Conscience and Catholicism: Rights, Responsibilities, and Institutional Responses

Leading ethicists and theologians address "Conscience," a term loaded with meaning and controversy in the Catholic Vhurch in recent decades around issues like political participation, human sexuality, war and institutional violence, and theological dissent. Many essays focus on the tension between the primacy of conscience (codified at Vatican II) and the processes and cultures of Catholic institutions, including schools, hospitals, and medical research facilities.

David E. DeCosse is the Director of Campus Ethics Programs at Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, where he is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Religious Studies. He edited But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War and Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children. His theological work has appeared in such publications as Theological Studies and National Catholic Reported. He is currently working on a book on Catholic social thought and social and economic inequality.

Kristin E. Heyer is Bernard J. Hanley Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University. Her books include Kinship Across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration (2012); Prophetic and Public: the Social Witness of U.S. Catholicism (2006), and the edited volume Catholics and Politics: Dynamic Tensions between Faith and Power (2008). She serves on the boards of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church and the Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education.