Explanation of Catholic Morals | Page 5

is nothing unwilling about what is willingly done.
The will is an inviolable shrine. Men may circumvent, attack, seduce
and weaken it. But it cannot be forced. The power of man and devil
cannot go so far. Even God respects it to that point.
In all cases of pressure being brought to bear upon the moral agent for
an evil purpose, when resistance is possible, resistance alone can save
him from the consequences. He must resist to his utmost, to the end,
never yield, if he would not incur the responsibility of a free agent.
Non-resistance betokens perfect willingness to act. The greater the
resistance, the less voluntary the act in the event of consent being
finally given; for resistance implies reluctance, and reluctance is the
opposition of a will that battles against an oppressing influence. In
moral matters, defeat can never be condoned, no matter how great the
struggle, if there is a final yielding of the will; but the circumstance of
energetic defense stands to a man's credit and will protect him from
much of the blame and disgrace due to defeat.
Thus we see that the first quality of the acts of a moral agent is that he
think, desire, say and do with knowledge and free consent. Such acts,
and only such, can be called good or bad. What makes them good and
bad, is another question.

CHAPTER III.
CONSCIENCE.
THE will of God, announced to the world at large, is known as the Law
of God; manifested to each individual soul, it is called conscience.
These are not two different rules of morality, but one and the same rule.
The latter is a form or copy of the former. One is the will of God, the
other is its echo in our souls.
We might fancy God, at the beginning of all things, speaking His will
concerning right and wrong, in the presence of the myriads of souls that
lay in the state of possibility. And when, in the course of time, these
souls come into being, with unfailing regularity, at every act,
conscience, like a spiritual phonograph, gives back His accents and
reechoes: "it is lawful," or "it is not lawful." Or, to use another simile,
conscience is the compass by which we steer aright our moral lives
towards the haven of our souls' destination in eternity. But just as
behind the mariner's compass is the great unseen power, called
attraction, under whose influence the needle points to the star; so does
the will or Law of God control the action of the conscience, and direct
it faithfully towards what is good.
We have seen that, in order to prevaricate it is not sufficient to
transgress the Law of God: we must know; conscience makes us know.
It is only when we go counter to its dictates that we are constituted
evil-doers. And at the bar of God's justice, it is on the testimony of
conscience that sentence will be passed. Her voice will be that of a
witness present at every deed, good or evil, of our lives.
Conscience should always tell the truth, and tell it with certainty.
Practically, this is not always the case. We are sometimes certain that a
thing is right when it is really wrong. There are therefore two kinds of
conscience: a true and a certain conscience, and they are far from being
one and the same thing. A true conscience speaks the truth, that is, tells
us what is truly right and truly wrong. It is a genuine echo of the voice

of God. A certain conscience, whether it speaks the truth or not, speaks
with assurance, without a suspicion of error, and its voice carries
conviction. When we act in accordance with the first, we are right; we
may know it, doubt it or think it probable, but we are right in fact.
When we obey the latter, we know, we are sure that we are right, but it
is possible that we be in error. A true conscience, therefore, may be
certain or uncertain; a certain conscience may be true or erroneous.
A true conscience is not the rule of morality. It must be certain. It is not
necessary that it be true, although this is always to be desired, and in
the normal state of things should be the case. But true or false, it must
be certain. The reason is obvious. God judges us according as we do
good or evil. Our merit or demerit is dependent upon our responsibility.
We are responsible only for the good or evil we know we do.
Knowledge and certainty come from a certain conscience, and yet not
from a true conscience which may be doubtful.
Now, suppose we are in error, and think we are doing something