We’ve all heard the saying: "Let your conscience be your guide."
In light of that statement and what has been occurring regarding thePresident of the United States in the recent past, it may be well to think a bit about conscience and whether or not President Clinton’s conscience should be any concern of ours.
The Catholic Church teaches that there are three kinds of consciences: a LAX conscience, which
doesn’t think that certain acts are sins OR doesn’t care; the SCRUPULOUS conscience, which thinks
certain acts are sins that are not; and the RIGHT conscience that is formed correctly to know what truly
offends God and what does not. We have the Ten Commandments as our major guide, thanks to our
Good God Who gave them to us through Moses. And we have the teaching of the Church which explains the Commandments to us clearly. Every Christian has the obligation to work at forming a RIGHT or CORRECT conscience. That means studying and internalizing all of the moral rights and wrongs implied and given in the Ten Commandments.
If we were fortunate, we would have had a very good Catholic education, either from our parents
or Catholic school or CCD program. We would have been blessed to have learned right from wrong
beginning at an early age.
The reality must be faced, however, that good Catholic education has been wanting in the last 25
to 30 years. Instead of the basic truths of our Faith being taught, students were presented with an
humanistic love, love, joy, joy approach to their religion.
No Catholic can be against love and joy, but the truth is that those are fruits. One doesn’t get
fruit from a tree until he has first planted the seed. One does not put the roof on the house without first
laying the foundation.
All of these laxities in the teaching of the Catholic Faith are now bearing bad fruit in the adult
conscience today which is so ready to excuse evil and accept "it" as: "Well, everybody else is doing it.
What’s the big deal?"
Satan has succeeded in creating this confusion in our day. In a previous article, I had written that a person cannot have one conscience in private and a different one in his work place. Those who think that President Clinton’s private life is none of our business must realize that if Clinton can repeatedly commit adultery (as he has done for years with Jennifer Flowers and now Monica Lewinsky, at least), and yet do a good job in
leading our country, are badly misinformed. A human being brings the SAME conscience with him everywhere. If President Clinton is breaking God’s Laws in a BIG way in private, don’t for a minute think he can make morally
right decisions for this nation, which is OURS. It is no wonder, for example, that he cannot SEE the evil in partial birth abortion or any abortion for that matter. His conscience is a very LAX one and is very darkened.
And dear reader, don’t tell me "we can’t judge." That’s another tool of the evil one. We CAN
and MUST make objective judgments about what is right and wrong. To do otherwise is to be like those
who bury their heads in the sand. There’s no "light" there.
More about Clinton next week. In the meantime, let’s pray hard for him. God bless you!