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From John Paul II, his encyclical on the Holy Spirit:

Conscience

43. The Second Vatican Council mentioned the Catholic teaching on conscience when it spoke about man’s vocation and in particular about the dignity of the human person. It is precisely the conscience in particular which determines this dignity. For the conscience is “the most secret core and sanctuary of a man, where he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.” It “can …speak to his heart more specifically: do this, shun that.” This capacity to command what is good and to forbid evil, placed in man by the Creator, is the main characteristic of the personal subject. But at the same time, “in the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience.”

Obedience

The conscience therefore is not an independent and exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil. Rather there is profoundly imprinted upon it a principle of obedience vis-a-vis the objective norm which establishes and conditions the correspondence of its decisions with the commands and prohibitions which are at the basis of human behavior, as from the passage of the Book of Genesis which we have already considered.  Precisely in this sense the conscience is the “secret sanctuary” in which “God’s voice echoes.” The conscience is “the voice of God,” even when man recognizes in it nothing more than the principle of the moral order which it is not humanly possible to doubt, even without any direct reference to the Creator. It is precisely in reference to this that the conscience always finds its foundation and justification.

Convincing power 

The Gospel’s “convincing concerning sin” under the influence of the Spirit of truth can be accomplished in man in no other way except through the conscience. If the conscience is upright, it serves “to resolve according to truth the moral problems which arise both in the life of individuals and from social relationships”; then “persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct.”

A result of an upright conscience is, first of all, to call good and evil by their proper name, as we read in the same Pastoral Constitution (Gaudium et Spes): “whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons”; and having called by name the many different sins that are so frequent and widespread in our time, the Constitution adds: “All these things and others of their kind are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator”

By calling by their proper name the sins that most dishonor man, and by showing that they are a moral evil that weighs negatively on any balance- sheet of human progress, the Council also describes all this as a stage in “a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness,” which characterizes “all of human life, whether individual or collective.” The 1983 Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on reconciliation and penance specified even more clearly the personal and social significance of human sin. - Dominum et Vivificantem

It seems to me the Church and the world desperately needs this convincing power of the Holy Spirit, His illumination of conscience, in order to attain the healing of sin and division through obedience to His promptings and urgings in the deepest recesses of our hearts, guided by the teachings He transmits through the Church.

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Today is the feast of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595).  Growing up, the nuns and priests always referred to him as the saint with a sense of humor, so I had this image of him as sort of a stand-up comic.  Exhibiting this joy in the spiritual life was a big deal in the late 1950’s and ’60’s. Catholics didn’t want to appear too strict - no one wanted any “plaster saints” as they used to say.

I have memories of many parish priest’s homilies usually opening with a joke, to warm up the crowd.  Photos of nuns filling baseball stadiums were big ice breakers, as were photos of sisters playing baseball.  I seem to remember a June Alyson movie about a baseball playing nun.  It was probably an American thing to do.  After the Council, we came to realize even more how human and fun priests and religious could be.

It was the joy of the Holy Spirit that St. Philip should be noted for, rather than for his humor or cheerfulness.  Maybe some stuff in his life was ‘funny’, such as his mangled chalice, preserved today,  gnawed and bent up.  He used to bite down on the chalice to keep himself from going into ecstasy at Mass.  Now that’s kind of amusing.  But he wasn’t a comedian.  (He was permitted to celebrate Mass privately, which took hours, because he would be rapt in ecstasy.)

He lived for a long time as a layman, a familiar amongst the common people of Rome, a habit he continued after his ordination.  (He is known as the “Apostle of Rome”.)  He attracted to himself men and boys, whom he instructed in the faith and piety, often presenting to them the ascetical practices of the Church in a humorous manner, thereby causing them (penance) to be more appealing to undertake.  He was, nevertheless, a remarkable mystic, intensely devoted to the Holy Spirit, or the Love of God, from Whom he received many signal graces.

Holy Father, John Paul II had this to say about St. Philip Neri:

“Leafing through the biography of St Philip, in fact, one is surprised and fascinated by the cheerful and relaxed method he used to educate, supporting each person with fraternal generosity and patience. As is well known, the saint used to put his teaching into short and wise maxims: “Be good, if you can”; “Scruples and melancholy, stay away from my house”; “Be simple and humble”; “He who does not pray is a speechless animal”; and, bringing his hand to his forehead, “Holiness is three fingers deep”. Behind the cleverness of these and many other “sayings”, we are aware of the acute and realistic knowledge he had acquired of human nature and the dynamics of grace. He translated the experience of his long life and the wisdom of a heart inhabited by the Holy Spirit into these immediate, terse teachings. These aphorisms have now become a patrimony of wisdom as it were for Christian spirituality.

2. St Philip appears against the background of the Roman Renaissance as the “prophet of joy”, who had decided to follow Jesus, even while being actively involved in the culture of his time, which in many respects is particularly close to that of today.” - Letter on the IV Centenary of the Death of St. Philip Neri

New Advent has an edifying, but brief biography of him.  The jokester image of him is a modern distortion. 

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