Bishop Robert Barron, a Catholic theologian, author, and evangelist, explores what conscience really is. He tackles Freud’s critique, the difference between moral conviction and gut feeling, and why people reach conflicting conclusions. The conversation also examines prudence, freedom, moral relativism, conscience formation, and how Scripture, tradition, and wise counsel can guide discernment.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Why Conscience Transcends Parents And Laws
Robert Barron rejects Freud’s claim that conscience is merely an internalized parental voice.
Children eventually recognize that parents or laws can act wrongly, revealing a moral standard that transcends those authorities.
insights INSIGHT
Personal Conscience Needs Shared Moral Principles
Individual consciences can reach moral judgments only because they share an objective framework.
Aquinas’s principle “do good and avoid evil” parallels logic’s principle of non-contradiction as the basis for meaningful moral dialogue.
insights INSIGHT
Prudence Applies Conscience To Real Situations
Prudence connects universal moral principles with concrete decisions in changing circumstances.
Robert Barron compares moral judgment to knowing baseball’s rules and applying them as the game unfolds.
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Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. What does it mean to listen to your conscience, especially in a culture that scoffs at the existence of moral values? Does the concept of conscience still mean anything today? Or is it a relic of what the secular world would have us believe was a naïve and superstitious past—a time of cartoon crickets and buzz-killing angels perched on our shoulders, scolding us into acting against our desires? Was the atheist Sigmund Freud right that conscience is merely the internalized echo of a tyrannical father, seeking to keep our conduct in check? And even if we grant that conscience has some kind of objective existence, how can we account for the fact that people reach radically incompatible moral conclusions while all claiming to follow it? For example, one person says conscience leads them to support abortion; another says conscience requires them to stand against it. Through all of this, how can we say that the conscience is "free" if its primary function is to impose rules? Here to help us untangle these questions, and to make the case that recovering the biblical conception of the conscience is more important than ever, is Bishop Robert Barron.
Topics Covered
00:00 | Introduction 01:24 | Bishop Barron in Nashville: Good News Conference, Dominicans, and Theo Von 02:29 | What is the conscience? 05:21 | Is conscience just a gut feeling? 07:14 | The "angel" and the "devil" on our shoulders 09:57 | Perceiving conscience as an external voice 11:30 | Freud's concept of the internalized voice of authority 16:04 | Both radically individual and universally shared 18:04 | How prudence interacts with the conscience 18:55 | Is the conscience free? 22:04 | What are the duties to the conscience? 24:57 | What about when poor judgment clouds the conscience? 28:02 | "My truth, your truth" 30:24 | Responding to the conflation of evil and good 32:22 | The liberating benefits of rules 34:01 | Listener question: How can I respond to "I'm spiritual but not religious"? 36:14 | Join the Word on Fire Institute
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