COSCIECE AD COTRACEPTIO

By Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D. 2009.

Oftentimes, one hears the phrase “the primacy of conscience” used by dissenters to
justify acts such as fornication, adultery, contraception, and even abortion, for proportionate
reasons. They say, for example, to couples: “The Church teaches the primacy of conscience. If
your conscience tells you that contraception is OK for good and responsible reasons, then it can
only be morally right and acceptable.” One dissident moral theologian, John Giles Milhaven,
asserted a year after the publication of Humanae Vitae that Catholic couples could freely practice
contraception as an “act of conscience.”1 Noting this sad state of affairs, Auxiliary Bishop of
Sydney, Australia and Professor of Bioethics and Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute in
Sydney, Anthony Fisher, writes: “‘Follow your conscience’ came to be a code for pursuing
personal preferences or reasonings over and against the teachings of Christ and the Church in
areas of sexuality, bioethics, remarriage and reception of the Eucharist. Here one’s conscience,
anchored in genuine, authentic feeling, becomes the highest Court of appeal. – it is infallible.
The language of the primary of conscience, unknown to the tradition, more often implied contest
with the Church rather than with the spirit of the age or the surrounding culture. Sophisticated
consciences yielded judgments in accord with the ew York Times than with L’Osservatore
Romano.”2
Criticizing the proportionalist “doctrine of the primary of conscience” employed by
certain revisionist moral theologians to further their dissent against Church teachings on
questions of sexuality, George Cardinal Pell of Sydney writes: “I have spoken against the so-
called ‘doctrine of the primacy of conscience,’ arguing that this is incompatible with traditional
Catholic teaching. …Conscience does not, even in the Catholic sense, enjoy primacy, because
conscience always involves a human act of judgment which could be mistaken… One should say
that the word of God has primacy or that truth has primacy, and that a person uses his conscience
to discern the truth in particular cases.” 3
Immediately after the publication of Humanae Vitae in 1968 many moral theologians
asserted that the faithful could rightfully dissent from the Church’s teaching on contraception,
following their consciences instead. Dissent on the issue of contraception soon broadened to
dissent on moral norms concerning fornication, adultery, masturbation, homosexual acts, to the
point where dissident moral theologian Philip Keane suggested that practically anything goes in
the area of human sexuality, so long as it accords with one’s conscience.4 The most well-known
of the dissenters in the United States, Charles E. Curran, who organized the revolt of many
American moral theologians from Humanae Vitae in 1968, went on to hold that dissent could be

1
J. G. MILHAVEN, The Grounds of the Opposition to ‘Humanae Vitae,’ “Thought,” 44 (1969), pp. 343-357.
Justifications for the use of contraception in the name of conscientious dissent are given in: W. C. BIER (ed.),
Conscience: Its Freedom and Limitation, Fordham University Press, New York, 1971.
2
A. FISHER, Moral Conscience in Ethics and the Contemporary Crisis of Authority, in Christian Conscience in
Support of the Right to Life. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life (23-25
February 2007), edited by E. Sgreccia and J. Laffitte, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City, 2008, p. 40.
3
G. PELL, Conscience, published by the Archdiocese of Sydney, March 3, 2004.
4
P. KEANE, Sexual Morality: A Catholic Perspective, Paulist Press, New York, 1977.

1
legitimate with respect to any specific moral teaching proposed by the Magisterium.5 Karl
Rahner, who had upheld the Church’s teaching on conscience in his 1963 book ature and
Grace: Dilemmas in the Modern Church,6 became one of the most influential dissenters on
issues of sexual morality after the end of the Second Vatican Council, joining the dissidents
against Pope Paul’s Encyclical on birth control.7
In his 1993 Encyclical Veritatis Splendor (Splendor of Truth), Pope John Paul II warned
that “certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent
that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken
by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The
individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which
hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one
has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgment
is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable
claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and ‘being at
peace with oneself,’ so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic
conception of moral judgment.
“As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development.
Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably
the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial
reality as an act of a person’s intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal
knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right
conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual
conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then
acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each
individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme
consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature.”8
Explaining how dissident theologians justify dissent from Church teachings, particularly,
with regard to certain questions of human sexuality which the Magisterium has spoken firmly
and definitively as being intrinsically evil, by a subjectivistic interpretation of conscience as an
autonomously ‘creative’ arbiter of moral norms, consistent with proportionalism’s model of
theonomous autonomy, the Holy Father, in Veritatis Splendor, writes: “The way in which one
conceives the relationship between freedom and law is intimately bound up with one’s
understanding of the moral conscience. Here the cultural tendencies in which freedom and law
are set in opposition to each other and kept apart, and freedom is exalted almost to the point of
idolatry – lead to a ‘creative’ understanding of moral conscience, which diverges from the
teaching of the Church’s tradition and her Magisterium.

5
C. E. CURRAN, Ten Years Later, “Commonweal,” 105 (July 7, 1978), p. 429. Cf. C. E. CURRAN, ew
Perspectives in Moral Theology, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 1974, pp. 19-22, 41-42, 192-
193, 211, 271-276.
6
K. RAHNER, ature and Grace: Dilemmas in the Modern Church, Sheed and Ward, London, 1963, pp. 50, 51-53,
55-56.
7
See, for example: K. RAHNER, On the Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae,’ “Catholic Mind,” 66 (November 1968), pp.
28-45 ; K. RAHNER, Theology and the Magisterium, “Theology Digest,” 29.3 (1981), p. 261. For a perceptive
critique of Rahner’s dissent from magisterial teaching on moral questions, see: R. McINERNY, Whither the Roman
Catholic Theologians?, “Center Journal,” 1.2 (1982), pp. 85-102.
8
JOHN PAUL II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 32.

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 “According to the opinion of some theologians, the function of conscience had been
reduced, at least at a certain period in the past, to a simple application of general norms to
individual cases in the life of the person. But those norms, they continue, cannot be expected to
foresee and to respect all the individual concrete acts of the person in all their uniqueness and
particularity. While such norms might somehow be useful for a correct assessment of the
situation, they cannot replace the individual personal decision on how to act in particular cases.
The critique already mentioned of the traditional understanding of human nature and of its
importance for the moral life has even led certain authors to state that these norms are not so
much a binding objective criterion for judgments of conscience, but a general perspective which
helps man tentatively to put order into his personal and social life. These authors also stress the
complexity typical of the phenomenon of conscience, a complexity profoundly related to the
whole sphere of psychology and the emotions, and to the numerous influences exerted by the
individual’s social and cultural environment. On the other hand, they give maximum attention to
the value of conscience, which the Council itself defined as ‘the sanctuary of man, where he is
alone with God whose voice echoes within him.’9 This voice, it is said, leads man not so much to
a meticulous observance of universal norms as to a creative and responsible acceptance of the
personal tasks entrusted to him by God.
“In their desire to emphasize the ‘creative’ character of conscience, certain authors no
longer call its actions ‘judgments’ but ‘decisions’: only by making these decisions
‘autonomously’ would man be able to attain moral maturity. Some even hold that this process of
maturing is inhibited by the excessively categorical position adopted by the Church’s
Magisterium in many moral questions; for them, the Church’s interventions are the cause of
unnecessary conflicts of conscience.
“In order to justify these positions, some authors have proposed a kind of double status of
moral truth. Beyond the doctrinal and abstract level, one would have to acknowledge the priority
of a certain more concrete existential consideration. The latter, by taking account of
circumstances and the situation, could legitimately be the basis of certain exceptions to the
general rule and thus permit one to do in practice and in good conscience what is qualified as
intrinsically evil by the moral law. A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in
some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid in general, and the norm of the
individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision about what is good and what
is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimise so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to
the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the
moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept.
“No one can fail to realize that these approaches pose a challenge to the very identity of
the moral conscience in relation to human freedom and God’s law.”10

The ature of Conscience

The Second Vatican Council states: “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law
which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love
and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…For man has

9
VATICAN II, Gaudium et Spes, no. 16.
10
JOHN PAUL II, Veritatis Splendor, nos. 54-56.

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in his heart a law inscribed by God…His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary.
There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”11
Conscience is not a special faculty distinct from the intellect but is rather a function of the
practical intellect judging the concrete act of an individual person as morally good or evil. It is
the judgment of practical reason with regard to the moral goodness or sinfulness of an action.
Conscience (conscientia) is defined as the practical judgment of reason upon an individual act
as good and to be performed, or as evil and to be avoided. It is “a judgment of reason whereby
the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in
the process of performing, or has already completed.”12

The Division of Conscience

There are different types of conscience. As regards the act considered by conscience, we
have: the antecedent conscience (which is a guide to future acts) and the consequent conscience
(a judge of past acts). As regards the act of assent, we have: a certain conscience (which judges
without fear of being mistaken) and the doubtful conscience (which either makes no judgment or
judges with fear of the opposite being true). With regard to conscience’s conformity with the
eternal law, we have the following: a lax conscience (which judges something to be lawful when
it is in fact sinful, or judges to be a venial sin something which is in fact a mortal sin), the
scrupulous conscience (which sees sin when there is none, or considers something to be mortally
sinful when in fact it is venially sinful), a tender conscience (which forms an objectively correct
judgment with ease even in finer distinctions between good and evil), a correct or true
conscience (which judges as good that which is good and evil that which is evil), and an
erroneous or false conscience (which judges as good that which is evil).
As regards the term ‘conscience’ to designate different levels of our awareness of moral
truth we have: 1. The particular moral conscience (conscientia in the narrower sense), which
refers to a practical judgment terminating a process of moral deliberation. Conscience, in this
sense, refers to reflective moral judgment that serves to bring to a conclusion a process of moral
deliberation. It is called particular since the judgment is the result of one’s reasoned and
thoughtful evaluation about the morality of a particular course of action ; 2. The general moral
conscience (also called synderesis by the Scholastics, though the term anamnesis is preferred by
Joseph Ratzinger,13 now Pope Benedict XVI), which is one’s personal awareness of basic moral

11
VATICAN II, Gaudium et Spes, no. 16.
12
CCC, 1778.
13
In his essay Conscience and Truth, published in the original German in 1995, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger writes:
“The word ‘anamnesis’ seeks here to affirm what Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: ‘When Gentiles who have
not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness’(2:14-
15)…
“The first level, which we might call the ontological level, of the phenomenon ‘conscience’ means that a kind of
primal remembrance of the good and the true (which are identical) is bestowed on us. There is an inherent
existential tendency of man, who is created in the image of God, to tend toward that which is in keeping with God.
Thanks to its origin, man’s being is in harmony with some things but not with others. This anamnesis of our origin,
resulting from the fact that our being is constitutively in keeping with God, is not a knowledge articulated in
concepts, a treasure store of retrievable contents. It is an inner sense, a capacity for recognition, in such a way that
the one addressed recognizes in himself an echo of what is said to him. If he does not hide from his own self, he
comes to the insight: this is the goal toward which my whole being tends, this is where I want to go”(J.

4
principles or truths. It is an awareness of moral truth, not at the level of particular actions and
situations, but at the level of general principles. Synderesis is our habitual awareness of the first
principles of practical reasoning and of morality ; 3. The transcendental conscience (not to be
confused with Walter Conn’s relativistic understanding of transcendental conscience which
denies objective moral absolutes14), which is a mode of self-awareness whereby we are aware of
ourselves as moral beings, impelled by our own nature, and morally bound, to seek the truth
about what we are to do. Conscience, at this level, is a dynamic thrust within oneself for moral
truth.

The Erroneous Conscience and the Objective Moral Order

We see that the conscience of a person is not always a true or correct conscience (which
conforms to the natural law and eternal law). In a great number of instances, we have persons
with erroneous or false consciences. Some may have a certain conscience, but this does not
guarantee that this conscience is true or correct; one may be absolutely certain of something yet
be absolutely mistaken. What we unfortunately see today are scores of priests, theologians,
religious and badly formed laity who, having erroneous or false consciences, justify the use of
contraception and other intrinsically evil acts against the teaching of the Catholic Church “in the
name of conscience.” To speak of a Catholic conscience rightly judging against the Magisterium
in favor of contraception and other intrinsically evil acts means that one has misunderstood the
meanings of Catholic conscience and Magisterium. Pope John Paul II writes: “Since the
Magisterium of the Church has been instituted by Christ the Lord to enlighten our consciences,
to appeal to this very conscience precisely in order to question the truth of what has been taught
by the Magisterium, is to reject the Catholic conception both of the Magisterium and of the
moral conscience. To speak of an inviolable dignity of conscience without further qualification,
is to run the grave risk of error. In point of fact the situation in which a person finds himself who
falls into error, after having made use of all the means at his disposal in search of the truth, is
very different from that of a person who takes little care to discover the truth, either through
mere acquiescence in the opinion of the majority – which opinion has often been deliberately
created by the powers of the world – or through negligence. Vatican II reminds us of this with its
clear teaching: ‘It often happens that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable
to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity. This cannot be said of the man who takes little
trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded
through the habit of committing sin’(Const. Gaudium et spes, 16).
“The Magisterium of the Church is to be placed among the means that the redemptive
love of Christ has provided us with to avoid this danger of error. In His name, the Magisterium
possesses a true and proper authority to teach. Thus it cannot be said that a member of the
faithful has carried out a diligent search for the truth if he has not taken into account the teaching
of the Magisterium; or if, equating it with any other source of knowledge, he sets himself up as
its judge; or if, when in doubt, he prefers to follow his own opinion or that of theologians, rather
than the certain teaching of the Magisterium.

RATZINGER, Conscience and Truth, in Values in a Time of Upheaval, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2006, pp. 91-
92).
14
W. CONN, Conscience: Development and Self-Transcendence, Religious Education Press, Birmingham, AL,
1981.

5
 “To continue speaking, in such a situation, of the dignity of conscience, without adding
anything else, is not in accord with the teaching of Vatican II and the whole Tradition of the
Church.”15
Conscience discerns what is right and wrong; it doesn’t create the objective moral order
of right and wrong. We are not, through our judgment of conscience, the arbiters of good and
evil. Conscience is the proximate norm of morality, not the ultimate and objective norm of
morality. “The dignity of this rational forum and the authority of its voice and judgments derive
from the truth about moral good and evil, which it is called to listen to and to express. This truth
is indicated by the ‘divine law,’ the universal and objective norm of morality. The judgment of
conscience does not establish the law’; rather it bears witness to the authority of the natural law
and of the practical reason with reference to the supreme good, whose attractiveness the human
person perceives and whose commandments he accepts. ‘Conscience is not an independent and
exclusive capacity to decide what is good and what is evil. Rather there is profoundly imprinted
upon it a principle of obedience vis-a-vis the objective norm which establishes and conditions the
correspondence of its decisions with the commands and prohibitions which are at the basis of
human behavior.’16”17
Pope John Paul explains that conscience derives the criteria of its judgments from the
eternal, objective and universal law of God: “Where does conscience derive its criteria of
judgment? On what basis does our moral conscience judge the actions we are about to carry out
or have carried out? Let us listen attentively to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council: ‘The
highest norm of human life is the divine law itself – eternal, objective and universal, by which
God orders, directs and governs the whole world and the ways of the human community…It is
through his conscience that man sees and recognizes the demands of the divine law. He is bound
to follow this conscience faithfully in all his activity so that he may come to God, who is his last
end.’18
“Let us reflect attentively on these words which are so deep and enlightening. Moral
conscience is not an autonomous judge of our actions. It derives the criteria for its judgments
from that ‘eternal, objective and universal divine law,’ from that ‘unchangeable truth’ of which
the conciliar text speaks: that law, that truth, which the intelligence of man can discover in the
order of being.”19

Reasons for Having an Erroneous Conscience

Conscience is not an infallible judge; it can make mistakes: “If moral conscience is not
the ultimate instance which decides what is good and what is evil, but must conform itself to the
unchangeable truth of the moral law, then it follows that conscience is not an infallible judge: it
can err.
“This point merits special attention. ‘Do not be conformed,’ the Apostle teaches, ‘to this
world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind’(Rom 12:2). In the judgment of our
consciences there remains always the possibility of error.
15
JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Second International Congress of Moral Theology, Sala Clementina, Vatican
City, November 12, 1988, no. 4.
16
JOHN PAUL II, Dominum et Vivificantem, no. 43: AAS 78 (1986), 859; cf. VATICAN II, Gaudium et Spes, no.
16; VATICAN II, Dignitatis Humanae, no. 3.
17
JOHN PAUL II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 60.
18
VATICAN II, Dignitatis Humanae, no. 3.
19
JOHN PAUL II, General Audience, August 17, 1983, no. 2.

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 “The consequence which derives from such error is very serious: when man follows his
own erroneous conscience, his action is no longer correct, it does not objectively realize what is
good for the human person. And this is so for the simple fact that the judgment of conscience is
not the ultimate moral instance.”20
The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists a number of reasons why one can end up with
an erroneous conscience that approves, for example, of contraception: “Ignorance of Christ and
His Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken
notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of
conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.”21

The eed to Form a True or Correct Conscience

How does someone come to see that contraception, for example, is intrinsically evil? By
obtaining a true or correct conscience in conformity with the natural law and eternal law. There
is a serious obligation for man to possess a true or correct conscience for conscience is the
proximate norm of morality which must act as a guide for man’s whole moral life. Now it is of
the utmost importance for him to be guided by a true, and not false, standard of morality. The
means for obtaining a true or correct conscience include: 1. Knowledge of the laws governing
our moral life; 2. Seeking counsel and spiritual guidance from wise persons; 3. Assiduous prayer
to God for enlightenment; 4. Removal of the obstacles to a correct or true conscience, the chief
of which being the obscurity resulting from unforgiven sin.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about the formation of conscience:
“Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is
upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true
good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for
human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own
judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.
“The education of conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the
child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience. Prudent
education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear, selfishness and pride, resentment arising from
guilt, and feelings of complacency, born of human weakness and faults. The education of
conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.
“In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path; we must
assimilate it in faith and prayer, and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience
before the Lord’s Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or
advice of others and guided by the authoritative teachings of the Church.”22
Veritatis Splendor explains the role of the Catholic Church and her Magisterium in the
formation of consciences: “Christians have a great help for the formation of conscience in the
Church and her Magisterium. As the Council affirms: ‘In forming their consciences the Christian
faithful must give careful attention to the sacred and certain teaching of the Church. For the
Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. Her charge is to announce and teach
authentically that truth which is Christ, and at the same time with her authority to declare and

20
JOHN PAUL II, op. cit., no. 3.
21
CCC, 1792.
22
CCC, 1783-1785.

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confirm the principles of the moral order which spring from human nature itself.’23 It follows
that the authority of the Church, when she pronounces on moral questions, in no way undermines
the freedom of consciences of Christians. This is so not only because freedom of conscience is
never freedom ‘from’ the truth but always and only freedom ‘in’ the truth, but also because the
Magisterium does not bring to the Christian conscience truths which are extraneous to it; rather it
brings to light the truths which it ought already to possess, developing them from the starting
point of the primordial act of faith. The Church puts herself always and only at the service of
conscience, helping it to avoid being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine proposed by
human deceit (cf. Eph 4:14), and helping it not to swerve from the truth about the good of man,
but rather, especially in more difficult questions, to attain the truth with certainty and to abide in
it.”24
In one of his many General Audiences during his Pontificate, Pope John Paul explained
that “it is in the Church that the person’s moral conscience grows and matures; by the Church it
is helped ‘not to be tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the
cunning of men.’ The Church, in fact, is ‘the pillar and bulwark of the truth’(1 Tim 3:15).
Fidelity to the magisterium of the Church, therefore, prevents the moral conscience from straying
from the truth about man’s good.
“It is not right then to regard the moral conscience of the individual and the magisterium
of the Church as two contenders, as two realities in conflict. The authority which the
magisterium enjoys by the will of Christ exists so that the moral conscience can attain the truth
with security and remain in it.”25

23
VATICAN II, Dignitatis Humanae, no. 14.
24
JOHN PAUL II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 64.
25
JOHN PAUL II, General Audience, August 24, 1983, no. 3.