truth. There is no objective moral good and evil. Whatever is convenient, whatever fits in with your contemporary lifestyle, however disordered and degenerated it may be. “Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1778). It must be grounded in truth, formed to truth. For Catholics that is Church teaching in faith and morals.
In a nutshell: You abuse your conscience by repeated immoral acts until eventually “bad” no longer feels bad and morality becomes subjective and meaningless. If you abuse your conscience, you will eventually kill it.
My grandmother is fond of saying, ”people today want you to think right is wrong and wrong is right.” I used to roll my eyes at that and spew a bunch of cultural relativist mumbo jumbo. Here lately, I am starting to grasp what she was saying and see the wisdom in integrating it into our lives and our marriage.
Since we are “living in sin,” we have decided that lent is the perfect season to start making an adjustment to our living situation and personal relations. Without getting into the nitty gritty, lets just say we are living in separate areas of the house and taking cold showers.
Do we feel better for it? It is hard (and weird) to admit this, but we do. Both of us have indeed been killing our conscience over the past few years and are on a mission to get them back and functioning.
Catholic guilt can be a doozy!
