The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology by Matthew Levering

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology by Matthew Levering Peter Cajka Matthew Levering, The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021), viii + 360 pages. Matthew Levering wants to know why conscience, important before the Second Vatican Council, became even more dominant in Catholic moral theology in the late twentieth century. His book seeks to understand, as he frames it, “why, in Catholicism, conscience so easily and stubbornly takes over the whole terrain” (11). Levering bats away confession as an answer to this smart question, observing how the sacrament has declined. He then quickly dismisses the debate over Humanae vitae as ground zero. The battle over contraception is often seen as a decisive moment in a supposed twentieth-century pivot from law to conscience. Instead, Levering provides a more creative and interesting story. Conscience sky-rocketed to a place of prominence in the late twentieth century on the wings of the existentialist surge in Continental and Catholic thought after important intellectual foundations laid by Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers in the 1940s inspired Karl Rahner, Joseph Fuchs, and Bernard Häring to infuse Catholic moral theology with existentialism in the 1960s and after. These important intellectuals began a turn towards conscience well before the 1960s. Then they inspired a generation of moral theologians to amplify conscience in Catholic tradition. Conscience remains important today. Levering’s book parallels the pathbreaking insights found in historian Edward Baring’s recent work, Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the [End Page 87] Making of Continental Philosophy, a book that shows how Catholics were crucial in spreading existentialism and phenomenology across Europe in the twentieth century, making it truly “continental.”1 The approach of infusing conscience with existential thought has been picked up and pursued most prominently in recent years by Jesuit James Keenan of Boston College. Levering’s intervention is historical and, as I explore below, also profoundly theological. Rahner, Fuchs, Häring, and Keenan are just four of the twenty-six figures that Levering profiles in his impressive book. Levering has assembled a cast of characters that includes allies with whom he agrees and detractors held up as problematic. Here is where Levering’s theological intervention begins to emerge. Those he counts as fellow travelers acknowledge the importance of conscience but do not make it the center of Catholic thought; the interlocutors he takes issue with place too much hope in conscience. Levering says the writers in this latter group place conscience “at the helm” of Catholic life (192). He disagrees with this inflation, and his book seeks to subordinate conscience to other concepts while still allowing it to maintain an important role in Catholic ethics. Levering desires a much more diverse set of foundations for moral theology. “The Catholic moral life,” Levering writes, “consists in a Christ-centered ethics of the inaugurated Kingdom of God, in which the spirit leads us in charity while also forming us in humility and prudence, while also enlightening our perception of the natural law” (13). In this system, Levering adds, “conscience will continue to have a significant role, but now with the virtue of prudence” (16). He asks the twenty-six figures to serve as tour guides through four chapters, each of which constitutes discrete realms of analysis: (1) conscience and the Bible; (2) conscience and the moral manuals; (3) conscience and the Thomists; and (4) conscience and German thought. Levering lifts up thinkers like Benoît-Henri Merkelbach, Michel Labourdette, and Joseph Ratzinger, who, according to his analysis, bring conscience under the influence of other components of moral life, particularly the value of prudence. That is one side of his ledger. On the other side, Levering writes about the aforementioned existentialists but also explores the work of Biblical scholars like Philippe Delhaye, manualists like Austin Fagothey, S.J., and Thomists like Eric D’Arcy. He displays the work of these scholars as examples of Catholic thinkers who attributed too much power to conscience. Each of these writers assigns subjectivity a capacity to shape perceptions of reality. Each places serious checks on the power of law to coerce conscience. [End Page 88] Levering says...