Conscience is intelligent responsibility to the truth --Ratzinger

"And who is my neighbor?" Luke 10:29-37

"[Moral] concience is the capacity to be open to the call of truth, which is objective, universal, the same for all who can and must seek it.

"It is not isolation but communion: cum scire ('to know together with') in the truth concerning the good, which accompanies human beings in the intimacy of their spiritual nature. It is in this relationship with common and objective truth that continuing formation should occur.

"For the Christians, this naturally entails a sentire cum Ecclesia ('to think with the Church'), and so, an intrinsic reference to the authentic magisterium of the church."

The Essential Pope Benedict XVI, eds. Thornton and Varenne, New York: HarperOne, 2008, 287;
Report of Cardinal Ratzinger at the Consistory for the preparation of the Encyclical Evangelium vitae, April, 1991, IV.2.