Decision-Making in an Uncertain Time. Should You Always Obey Your Conscience?

This paper explores the legal framework concerning the conscientious objection rights of employees in Ireland and critically considers how the various sources within that legal framework may overlap and intersect. It specifically considers the uncertainties created by section 22 of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 and its interaction with the Constitution of Ireland, the common law, other statutory regimes in employment law, EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights. In conducting this analysis, the paper attempts to map out likely future directions of travel within the law of conscientious objection in the context of termination of pregnancy in Ireland. Full article

Ivan Illich was an incisive critic of aspects of contemporary Western cultures, such as the over-reach of obligatory institutionalized schooling, the excessive medicalization of society, and the dangers of global industrial development. From the outset there was a deeper edge to his work which concerned the formative, but ambivalent, influence of Christianity. His case is that a perversion of Christianity has come to be woven deep into the fabric of modernity and that ‘living by one’s conscience’ is one of the constitutive threads therein. Illich advocates living by hope and not by conscience. The article presents some lines along which Illich’s concern with the centrality of hope could be further developed. Full article

Medieval theologians considered that it was a mortal sin to act against one’s conscience, even though they knew that conscience sometimes erred. This article inquires how they, as pastors, nevertheless engaged with the laity’s real-world experiences of conscience and with problems that this involved. In focus of the inquiry are pastoral tracts written by Jean Gerson (d. 1429). In these tracts, Gerson described troubling behaviour that he associated with malfunctions of conscience, and he observed how the precept that conscience obliged was a burden that some individuals could not handle. Gerson offered an analysis of these problems as well as alleviating pastoral advice. He agreed that one should obey one’s conscience, but this article argues that his analysis and advice went far towards circumscribing the force of this precept. Full article

Since its emergence after the Council of Trent, moral theology as a discipline has had an intimate but problematical relationship with philosophy. It is not rare, even today, to hear or read moral theologians expounding their views with no explicit acknowledgement of the importance of the philosophical terms and theories they use in the formulation of their positions. All this would seem to be particularly the case with a term that has gradually become quite central to moral theological discourse: conscience. The purpose of this article is to suggest that phenomenology, as a relatively new and profoundly revolutionary branch of philosophy, has become an indispensable resource for moral theological reflection on conscience. In particular it will be argued that the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) constitutes a profound -unintentional- critique of traditional conceptions of conscience and simply cannot be ignored (as it normally is!) in contemporary discussions of this theme. What follows, then, divides into four sections: the first on a traditional vision of conscience; the second on consciousness in the thought of Merleau-Ponty; the third on conscience as a form of consciousness; and the fourth on the potential contribution of this line of thought to ethics and fundamental moral theology. Full article

Of the many questions on which our title invites reflection, one in particular has again achieved prominence in the United States: how is a politician who is Roman Catholic expected to vote when a measure purports to legalise what church teaching says is morally wrong? The debate has become increasingly acrimonious, to the point where senior prelates are among those who contend that President Biden and Speaker of the House Pelosi are unfit to receive Holy Communion since they subscribe to the ‘pro-choice’ position of the Democratic Party. The core question has become politicised, its public discussion poisoned by association with toxic elements of the so-called ‘culture wars’, at an impasse that is impairing effective leadership in the US Catholic Church, and an effective Catholic contribution to the common good of American society. I shall argue that this is as unnecessary as it is regrettable, and that a way through the impasse is to be found in mainline Catholic thinking about morality, law, and politics. Full article

The immediate background to this essay is the contemporary expression of the relationship between conscience and truth in Catholic theology. The methods pursued are historically and textually based. Historically, there is a clear development in how Catholic theology has dealt with this relationship. Textually, three significant theologians are cited to explain this development (Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and Alphonsus de Liguori). The conclusions reached indicate a strategy for a more robust Catholic expression of how conscience and truth can be explained. Full article

As commonly used in its moral sense I will, for the purposes of this paper, take the concept of “conscience” to be the inherent ability of every healthy human being to perceive what is right and what is wrong and, on the strength of this perception, to control, monitor, evaluate and execute their actions. Such values as right or wrong, good or evil, just or unjust, and fair or unfair have existed throughout human history and are also shaped by an individual’s cultural, political and economic environment. The medieval penitential literature offers just one such historical snapshot. These manuals or guides for confessors, including prayers, lists of questions to be asked by the confessor, and penances to be assigned for various sins were an integral part of the practice of private penance which began in the Celtic Church and later spread through Europe with the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon missions. Penitential books for use by confessors in private penance appeared in the sixth through ninth centuries. These texts were not as a rule decreed by episcopal synods. Their authority generally rested on the reputation of their compiler or editor. Public penances were assigned for public sins that caused scandal for the church. Private penances were assigned for private sins or matters of conscience. The Penitentials were generally more flexible than the churches’ ancient canonical penitential system which they largely replaced. While later European Penitentials tended to provide more complete guidance for the confessor instead of mere lists of rules and penalties; such instruction is not entirely absent from the earlier Irish texts and ancillary documents. Thus, the goal of penance in the early middle ages was not only sacramental but also didactic. It would have been an occasion to inculcate Christian beliefs, an opportunity to model proper Christian behaviour and by extension a key part of the formation of conscience. As was the case with later expressions of casuistry (Etym. Latin casus, case, or problem to be solved) the purpose of the penitential literature was thus to adapt and apply the unchangeable norms of Christian morality to the changing and variable circumstances of human life albeit in somewhat rudimentary fashion. As such this literary genre and the pastoral practices stemming from it are a valid and worthy object of any historical study and theological analysis concerning the ‘formation of conscience.’ Full article

The French Dominican Thomas Deman (1899–1954) argued for the restoration of the virtue of prudentia against a background of moral theology and philosophy that, as he saw it, had replaced the centrality of prudenti a with a centrality of conscience. This article will follow Deman in his reading of Aquinas and develop an understanding of prudentia as a moral virtue of the intellect, which co-ordinates the good life, the moral life. Conscience is a moment within the performance of prudentia. The argument of the paper is that, while conscience and prudentia are both important for good human decision-making, they should not be seen as rival concepts but rather, conscience should be understood as working within the virtue of prudentia. Specifically, the argument is that the role of conscience passes into the practical order only when it is enacted via the virtue of prudentia. Full article

This essay investigates the role of uncertainty in post-Reformation Catholicism. It argues that one of the reasons why uncertainty was so central to early modern Catholic discourse lies in the complex and multifaced relationship between believing—that is, the act of holding as true something that we are unable to verify as such by means of reason—and knowing—that is, the act of holding something as true on the basis of a reasonable and reasoned assessment. By providing a brief analysis of printed and manuscript sources, this essays shows how some of the theological, religious, and intellectual tensions in articulating the relationship between things that need to be believed by faith and things that need to be known by reason, both in the works of influential theologians such as Augustine and Francisco Suárez, and in the elaboration of a wider sector of the Catholic population. Full article