Catholics recognise that there is profound disagreement in the community about many moral issues,
including the abortion issue. This does not however reduce the issues to ones of personal choice.
The morality of slavery or apartheid have been the source of considerable disagreement: but this
does not mean that these hard issues should be left to the 'personal' decision of those involved.
This brief paper will look at conscience in the context of abortion, but the principles of concerning
conscience are applicable for other moral issues.
Some have suggested that the issues of abortion and the respect due to unborn human life are best
left to the personal consciences of the women concerned. The Catholic Church has always held to
the primacy of conscience and taught that individuals must follow their consciences even when they
are wrong. (Vatican II, On Religious Liberty (1965), �2)
None the less it is important to understand the difference between conscience and personal
preference or arbitrary private intuition (cf. Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World (1965), �30,
on "wallowing in the luxury of a merely individualistic morality").Conscience is the inner core of
human beings whereby, compelled to seek the truth, they recognise the objective standards of
moral conduct, indeed the dictates of God's law, and make a practical judgment of what is to be
done here and now in applying those standards (Rom 2:15-16; Vatican II, On Religious Liberty
(1965), ��2,3; The Church in the Modern World (1965), �16). Thus the moral character of actions is
determined by objective criteria, not merely by the sincerity of intentions or the goodness of motives,
(Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World (1965), �51) and all people are called to form their
consciences accordingly.
Deep within their conscience human persons discover a law which they have not laid upon
themselves but which they must obey. Its voice, ever calling them to love and to do what is
good and avoid evil, tells them inwardly at the right moment: do this, shun that. For human
persons have in their hearts a law inscribed by God... the more a correct conscience
prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided
by the objective standards of moral conduct. Yet 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 person 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.
- Second Vatican Council, The Church in the Modern World (1965), ��27
How then do we form a right conscience? Catholics seek to inform their consciences according to
reason and revelation as guided by Church teachings. They believe that by "their faith, aroused and
sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching authority
(magisterium), and obeying it, receives not the mere word of human beings, but truly the word of
God." (Vatican II, The Church (1964), �12). It is to the pope and the bishops that this teaching
authority is entrusted. As the Second Vatican Council put it: "in matters of faith and morals, the
bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful, for their part, are obliged to accept their
bishops' teaching with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind" (The Church (1964), �25). Thus
for a Catholic to disagree with what the Church teaches on abortion, he or she would need to have
very clear reasons and convictions. These could only follow a genuine search for meaning through
docility to church teaching, reading, prayer, taking counsel, developing the virtue of prudence, and
so on. Any conflict would then be within the person's conscience, rather than between conscience
and some alien magisterial authority.
In forming their consciences the faithful must pay 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.
It is her duty to proclaim and teach with authority the truth which is Christ and, at the same
time, to declare and confirm by her authority the principles of the moral order which spring
from human nature itself.
- Second Vatican Council, On Religious Liberty (1965), �14
It is sometimes rightly pointed out that no pope has proclaimed the Church's teaching on abortion in
a specific ex cathedra statement declaring it as an essential matter of faith and infallibly true, and
that there are degrees of authority in magisterial pronouncements. But Catholics believe that even
when he does not speak ex cathedra the pope's authoritative teachings must be accepted with
respect and sincere assent, and that the consistent teaching of the Church must be adhered to "with
the loyal and obedient assent of faith" (Vatican II, The Church (1964), �25). The Church's teaching
on abortion has been unfailingly proposed throughout the centuries by popes, bishops and
theologians, and restated in the clearest possible terms by the Second Vatican Council of all the
bishops, as well as by all the popes of modern times and the bishops' conferences of many
countries (including almost annual statements by our bishops). The gravity with which the Church
views this matter is demonstrated by the fact that the procurement of abortion is one of the few
offences which still incurs an automatic excommunication under the new Code of Canon Law (CIC
1398).
Sometimes it is said that a person might publicly dissent from Church teaching on a matter like
abortion and still remain a bona fide Catholic. But those who do are, of course, dissenting from a
grave teaching of the Church. Scholars and teachers may withhold assent provisionally from non-
infallibly proposed teaching under certain stringently defined conditions; they may still debate such
issues as 'ensoulment'; and they may wish to clarify and re-present Church teaching in this area in
contemporary terms. But they do not serve the Church as authentic teachers if they publish views
contrary to the Church's unambiguous, explicit and highly authoritative teaching. The vocation of
other Catholics, such as politicians, lawyers and judges, is a fortiori to take the initiative in civilising
and making more humane and moral the affairs of human society. 6
Thus the Catholic Church today is clearly the most outstanding mouthpiece for the rights of the
innocent and defenceless unborn, and many ordinary Catholics suffer the 'martyrdom' of sticking to
their often inconvenient and unpopular principles on this matter which they believe is the greatest
human rights issue of our time. They do so because they believe abortion is the single most
pressing human rights issue of our time: a matter of life and death for 60,000 Australian babies,
180,000 British babies and many more babies in the USA and elswhere every year.
And they do so because they care about what kind of wordl we are building for the twenty-first
century. They dream of a society where nobody's conscience will allow them to kill the weak and
defenceless of whatever age, state of physical or intellectual perfection, address or social class, a
society in which well-informed conscience rules, and thus justice, compassion and truth.
Fr Anthony Fisher OP
CompuServe ID 76711,1340 (Michael G Hains CRN Sysop)
