When discussing Vatican II with students in my Introduction to Christian Ethics course, I often focus on its impact on the role and function of conscience in the lives of Catholics. Both Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae highlight the authority of a well-formed conscience and invite the faithful to move beyond the “pray, pay, and obey” model of fidelity in a hierarchical church. They mandate the faithful to internalize Christian values and become active participants in reading “the signs of the times”  for the moral discernment of what it means to follow Christ faithfully in a church that is communion in the Body of Christ.  

Gaudium et spes describes conscience as a “law inscribed by God” in human hearts, “the most secret core and sanctuary of man…[where] he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depth. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor.” “To obey it is the very dignity of man.” (GS, 16) Theologian Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, commented on this passage: “Over the Pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. Conscience confronts [the individual] with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official church.”

Unfortunately, Vatican II’s vision of conscience, its role, function, and authority, and the vision of a communion church that supported it, have been severely impeded during the pontificates of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Their governing vision, which emphasized a hierarchical church and obedience to magisterial pronouncements as a primary virtue, has transformed Vatican II’s vision of church doctrine at the service of women and men in their conscience’s search for goodness, truth, and Christian wholeness, to conscience at the service of doctrine. John Paul’s encyclical on ethical method, Veritatis splendor, was authoritarian and hierarchical in its assertions on conscience and reduced Gaudium et spes’ invitation to the faithful to search for genuine solutions to the problems facing humanity to obeying church doctrine, especially on sexual matters. In the words of Bernhard Häring, “It staggers the imagination to think that an earthly authority or an ecclesiastical magisterium could take away from man [or woman] his [or her] own decision of conscience.”

I fear that the institutional church’s hierarchical and authoritarian stance on conscience, at least in part, is alienating many of the faithful, especially millennials, who are seeking communities other than the church where their consciences are respected and their voices are heard.  I judge this to be a tragic situation. It alienates the faithful from the wisdom of a tradition that contributes profound insight on many moral issues. It also eliminates their active participation in the ongoing discernment of the communion church. The lived experience of the faithful includes a wealth of wisdom and insight that can inform doctrine on a number of moral issues, again including sexual issues. Unfortunately, as the recent surveys for the upcoming synod on the family indicate, there is frequently an attempt by many bishops to censure or silence the voices of well-formed consciences, especially if these voices articulate any disagreement with Catholic sexual teaching.

My hope for the church is that it will create an ecclesial infrastructure that respects, promotes, and does not fear conscience, and facilitates “dialogue in charity,” in which the faithful and all people of good will can speak and be heard, and where all participants in the dialogue can learn from one another to read the “signs of the times” and move the pilgrim church forward as a credible, loving, merciful, compassionate, and Christian voice in and for the world.