What it means for Catholics to ‘let your conscience be your guide’
Disney’s Jiminy Cricket tells Pinocchio to “always let your conscience be your guide,” and the Catholic Church teaches that the conscience is our “most secret core and sanctuary,” within which we are alone with the voice of God. It is clear that an individual’s conscience holds a respected place both in our wider culture and certainly within church teaching. But the nuances around informing and listening to our conscience can feel mystifying.
While a strong sense of personal accountability is a good thing, the conscience can also be incorrectly invoked as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card to justify whatever decision we’ve made.
