We do not have to create a conscience for ourselves. We are born with one, and no matter how much we may ignore it, we cannot silence its insistent demand that we do good and avoid evil. No matter how much we may deny our freedom and our moral responsibility, our intellectual soul cries out for a morality and a spiritual freedom without which it knows it cannot be happy. The first duty of every man is to seek the enlightenment and discipline without which his conscience cannot solve the problems of life. And one of the first duties of society to the men who compose it is to enable them to live by the light of a prudent and mature conscience. I say “spiritual” and not merely “religious,” for religious formation is sometimes no more than outward formality, and therefore is not really religious, nor is it a “formation” of the soul.

– Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island [1955]