Aikoye, John Musa
(2013)
The nature, role and formation of cnscience in the thoughts of John Henry Newman, Germain Grisez and Linda Hogan: an assessment of their thoughts in relation to Church teaching.
PhD thesis, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth.
Abstract
From the birth of Christianity to the present day, conscience has been a prominent and
essentially contentious concept in Catholic moral theology and tradition. Catholic theologians
have, for centuries, engaged in generating elaborate treatises on the meaning, nature,
primacy, role and formation of this human capacity for moral choice.
The concept has raised bitter, divisive and damaging disputations in history between
individual conscience and perceived objective truth that is subjective/objective dilemma. For
instance, Martin Luther unapologetically asserted that:
I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is
captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything,
since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. 1.
In the presence of ecclesiastical and political leaders, Luther has done no less than to
proclaim his ‘captive’ allegiance to the doctrine of the primacy of conscience. In response to
such a declaration, the Secretary to the Diet of Worms remonstrated with Luther as follows:
Lay aside your conscience, Martin; you must lay it aside because it is
in error; and it will be safe and proper for you to recant. Although you
say the councils have erred you will never be able to prove it, in
matters of faith at least, and even in matters of moral I fancy it will be
with much difficulty. 2.
Amongst the issues raised by this response, issues that are dealt with during the course of this
thesis, are that: (i) the primacy of conscience will inevitably lead to conflict between the
individual and the institutions, be they political or ecclesiastical; (ii) the expectation that the
individual conscience should ‘naturally’ defer to the professionalised ‘wisdom’ of the
institution; (iii) the ecclesiastical management of the erroneous conscience; and (iv) even in
the event of the institution being in error, it is better that the individual recant his or her own insights and continue to obey institutional edicts because as a minority of one, he or she will
always find it inherently difficult to satisfactorily establish such institutional error. There are
some, however, who would argue at this stage that far from exercising the primacy of
conscience Luther is actually concretising what John Henry Newman was to later describe as
“the right of self-will.” 3. Luther’s solitary, but principled stand foreshadows Mahatma
Gandhi’s assertion that, “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” 4.
While matters of conscience for today’s Catholics usually enter their consciousness at
less grandiose levels than those experienced by Martin Luther, such Catholics are nonetheless
faced with morally demanding struggles. Hence, this thesis examines the Church’s interaction
with conscience as she seeks to “inform” it as to how Christians should respond in moral
areas. It also seeks to examine the individual Catholic’s personal conscientious management
of such modern moral dilemmas from a stance that is informed by the ethical notion of
intrinsece malum or malum in se, 5. for example.
This thesis undertakes such a task through the ‘lens’ of the thinking, theories and life
experiences of these theologians: John Henry Newman, Germain Grisez and Linda Hogan, all
of whom are absolutely convinced of the notion that conscience is a unique but complex
human phenomenon that cannot and must not be ignored or mismanaged. It is in the light of
their unique contributions to the study of the notion of conscience, then, that this thesis seeks
answers to the following questions:
1. What does conscience mean in a pluralist society that is characterised by
individualism, subjectivism, relativism and very diverse moral values?
2. What roles, functions or goals do these scholars assign to conscience?
3. What is their understanding of the term “primacy of conscience”?
4. How do they relate conscience to the intention and circumstance of human actions?
5. What is their response, if any, to the prospect of the individual conscience against
specific moral church teaching?
6. In the inevitable event of such conflicts occurring, what solutions do these scholars
proffer in order that they be resolved?
7. How do these scholars relate conscience to the role of the Holy Spirit (teacher of
truth)?
8. To what extent, if any, does their understanding of the notion of a Christian
conscience differ from, or closely interrelate with, the notions of goodwill and truth?
9. How do they treat erroneous conscience in terms both of the ‘informing Church’ and
the ‘misguided’ Catholic?
AIM AND PURPOSE OF THE THESIS
As already noted, this thesis draws from ongoing modern theological enquiry
evidenced in the works of the English clerical scholar, John Henry Newman, the American
lay moral theologian, Germain Grisez, and the Irish moral theologian, Linda Hogan. As with
the overall history of the study of conscience, the writings of these scholars on the nature and
function of conscience reveal distinctive differences in the moral theological views they
represent. Newman’s general approach to the topic could be characterised as being
distinctively religious, while Grisez’s is driven by philosophical/conformist principles and
Hogan’s by the tenets of personalism. The thesis evaluates the usefulness and efficacy of
these distinctive approaches by examining them in relation to the overall teaching tradition of
the Catholic Church.
Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
Keywords: |
conscience; John Henry Newman; Catholic moral theology;
Germain Grisez; Linda Hogan; primacy of conscience; |
Academic Unit: |
St Patrick's College, Maynooth > Faculty of Theology |
Item ID: |
14595 |
Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
Date Deposited: |
06 Jul 2021 16:17 |
URI: |
|
Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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