More on conscience and dissent

Why is dissent appropriate in Catholic life? I think Richard A. McCormick, S. J., put it well: “[A] community without it is a community in comfortable stagnation.” Readings in Moral Theology no. 6: Dissent in the Church (Curran and McCormick, eds). In addition, Frances A. Sullivan, S.J., one of the most respected writers in the Church on ecclesiology, observes in Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church not only that Catholics are properly faithful to the Magisterium even when they disagree so long as they give it appropriate respect (p. 166), but also that one of the ways in which noninfallible teaching are learned to be erroneous is when the Holy Spirit leads the faithful to reject the teaching. (p. 167-69).

It is difficult enough to know when dissenters are or are not lead by the Holy Spirit (as Sullivan discusses with great subtlety), but it is clear to me that if dissent is suppressed, voluntarily or not, the process of correcting error is harder to get off the ground.

Father Sullivan’s discussion of Vatican II makes it clear to me that there is a role for subjective conscience and judgment in Vatican II. Among other things, he observes that the Council rejected an amendment to the statement in the Declaration on Religious Freedom that the faithful “ought carefully attend to” the sacred and certain teachings of the Church. It was proposed that the text “ought carefully attend to” should read “ought to form their consciences according to.” This amendment was rejected when the Theological Commission in charge of the text maintained that the amendment was unduly restrictive and that the obligation of the faithful was “sufficiently expressed in the text as it stands.” It is hard to read the Council as saying something it precisely refused to say and that the Theological Commission specifically renounced.

 But, as I have said before, I recognize that there are two traditions within the Church on this. Two additional helpful sources: Readings in Moral Theology 14: Conscience (Charles Curran ed. ) (collecting essays with a variety of views); Linda Hogan, Confronting the Truth: Conscience in the Catholic Tradition (2000)(tracing the two traditions of conscience in Church history).
Steve