Question Of Consciousness Research Articles

Questions of conscience in a confessional state: From ‘Freedom of conscience’ to ‘Objections of conscience’ in Malta

ABSTRACT While there is an ample body of literature in the anthropology of moralities there is a surprising dearth of research on conscience per se. In Malta over the last ten years there has been a proliferation of a public discourse of ‘conscience’ – its affordances, freedoms and its legal safeguards. This has been the result of debates over reforms leading to the liberalization of sexual and family life, including most recently debates over the legalization of abortion. While the language of conscience in various human rights instruments claims a universal character its meanings, inflections and significance can vary in important ways. There is a blurred boundary between conscience and religion. This paper examines the ways in which conscience is deployed and the significance of the appeals to a national conscience in a European confessional state. It looks at the specific meanings of conscience in Malta and a brief lexical and political history It then moves on to look at the ways objections of conscience are framed in contemporary Malta in light of theological debates and their ramifications in Catholic Malta.

The hinc et nunc of moral theology: Francisco de Vitoria’s lesson and the missionary experience

In the sixteenth century, as moral theology was being consolidated as an autonomous academic discipline, theologians at the University of Salamanca, including the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, began to incorporate current moral and political issues into their teaching agendas. Prominent among these issues were those arising out of the conquest of the Americas. Their students, a generation of university-trained missionaries, then went to work in Spanish possessions in the Americas and the Philippines. These missionaries and men of learning included the Augustinians Alonso de la Veracruz (in Mexico) and Martín de Rada (in the Philippines and China). As their world expanded, Vitoria's teachings were rendered fully intelligible in the confusing reality of the colonial enterprise, and these missionaries struggled to apply his lessons to the questions of conscience they encountered. The result can be considered a new chapter in the relationship between theological knowledge, the production of facts, and moral certainty, all against the backdrop of the territorial and economic expansion of Spain.

Questions of Conscience.

Susan A. Salladay, PHD, RN, serves as online and onsite faculty for several ADN and RN-BSN nursing programs. Her PhD is in philosophy, with specialization in bioethics; she also holds an MSN with a nursing education focus. In addition to being a regular columnist for JCN, she writes a column on ethical problems for Nursing. The author declares no conflict of interest. ∗Name changed to protect privacy.

Conscientious Non-objection in Intensive Care.

Discussions of conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare often concentrate on objections to interventions that relate to reproduction, such as termination of pregnancy or contraception. Nevertheless, questions of conscience can arise in other areas of medicine. For example, the intensive care unit is a locus of ethically complex and contested decisions. Ethical debate about CO usually concentrates on the issue of whether physicians should be permitted to object to particular courses of treatment; whether CO should be accommodated. In this article, I focus on the question of how clinicians ought to act: should they provide or support a course of action that is contrary to their deeply held moral beliefs? I discuss two secular examples of potential CO in intensive care, and propose that clinicians should adopt a norm of conscientious non-objection (CNO). In the face of divergent values and practice, physicians should set aside their personal moral beliefs and not object to treatment that is legally and professionally accepted and provided by their peers. Although there may be reason to permit conscientious objections in healthcare, conscientious non-objection should be encouraged, taught, and supported.

Bernhard Häring na II. vatikánském koncilu - jeho význam a vliv

The article seeks to describe the role and impact of B. Haring on Vatican II. The beginning focuses on the phase before the Council, when Haring published his first systematic work Das Gesetz Christi (The Law of Christ), in which he offered an overview of moral theology. In his work he attempted to renew this discipline by detaching it from Canon Law and directing it towards other disciplines, such as Spiritual Theology, Sacramental Theology and Pastoral Theology. Some examples of his different approach to moral theology include the areas of theological anthropology - particularly regarding questions of conscience. The article goes on to describe the time of the Council consultations, during which Haring worked as a secretary in the preparation of important documents such as Lumen gentium, Gaudium et spes, Optatam totius, etc. The author of this article uses Acta of Vatican II, Haring's autobiographical works, and materials which are still unpublished for sources - including Haring's notes, which were still in the monastery where he died. Haring's voice was not silent after the Council. He continued with public discussion about moral problems - even exploring further the idea that there are no questions solved once and for all. (After the Pope published his encyclical Humanae vitae, for example, Haring used his moral theological reasoning to express his dissent.) The entire article summarizes Haring's concept of renewed moral theology and underscores his personal legacy, a legacy which forces us even at present to discover, discuss and change our way of life by asking challenging questions.

Growing strong from the Acorn

Historian Neale writes that, "today, as it begins its second century, the NUJ is in relatively good health, after surviving several crises - political and financial - in the 1980s and 1990s... NUJ membership has topped 40,000, budgets are in the black, an increasing number of women members reflect changes in journalism as well as wider society, and the NUJ has, if anything, bucked the trend of failing union membership in British industry." He continues: "Questions of job security, pay and conditions remain pre-occupations for the NUJ, as they do for its members, but questions of conscience, professional standards and the wider, social role of the journalist reverberate in its discussions as widely as they seem to have done in any of the past ten decades. One suspects that they will continue to do so in the next century, too."

Book Review: Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches

Book Review: Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches

Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches. Edited by Walter Wink. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1999. 133 pp. n.p.

Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches. Edited by Walter Wink. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1999. 133 pp. n.p.

Pioneer; A History of the Johns Hopkins University 1874-1889

This history of the early years of the Johns Hopkins University is much more than the story of the establishment and development of one of the most distinguished institutions of higher education in the United States. The book deals with a period of re-thinking and re-assessment in higher education ...Many of the fundamental problems of educational principle ...were tackled at this stage of the University's history and the book deals fully with the questions of conscience and of politics which were involved in their solution. -International Association of Universities Bulletin

Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874-1889

"This history of the early years of the Johns Hopkins University is much more than the story of the establishment and development of one of the most distinguished institutions of higher education in the United States. The book deals with a period of re-thinking and re-assessment in higher education ...Many of the fundamental problems of educational principle ...were tackled at this stage of the University's history and the book deals fully with the questions of conscience and of politics which were involved in their solution." -International Association of Universities Bulletin