EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE. - I. NATURE. - An ascetical exercise in which a man desirous of spiritual perfection, through reflection on his own actions, corrects their defects and raises them to greater perfection.
Already the ancient philosophers deemed it necessary for the improvement of life to spend some time in rendering an account of one's own thoughts, words and actions. Pythagoras prescribed the examination of conscience for his disciples, and Cicero declared that he practiced it every evening concerning what he had said, heard and done during the day. The sentence of Seneca is famous: « Quotidie apud me causam dico, totum diem mecum scrotur facta et dicta remeitor. Nihil mihi abscondo; nihil transeo » (cf. Ep. 83, 2; De ira 3, 36, 1).
The use of the examination of conscience in a strictly ascetical sense, however, spread with the eremitical and cenobitic life of the first centuries of the Christian era. The Holy Fathers in eloquent pages commemorate that God searches the reins and the heart (Ps. 7, 10), that even every idle word, according to the saying of Jesus Christ, will be examined on the day of judgment (Mt. 12, 36). And before them St. Paul said that if we judged ourselves, we would avoid the divine judgment (I Cor. 11, 31). Voluntary expiation was strongly recommended as a preservation from God's punishment. The Fathers generally recall that humiliation leads to exaltation, repentance to forgiveness, as with the publican of the Gospel parable who recognized himself a sinner and with a contrite heart had implored God's mercy, obtaining it. St. Augustine writes: « Before judging others, be a judge of yourself. Enter into yourself, turn your attention to your works, discuss them, hear your own case... You have examined, judged, punished yourself? Then you are spared » (PL 38, 110).
The practice of the examination of conscience passed from monasticism, both Eastern and Western, into medieval spiritual life: it was intensely recommended by St. Bernard (1090-1153) and widely practiced by families of Benedictine, Carthusian, Victorine and Dominican inspiration. In the modern age it became general, with methods multiplying. It had particular importance in the spirituality inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556); ecclesiastical authority introduced it into seminaries; its use today is universal in colleges, boarding schools and religious institutes, and it is customarily made at a fixed hour for a time varying from a quarter of an hour to a half hour. Such universality indicates the esteem in which it is held in the Church for its salutary influence on the Christian life.
The advantages of the examination of conscience are especially in relation to « purity of conscience and the attainment of determined virtues » (G. B. Scaramelli, Dirett. ascetico, I, trat. I, a. IX). To obtain purity of soul it is necessary, besides knowing one's own failings and the external occasions that cause them, to conceive a true sorrow for them and the purpose of amending them. Now the knowledge of bad inclinations, of failings and of their roots, is almost impossible for one who never or almost never reflects on the state of his own soul.
The acquisition of virtues depends essentially on an intimate reflection on oneself and on the circumstances in which one lives. Beginning with the virtue of humility, the basis and foundation of every true perfection, defined by St. Bernard as «that virtue by which a man, through the truest knowledge he has of himself, holds himself vile», it is born from frequent examinations of conscience which demonstrate that man without God is nothing, can do nothing, and corrupts and spoils the gifts of the Lord; so that from such knowledge the soul arrives at the feeling of confusion that prevents it from becoming proud, detaching it from blind pride, from the aspiration to overpower, from believing itself more than it is.
The practice of the examination of conscience is evidently most useful for disposing oneself better to sacramental Confession and for drawing greater fruit from the Sacrament, favoring a more precise accusation of one's sins and a more actual and intense sorrow and purpose of amendment. Performed seriously every day it also becomes an excellent preparation for death and for the judgment of God.
Two kinds of examination of conscience are distinguished, the general and the particular.
The first deals essentially with the failings committed in a day (or half a day) beginning from the hour of rising up to the moment of the exercise, going through the various hours and occupations. Various methods have been proposed (v. below). Ascetical authors, however, dwell above all on recommending the formulation, during the examination, of acts of contrition, insisting on the most perfect motives for detesting the evil committed. Sincere repentance of perfect contrition in fact immediately obtains the forgiveness of sins and restores the soul's purity, although there remains in the person guilty of mortal sin the grave obligation of expiation in the subsequent sacramental Confession, under condition of otherwise falling back into disfavor with God through the transgression of a grave obligation imposed by him. If the sorrow is what it should be, the purpose of fleeing sins in the future will not be lacking. But since the human will is weak and frail, it is recommended to end the examination by resorting to prayer to obtain the divine Grace that strengthens it.
The particular examination of conscience is the concentration of attention and efforts upon one special point. It is an application to the moral life of the strategic principle of avoiding the dispersion of forces. It is therefore directed at eradicating one by one the principal defects of the individual, according to the famous phrase of the Imitation of Christ: «If every year we uprooted one vice, we would soon be perfect». Every man has, ordinarily, one or more weak points, or predominant passions that are the root of his daily failings. Precisely against these tendencies a particular examination of conscience is to be practiced, that is, a special vigilance and more intense and circumstantial purposes. This is a very reasonable industry, already in use among the sages of antiquity. Plutarch employed it to overcome anger and indignation. To facilitate its practice, spiritual masters advise beginning with the defects easier to overcome in order then to pass to the more difficult ones; to take aim first at the exterior ones, which also offend others, then at those purely internal. As regards the purpose of amendment, the principal element of the particular examination, one must ensure that it is truly serious and energetic, because mere wishes or half measures are not enough to attain the goal.
Bibliography5 works
On the particular examination of conscience: J. Deharbe, Examen ad usum Cleri in gratum praecipue sacerdotum sacra exercitia obtinent, Regensburg 1906; C. Pontineau, Nouveau traité d'examen particulier, Brussels 1912; L. Sempé, Actes et mystique. L'examen particulier, principe, méthode, origine, Toulouse 1923; A. J. Willwerding, Examination of conscience for boys and girls, St. Louis 1927; C. Imba, A Particular Examen. A constructive method, ibid. 1930; P. Gocka, Der aszetische Wert des Particularexamens, Głogów 1938; O. Marchetti, E. di c. per il clero durante i santi esercizi, Rome 1934; id., E. di c. per i giovani, ibid. 1939; id., E. di c. per gli adulti, ibid. 1942; W. Siero, Näher, mein Gott, an Dir! Handbüchlein für die tödliche Geschwulferforschung, Warendorf in W. 1940.
Arnaldo M. Lanz
II. PRECEPT AND METHOD
Especially after the appeals to the spiritual life of Pius X (Haerent animo: cf. Acta Pii X, 4 [1908], pp. 237-64) and of Pius XI (Ad catholici Sacerdotii, 20 Dec. 1935, in AAS, 28 [1936], pp. 5-53), the examination of conscience has become one of the most important practices of the religious life. The CIC commands it indirectly to all clerics: «Curent locorum Ordinarii ut clerici omnes... quotidie... conscientiam suam discutant» (can. 125).
The method of the examination of conscience is left entirely free by the legislator.
The general examination of conscience according to the method of St. Ignatius contains five points: thanksgiving to God, the request for grace, a careful investigation of our conduct from the first awakening in the morning up to the moment of the examination, the request for pardon and the resolution (Modus faciendi examen generale et continet quisque puncta). The method of the particular examination of conscience is more complex. It begins with the first awakening in the morning (preventive examination) and is carried out in two moments, before lunch and after supper. It also requires the written notation of one's failings (a kind of balance sheet of losses and gains) in order to be able to make comparisons between one day and another, between one week and another. This complex system made the particular examination according to St. Ignatius less acceptable to several masters of the spiritual life, among them St. Francis de Sales (Lettere alla suora di Soulfour, in Oeuvres de St François de Sales, XII, Annecy 1902, p. 167 ff.) and St. Alphonsus (La vera sposa, ed. Rome 1935, ch. 21).
The Ignatian methods for the examination of conscience, both general and particular, are marked by the spirit of St. Ignatius, a methodical spirit, an enemy of the abstract, which represents the spiritual life as a struggle and a conquest. It does not propose to renounce sin generically, but this sin; nor to wish to be perfect, but to conquer this or that virtue. It starts from the principle that man must do everything as if everything depended on him.
Alongside the Ignatian methods there are other methods, and among these a particular importance attaches to the so-called Sulpician methods, whose guiding ideas come to us from Cardinal De Bérulle, from De Condren and from Ollier. Since the central idea of the Sulpician method is union with and adherence to the Incarnate Word, in order to offer to God the acts of religion that are due to him, to reproduce in the soul the virtues of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to the five acts of the general examination of St. Ignatius are added adoration and the placing of oneself in the presence of Jesus as model and judge: the examination, moreover, will not have as its direct object the removal of a determined defect or the acquisition of a determined virtue, but rather the abuse of the dispositions to virtue that Jesus Christ has given us, rejecting his inspirations and hindering his inspirations and motions (cf. M. Ollier, Lettres, ed. E. Levesque, I, Paris 1935, pp. 311-17). The Church, in recommending, as has been said, the examination of conscience to all the clergy, has not intended to impose a determined method, but leaves to each one the widest freedom of spirit.
III. ACT OF THE PENITENT
The examination of conscience as an act of the penitent, presupposed to the accusation of one's sins, is called by the Council of Trent (sess. XIV, cap. 5) diligens sui discussio (can. 501). The doctrine of the most accredited moralists holds it necessary first of all as a means of satisfying the duty of an integral accusation of all mortal sins, and furthermore as a means of rendering confession spiritually more fruitful. However, only he will commit grave fault who should neglect it while yet perceiving the danger of subsequently omitting to accuse mortal sins. The diligence required is the normal diligence that men are accustomed to apply to those things to which they give a true importance; there will therefore be no need of the greatest diligence, nor even of a diligence that has anything extraordinary about it. For this reason it is held, in doctrine, that no penitent is obliged to put his sins in writing or to make use of an interpreter when he should not know the language of the confessor; for this reason too, in the case of the scrupulous, the examination of conscience may be forbidden or reduced to a minimum. Faced with a penitent who has gravely failed in making the examination of conscience, the confessor, in principle, would even have the right to send him away as indisposed; in practice, the doctrine of the most accredited moralists recommends not doing so, because those who have not made it through incapacity, left to themselves, will be back at the beginning; and with regard to those who have omitted it through indisposition, there is the danger of quenching the smoking wick. The Roman Catechism (De Poenit., n. 60) is inspired by a criterion of leniency where it asserts: « Si audita confessione iudicaverit (confessarius) neque in enumerandis peccatis diligentiam, nec in detestandis dolorem poenitenti omnino defuisse, absolvi poterit ».
Bibliography3 works
Luigi Oldani