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• Sacramental Grace or Sanctifying Grace is Received through the Sacraments
• Sacramental Grace or Sanctifying Grace Perfects the soul to enable it to live with God and to act by his love Is life-giving
• Actual Grace Refers to God’s interventions that produces acts of love
• Healing Grace Removes fear, hurts, frustrations, conflict, and anxiety
• Healing Grace Builds and strengthens relationships
• Healing Grace Promotes understanding
• Illuminating Grace Inspires truth, beauty and goodness
• Illuminating Grace Releases God’s creative powers in man
• Illuminating Grace Inspires from within one’s heart and soul
• Illuminating Grace Inspires through the medium of another person’s love
• Grace of State or Apostolate Enables exercise of the responsibilities of Christian life… And of ministries within the Church and its Body of people (Rom. 12:6-8)
• Special Graces – “Charisms” Favors, gifts from God intended for the common good of the Church
• Special Graces – “Charisms” Used to build up the Church and Community of God’s people
• Other Graces Grace of Generosity
• Other Graces Grace of Cheerfulness and Encouragement, Etc…
• We need to come to truth and freedom by connaturalization in Christ
• The key to moral life, then, is the human person
• In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience.
• Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man.
• We have in our hearts a law written by God. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with this law or not, it is there, God put it there (Jer. 31:33). This law, our conscience, guides us to love, to do good, and to avoid evil.
• The problem arises if one's conscience remains in ignorance of what is good and true, or is blinded by the habit of committing sin
• Sources of an erroneously formed conscience

  • Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel
  • Bad examples given by others
  • Enslavement of one's passions
  • Rejection of the experience anchored in Christian charity
• If a person chooses to remain ignorant and refuses to properly form his conscience, then he is culpable for whatever wrong moral decisions and evil he commits
• He cannot claim ignorance as an excuse mechanism for doing whatever he thinks may be right
• We exercise authentic Christian freedom when we choose to do the good. With this freedom of conscience goes a corresponding duty to respect the same freedom in others.
• In forming our conscience, we need to be exposed to the “heart factors” and “mind factors”.
• The “heart factors” include reading and prayerful reflection on Jesus’ teaching and actions, and our own prayer and sacramental life, always asking ourselves, “What is Jesus/God saying to me?
• “Mind factors” refer to a deepening in understanding of Sacred Scriptures and Church teaching especially Catholic moral principles, and sound moral guidance. Again, we ask ourselves, “How can I apply this teaching or guidance in my life today?”
• O’Connell states that a full sense of conscience includes three senses: the sense of responsibility, the sense of exercise of moral reason, and the sense of judgment of the moral action.
• The first is the basic sense of responsibility that characterizes the human person. Synderesis is the inner drive to the good. Everyone has this drive to do good, but it is often obscured by the complexities and distortions of life today (a characteristic).
• The second is the exercise of moral reasoning as a person searches for objective moral values. We need to ask: What is the good? This is the realm of the formation and examination of conscience, wherein we seek to grasp moral truth by making use of sources of moral wisdom wherever they may be found, and then through a process of reflection, analysis, and accurate perception, come to an enlightened decision. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church is a necessary component in the formation of conscience for Catholics (a process).
• The third sense of conscience is the judgment by which we evaluate a particular action. It is the actual judgment, making a moral decision based on “my” personal perception and grasp of values. This is the conscience that “I” must obey to be true to myself. Thus, O’Connell points out, we can see the proper formation of conscience is essential to make a proper judgment. One can only choose the good, if one knows what the good is (an event).
• the third sense of conscience is determined by the second sense of conscience. That is why, he believes, the formation of conscience is so important.
• First Category: True or Correct Conscience – one that has made a sincere effort to discover the truth and one that acts in accordance with the Word of God and the teachings of the Church. One that deduces correctly from the principle that the act is lawful, or it conforms to what is objectively right.
• Types of Conscience under the First Category: 1. Informed Conscience 2. Tender Conscience
• Informed Conscience - one that informs and educates itself about a particular moral issue.
• Tender Conscience - one that forms objectively correct judgments with comparative ease even in finer distinctions between good and evil.
• Second Category: Erroneous or False Conscience – one that is contrary to God's Word and the teachings of the Church. One decides from false principles that something is unlawful.
• Types of Conscience under the Second Category: 1. Bad Conscience – 2. Weak Conscience 3. Scrupulous Conscience 4. Lax Conscience 5. Pharisaical Conscience 6. Perplexed Conscience 7. Seared or Hard Conscience
• Bad Conscience – one that has not even inquired about what is right or wrong. It has no regard for objective truth.