One quality that separates humans from all other creatures is conscience, our sense of right and wrong. People I admire in history, like Franz Jägerstätter and Dorothy Day were champions of following one’s conscience. Conscience plays a central role in all religions and ethics. Dorothy Day recognized the importance of following one’s conscience “[e]ven when one is following a wrong or ill informed conscience.” (CW 12/1965: 1)

My feeling is that following one’s conscience is natural to humans just like seeking water and sun is natural to many plants in the garden or the worm seeking compost. When one goes against nature, as we now see with global warming or in the tragedy of New Orleans, there are dire consequences. As the officer at West Point points out in last night’s posting “soldiers who kill reflexively in combat will likely one day reconsider their actions reflectively.” Conscience can be suppressed but it cannot be eliminated.

We are one with nature from plant to the worm to the guerrilla, but we are the only creatures who can say with Emmanuel Kant: “I think therefore I am.” With conscience comes responsibility.

St. Ignatius of Loyola and Mahatma Gandhi, two of my other models, like Dorothy Day and Franz Jägerstätter, were strong believers of the “priority of conscience.” St. Ignatius asked his followers to do a daily “examination of conscience,” and Gandhi believed that the power of God and truth was within us.

I had the chance to work outside today. I can see how nature works reflexively; trees shed their leaves in fall due to the upcoming scarcity of sun in winter. The dead leaves fall onto the ground to fertilize it. We humans naturally work reflectively. However when we act reflexively. and rake our leaves into the street to be taken away by the city to a landfill, we are not raking with conscience. However, when we rake our leaves onto the grass and garden to fertilize it we are working reflectively and with conscience.

This example of raking leaves is a small example of how we can work naturally or not in our daily lives. On big issues, like that of war, working with conscience or not can make significant difference.

Some call Ignatius’s daily examen of conscience an examen of consciousness, where we become aware of our day activities and reflect on them. With all the noise and distraction around us maybe the importance of examen of consciousness is needed today if we want to realize our full nature as humans. Conscience is natural.

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