On July of 1968, Pope Paul VI published one of the most controversial encyclicals that any pope has ever published:Humanae Vitae (On Human Life). In this encyclical the pope tried to bring to a close the question on contraception that for a long time had captivated the minds of many theologians and bishops. In the encyclical the pope states, "…The Church calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life" (HV, 12). Thus any action that separates these two components of any sexual activity is declared by the Church as morally wrong. With this statement the question of contraception was thought to be closed.

However, such wasn't the case. It is our experience now a day that the faithful has ignored such strong statement by the pope. Many theologians have expressed their disapproval by giving public statements on the matter. There have been a variety of opinions regarding the Magisterium's role regarding this teaching. Very few of opposing theologians have given credit to the pope's teaching on this issue. Many of them have argued that the pope's argument of natural law violates the traditional use of them.

What is interesting is that many who object to the teachings of Paul VI and succeeding popes do so from a concern to what they perceive as a lack of trust the official Magisterium gives to individuals’ consciences in moral choices matter of morals.

In this article, I will reflect on some of these arguments from “conscience” that some contemporary theologians use to approve the use of contraception. As we will further see, their arguments do not hold true because a good Christian conscience would strive to conform itself with the teachings of the Church. Those who argue in that use of contraceptives is justified as long as their motives arise from an examination of conscience find themselves at odd with Church teaching because their definition of conscience is incongruent with the Church’s very own definition of conscience.

One such theologian, for example, was Richard McBrien. He pointed out that many of the reactive objections from some Episcopal Conferences against Humanae Vitae emerged as a concern “on the primacy of conscience, the need to be understanding and forgiving, and the judgment that Catholics who sincerely cannot follow the encyclical's teaching are not thereby separated from the love of God through mortal sin” (1024).

I find it interesting that at the time the encyclical was published some bishops called for understanding and forgiveness towards those who cannot follow the teaching. Giving the primacy of conscience as a reason not to follow a teaching of the Church is like declaring that the Church's teaching can contradict the human conscience, even when the arguments forbidding contraception by the encyclical do not come from ecclesiastical authority, but from the natural law, which is what guides all people towards God.

For example, one can read the the immediate response given by the German Bishops at the time. They said that "Pastors must respect the responsible decisions of conscience made by the faithful."[i] Also, the Dutch bishops gave an explanation a little more elaborate when they declared that while all the faithful are called to respect the authority of the Church, there are "many factors which determine one's personal conscience regarding marriage rules, for examples mutual love, the relations in the family, and social circumstances."[ii] The Dutch bishops seem to point out that even though the teachings of the Church should be followed, the couples are more capable than the Church to make a good decision of conscience.

It might have been confusing for pastors and people in general to read of bishops’ doubting their God-given authority on matters of marriage and morality. The problem at that time, however, was one of perspective. Since some had declared the conscience as the sole source of ones capacity to make choices, not knowing the role that the Church played in the formation or guidance of such conscience was challenging. The Scandinavian bishops point this matter in a clearer sense when they said, "No one, including the Church can absolve anyone from the obligation to follow his conscience…If someone for weighty and well-considered reasons cannot become convinced by the argumentation of the encyclical [Humanae Vitae], it has always been conceded that he is allowed to have a different view from that presented in a non-infallible statement of the Church" [iii].

Judging from what the Second Vatican Council said about conscience we may conclude that the Church, by presenting a teaching that goes beyond what people's conscience decide, it is a teaching that binds only those who feel in their conscience the need to be bound by it. In this case, I cannot think of any teaching that comes from Church authority that is not subjected to the individual's conscience.

Anne Patrick, a feminine theologian, believed that a conscience should be liberated from external oppression in order to let itself be useful for the individual making the choices. She writes, “our choices and ourselves are independent realities, mutually influencing each other. Vision alone will not suffice, however, we must also grow more confident and competent in skill or practical reasoning” (208). The key word here is confident. Patrick believes that one must have confidence that one can make the right choice. If we were to find out that our conscience acted wrong, we should think that God gave us the gift of an infallible conscience and that we ought to be freed from torturing ourselves with guilt. The problem that she sees in Catholic circles is that consciences are not given the necessary freedom from the authority of the Church to act out of their own responsibility of conscience. She believes that Catholics place too much trust in the magisterial teaching of the Church.

“…Catholics have long understood that divine authority is expressed in a human institution and through human leaders, much the way all Christians have believed that God's word has been expressed in a humanly composed and humanly edited collection of writings that is the Bible” (28).

Patrick believed that the Church may not speak directly from God. She calls into question the very authority of the Magisterium and of the Roman Pontiff. The authority of the Church, for Patrick, is such that it suppresses any new form of expression that may differ from authoritative Church teaching. She gives as an example the case of Charles Curran and the Vatican. In different manners, the Church is trying to present her truth and leave no room for any personal development of conscience.

In Patrick's view, conscience is influenced by the surroundings; but its ultimate choice of actions resides in the self. In this perspective the knowledge of what is objectively good is irrelevant to one’s own choice. If we are told by Christian faith what is good or evil, it only serves the conscience as a counseling factor. If Paul VI teaches that contraception is an intrinsic disordered act, it is a consultative statement and if one feels within his conscience that the teaching cannot be lived, one can choose not to and the conscience should liberate him from any guilt. The rules and laws of society and religion only serve as consultative entities.  In Patrick’s view of conscience, decisions between good and bad come from the person alone. Conscience is the right that every person has to make private choices independent of anything else. Any action is good as long as one gave it a sincere thought. Patrick seems to deny that in order to act consciously one need to have some knowledge of what ought to be good or bad according to some principle[v].

In order to liberate the conscience, Patrick calls for a whole change of paradigms. She shows an extreme trust in a person's deliberation for the good. Bad actions can never come from an individual who really thinks about the best good possible. She claims that many of our anxieties come as a consequence of searching for a Truth, when the real case is that there are some truths that are meant to be discovered by the individual's conscience and some others that are meant to remain away from us. In order to be truly at peace, one must learn how to detach one self from any external authority, including the Church's.

For Patrick's there is no actual sense on a search for the truth, as the Church so strongly believes when she defines doctrine. She believes that behind the Church's definition of moral she tries to make it possible for human beings to flourish as the creator intends. But according to Patrick, nobody can tell what the creator intends for each person, except in ones conscience. The Church cannot know God's intention for all people. Even though the Catholic Church claims to have all authority to discern the truth and the good she goes, "without emphasizing the fact of its limitations in relation to divine transcendence" (104). The Church, in Patrick's view, is not capable of declaring the truth in morals because it lacks certitude.

Patrick will conclude that certain Church teachings do not bind people because they are not convincing (105). If people do not take the teaching because it does not make sense to their conscience, then it is not binding. "In the face of widespread non-reception of the teaching of Humanae Vitae and other related moral doctrines, Roman officials have used the power of their office to shore up unconvincing arguments in support of teachings of sexual and reproductive ethics and the status of women" (105).

We can see that for Patrick the teachings of Humanae Vitae and other sexual ethics are not a matter of natural law, but a sign of supremacy of consciences. For example, if those in the Magisterium believe in their conscience that contraception is wrong, they will impose that teaching on the people.

In light of an individualist’s view of conscience we may say that the statements from many bishops leaving it to a couple's conscience makes perfect sense. However, if we are to say that those people who do not feel in their conscience that they are capable to following the teaching of a non-infallible statement from the Church, what are we to say of the whole Catechism of the Catholic Church which it has never been declared infallible by the pope.

According to many theologians, such as McBrien and Patrick, the Church's teaching office is only for advise to people's conscience and therefore they are not be bound to it.

Patrick's answer to the questions of a personal conscience and the Church authority can be enlighten by the Church herself. In the Second Vatican Council the fathers decided to define what a conscience was.

The Catholic Church speaks of conscience generally as the ability to know moral truth.[vi] The Fathers of Vatican II define conscience as a voice. This voice is, "ever calling in him to love and to do what is good and to avoid what is evil, tells him inwardly as the right moment: do this, shun that" (GS 16).  So far this definition seems to be the most common view that people has of conscience. Anne Patrick actually uses this definition to support her claim that conscience gives the person autonomy over his moral actions. Vatican II's definition, however, becomes a little more complicated when it says that man's "conscience is most secret core and his sanctuary. There he alone with God whose voice echoes in is depths" (GS 16). The person cannot make choices in an autonomous fashion because one is with God. This definition brings a little more complicated view of conscience.  As I will explain now, conscience is not something separated from the individual person. The choices that come out of the conscience belong to the person who makes them.

It must be clear, moreover, that the Church’s definition of conscience is not one that allows the person to act solely in his or her own will. Rather, conscience is that capacity which allows a person to conform his or her self to the truth of his or her own being. If I were to say that conscience is the capacity that a person has to do whatever he or she thinks is right, I would not be searching for a Christian Conscience, because, as we will see later, a Christian Conscience allows the human person to go out of his own being and actualize his potentials as a human being. As Bernard Haring says, "conscience is the person's moral faculty, the inner core and sanctuary where one knows oneself in confrontation with God and with fellowmen" (252).

The etymology of the word conscience can help us define it more clearly. Consciencia is a junction of two Latin words: con(with) scientia (knowledge). In this view we may say that conscience is a "knowing with." To know something implies the capacity to abstract something from the outside and place it somehow in the person. To know with, that is, to act in conscience, is to act not from inside but with some abstractions of the things outside of us.

With this in mind, St. Thomas Aquinas believed that conscience was not a power to make decisions, but an act of making the decision itself and in order to do so, one needed to have some knowledge of some sort. "Conscience, according to the very nature of the word, implies the relation of knowledge to something…i.e. knowledge applied to the individual act."[vii]

The Canadian Bishops believed that conscience is “…That ultimate judgment that every man is called to make as to whether a given course of action is acceptable to him without violating the principles which he is prepared to admit as governing his life. If he goes against those principles, he is said to be acting "against his conscience."(# 6)

John Paul II's view of conscience does not contradict the one of the bishops. However, his view of conscience brought the Canadian Bishop's definition to a higher and clearer understanding of conscience. The Canadian Bishops placed as the governing principle of man's conscience in a rather subjective view since the governing principle of conscience is simply that which man is prepared to admit.

For John Paul II, “Conscience bears witness to man's own rectitude of iniquity to man himself but, together with this and indeed even beforehand, conscience is the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man's soul, calling him fortiter et suaviter to obedience.[viii]

Conscience is in no way subjective to the individual. It is subjective to God, who is the creator of the human person. The conscience, thus, enables the human person to follow the Law of God written in his or her heart. It is true that we must follow our conscience even if it is wrong[ix], as Anne Patrick pointed out[x], however, following St. Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II continues saying that conscience, "Formulates moral obligationin the light of the natural law: it is the obligation to do what the individual, through the workings of his conscience, knows to be a good he is called to do here and now."[xi]

Conscience is a matter of moral concern because it is a capacity to act according to our natural capacity towards what is truly good for us. The natural law defines what is true to every human being. Our task is, therefore, to come to the knowledge of that truth in order to bring our lives to fulfillment. An action of conscience is one which brings the person towards his or her own identity: the answer to the question “who am I as a person?” An erroneous act of conscience is one which brings the person apart from his natural end, and thus avoids the challenge presented by the very same question.

John Paul II will further said, “Moral conscience does not close man within and insurmountable and impenetrable solitude, but opens him to the call, to the voice of God. In this, and in nothing else, lies the entire mystery and the dignity of the moral conscience: in being the place, the sacred place where God speaks to man”[xii]

If we say that God speaks to man through his conscience, we may say therefore, that a decision of conscience cannot come only from the individual, it must come from God. As we say above, Anne Patrick denied the fact that the Church had any authority to judge or oblige ones conscience. In this, Patrick was right. However, the Church has the authority to teach the truth which ultimately will lead the conscience to a right judgment.

Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae mentioned the fact that there are things in which the Church does not have the authority to teach. In the issue of contraception she does not have the right to say weather contraception is right or wrong in an individual's life. However, she is obliged by her nature of being sent by Christ to point to the truth that has been revealed to her. John Paul II alluded to this fact when he said,

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. (VS 64).

The teaching presented in Humanae Vitae did not come from the sole teaching office of the Church. The whole teaching on contraception cannot be qualified as something subject to the Church's Magisterium. It derives from the Natural Law. Thus, Paul VI wrote.

Since the Church did not make either of those laws [Natural and Eternal], she cannot change them. She can only be their guardian and interpreter; thus it would never be right for her to declare as morally permissible that which is truly not so (HV 18).

This article is not about Humanae Vitae's arguments of natural law. It is about the Church's authority to declare contraception an intrinsically disordered act and that such declaration does not violate the Church's understanding of conscience.

The Church can only conduct herself as the Divine Redeemer; she knows the weaknesses that trouble the human heart and she has compassion on the multitudes, and she forgives their sins. She cannot, however, do otherwise than to teach the law that is proper to human life restored to its original truth and guided by the Spirit of God (cf. HV 19).

In light of this, the Church has the mission to teach people's conscience what is the right thing to do regarding the use of contraceptives. It will ultimately be the decision of the individual's conscience to follow what the Church teaches on the matter or not. It will ultimately depend on the couple's trust in the Church as the one who brings the message of the Gospel. If people do not trust the Church, then there is little that she can do, but to keep pointing out to the truths which she believes to be revealed.          

When Humanae Vitae was first proclaimed, many theologians believed that it was just a matter of birth control and that it should be left for a couple’s privacy to decide. However, as Thierry Dejond poins out,

Pope Paul VI had the wisdom insight and courage to defend the worth of the human person by upholding the moral law…By underscoring the ethical dimension of the contraception issue, the Church shows that freedom involves choices on which the value of human nature, anthropology and metaphysics depend (3).

As Paul VI pointed out in the encyclical, the ethical view ofHumanae Vitae is based on a “total vision of man and his vocation, his natural and earthly as well as his supernatural and eternal vocation (HV 7). Therefore, to say that contraception is a matter of the privacy of conscience would be as to separate the issue of contraception to only one part of the human circumstance. It would be like saying that a person’s actions regarding sexual morality pertain only to one area of human endeavor.

The different conferences of bishops that questioned Humanae Vitae's authority over a couple's conscience came later with different definition's of conscience which give emphasis to the Church's true view of conscience. As Janet Smith points out, the Austrian bishops declared that, "There is freedom of conscience but not freedom from building a correct conscience" (151).

Gaudium et Spes said, "that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity." Thus, we may say that the only way in which a person may follow his conscience regarding the use of contraception is when that person claims ignorance. However, "This cannot be said of the man who takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience in by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin" (GS 16). To say that a person is forgiven to use contraceptives because they don't know better is not the same as to say that they should use them because their conscience tells them that they are doing right.

Someone has to be forming the conscience. The question is not whether those people that use contraceptives are following their conscience; rather, the question is who is forming their conscience. Janet Smith puts it in the following way,

If the Magisterium is not forming the conscience of the Catholic, again something else (one's own reason perhaps) or someone else is. The Catholic who rejects the teaching of the Church has, in effect, decided that something or someone else is a more authoritative teacher than the Church (153).

It is clear that the conscience of many Catholics today have not been properly formed on sexual ethics. The fact that many Catholics do not live up the standards of marriage thatHumanae Vitae and other Church documents call for proves for us that the Church is not directing their conscience. One may argue that the popular culture is.

Even though many people did not take the teachings ofHumanae Vitae, it is clear that as time passes since the encyclical was first proclaimed, people has become more aware of the authority from which the Church teaches. It would be mistaken ecclesiology to say that the Church is not competent to teach the conscience of couples as they plan their marriage. If the Church is not competent to lead the conscience towards the eternal good, then who is? It would leave all individuals floating in a sea of questions and burdens regarding the good and the bad of each action.