Day 240: Erroneous Judgment of Conscience (2025) - The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Episode: Day 240 — Erroneous Judgment of Conscience (CCC 1790–1802)

Date: August 28, 2025
Host: Fr. Mike Schmitz
Podcast by: Ascension

Main Theme

This episode explores the concept of “erroneous judgment of conscience” in Catholic teaching. Fr. Mike discusses the Catechism’s teaching that everyone must obey the certain judgment of their conscience, while also recognizing that human conscience can be ignorant or make mistakes—sometimes with personal responsibility, sometimes without. The episode examines how error can enter into conscience, what forms this error can take, and why forming the conscience is essential for freedom and joy in Christian life.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Obligation to Obey Conscience ([00:05]–[02:30])

Central Teaching: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”
Fr. Mike explains: If you're convinced an action is wrong, doing it knowingly is self-condemnation.

Quote: “We always must obey the certain judgment of our conscience. If I knew something would be the wrong thing to do...and I deliberately acted against that, I would be condemning myself.” (Fr. Mike, [01:20])

2. Erroneous Judgment and Ignorance ([02:30]–[07:25])

The Catechism allows that conscience can remain ignorant and make mistakes.
- Sometimes this ignorance is our own fault (culpable).
- Sometimes it’s not possible to know (invincible ignorance).
Fr. Mike’s analogy: “If you're driving, it's your job to know the speed limit.”

Quote: “If you're driving, it's your job to know. And that's why the Catechism quotes Gaudium et Spes and says, this is the case. You know, it's our fault if I'm ignorant and it's my fault.” ([06:07])
Examples of faulted ignorance:
- Not bothering to learn what’s right and good
- Being numbed or blinded by habitual sin
Habitual Sin: Fr. Mike quotes a preacher:
- “Sin doesn't prick your conscience. Sin deadens your conscience. God is the one who helps us see... Sin blinds, deafens and numbs our conscience.” ([09:45])

3. Sources of Erroneous Judgment ([07:25]–[10:20])

Catechism lists sources of error (par. 1792):
- Ignorance of Christ and His Gospel
- Bad example by others
- Enslavement to passions
- Mistaken autonomy of conscience (“I don’t need guidance, I can figure it out myself.”)
- Rejection of the Church’s authority
- Lack of conversion and charity
Quote: “Maybe I know the good. I know the true, I know the beautiful. I just don’t care. I have a lack of love. And therefore, yeah, this is at the source of maybe my error of judgment and moral conduct.” ([10:08])

4. Invincible Ignorance and Guilt ([10:20]–[12:30])

If ignorance is “invincible” (cannot be overcome), or there’s no personal responsibility, the evil committed isn’t their fault—though the act remains evil.

Quote: “There are times where our ignorance is invincible... So my ignorance is what they call invincible. Or, you know, I'm not responsible for my erroneous judgment for whatever reason.” ([10:40])
Still, everyone must work to correct errors and form their conscience.

5. Virtue, Freedom, and Formation ([12:30]–[15:50])

The call to form our conscience is not a straitjacket but an invitation to freedom.
Virtue = Freedom: Being able to do what we ought gives us true freedom.
If we’re strong enough to do what we know is right, “you wouldn’t be afraid... you would have joy.”

Quote: “To have a formed conscience is an invitation to be free, to be strong, to be courageous, to be powerful in this world... Remember, virtue is a call, an invitation to be free.” ([13:30])
Conscience formation is ongoing and necessary for all.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On habitual sin and conscience:
“Sin doesn't prick your conscience. Sin deadens your conscience... God is the one who helps us see. God is the one who helps us hear. God is the one who wakens us up.” (Fr. Mike, [09:45])
On the necessity of seeking truth:
“If I've taken little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when by degrees, my conscience is almost blinded to the habit of committing sin, then I'm culpable for the evil I commit because it was my job to know.” (Fr. Mike, [08:15])
On virtue and freedom:
“Imagine your life like this. If you had the power to do what you ought, how incredibly free you would feel.” (Fr. Mike, [14:22])

Important Timestamps for Key Segments

[01:20] — The absolute obligation to follow a certain conscience
[06:07] — Example of personal responsibility for knowledge (driving)
[09:45] — How habitual sin deadens conscience
[10:08] — The root of erroneous judgment: lack of love
[10:40] — Invincible ignorance and non-imputability of guilt
[13:30] — Virtue as true freedom, not a straitjacket
[14:22] — The joy that comes from having formed conscience and the power to do what we ought

Episode Flow & Tone

Fr. Mike brings an encouraging, urgent, and sometimes gently challenging tone:

Reminds listeners not just of obligations, but of the beauty, freedom, and strength that come from forming their conscience and living in truth.
Uses relatable, down-to-earth analogies and examples (speed limits, daily life questions, the influence of community and culture).
Ends with a forward-looking invitation to the next episode (“tomorrow we’re going to talk about the virtues... you guys, I’m telling you right now, you’re going to love it”).

Summary

This episode offers a clear and compelling explanation of Catholic teaching on conscience and erroneous judgment. Fr. Mike weaves together doctrine, practical examples, and personal reflection, reminding listeners that following conscience is a duty, but forming it is a lifelong necessity—serving not only as a safeguard from error but as an entry into the freedom, strength, and joy that God desires for each individual. The next episode will begin the study of virtues, further exploring how conscience and character are shaped.

Transcript

A (0:05)

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 240. We reading paragraphs 1790 to 1802 is a little bit of nuggets in there today. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a Foundations of Faith approach you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today's day 240. I just want to have a quick thank you for all those who have supported the production of this podcast with your prayers, your financial gifts. Literally, literally. We couldn't do this without you. We couldn't get to day 240, that's for sure. Reading paragraphs as I said, 1790 to 1802. What we're talking about today is an erroneous judgment. We always must obey the certain judgment of our conscience. If we were to deliberately act against it, we condemn ourselves. Okay, so that's the key, though. We have to always obey the certain judgment of our conscience. If I knew something would be the wrong thing to do, I was completely convinced of this. I knew it would be the wrong thing to do, and if I deliberately acted against that, I would be condemning myself. And yet it can happen that the moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments, because we're talking about that today. Let us open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and call upon God our Father in Jesus name, to send that Spirit among us. Let's pray now. Father in Heaven, we give you praise, we give you glory. We ask you to please open our minds so that we can truly apprehend the truth. We can truly apprehend the good, the beautiful, and give us hearts that are in wills, that are strong and courageous, that can actually choose what we know is true and refuse to do what we know is evil. Help us always to turn away from evil, even in small ways. Lord God, there are some things that are obviously evil. Some things that are. That we would say are beyond the pale. We would never choose those, Lord. Yet we ask you to please. Help us to choose against those when they're small. Help us to choose against those when they're little. Help us to choose against those when we just tolerate evil in our lives. Help us to not tolerate evil in our lives. Evil that we not only tolerate, but sometimes we delight in. Help us to never do that. Help us to delight in you. Help us to delight in virtue. Help us to delight in truth and goodness and beauty. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 240. We are reading paragraphs 1790 to 1802. Erroneous judgment a human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to 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. This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin. In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits. Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given to others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity. These can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct. If, on the contrary, the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience. A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. As Gaudium et Spes states, the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by objective standards of moral conduct. In brief, conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths. Conscience is a judgment of reason by which the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act. For the man who has committed evil, the verdict of his conscience remains a pledge of conversion and of hope. A well formed conscience is upright and Truthful, it formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. Everyone must avail himself of the means to form his conscience. Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law, or on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them. A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. Conscience can remain in ignorance or make erroneous judgments. Such ignorance and errors are not always free of guilt. The word of God is a light for our path. We must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. This is how moral conscience is formed. All right, there it is. Erroneous judgment. So a couple assertions and a couple dangers, right? We're looking at this. First paragraph, 1790 says this. As we said at the very intro, a human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. So if I know something is true, right? If I know something is wrong, if I know something is good and know something is evil, I have to that certain judgment. I know this to be true. If I were to deliberately act against it, I would condemn myself, right? Because I would be doing what I knew was false. We mentioned this yesterday. That person I mentioned who had looked at it, he examined his own life and he realized that the majority of what he would say in the course of a daily basis was not true. He did not truly believe this. And he realized that in doing that, he is making himself weaker because he was saying things he didn't even believe. He was condemning himself, right? He was speaking against what he knew was true already. At the same time it says this. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgment about acts to be performed or already committed. So we recognize that we have to follow the certain judgment of our conscience. At the same time, our moral conscience can remain in ignorance. We can make erroneous judgments. Therefore, this ignorance, if we don't know the true, the good, the beautiful, that can be imputed to one's personal responsibility, it actually could be the case that, yeah, I didn't know that, but I had every opportunity to know it. I didn't know that, but it was my job to know it. Maybe I've shared this example before. One of our students at one point got pulled over for speeding, essentially. And the officer said, you know, this is a 30 mile an hour zone. And she said, but I didn't know it was 30 miles an hour. And the reality of course is if you're driving, it's your job to know. If you're driving, it's your job to know the speed limit. And that's why the catechism quotes gaudium expes and says, this is the case. You know, it's our fault if I'm ignorant and it's my fault. It says this can be the case when a person takes little trouble to find out what is true and good. Think about that. Think about us, man. How many times, Like, I think that's fine. I'm sure that's fine. And have I ever thought about it? Remember yesterday's big question, like, well, I think this is good. I think this is bad. Okay, give me a reason. What's the reason why you think this is good? What's the reason why you think this is bad? Like, I don't know, I just. That's what people say, right? That's what our culture says. That's what I want to be true. And our ignorance can be our fault when we take little trouble to find out what is true and good. Or it says this, I don't know if it's even worse, but it's also the case. Or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin, we realize that sin can make us blind, right? Sin can make us deaf. Sin can make us numb. In fact, I remember someone, a preacher, who once said something along the lines, and he highlighted the fact that some people were saying, oh, you know, sin pricked my conscience. And this man said, actually, that doesn't happen. Sin doesn't prick your conscience. Sin deadens your conscience, as it says here. Sin can blind our conscience. Sin can deafen our conscience. He said, God pricks your conscience. God is the one who helps us see. God is the one who helps us hear. God is the one who wakens us up. Sin blinds, deafens and numbs our conscience. And if this is the case, if I've taken little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when by degrees, my conscience is almost blinded to the habit of committing sin, then I'm culpable for the evil I commit because it was my job to know I'm alive. I'm a human being. I'm a rational human being. I'm a rational being made in God's image and likeness. It's my job to find out what the truth, the good and the beautiful is. And if I choose against the truth, the good and the beautiful, if I choose the unclean, if I choose the evil and I become blinded, that's my fault. Now some other things that can be at the heart of our errors of judgment. The things that can be at the heart of our male formed conscience is in paragraph 1792, it says ignorance of Christ and his gospel. Those are some of the things that just. Yeah, I didn't know that was the true, the good and the beautiful. I didn't know that was the right thing to do. Others bad example given by others. I surround myself by people who. Or maybe I never even had choice, right? Maybe it was the people I was raised by. Maybe it was the people I just kind of happened to fall in with. It wasn't even again my decision. It just happened to be there. But the bad example given by others, that can be a source of errors of judgment, enslavement, One's passions. Remember we talked about the passions before, right? Those passions are meant to be the driver, right? The engine in us. It gives us the fuel to reach out to the true, the good and the beautiful. But so often the passions aren't merely that. That fuel. The passions are the things we choose, the thing we follow. As opposed to being guided by our intellect and moved by our will. We're just moved by those desires and we can become enslaved to those things. There's the next one. It says assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience. Meaning I don't need any guidance. I can figure it out myself. I don't need to be taught, I don't need to be formed. I. I think this is the case, therefore it is the case the next one is connected to it. Rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching. That can be a source of my error and judgment. The last one here is lack of conversion and charity. Lack of conversion and lack of love that I haven't actually been conformed to even wanting to be like Jesus. Or maybe I just lack love. Remember what love is? Love is willing. The good of the other. And maybe I know the good. I know the true, I know the beautiful. I just don't care. Right? I have a lack of love. And therefore, yeah, this is at the source of maybe my error of judgment and moral conduct. Now, last thing, there are times where our ignorance is invincible. Yep. I didn't know that in knowing my story. There is no way I could have known that. There's no way I should have known that. So my ignorance is what they call invincible. Or, you know, I'm not responsible for my erroneous judgment for whatever reason. My culpability, right, my culpability has been mitigated maybe even eradicated. Now, at the same time it says, this judgment remains no less an evil. It's still a privation, it's still a disorder. And I have to therefore work to correct that. I have to continue to go about the process of formation of my conscience. Therefore, no one's off the hook. Even if my ignorance is invincible, even if there are things in my life that are happening that make it so, my guilt, my culpability. Right. Has been mitigated. All of us are called to become virtuous. Not because this is a straitjacket, but because we're called to be free. Remember, virtue is a call, an invitation to be free. To have a formed conscience is an invitation to be free, to be strong, to be courageous, to be powerful in this world, as strong as possible in this world. That's what virtue is. It is not a straitjacket that binds us. It is the power. Remember freedom. It is the power that. To do what we ought and to have that power. Think about this. Imagine your life like this. If you had the power to do what you ought, how incredibly free you would feel. Like we mentioned yesterday, you wouldn't be afraid. If you had the power to do what you ought, you would have joy. And that's what God wants for us. That's what the Church wants for us. When we talk about this erroneous judgment. Yes, that we have to always obey the certain judgment of our conscience. And yet we have to make sure that that conscience is, has been and is being formed. That is the great invitation that the Church puts out to us tomorrow. I mentioned the word virtues about a thousand times today. Well, tomorrow we're going to talk about Article 7, which is beginning to talk about the virtues, which is just you guys. I'm telling you right now, you're going to love it. Until then, I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.