The Fifth Sunday of Easter

For a Doctrinal Homily Outline for the Fifth Sunday of Easter click here.

I titled this one, “The conscience of Christ’s branches” because the Gospel was about Christ the true vine and we His branches and the doctrinal focus was a correct understanding of conscience and its formation.

Here is a quick preview:

Some people think conscience is some undefinable mysterious personal power that can magically justify any course of action. They are in error. What is conscience really?

• Conscience is one’s reason sitting in judgment over one’s actions based on one’s understanding of what is really good and evil.
• John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (“The Splendor of Truth”), “Conscience is . . . an act of a person’s intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now” (§ 32).