Sermon Blog
Forming the Consciences of Children: Truth and Freedom
September 12, 2025
Parents, teachers, coaches and anyone who has authority over children will struggle at one time or another with the consequences of freedom. Children need direction, guidance and care. But as they age, they grow in both the ability and desire to go their own way, be their own guide and provide for themselves. Parents in particular may suffer as they watch their children misuse their freedom and hurt themselves and others. St. John Henry Newman was not a parent, but he was an educator who spent three decades of his life forming young boys into men. In his writings on conscience and educational experience, he helps Christians understand how to help form the consciences of children so they may rightly exercise their freedom.
Freedom is not a problem; it is a gift of God. In giving us freedom, God gave us the ability to love. To know how to love, He gave us conscience, that voice of God that draws man toward God, according to Newman. But conscience, like a muscle, is not fully formed at birth. It must be sculpted and developed into maturity.
In forming this muscle, those who educate children must educate them in love. Newman was ahead of his time in understanding that children, even from a young age, can be persuaded rather than forced to do the good. In founding The Oratory School, Newman was adamant about having an atmosphere of freedom where influence from teachers and mentors, rather than strict discipline, ruled the boys. Hilare Belloc left a memorable testimony to the effect:
They [the boys] were taught to be free – as self-reliant and as free – as any of the young Englishmen who were growing up around them in the great public schools; but with it all there was an atmosphere of healthy religion, and unconstrained frequency in the approaching of the Sacraments, a sincere faith and high code both of morals and of honour, which appeared so natural and so native to the place, that it would have been called spontaneous by anyone who did not know that the founding of the school, its influence, and its spirit were due to Cardinal Newman. 1
As children “learn to do good,”2 they learn it best from living examples, as Belloc’s quote suggests. Fernando Ocáriz, prelate of Opus Dei was once asked about how parents could make sure children prayed. He replied that freedom should be there from the very beginning, and that parents must teach by example. He suggested that when children see their mother and father praying, or coming home from Mass with joy in their hearts and on their faces, it will dispose them toward these things. But we cannot do this as some sort of tactic; we must have this joy truly.
In teaching children how to love and in granting them the freedom to exercise it, we imitate our Heavenly Father. It’s the love of God that compelled God to come to earth and how great was that love that He constrained himself to come only at the permission of Our Lady! And it is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross that is the greatest act of freedom, even though Jesus was at the mercy of his executioners. Even in the darkest moments of his passion, Christ demonstrates that freedom is an interior possession. Speaking about his life, Jesus says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”3 We don’t have that same power of ourselves, but we can choose the will of God in our lives, even when it is inconvenient and small as well as when it is grievous and big. No one can take this from us.
In raising and teaching children, we have an awesome responsibility. We must know the truth ourselves if we are to form the consciences of our children. Likewise, if we want our children to freely choose the good, then words are not sufficient. “Love is deeds, not sweet words,” as St. Josemaría Escrivá liked to repeat. Our first deed should be to pray: God grant us the grace to teach our children how to use their freedom in service of the good.
1. “John Henry Cardinal Newman,” The Lamp, no. 39, 1890, pp. 138-39, quoted in P. Shrimpton, A Catholic Eton?, pp. 284-285.
2. Isaiah 1:17
3. John 10:18
