Abstract
This is an important but unconvincing book. Matthew Levering’s central claim is that since the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965 too much of Catholic moral theology has become mistakenly ‘conscience-centred’. In the book, this phrase works rhetorically more than substantively. Moral theology that merely emphasizes the importance of conscience is nevertheless branded pejoratively as ‘conscience-centred’. By this, Levering means especially that this moral theology is defined by a notion of conscience set to slide at a moment’s notice into a selfish subjectivism.
The great church historian John O’Malley said that ‘conscience’ was one of the key words of the Second Vatican Council. Behind the widespread conciliar use of the term were a range of concerns: chiefly, the failure of so many Catholics to oppose fascist regimes in Europe in World War Two; the oppression of the Catholic conscience in communist countries; the presence of Catholics in democratic societies committed to freedom of conscience; and the cry of conscience of the global poor. Underlying these issues was the Council’s concern to renew a moral theology that over centuries had grown moribund due to an emphasis on obedience to the law. At the heart of the conciliar renewal of moral theology was indeed a focus on conscience as a place of encounter with God and the law of neighbour love.
The greatest strength of Levering’s book is its history of the theology behind this story of conscience and the Council. He laudably provides extensive and fair-minded readings of the theological and philosophical views of conscience of some of the great twentieth-century figures in the Catholic tradition before, during and after the Council (although these figures include no women nor anyone from the global South).
But the book’s value as exposition outweighs its merit as a convincing argument. It is clear that Levering prefers a view of conscience drawn from interpretations of the New Testament and the work of St Thomas Aquinas. This view subordinates conscience to the virtues; natural and eternal law (which Levering links all but exclusively to matters of sexual ethics); to the hierarchical teaching office of the Church (which Levering identifies with the Church per se; his is not a synodal church); and to Christ and the Holy Spirit. But this favoured view of conscience is asserted more than argued.
Similarly, the book’s criticism of the contemporary turn to conscience neither applies accurately to its theological targets nor engages sufficiently how theologians are reimagining conscience in light of the Church’s service to the world. The work of American Jesuit James Keenan is held up as an example of problematic ‘conscience-centred’ moral theology and its subjectivist turn. But here is Keenan in 2016 on the need for Catholics to practise humility in order to confront in conscience the sin of racism: ‘We need to confess our sins in the light of Christ, realizing in grace that the chance to act otherwise was there and that the excuses we proffer are merely, well, excuses.’ That doesn’t sound very subjectivist to me.