Free to Choose

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Free to Choose

• November 8, 9, or 11

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Resources

• Bible, Dr. Wm
• CCC, GOF materials
• St. Anthony Messenger
• The Catholic Source Book
• B.Haring Free and Faithful in Christ
• Veritatis Splendor John Paul II
• Archbishop Pilarczyk Twelve Tough Issues And
  More

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Structure

• Prayer
• Age specific
• Closing prayer

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Question

• What does it mean to you that you were created by
  God to have free will?

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Focus

• Conscience asks What is the right thing for me
  to do right now?
• Communal aspect of Conscience and free will
• Free will to choose to be with God or not

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Definition

• The word CONSCIENCE comes from two Latin words
  cum meaning together, and sciencia meaning
  knowledge. The root meaning gives an indication
  that conscience is based upon our communitarian
  nature.

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Definition

• A good conscience is not self-assured or
  self-affirmation. Rather the disciple is one who
  chooses to be in constant dialogue with God, and
  is especially attentive to the voice of the
  Spirit within and during times of prayer and
  reflection. The disciple has a constant concern
  for the integrity of other persons, rather than
  being primarily concerned with doing my own
  thing.

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What is Conscience?

• Conscience is the power of making a judgment
  between good and evil. The judgment has to do
  with how moral principles and values apply to a
  concrete situation. Conscience answers the
  question What is the right thing for me to do
  here and now?

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Develop Conscience

• Holy Spirit
• Scriptures
• Magisterium
• Community

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What is Conscience?

• Appropriate answer depends on three elements
• Knowledge
• Evaluation
• Application

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Knowledge

• First, we must know what is right in general. We
  need to have assimilated from family, neighbors,
  school and church the general demands of
  goodness, of moral behavior. We have to know what
  the moral rules are, rules which are rooted in
  teachings about God and humanity, about good and
  bad.

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Evaluate

• Second, we must evaluate the specific
  circumstances in which we find ourselves. Which
  circumstances in a situation are important and
  which are not? Which are of primary importance
  and which are secondary?

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Application

• Third, we need to apply the moral principles and
  values to our specific circumstances. This
  implies discerning the fit between our
  circumstances, as we have analyzed them, and the
  moral principles and values according to which we
  direct our lives.

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Conscience

• Because we are individual spiritual beings gifted
  with intellect and will, each faced with our own
  personal mix of situations and circumstances, we
  cannot avoid making personal judgments of
  conscience. We cannot turn all moral decision
  making over to someone else. We are called to do
  right, and we are responsible for what we do. The
  discernment of what is right here and now, for
  which we are individually answerable, is the work
  of conscience.

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Conscience

• CCC 1776 Deep within his conscience man
  discovers a law which he has not laid upon
  himself but which he must obey. Its voice ever
  calling him to love and to do what is good and to
  avoid evil, sound in his heart at the right
  moment. His conscience is mans most secret core
  and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God
  whose voice echoes in his depths.

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Following Conscience

• Our conscience is the final norm for judging the
  morality of our action, here in our life, now.
  Nothing, no one can take its place. This is what
  it means to be guided by our conscience. We have
  an obligation to follow our conscience, but I
  also have an equal obligation to form my
  conscience, to do what is necessary for its
  proper functioning.

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Conscience

• Conscience enables one to assume responsibility
  for the acts performedIn attesting to the fault
  committed, it calls to mind the forgiveness that
  must be asked, the good that must still be
  practiced, and the virtue that must be constantly
  cultivated with the grace of God

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Forming Conscience

• We first need instruction. We need to understand
  where our life comes from, what its purpose is,
  how we are to reach the goal set for us beyond
  ourselves and beyond the whims of the moment,
  what is important and what is illusionary. For
  this instruction we turn to the word of God and
  the teachings of the church.

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Forming Conscience

• Gods love gives us guidance through he teachings
  of the church. The community of the faithful has
  not only received the word of God, but has also
  prayed over it, reflected on it and tried to live
  it through the ages.

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Forming Conscience

• Stop
• Think
• Get help

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Forming Conscience

• The moral teaching of the Church looks on reality
  not in terms of individual preferences here and
  now, but in terms of how the love of God is
  expressed in the life of all the faithful. What
  we do determines what we become, and in order to
  do what is right, we first have to know what is
  right.

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Erroneous Judgment

• CCC 1790 A human being must always obey the
  certain judgment of his conscience. If he were to
  deliberately act against it, he would condemn
  himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience
  remains in ignorance and makes erroneous
  judgments about acts to be performed or already
  committed.
• CCC1792

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Right - Wrong

• Doing what is wrong is always harmful doing what
  is good is beneficial. Goodness corresponds to
  reality, to the way in which God created us to
  live.

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Freedom of Conscience

• First, since my conscience is the final judge of
  what I must or may do, nobody can make that
  judgment for me.
• Secondly, it concerns the relationship of civil
  society to my religious beliefs. My conscience is
  free because no civil govt has a right to tell
  me what I must believe or what religion I am to
  practice.

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VERITATIS SPLENDOR

• The way in which one conceives the relationship
  between freedom and law is thus intimately bound
  up with one's understanding of the moral
  conscience. (54)

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VERITATIS SPLENDOR

• The relationship between man's freedom and God's
  law is most deeply lived out in the "heart" of
  the person, in his moral conscience. Always
  summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the
  voice of conscience can, when necessary, speak to
  his heart more specifically 'do this, shun
  that'. For man has in his heart a law written by
  God. (54)

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VERITATIS SPLENDOR

• The text of the Letter to the Romans which has
  helped us to grasp the essence of the natural law
  also indicates the biblical understanding of
  conscience, especially in its specific connection
  with the law "When Gentiles who have not the law
  do by nature what the law requires, they are a
  law unto themselves, even though they do not have
  the law. They show that what the law requires is
  written on their hearts, while their conscience
  also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts
  accuse or perhaps excuse them" (Rom 214-15). (57)

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VERITATIS SPLENDOR

• According to Saint Paul, conscience in a certain
  sense confronts man with the law, and thus
  becomes a "witness" for man a witness of his own
  faithfulness or unfaithfulness with regard to the
  law, of his essential moral rectitude or
  iniquity. Conscience is the only witness, since
  what takes place in the heart of the person is
  hidden from the eyes of everyone outside.
  Conscience makes its witness known only to the
  person himself. And, in turn, only the person
  himself knows what his own response is to the
  voice of conscience. (57)

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VERITATIS SPLENDOR

• Certainly, in order to have a "good conscience"
  (1 Tim 15), man must seek the truth and must
  make judgments in accordance with that same
  truth. As the Apostle Paul says, the conscience
  must be "confirmed by the Holy Spirit" (cf. Rom
  91) it must be "clear" (2 Tim 13) it must not
  "practice cunning and tamper with God's word",
  but "openly state the truth" (cf. 2 Cor 42). On
  the other hand, the Apostle also warns
  Christians "Do not be conformed to this world
  but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
  that you may prove what is the will of God, what
  is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rom 122).
  (62)

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Free Will

• Freedom of will means that human beings have the
  ability to choose to cooperate with Gods will
  in other words-, to do what is right or to
  choose not to.

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Free Will

• Living things, both plants and animals, perform
  actions based on instinct. Human beings are
  different precisely because of free will choices.
  We do some things based on instinct but mostly we
  make choices.

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Free Will

• Genesis God did not consider creation complete
  until human beings who could choose their
  destinies becoming partners with God in
  creation came into being. Gn. 127 each made in
  Gods image. You live out that sacredness by
  choosing to love other people.

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Partners with God

• Free will doesnt simply mean that we have
  freedom to choose what we eat for lunch or even
  what we will do for a living. We are talking
  about the freedom to cooperate with God in making
  the world right and beautiful.

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Temptation

• Temptation is the desire to go against Gods will
  based on the illusion of happiness. We believe
  that a wrong choice will bring us greater
  happiness than a right choice, even though, in
  our hearts- we know better. We give into
  temptation because..

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Temptations

• We begin to wonder if God really loves us as much
  as we thought. Does God have my best interest at
  heart? After all isnt everyone else doing it?

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Free Will

• Free will always remains intact with it your
  ability to choose life and reject death. Jesus
  made sure of this when, through his own free will
  choices, he destroyed the power of temptation and
  sin to control you.

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Free Will

• The more you come to see what free will is all
  about, the more likely you will avoid buying into
  one of two extreme misconceptions about God.
• 1) God is a mean judge waiting to catch you.
• 2) God is a sleepy old man unconcerned about you.

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Choices

• To say that we have free will is to say that our
  actions really do matter. Your daily choices can
  strengthen your relationship with God and with
  one another.

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Focus

• Conscience asks what is the right thing for me to
  do right now
• Communal aspect of Conscience and free will
• Free will to choose to be with God or not

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Next Time

• Going Deeper Nov. 18, 630 pm and Dec. 13, 630
  pm
• Parish Night January 17 or 20
• Only two dates
• Martin Luther King Day
• The Reality of Sin