Some Good Thoughts from the Holy Father

There is a prevalent error in the minds of modern men, that the individual subjective conscience is an infallible source of truth. Sadly, this has worked its way into the Catholic world as well. I can't tell you how many of us in RCIA or other faith formation have been told that we may ignore Church teaching if it doesn't fit with our opinion, because we are "called to follow our conscience."

The Holy Father's "On Conscience," addresses this beautifully. Here is a sampling (emphasis in bold added by me):

"By the way, a look into Sacred Scripture should have precluded such diagnoses and such a theory of justification by the errant conscience. In Psalm 19:12-13, we find the ever-worth-pondering passage, 'But who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from my unknown faults.' That is not Old Testament objectivism, but profoundest human wisdom...

...Not without reason does the self-righteous man in the encounter with Jesus appear as the one who is really lost. If the tax collector with all his undisputed sins stands more justified before God than the Pharisee with all his undeniably good works (Luke 18:9-14), this is not because the sins of the tax collector were not sins or because the good deeds of the Pharisee were not good deeds. Nor does it mean that the good that man does is not good before God, or the evil, not evil or at least not particularly important.

The reason for this paradoxical judgment of God is shown precisely from our question. The Pharisee no longer knows that he too has guilt. He has a completely clear conscience. But this silence of conscience makes him impenetrable to God and men, while the cry of conscience that plagues the tax collector makes him capable of truth and love. Jesus can move sinners. Not hiding behind the screen of their erroneous consciences, they have not become unreachable for the change that God expects of them - of us. He is ineffective with the "righteous" because they are not aware of any need for forgiveness and conversion. Their consciences no longer accuse them but justify them."