Rhetorical Analysis Essay On John Paul 2

VS 54-56 Pope John Paul II states that our freedom and God’s law is most noticeably present in our conscience. When we set our freedom against the moral law, we risk deviating from the teachings of the Church or even contradicting them entirely. Some theologians have gone as far as to state that the conscience is simply a guide to give a general view of the man’s life, rather than “the sanctuary of man, where he is alone with God whose voice echoes within him” (John Paul II 55). Some also state that the Church’s intervention in the life of the faithful is the true cause of the conflicts in our conscience, which could be solved by allowing Christians to make their own decisions regardless of the moral law. This idea falls under scrutiny, however, as it proposes a double standard for the moral law. To support this argument, one must separate the inherent truths of the moral law so as to not conflict with the yearnings of the individual conscience.
VS 57-58 Saint Paul proposes that our conscience confronts us with the moral law and acts as a “witness” to our actions. He goes further stating that the conscience is in fact the only true witness of our moral standing as the exploits of the heart are hidden from the
When viewed as this, or freedom works to form our very moral life, developing or degrading our adherence to the moral law. Many theologians, however, have gone further by proposing a separation between the person and the acts. They believe that the act itself only constitutes part of the moral determination. In this ideology, the good and evil of a moral action is less dependent on the will and based more heavily on the physical goods and evils that result from the action. This eventually leads to the belief that the moral assessment of a person relies not on their choices, but on the outcome of their