In the years since the Second Vatican Council, and setting aside liturgy, which invites uniquely passionate debates, no issue has been as much debated and as foundational to a host of discussions, as that of conscience. From the council's achievement in promulgating Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on Religious Freedom, to the reception — and rejection — of Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae in 1968, through Pope John Paul II's 1993 encyclical on moral theology Veritatis Splendor, the U.S. church's struggle with the Barack Obama administration over the contraception mandate, to Pope Francis' 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, conscience is both at the center of the issue and part of the foundation of the discussion.
Conscience is also the kind of issue about which the church's rich and nuanced teaching regrettably sometimes gives way to bumper sticker sloganeering. During the debate over the contraception mandate, it became clear to me that for many Americans, conscience was what John Henry Newman condemned as the false notion of conscience held in his day in his famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk:
When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without any thought of God at all. They do not even pretend to go by any moral rule, but they demand, what they think is an Englishman's prerogative, for each to be his own master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one's leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a word against his going to perdition, if he like it, in his own way.
Conscience, in Catholic theology, is the opposite of willfulness.
A new book, Conscience and Catholic Education: Theology, Administration, and Teaching, edited by Kevin Baxter and David DeCosse (DeCosse is a contributor to NCR), brings together several essays that focus broadly on issues of conscience encountered in the educational field. The essays are uneven but important. In the United States, where Catholic education has such a large footprint and yet our theology of conscience is so easily abused, attending to the issues raised is critical.
The two strongest essays are both from lawyers. Sister of Charity of Nazareth Mary Angela Shaughnessy, who is a distinguished fellow at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, examines which "legal or Constitutional concepts can help Catholic school administrators think respectfully through these difficult decisions" pertaining to non-Catholic faculty and students, as well as Catholic faculty and students who have made conscientious decisions at odds with church teaching.
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