Conscience and Guilt

Our moral experiences of guilt and obligation are something presented to us by our consciences. This
conscience is something within us that speaks to us, telling us what we should do, making us feel guilty at times,
approving our behavior at other times and making us feel bad or good. Like all human abilities, the conscience
develops as we move through life.
There are many influences, both good and bad, that touched us and added something to our consciences.
There are times when reason guides us in a moral way. In our religious lives, we sense that God speaks to us and
guides us. Because our consciences are so complex and are constantly changing, it is frequently difficult to
know whether our consciences are guiding us correctly or not.
For example, I feel guilty because a foolish mistake cost me a game of chess. I may feel ashamed or dis-
gusted. How should I evaluate this feeling of guilt? Do I agree with or accept this feeling? Or do I disagree with
it or laugh at it? Do I accept that I have done something wrong, foolish and shameful, or do I affirm that I have
done nothing wrong and let the feeling of guilt go away?
Another example. I decide on a career and my parents disapprove of this. They scold me and make me
feel guilty for disappointing them. How do I handle this? Should I agree that I have done something wrong?
Should I feel bad, or should I judge that I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to feel guilty for?
A third example. I got angry with a friend and said some cruel words. I feel guilty afterwards. How do I
respond to this? Do I accept my fault, do I hate myself, or do I go and apologize and make up for the cruel
words? Or do I judge that it was my friend’s fault and I have done nothing wrong? Should I ignore the sugges -
tion that I should feel guilty?
What do we do with our feelings of guilt? Do we accept them or not? All these tell us we need to have
principles, rules for judging guilt and dealing with guilt. We need a basis for deciding whether a guilty feeling is
true or false. We also need rules for dealing with true and false guilt.
The question of what is true and what is false guilt is not raised as long as we live immersed in the
anonymous social existence of the “crowd,” we simply feel the obligations and guilt which everyone feels and
we are guided by the way everyone acts. My existence is automatic and controlled. I do not make any evaluation
about my true obligations in life. My moral obligations and my sense of guilt and shame are presented as things
which “they say” I should feel. These feelings are ready-made, and I do not have to think about them or make
judgments about them.
It is only when I dare to live as an individual with individual responsibility that this question of true and
false obligation and guilt arises. Then I need to assess which of these feelings are truly valid or not. Then I meet
other obligations which are not suggested by my culture or environment but which really confront me as an indi -
vidual.
The Mature Conscience. To be mature adults, we need developed consciences. We cannot merely ac-
cept without personal evaluation the experience of obligations and guilt that arise in us or that are forced upon
us. Just as human maturity requires that we have grown up in our social and technical skills, so it also requires
that we have grown up in our living of morality. As mature adults, we need to have more moral awareness and
more skill at moral judgments than that possessed by a child.
A developed, mature conscience has certain characteristics. First, it is sensitive to all the moral demands
that are there in a concrete situation. It makes me aware that in my life, I have legitimate obligations to myself,
to others, to God and to the world. As I grow as a human being, I become more sensitive to these obligations.
Human existence is not the play world of a child where I do whatever I want to do, without any recognition of
what I ought to do. Sometimes it happens that even adults can have a serious gap in their sensitivity to morality
and not be aware of basic obligations and the wrongness of their actions. Psychologists call such persons psy -
chopaths or sociopaths.
A second characteristic of a mature conscience is its ability to make a personal moral evaluation. When
I was young, I accepted the moral judgments of my family and my culture and I was guided by them. I looked
upon certain actions as good or bad because others told me so. But there came a time when it became fitting that
I should begin to make my own moral decisions. Now, in the complex and confused situations of life, I am
called upon to decide what I should do. What career should I take up? Should I get married? How should I wor -
ship God? How should I treat other people?
 A third characteristic of a mature conscience is that it is balanced. It is able to judge which are the more
important moral obligations and which are the less important ones. At any stage in our lives, there are certain
major obligations that are present. A student has the obligation to study, parents have the obligation to care for
their families, a doctor has the obligation to give his patients good care.
A balanced conscience is aware of these major obligations and concentrates on them. A balanced con -
science is also able to deal rationally with all of the minor obligations of life. It does not make one of these mi-
nor obligations more important than one of the major ones. It does not make the impossible demand that every
small obligation must be fulfilled.
Furthermore, a mature conscience is not scrupulous. A scrupulous conscience is one that finds guilt
where there is none, or imagines a minor fault to be a major sin. By contrast, a mature balanced conscience is
able to set aside the false guilt feelings that arise in experience, not paying any attention to them. This con-
science also does not make a big fuss about small faults. It guides a person to concentrate on the important
things and to trust in God.
Furthermore, persons with balanced consciences know how to deal with guilt in a healthy way. They re-
spond to true guilt by reforming their activity and moving forward with their lives. They let false guilt flow
away. They do not allow themselves to give in to self-hatred, nor do they become burdened and depressed be -
cause of guilt.
Guilt. 1) For there to be true guilt, there must exist a valid obligation which truly applies to me. There
are two points to this principle. First, for true guilt, an obligation arising from a valid moral source must be
present. Such a source would be something like the natural law, a moral value, a relationship, the divine law,
etc. Secondly, for guilt to be true, I must judge that this obligation applies to me.
Thus, the experience of shame for what others might think about me does not fall within the realm of
true morality, since there is no question of a moral fault in such a case. Even though in shame there is the experi-
ence of an accusatory judgment made by others, there is no valid moral criterion at the basis of this judgment,
no valid and objective standard or law.
In the experience of shame, there is only an arbitrary social standard, a rule which others happen to af-
firm at this moment. The behavior that they judge to be unacceptable today may be judged to be acceptable to -
morrow. The “they” or the “others” by themselves have no permanent and valid basis for their moral judgments.
They make us feel shame, but they can not give us a true obligations or a true guilt.
2) For there to be true guilt for doing something immoral, the act must be intended. In true guilt, I am
aware that I have freely chosen to do something that was destructive of myself or others. By contrast, there can
be no true guilt when something was done or said which was not intended. This can be clarified by various ex-
amples.
If I accidentally hit a person which driving my car, I am not guilty of a moral fault. I certainly didn’t in -
tend to hit the person. Sometimes we say things without intending to hurt others, only to find out we have actu-
ally hurt them. We may feel bad about this, but we have no true guilt here. Similarly, if my mother died while
giving birth to me, I have no reason to feel guilty about this. I did not intend it.
3) For there to be true guilt, I must be responsible for it. I must somehow have caused it. I cannot be
guilty for something I did not cause. There can be no true moral fault for involuntary feelings within me. Anger,
desire and fear are feelings which often arise very naturally and automatically in me. I have no control over their
initial appearance and I am not morally guilty about them. True morality arises only when I later respond to
them in some way, either deciding to do something about them or reacting against them or just letting them go
away.
4) For there to be true guilt in omitting something, I must be obliged to perform that action. I frequently
find myself confronted by expectations. Moral obligations arise from these, resulting in guilt when I fail to do
them. For example, I have certain clear responsibilities to my family, things that I should do. By contrast, I am
not morally responsible for the care of every other family and every other person in the world. I have no valid
obligation to take care of feeding, clothing and sheltering them. Even though I am concerned about others and I
may generously give something of my life to helping others, I have no strict moral obligation to do so. It would
be a case of false guilt if I were to condemn myself for not doing anything.
Healthy and Sick Guilt. 1) Healthy guilt leads to a richer, fuller life and greater freedom. Sick guilt
leads toward a paralyzing of our energies, toward a withdrawal from life. Healthy morality leads us forward

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along a path of human development. When guilt appears, it is a sign that we are not acting in a way that leads to
growth. This guilt should naturally lead to change and take a more mature attitude toward life.
By way of contrast, many guilt feelings composed mainly of fear and shame tends to block growth.
They tend to paralyze us, inhibiting our efforts to go forward. The fear and shame we feel may pull us back and
make us hesitate to do anything in the future. The result is an end to growth. It leads us not to trust ourselves and
not to trust life. A fear of what others may say holds us back from making our own decisions and doing what we
think should be done. There is no more growth here.
2) Healthy guilt is put behind us. It is part of living, it leads us forward. We leave it behind and forget
about it. Sick guilt stays with us for many years. Life is meant to be lived positively. Guilt is not something we
should cling to. In a healthy way, we are guided by it to correct the fault, to restore and to make up for this.
Healthy guilt points us forward.
3) Healthy guilt does not destroy our self-respect. Sick guilt leads to self-hatred. Here we see moral
rules as necessary restraints for the wild and evil aspects of human nature. This leads us not to accept the pres -
ence of irrational impulses within us and to hate ourselves. We do not trust ourselves. We reject and punish our -
selves, making us miserable.
Contrast this with the compassion of those who hate the sin but not the sinner. A healthy attitude is mo-
tivated by love for ourselves and a deep sense that our lives are worthwhile and should be treasured. The faults
we commit are evil and we should turn away from them, but we never lose the sense of our own preciousness,
no matter what we have done. In healthy guilt we are compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves.
4) Sick guilt is controlled by fear, the fear of making mistakes, the fear of rejection by others, the fear
of what is deep within us. In healthy guilt, the self is in control, making its own rational judgments. In sick guilt
there is no room for a rational evaluation of the situation, of one’s obligations and faults. There is only an expe -
rience of an automatic, authoritarian imposition of obligation or guilt by the conscience. The result is a sense of
powerlessness.
In healthy guilt, the self is strong and in control. It rationally evaluates what has happened, accepts its
own guilt and decides what the appropriate response will be. It is guided by its own sense of what it should do
and not by the pressure to conform. It is honest and it becomes stronger as it faces the situation and copes with
its responsibility.
5) Healthy guilt leads ultimately to joy. Sick guilt leads to sadness and depression. There is pain con-
nected with all guilt, which no one likes to feel. But the pain of healthy guilt is like the pain of a wound that is
healing. It is a growing pain that makes us aware of what is needed for growth. We experience it with hope and
a sense that we are moving forward toward wholeness.
By contrast, sick guilt leads us into deeper sadness, a sadness that can take many forms. It can be self-
hatred or self-rejection. It can be the sadness of despair, when we no longer try and we give up on life. It can be
the sadness of being entrapped in the past and being unable to go forward.
6) Sick guilt is self-centered. Healthy guilt is outgoing. In sick guilt we are absorbed in our own private
selves, using much energy to deal with our private feelings. We make much of our fears and shame.
Healthy guilt leads us outwards beyond ourselves, toward rectifying the wrong that we have done. It
leads us to improve our relationship with people and to improve the world that we live in. It leads us to God.
Some examples here of guilt. Which are healthy, and which are sick?
- I asked forgiveness from my friend because I was cruel to her.
- I am ashamed of making mistakes in class. I will never again speak out in class.
- I cannot forget the sins I have committed in the past.
- I hate myself for having pre-marital sex or having an abortion.
- I feel bad for not studying class and will now try to do better.
- I fear that my parents will find out that I stole money from them or that I lied to them.
- I am ashamed not to cheat when everyone else is cheating.
- I am afraid to be honest because everyone will think I am trying to attract attention.
- I do not give alms to beggars because people will stare at me.

Michael Moga SJ
Understanding Morality

Conscience and Guilt 3