A few years ago I read a report on how parents come to decisions regarding the number of children to welcome into the world. Research suggests that decisions about numbers and spacing of births has a lot to do with child safety seating in motor vehicles. The cost and placement of infant and child seats is a significant factor. The researchers were examining the possible correlation of lowered fertility rates and child safety mandates for motor vehicles.

I had to think about this for some time and even checked in with a few families, without too much probing, about the dynamics of child safety devices in their cars. My experience is rather limited other than recalling the constant shifting and swapping of car seats that my mom and dad had to do in their role as grandparents. I remember my dad saying something about having to use mom’s car because his car at the time wasn’t adaptable to car seats. I think he was a bit relieved that he didn’t have the after-school pickup duty.

Now, I am not going to wade into the complicated public policy decisions that have given rise to this dynamic. I actually want to confess my naiveté about these things. I must inform my conscience, reflect and learn, about the competing values at play and the economics of child safety and the fertility rate. I also must inform myself about how others might make a decision that the best way to keep a child safe from harm is not to have that child in the first place. Above all I must reflect on the nature of human life, the miracle of our existence, and the dignity of the human person which is an immeasurable good.

My point is that decisions about bringing new life into the world are the realm of the conscience.  Making a decision about human life requires a level of engagement and understanding way beyond the ordinary, day to day choices we are faced with. To have an informed conscience admits that there are decisions in our life that require a special forum, an arena or theater if you will, that is appropriate and necessary for making important moral decisions. This place in our hearts where we invite the good to reside is called sacred. And it is indeed sacred because the conscience is where we encounter God speaking to us, calling us to fulfill the promise of our creation and walk the path into eternal life.

Gaudium et Spes offers this wonderful summary of the conscience for our times: “In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths.” [GS #16]

Conscience is a human faculty which takes place in the heart of an individual person, but the conscience is anything but self-centered. In our conscience we encounter the God who created us. The conscience is where God reveals His truth:  that we are created in the image and likeness of God, God who is a community of persons. The conscience is where we hear the greatest commandment, to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and find the grace to put that commandment into practice.

Last month we recalled the tragic Supreme Court decision that desecrated the conscience, stripping it of compassion and charity and relegating it to a mere calculus of personal utility. We are entering the time of the year when through our external prayer, sacrifice and charity we ask God’s help to repair and strengthen the hidden sanctuary of our consciences. And this is the time of the year when we proclaim the sacred truth to others who have consciences imperfectly formed, weakened by sin or willful ignorance. 

Over fifty years ago, Gaudium et Spes spoke prophetic words about the immeasurable value of human life: “In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, "As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40) Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.”

How then shall our consciences be well-formed? The passage just quoted from  Gaudium et Spes gives us a way forward. Our conscience is the forum of judgment for moral actions. It makes sense that it in turn will be brought into the final tribunal at the last judgment. Christ likens this judgment to a farmer separating the sheep from the goats. Christ gives us a very simple criterion to assist in forming our own consciences, the criterion by which we will be judged:  “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Our choices are encounters with the living God in Jesus Christ. How can we ever deprive a human life of this opportunity to encounter God?