The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics recently hosted the conference "Conscience in Catholicism: Rights, Responsibilities, and Institutional Policies." Scholars from around the world gathered to ...

Primacy of conscience has been thrust to the fore of Church-wide discussions on marriage, contraception and homosexuality at the Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family. But as we saw happen in the ...

“Choice” is a byword of our secular age. For many, it has become integral to their concept of freedom. In one respect, choice is essential to our shared humanity — it is a way of pointing to our ...

This, at least, is how I read the doctrine of Protestants as well as of Catholics. The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor expedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State ...

The New York Times obituary for former defense secretary Robert McNamara (1916–2009) included these sad lines about his later life: “He wore the expression of a haunted man. He could be seen in the ...

Fundamental to the liberties of man is that faculty of the soul termed “conscience.” Today that term connotes for most people only a moral monitor—a twinge of mind that indicates a moral judgment of ...

After the existential drama of Heidegger's notion of being-towards-death, why do we need a discussion of conscience? As so often in Being and Time, Heidegger insists that although his description of ...

The Gospel reading yesterday was providential. The small, noisy group of conservatives, mostly Americans, who continue to challenge the teaching of Pope Francis and two synods of bishops relating to ...

Freedom of conscience is an individual's last line of defense. That framing is not rhetorical. It is a legal and moral reality.