Gaudium Et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on Conscience: a Forgotten Concept of Vatican II?

Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on Conscience: a Forgotten Concept of Vatican II?

Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman

Abstract. — This paper explores the authority and inviolability of conscience in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae. It then highlights three tensions in the texts, two models on the nature of conscience that result from these tensions, and argues that since Vatican II, during the pontificates of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, tradition’s claims on the inviolability of a well-formed conscience have been largely forgotten and, at times, even violated. It also proposes steps, which Pope Francis has initiated, that must be taken to regain the authority and inviolability of conscience and return it to its proper place in the Catholic tradition.

Introduction

Already in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas established the authority and inviolability of conscience. “Anyone upon whom the ecclesiastical authorities, in ignorance of the true facts, impose a demand that offends against his clear conscience, should perish in excommunication rather than violate his conscience.”1 He goes further and insists that the dictate of a mistaken conscience must be followed and that to act against such a dictate is immoral and sinful.2 Seven hundred years after Aquinas, Gaudium et Spes issued a clarion cry with respect to conscience. “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of man. There 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” (GS 16). Dignitatis Humanae went further to assert the inviolability of conscience. “In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience faithfully, in order that he may come to God for whom he was created. It follows that he is not to be forced to act contrary to his conscience.

1. Thomas Aquinas, In IV Sent., dist. 38, q. 2, art. 4. 2. Id., Summa Theologiae, I-II, 19, 5. Henceforth cited as ST. 154 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman

Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience, especially in matters religious” (DH 3). Despite these affirmations of the authority of conscience, theological and pastoral debates continue over the nature of conscience and its inviolability. These are due, at least in part, to tensions within the documents. In this essay, we begin with affirmations in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on the nature of conscience and its inviolability. We then explore three tensions in the texts; two models on the nature of conscience that result from these tensions; and how these models are reflected in the writings of Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.

I. Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on Conscience: Consensus

Several points are evident from the statements in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on the nature and inviolability of conscience. First, conscience is sacred; it is a gift from God (GS 16). Second, it is an intrinsic part of the human person (GS 16). Third, following one’s conscience on moral and religious matters facilitates human dignity; violating one’s conscience on moral and religious matters frustrates human dignity (GS 16; DH 3). Fourth, one must never be forced to act against one’s conscience; such force is a fundamental violation of conscience and of human dignity (DH 3). Fifth, the authority granted to conscience pre- sumes that one’s conscience is well-informed (GS 16). Though there is consensus on many aspects of the nature of conscience and its inviolability in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae, those who have interpreted the documents in the post-Conciliar period note that there are tensions in the documents that lead to two different models on the nature of conscience. To those tensions we now turn.

II. Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on Conscience: Tensions

It is common knowledge that there is a general tension in the documents of the Second Vatican Council represented by differing ideological and theological perspectives. James Gaffney comments that the term ‘conscience’ in the documents is used “in a combination of senses which not even the most benign exegetical subtlety can rescue from gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 155 incoherence.”3 This incoherence is reflected in various tensions with respect to the nature of conscience and its inviolability.

Two Levels of Conscience Perhaps the most basic tension in the documents is on the nature of conscience itself. Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae describe two levels of conscience. To explore these two levels we return to Aquinas, where we see immediately that conscience is related to reason, and its understanding is situated in Aquinas’ anthropology. Closely following Aristotle, he considers the human person to be a unitary being, endowed with a body and a rational soul that vivifies it. Reason distinguishes humans from all other animals, and the rational soul has two powers, intellect and will, intimately related and involved in the process of knowledge. All knowledge begins with experience4 and proceeds through understanding, judgment, decision, and action. Conscience is the intellectual act of practical judgment that something is right or wrong, moral or immoral, to be done or not done. It binds us to do or not to do some action and, when an action has been done, “conscience is said to accuse or worry us if what has occurred is found to be out of accord with the knowledge by which it was tested, and to defend or excuse us if what has occurred is found to have turned out to be in accord with that knowledge.”5 Conscience is, just as Robert Smith defines it, “the act of practical judgment on a particular moral issue … that commands us to do this or not to do that.”6 Conscience comes at the end of a rational process which is a process of experience, understanding, judgment, and decision. This process includes an innate natural grasp of moral principles that Aquinas calls synderesis. “Though the habits which inform conscience are many,” he argues, “nevertheless they all take effect through one chief habit, the grasp of principles called synderesis.”7 Aquinas never makes these principles clear anywhere because, as Jean Porter correctly argues, his

3. James Gaffney, Matters of Faith and Morals (London: Sheed & Ward, 1987), 115-133. 4. See ST I, 79, 2. For an excellent summary, see Kenneth L. Schmitz, “St. Thomas and the Appeal to Experience,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 47 (1992): 1-20. 5. Ibid. 6. Robert J. Smith, Conscience and Catholicism: The Nature and Function of Conscience in Contemporary Roman Catholic Theology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998), 12. 7. ST I, 79, 13. 156 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman

“general theory of goodness requires him to hold that the first principle of practical reasoning is self-evident to all.”8 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in a 1991 speech, interpreted the medieval tradition as offering two levels to the concept of conscience, synteresis (which he suggests is better rendered as anamnesis) and conscience. Synteresis or anamnesis is “an inner repugnance to evil and an attraction to the good. The act of conscience applies this basic knowledge to the particular situation.”9 To make a practical judgment of conscience, then, involves both a grasp of the first principles of practical reason (synderesis/synteresis) and a gathering of evidence, a conscious weighing and understanding of the evidence and its implications, and finally making as honest a judgment as possible that this action is to be done and that action is not. A moral action is one that comes as the right outcome of such a process and an immoral action is one that comes as the wrong outcome of such a process. It is com- monplace theologically to insist that, in order to be right and moral, conscience must be informed; that formation is precisely the process we have just outlined. The failure to distinguish between the two levels of conscience and the ambiguity on what constitutes a well-informed conscience are central questions that divide interpreters of Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae on the nature of conscience and its inviolability. The two levels of conscience, namely, synderesis and the process leading to practical judgment, Joseph Fuchs names the subject-orientation and the object-orientation of conscience respectively. Conscience as subject-orientation is “having inner knowledge of the moral goodness of the Christian, and as standing before God, and Christ, and in the Holy Spirit.”10 This is where God’s voice echoes in the depths of the human heart (GS 16), “the highest norm of human life” (DH 3), and draws a person to the absolute where the first principles of practical reason are self-evident in the very nature of that moral knowledge, “summoning him to love good and avoid evil” (GS 16); this is the “upright norm of one’s own conscience” (GS 26). Conscience as subject orientation is the ontological affirmation of the intrinsic goodness of the human person created in the image and likeness of God and an invitation to enter into profound relationship with God and neighbor (GS 16).

8. Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue: The Relevance of Aquinas for Christian Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), 85-86. 9. Joseph Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/ ratzcons.htm, 8. This and all other URLs cited herein were accessed 25/11/2015. 10. Josef Fuchs, Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh, trans. Brian McNeil (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987), 123. gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 157

Though conscience as subject-orientation affirms who we are, created in God’s image, conscience as object-orientation “concerns the material content of the function of conscience” and indicates how we are to relate in the world.11 Conscience as object-orientation can “see that divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city” (GS 43). We respond to this world by acknowledging “the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience” (DH 3). Using the first principles of practical reason as a hermeneutical lens for analyzing what our relationship with the world is to be, being “guided by the objective norms of morality” (GS 16). and attending “to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church” (DH 14), among other sources of knowledge, conscience as objective-orientation gathers as much evidence as possible, consciously weighs and understands the evidence and its implications, and finally makes as honest a judgment as possible that this action is to be done and that action is not. In this way, human beings exercise conscience as practical judgment. Although both levels of conscience are essential, Fuchs correctly notes that the subject-orientation logically precedes the object-orientation.

Nature and Content of the Law The second tension is on the content of the law that informs conscience. While all theologians would agree that God is the ultimate source of the first principles which synderesis grasps, there is disagreement on the nature and content of the law and its role and function in the formation of conscience. Dignitatis Humanae states “the highest norm of human life is the divine law-eternal, objective, universal” (DH 3). Fuchs notes the “divine law is identical with the ‘eternal law’,” which is “nothing other than God himself.”12 However, since God is ultimate mystery and not directly accessible and fully knowable to human beings, divine law is ultimate mystery and not directly accessible and fully knowable to human beings as well. Human beings cannot know God totally and completely, and thus cannot know divine law totally and completely. Through the gift of synderesis God has allowed human beings to perceive and acknowledge “the imperatives of the divine law” (DH 3). The imperatives are labeled “all-embracing principles” (GS 79) and “objective norms of morality” (GS 16) which the “Church’s teaching

11. Fuchs, Christian Morality, 128. 12. Josef Fuchs, “On Christian Moral Theology,” in Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, ed. René Latourelle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 489. 158 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman office … authentically interprets” (GS 50). These imperatives can provide prohibitions that condemn certain acts always and everywhere (GS 27), are contingent on circumstances for their application (GS 87), give general guidelines that conscience must learn, interpret and apply, indicate plural answers to complex questions (GS 43), or provide general virtue rules, such as be just, be loving, be chaste, that do not indicate a specific action in any given context.13 Not only is the content of natural law ambiguous, so too is the objective norm’s relationship to conscience and its formation.

Conscience and the ‘Objective Norm’ A third tension is evident in the post-conciliar debates over the relationship between conscience and the ‘objective’ norms in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae. Fuchs states the terms of this debate succinctly: Does a truth exist ‘in itself’ or ‘in myself’?14 The first formulation sees the conscience as subjective; there is not an objective role for conscience.15 Objectivity is consigned to the objective norm ‘in itself’, ‘external’ to conscience. These objective norms exist outside the subjective conscience and the role of the conscience is to know and apply these norms as a deductive syllogism. That is, synderesis, as a property of the intellect, knows the general principles of divine law, do good and avoid evil. These principles are formulated into objective norms, such as do not steal or do not lie. Conscience as practical judgment knows the general principles, the objective norms that are formulated from these principles, and applies those norms in a particular situation.16 In this approach, conscience’s freedom is relegated to obedience to external objective norms (or authority) and the dignity of conscience depends on whether or not one’s judgment of conscience coincides or does not coincide with the objective norms. If it coincides with objective norms, the act is right and moral; if it does not coincide with objective norms, the act is wrong and immoral. Gaudium et Spes recognizes human finitude and sinfulness and their impact on the judgment of conscience, what it describes as an erroneous conscience, a

13. Fuchs, “On Christian Moral Theology,” 495. 14. Fuchs, Christian Morality, 125. 15. See John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 4, 59; and Pope Benedict XVI, On Con- science: Two Essays by Joseph Ratzinger (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2007), 12. 16. Charles E. Curran, “Conscience in the Light of the Catholic Moral Tradition,” in Conscience: Readings in Moral Theology, No. 14, ed. Charles E. Curran (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), 8. gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 159 conscience that knows incorrectly and, therefore, chooses a wrong act. If the ignorance is vincible, the person is morally culpable; if the ignorance is invincible, the person is not morally culpable. “Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for a man who cares but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sight- less as a result of habitual sin” (GS 16). The second formulation sees conscience as both subjective and objective and in this formulation there is a much more complex relationship between the object-orientation of conscience and the objective norm. Since conscience can err from invincible ignorance and not lose its dignity, the emphasis in Gaudium et Spes (and Dignitatis Humanae) is on the authority and dignity of conscience, not the authority and dignity of the norm. Objective norms exist externally and are formulated and justified on the basis of the four sources of moral knowledge, scrip- ture, tradition, reason and experience. These norms, however, “offer basi- cally nothing more than assistance – real assistance, but nonetheless merely assistance – in the assessment of morally correct decisions made in the conscience.”17 External, objective norms must always go through the object-orientation of conscience where the process of understanding, judgment, decision, and action take place. The object-orientation, assisted by the known principles of the subject-orientation of conscience, function as the hermeneutical lens to select, interpret, and apply the appropriate objective norm in a given situation. The norms maintain their objectivity, but so too does the objectivity of the conscience. In this formulation, truth exists ‘in myself’, not in a relativist sense that denies objective and universal truth, but in the sense of the intrinsic human dignity of the person and the authority of conscience, which must inter- nalize the values reflected in the norm, see their relevance to the human person in all her particularity, and go through the process of understanding, judgment, decision, and action. Fuchs summarizes the tension between these two formulations: “the assertions which suggest that the proper source of moral knowledge is the conscience are not sufficiently harmonized with those assertions that make objective norms (found outside the conscience) the source.”18 The essential point for conscience as object-orientation is the relevance of the objective norm from the perspective of the enquiring

17. Fuchs, Christian Morality, 130-131. 18. Josef Fuchs, Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality, trans. William Cleves, et al. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983), 45. 160 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman subject in light of the understanding of all the exigencies of the human person in a particular historical, cultural context. The implications of this perspective on the relationship between conscience as object-orientation and objective norms is that conscience should be guided by those norms but the authority of conscience is not identified with whether or not it obeys the objective norm. Otherwise, Dignitatis Humanae could not advocate for religious freedom, where “every man has the duty, and therefore the right, to seek the truth in matters religious in order that he may with prudence form for himself right and true judgments of conscience, under use of all suitable means” (DH 3). If mere obedience to objective norms was the sole role of conscience, then conscience that leads people to follow religious traditions other than the Roman Catho- lic Church could never be tolerated, since “this Church, constituted and organized as a society in this present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church” (LG 8). That religious pluralism is recognized and affirmed in Dignitatis Humanae shifts authority from the objective norm to conscience as object-orientation, informed by objective norms, where the hermeneutical lens of the conscience as subject-orientation facilitates the process of understanding. judgment, and decision of conscience. To summarize, in Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae there are tensions on the meaning of conscience, what Fuchs labels the subject- and object-orientation of conscience, the nature of law that informs conscience, and the nature of the relationship between conscience and objective norms. These tensions are illustrated in two different models of conscience.

III. Relationship between Conscience and the Objective Norm: Two Models

Following James Halstead’s excellent dissertation on conscience,19 Smith makes a distinction between what he calls a ‘man-in-relationship-to-law’ model of conscience and a ‘restless-heart-towards-God’ model.20 He offers as exemplars of these two models Germain Grisez and Bernhard Häring respectively. Grisez holds that the only way to form one’s conscience is to conform it to the teaching of the church. “In morals,” he

19. James Halstead, “Conscience, the American Bishops and the Renewal of Moral Theology: The Notion of Conscience in the Pastoral Letters of the American Bishops” (University of Louvain, Doctoral Dissertation, 1986). 20. Smith, Conscience and Catholicism, 65. gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 161 writes, “a faithful Catholic never will permit his or her own opinions, any seemingly cogent deliverances of experience, even supposedly scientific arguments, or the contradictory belief of the whole world outside the faith to override the church’s clear and firm teaching.”21 Ultimately, though Grisez waxes about human freedom, conscience is about obedience to church teaching and its objective norms. Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio follows this same model, being wholly rooted in both the truth of sexuality and marriage as taught by the Church and the obligation of the laity to obey that truth. Almost nowhere in the document does the Church’s teaching on the inviolable primacy of individual conscience, even in sexual matters, appear. Such an absence unjustly ignores the long-standing Catholic tradition fundamentally strengthened at the Second Vatican Council. Häring has a diametri- cally opposed stance. In the context of his overall approach to moral theology, namely, God’s call to all women and men and each individual’s response of a moral life, conscience, “man’s innermost yearning toward ‘wholeness’ which manifests itself in openness to neighbor and commu- nity in a common searching for goodness and truth,”22 must be free and inviolable, and “the church must affirm the freedom of conscience itself.”23 Church doctrine is at the service of women and men in their sincere conscience search for goodness, truth, and Christian wholeness; conscience is not at the service of doctrine. “It staggers the imagination,” Häring writes, “to think that an earthly authority or an ecclesiastical Magisterium could take away from man his own decision of conscience.”24 The motivation for such a move on the part of the ecclesiastical Magisterium is tied to ongoing concerns with individual relativism or subjectivism and threats to claims of objective truth. The reasoning is as follows. Those, like Grisez, who hold to the ‘man-in-relationship-to-law’ model, maintain that conscience is “merely the ‘subjective application’ of ‘objective norms’ to individual cases.”25 In this model, norms have the epistemological advantage of being objective, and therefore ‘true’, whereas conscience is ‘subjective’, and merely learns, knows and applies the objective norm syllogistically to a situation. In this application, the conscience

21. Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus. Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 567. 22. Bernard Häring, A Theology of Protest (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1970), 65. 23. Häring, Free and Faithful in Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity, vol. 1 (New York: Seabury), 1978. Emphasis in original. 24. Häring, The Christian Existentialist: The Philosophy and Theology of Self- Fulfillment in Modern Society (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 63. 25. Fuchs, Personal Responsibility, 224. 162 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman may apply the norm correctly or incorrectly. If the latter, there is an erroneous judgment of conscience that may or may not be morally culpable (GS 16), but the (moral) fault is in the subjective conscience and its application of the norm in the practical judgment, not in the objective norm itself. This model shifts the direction of analysis and authority of conscience from God, conscience, objective norm to God, objective norm, conscience. The objective norm supersedes the subjective conscience and the role and function of the subjective conscience is to obey the objective norm. Fuchs raises two questions that apply to such a posi- tion. First, why should the judgment of conscience be ‘only subjective’?26 Is there not a sense in which the very process of conscience as judgment is objective? Epistemologically, in Grisez’s analysis, the objective norm is primary and subjective conscience is secondary. Second, why do we give such a place of honor and privilege to objective norms in the epistemological hierarchy? Are not these norms, too, the outcome of the interac- tion of conscience with the world that begins with experience and proceeds through understanding, judgment, decision, and action? All objective norms, including the Magisterium’s norms, result from this process, and they all are subject to the contingencies of human knowledge and understanding in which norms and the understanding of them can evolve, be refined, revised, or even reversed in light of that human understanding. The changed norms related to usury, slavery, and religious freedom are historical examples of this evolution. Such evolution in human knowledge and understanding accounts for pluralism in perspectives and claims to objective truth. To that pluralism we now turn.

IV. John Paul, Benedict and Francis on Conscience: Pluralism or Relativism?

What fundamentally divides these two models and is at the root of many of the tensions in the interpretations of Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae are epistemological differences and the impact of those differences on claims to the inviolability of conscience and its relation to reality. These differences are reflected in Dignitatis Humanae’s “most influen- tial interpreter,” John Paul II, and what Herminio Rico labels the “three moments” in Dignitatis Humanae’s history: “Religious Freedom Replaces Established Catholicism;” “Freedom of the Church against Atheistic Communism;” and “The Challenge of Secularism and Relativism.”

26. Fuchs, Personal Responsibility, 224. gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 163

John Paul on Dignitatis Humanae Particularly germane to our study is the third moment, “The Challenge of Secularism and Relativism.” This moment emphasizes the intrinsic relationship between freedom and truth and the primacy of truth over freedom correctly understood, as “revealed in Jesus Christ” and “entrusted to the Church and, in an especial way, to the care of the Magisterium.”27 According to this moment, secularism attempts to replace truth with pluralism and equal respect for truth claims within pluralism; relativism severs the intrinsic link between freedom and truth and denies objective, universal, absolute truth codified in the moral teachings of the Magiste- rium. Rico notes that for John Paul II, a crucial goal in the third moment is “to reassert the role of religion in the formation of consciences.”28 The emphasis on religious freedom in Dignitatis Humanae, and openness to and dialogue with the modern world in Gaudium et Spes, were gradually replaced by, and reduced to, a pre-conciliar perspective emphasizing con- formity to magisterial authority and the claim that “the Catholic Church alone possesses the truth.”29 This third moment, especially on the dangers of relativism, shaped the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI on the nature of conscience and its relationship to Church teaching.

John Paul and Benedict on Relativism Throughout their pontificates, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI raised concerns over relativism, which denies the existence of objective, universal truth and fundamentally threatens the human search for truth. In his homily at the opening of the 2005 papal conclave, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke of the “dictatorship of relativism” which “does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”30 In this section, we are specifically concerned with moral relativism, which denies the existence of universal, objective, valid-for-all-circumstances moral truth. Such truth is necessary,

27. Herminio Rico, S.J., John Paul II and the Legacy of Dignitatis Humanae (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 161. 28. Ibid., 149. 29. Leslie Griffin, “Commentary on Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Reli- gious Freedom),” in Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations, ed. Kenneth Himes, O.F.M. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 258. 30. Joseph Ratzinger, “Cappella Papale Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice,” Homily of His Eminence Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of the College of Cardinals, Monday 18 April 2005, http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_ 20050418_en.html. 164 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman the Magisterium argues, as the foundation for absolute norms, which assert that certain acts (contraceptive and homosexual acts, for example) are intrinsically evil and can never be morally justified regardless of intent or circumstance. Concern about relativism is undoubtedly war- ranted in the twenty-first century, but the Magisterium fails to discern the difference between relativism, which rejects all objective ethical truth, and perspectivism, which acknowledges that there is objective ethical truth, albeit partial, but reliable, adequate, and always in need of further clarification. It also fails to discern legitimate theological pluralism, which the International Theological Commission’s document, Theology Today,31 advances as an essential criterion of Catholic theology. Neither moral nor theological pluralism is to be equated with the relativism just described. We now consider relativism and perspectivism in some detail.

The Magisterium on Relativism In modern times, moral relativism has been the subject of much magisterial concern. Pope Pius XII condemned “situation ethics” which he believed to be a form of relativism that denies universal moral truth.32 Pope Paul VI warned of moral relativism that claims that “some things are permitted which the Church had previously declared intrinsically evil,” and that this vision “clearly endangers the Church’s entire doctri- nal heritage.”33 Gaudium et Spes asserts the need for “objective norms” to guide the formation of conscience. In Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II warned of the dangers of relativism which detaches human freedom from any objective or universal foundation and proposes certain meth- ods “for discovering the moral norms” that reject absolute and immu- table norms and precepts taught by the Magisterium. Some Catholic ethicists complain that in Veritatis Splendor, John Paul falsely accused

31. International Theological Commission, “Theology Today: Perspectives, Prin- ciples and Criteria,” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_docu- ments/rc_cti_doc_20111129_teologia-oggi_en.html. 32. See Pius XII, “Allocution to the Federation mondiale des jeunesses feminines Catholiques [World Federation of Catholic Female Youth],” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 34 (January 18, 1952): 413-419 (henceforth AAS); Radio Message about the Christian conscience, AAS 34 (March 23, 1952): 270-278; and “Instruction of the Holy Office,” February 2, 1956 in Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schön- metzer, 33rd ed. (Rome: Herder, 1965), 3918. 33. Paul VI, “Address to Members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer,” AAS 59 (1967): 962. gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 165 them of “canonizing relativism.”34 Cardinal Ratzinger often warned of the dangers of a relativism that denies the existence of objective truth, calling it “the gravest problem of our time,”35 and concern with relativism and its impact, especially in the area of morality, continued to be a central concern of his pontificate as Benedict XVI. We underscore here that the relativism that denies the existence of objective truth is not to be equated with the relativism that acknowledges, as the International Theological Commission acknowledges, the incontrovertible relationship of moral principles, norms, and judgments to historical and cultural contexts. To avoid confusion, we refer to this kind of relationship as relationalism. Magisterial statements, we submit, not only fail to distinguish between the relativism that is condemned and the relationalism that is acknowledged but also, and all too easily and mistakenly, conflate legitimate theological disagreements about universal, objectivist claims to moral truth with relativism.

Perspectivism or Relativism? When facing a question about moral principles, norms, or actions, there must be a first step towards an answer. That first step, ethicist James Sellers suggests, is the stance the person takes vis à vis the question,36 and the distinguished Catholic moral theologian, Charles Curran, adopts this notion of stance.37 We prefer the visual metaphor of perspective intro- duced by James Gustafson, which suggests the way we look at something that puts everything else into focus.38 Pope John Paul II also prefers the metaphor of perspective in Veritatis Splendor, where he notes: “In order to be able to grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person.”39 The visual analogy we offer to clarify the notion of perspective is that of a man in a multi-story building. The perspective he gets when he looks out a first-floor window is different from the perspective he gets

34. maura Anne Ryan, ‘‘Then Who Can Be Saved?: Ethics and Ecclesiology in Veritatis Splendor,” in Veritatis Splendor: American Responses, ed. Michael E. Allsopp and John J. O’Keefe (Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 11. 35. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Christ, Faith and the Challenge of Cultures.” Accessed at: https://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/ratzhong.htm. 36. James Sellers, Theological Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 34-38. 37. Charles E. Curran, The Catholic Moral Tradition Today: A Synthesis (Washing- ton, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1999), 30-55. 38. James M. Gustafson, Christ and the Moral Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 240-247. 39. Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 78, emphasis in original. 166 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman when he looks out a twentieth-story window. The two perspectives, though different and clearly partial to the extent that our viewer can see only what the two windows allow him to see, put into reliable and adequate focus what truly lies outside the two windows. When you look out a first-story window, this is what you see of what truly lies outside the building; when you look out a twentieth-story window, this is what you see of what truly lies outside the building. Bernard Lonergan developed a theory of perspectivism with respect to human knowledge, which profoundly impacts our understanding of conscience in general, and conscience as object-orientation in specific. This theory applies to our present question in that different perspectives on reality and on norms that derive from conscience as object-orientation derive from different perspectives or ways of looking at reality. Just as his perspectives from two different windows lead the man to different, but reliably true views of the reality that lies outside his building, so also conscience as object-orientation may lead to two different perspectives on an ethical issue and the objective norms that guide responses to that issue. This perspectival approach confronts and addresses magisterial charges of relativism aimed at those who have a different perspective than that of the Magisterium on an ethical issue and the application of the objective norm to that issue. Writing on the nature of historical knowledge, Lonergan puts the foregoing in stark philosophical language: “Where relativism has lost hope about the attainment of truth, perspectivism stresses the complexity of what the historian is writing about and, as well, the specific difference of historical from mathematical, scientific and philosophic knowledge.”40 Theological ethical knowledge, we add, exhibits the same difference. Relativism concludes to the falsity of a judgment; perspectivism concludes to its partial but reliable truth. Lonergan offers three factors that lead to perspectival human knowledge, including moral knowledge. First, human knowers are finite, the information available to them at any given time is incomplete, and they cannot attend to or master all the data available to them. Second, the knowers are selective, given their different historical and cultural socializations, personal experiences, and ranges of data offered to them. Third, knowers are individually different, and we can expect them to have different interpretations of the data (and objective norms) available to them. Human knowers are like our viewer at first-story and twentieth- story windows; they get partial but reliable views of what truly lies outside the windows. Our normal experience enables us to predict that, if

40. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder, 1972), 217. gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 167 both our viewer at the windows and the moral theologian ascended to higher levels, they would each get a different, but still partial and reliably true, view again. Every human judgment of truth, including every judgment of moral truth, is a limited judgment and decision based on limited data and understanding. “So far from resting on knowledge of the universe, [a judgment] is to the effect that, no matter what the rest of the universe may prove to be, at least this is so,”41 and a moral judgment of a well- informed conscience is to the effect that, no matter what the rest of the universe may prove to be, at least this action is to be done and that action is to be avoided. It is precisely the necessarily limited nature of human understandings and judgments that leads to perspectivism, not as to a source of falsity but as to a source of partial but reliable truth. John Paul II’s and Benedict’s concern with relativism leads them to prioritize a ‘man-in-relationship-to-law’ model of conscience where the objective norms of the Magisterium provide the ‘truth’, and subjective conscience applies this truth syllogistically through the process of understanding, judgment, decision, and action. This is a very different perspective for Pope Benedict on the role, function, and authority of conscience in comparison to the perspective of theologian Joseph Ratzinger and his commentary on GS 16. “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.”42 Ratzinger’s perspective is in line with Pope Francis’ perspective on the role, function, and authority of conscience.

Pope Francis on Conscience Although it is still early in Francis’ papacy and he has not systematically presented his views on conscience and its inviolability, we can glean insight into his views on the basis of his distinction between realities and ideas and his reflections on conscience. First, while Francis clearly rejects

41. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans, 1957), 344, emphasis added. See also Method in Theology, 217-219. 42. Joseph Ratzinger, “The Dignity of the Human Person,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, vol. 5, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder, 1969), 134. 168 michael G. lawler & todd a. salzman relativism43 and affirms objective norms (EG 64), he warns that “realities are more important than ideas” and there has to be an ongoing dialectic between reality and ideas “lest ideas become detached from realities … objectives more ideal than real … ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom” (EG 231). Sociological surveys repeat- edly affirm the vast disconnect between the objective norms of the Mag- isterium on sexual ethics, the absolute norms that prohibit artificial contraception, homosexual acts, and communion for the divorced and remarried without annulment, for example, and the perspectives of the Catholic faithful. According to these surveys, these ideas or objective norms are detached from reality, and Catholics are following their consciences to make practical judgments on these and other moral matters. Francis calls for “harmonious objectivity” where ideas “are at the service of communication, understanding, and praxis” (EG 232). Such objectivity can be found in the conscience, even the consciences of atheists. In his exchange with an Italian journalist on the issue of atheists, Pope Fran- cis commented, “the question for those who do not believe in God is to abide by their own conscience. There is sin, also for those who have no faith, in going against one’s conscience. Listening to it and abiding by it means making up one’s mind about what is good and evil.”44 The ‘making up one’s mind’ is, we maintain, not an endorsement of relativism, which Francis clearly rejects, but an affirmation of perspectivism that recognizes plural truths that must be discerned by conscience as objective- orientation through the hermeneutical lens of conscience as subjective- orientation informed by, among other sources, external, objective norms. Francis’ statement on conscience seems to affirm our assessment. So we also [like Jesus] must learn to listen more to our conscience. Be careful, however: this does not mean we ought to follow our ego, do whatever interests us, whatever suits us, whatever pleases us. That is not conscience. Conscience is the interior space in which we can listen to and hear the truth, the good, the voice of God. It is the inner place of our relationship with Him, who speaks to our heart and helps us to discern, to understand the path we ought to take, and once the decision is made, to move forward, to remain faithful.45

43. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 231 (hereafter cited in text as EG). Accessed at: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-fran cesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftnref130. 44. editorial, “Pope Francis Tells Atheists to Abide by Their Own Consciences,” The Guardian, September 11, 2014. Accessed at: http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2013/sep/11/pope-francis-atheists-abide-consciences. 45. Pope Francis, “Jesus Always Invites Us: He Does Not Impose,” Angelus, June 30, 2013 (accessed at: http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2013/06/jesus-always- invites-us-he-does-not.html). gaudium et spes and dignitatis humanae 169

This statement reflects a very different model of conscience than Francis’ two predecessors. His model is much more in line with Häring’s ‘restless- heart-towards-God’ model than Grisez’s ‘man-in-relationship-to-law’ model and strikes us as more faithful to the long-established Catholic tradition and its teaching on the inviolability of conscience.

Michael G. Lawler is the Amelia and Emil Graff Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology at Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA. E-mail: michaellawler@ creighton.edu. Todd A. Salzman is the Amelia and Emil Graff Professor of Cath- olic Theology at Creighton University. Their recent co-authored publications include: Catholic Theological Ethics: Ancient Questions, Contemporary Responses (2016); The Church in the Modern World: Gaudium et Spes Then and Now (2014); “Catholic Theological Method for the 21st Century,” Theological Studies (2013); and Sexual Ethics: A Theological Introduction (2012). Address: Creighton Uni- versity, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE 68178, USA. E-mail: toddsalzman@ creighton.edu.