Once upon a time, in a land known as Christendom, a man died rather than betray his conscience, which is to say, his “convictions about what it is right and wrong to do.” That man was Thomas More (1478–1535), who, if you are a certain kind of law professor writing in the year 2020, you can imagine “erupting with amazement and anger” over some of the more liberal pronouncements of the U.S. Supreme Court before it was rescued by the three appointees of a twice-impeached president.

Fast forward to the mid-twentieth century: 

Four centuries earlier, an eminent Catholic jurist, Thomas More, had resigned from the office of lord chancellor and had refused to take a mandatory oath, suffering execution as a consequence, out of faithfulness to his church. Now the situation was flipped: [the Catholic Supreme Court Justice] William Brennan emphasized his fidelity to the judicial oath as a way of demonstrating his independence from his church, and thus his suitability for high office.

Decline has come upon the land. “Ideas and movements that were fresh in the sixteenth century…seem to be floundering or decrepit today.” One such idea is that of conscience. A book might be written “[r]eflecting on the changing meanings and importance attributed to conscience” at several “decisive turning points at which Western civilization changed from what it had been in premodern times to what it is today.” Indeed, a provocative, entertaining, even theatrical book of this kind has been written! But also a book too clever and coy, a book that exults in rhetorical questions and abounds with sentences like, “Let us return and take another look. Just in case.” 

Steven D. Smith’s The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity has three protagonists: Thomas More, James Madison, and William Brennan. Now and again, Smith seems to lose the thread of his story, and the reader’s patience is sorely tried, but the book’s basic argument is clear and its exposition lively. Smith wants to unspool the logic of conscience as a concept—from its zenith in late medieval times to its nadir in our own time.

First, then, Sir Thomas More, one of two “illustrious Thomases” Smith admires (the other is, of course, Aquinas). For More, conscience was fundamentally religious: God wills that you do the right; to betray what you believe in conscience is to act against God. As Smith explains, More believed “you should form your beliefs about what is right not on the basis of your own private judgment but rather according to what Christians have always and everywhere believed”—that is, “the ‘consensus’ or ‘common faith’ of Christendom.” That consensus, however, was already passing during More’s lifetime. By his own lights, he did what he could to preserve it—by persecuting Protestants—but with his death “ended…an extraordinary age. Even a world. Or…we might say that thus began a new era, or a new world.”

Enter Madison, who also conceived of conscience as “in its essence a religious faculty,” but whose interest in it was more political than personal. Smith repeatedly refers to conscience’s “capacity to consecrate error.” The idea is that you would do wrong to act against your conscience because, in doing so, you would be choosing to do what you take to be wrong, and that can never be right—even if you’re wrong about what’s right and wrong. If it’s always wrong to act against your conscience, does it follow that it is always right to act in accord with it? Smith is too quick to answer in the affirmative. According to him, the correct reasoning is: “You believe God wants you to do this; God knows you believe this; and therefore God does want you to do this (even though…in a different sense God might not want people, presumably including you, to do it)”—because what you believe is wrong. But that’s misleading. In fact, you’re responsible not only to your conscience, but for it. If it’s poorly formed, though you would do wrong to act against it, it wouldn’t be right, in the sense of good, for you to act in accord with it. Presumably, what God would really want is for you to reconsider whether your conscience is working as it should.

Conscience, then, does not “consecrate” error: nothing is made holy or true just by being dictated by someone’s conscience. It is, therefore, incorrect to claim that, for More, “it was Christianity that consecrated conscience,” while, for Madison, conscience consecrated religious liberty in the New World. Smith attributes to Madison the argument that, since all the different sects and denominations understood themselves to be doing God’s will, God must have willed that they believe and act differently from one another—which is to say that he willed religious diversity and liberty. This argument is clever, but not supported either by the historical record or by the logic of conscience. A better argument for religious liberty is that knowledge of matters religious and moral is fallible, and so a person of conscience should tolerate some diversity in judgment by other persons of conscience. (John Rawls, a bogeyman in Smith’s text, called this the fact of reasonable pluralism.) The limits of religious liberty and freedom of conscience have to be worked out over time, in conjunction with the duties of citizenship and the rights of other citizens.

If it is incorrect that conscience “consecrates” error, it is also incorrect that “the religious conscience,” as Smith calls it, “implies that for the existentially crucial purposes of this life and the next, it doesn’t really matter much whether what you believe actually is true, so long as you believe it is true.” He presents that implication as the next step in the disintegration of conscience and the decline of modernity. “If what matters is sincerity, not truth,” Smith writes, “why risk compromising your sincerity by reflecting or investigating, and perhaps thereby digging up complications and stirring up doubts?” Here it is worth pausing to ask whether you do in fact hold a belief “sincerely” when you refuse to reflect on it, or to investigate its truth. But Smith will not be denied his conclusion: “This elevation of the self was also a sort of culmination of a development denied and yet hinted at in Thomas More’s ideas and somewhat more self-consciously adopted in Madison’s—namely, the detachment of conscience from a commitment to truth.”

And here at last, slouching toward Gomorrah, comes William Brennan. He is presented as “a willingly, willfully fragmented man,” whose jurisprudence, relegating “religion and other ‘comprehensive doctrines’ to the private domain,” brought “a similar fragmentation for his fellow citizens.” Yet, Smith asks, “How can citizens meaningfully debate…issues [with a strong dimension of morality or justice] when they are admonished not to invoke what they most fundamentally believe?” The upshot is that the public square is vacated of substance. What fills this void is “the sanctity of the self,” whose “deeply felt convictions or commitments regarding how he or she should live” should never be questioned or subject to critical scrutiny, but instead accommodated as much as possible. To make his point, Smith discusses two Vietnam-era cases of conscientious objection, United States v. Seeger (1965) and Welsh v. United States (1970). In these cases, he writes, the Supreme Court “suggested that respect for conscience is based on respect for the individual subject. The sincere objector should not be forced to violate, or to be unfaithful to…himself.” God falls away, but somehow the warrant to respect conscience remains, even without “the historical commitment to formulated theological truth.”

Smith hints that this situation is unstable and perhaps untenable. “[W]hat would be the sense or authority of conscience,” he asks, “if it is detached from God?” Further, “[W]hy is conscience so weighty or so authoritative? And, more troublingly, why should government respect and attempt to accommodate the consciences of people whom government…believes to be mistaken or misguided in their judgments?” Smith ignores the work of others who have written about these questions, such as Cécile Laborde (see my “Protecting Religious Liberty,” May 2018). It is also curious that he doesn’t discuss two later Vietnam-era conscientious-objection cases, Negre v. Larsen and Gillette v. United States (1971), which already show the pendulum swinging. Guy Gillette appealed to humanistic principles for his refusal to serve in Vietnam, whereas Louis Negre, a Roman Catholic, sought discharge after consulting with a Jesuit at the University of San Francisco. That Jesuit, Fr. James Straukamp, advised Negre that “under the beliefs and teaching of the Catholic Church he [was] obliged to examine and form his own conscience in respect to participating or refusing to participate in the war at this time.” But this time the Court interpreted the Universal Military Training and Service Act more strictly than it had in Seeger and Welsh. Thirty years later, Negre’s lawyer, the distinguished Catholic scholar and jurist John Noonan, summarized the majority opinion thus: “What was truly sacred was not the claim of conscience but the security of the nation.” (See “A Right Not to Fight,” December 2017.)

After all this book’s drama (“Who knows what the situation will be by the time the book is finished and you read these words, if indeed that ever happens?”), a reflective reader might well wonder whether Smith has his villains right. His book takes several swipes at President Biden as another fragmented man in the broken mold of William Brennan. Fragmentation, however, might seem like the least of our worries. It is striking that the man with seemingly no conscience, former president Donald Trump, is not mentioned in Smith’s book. In the prologue, Smith tells us that he finished writing this book in mid-2020, before the presidential election. He couldn’t have foreseen the insurrection at the Capitol, or the resurrection of Trump from the ashes for this year’s election. It’s true that our republic is at a moment of peril, but it’s not at all clear that Smith’s story of decline captures the dynamics that have brought us to this point. 

The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity
Catholic Ideas for a Secular World
Steven D. Smith
University of Notre Dame Press
$55 | 286 pp.

From the very beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has encouraged Catholics to recognize women’s contributions to the life of the Church. In last year’s meeting of the synod, he called it an “urgent” matter to give women more responsibility in the ministry and leadership of the Church at all levels. 

In response to these calls, Georgetown University’s Berkeley Center hosted an event titled “Faith, Feminism, and Being Unfinished: The Question of Women’s Ordination” in April 2023. Panelists discussed the work of Anne E. Patrick, SNJM, a moral theologian and an organizer of the first Women’s Ordination Conference, held in 1975. While the question of women’s ordination to the diaconate is under consideration at the synod, the Church has definitively rejected their ordination to the priesthood.

We asked four participants in the Georgetown panel to continue the conversation. In what ways are women excluded from and undervalued in the life of the Church? What does the Church lose by marginalizing women? How are women still managing to lead from the margins? Some of the contributors discuss their own frustrated calling to the priesthood. But there are other, subtler ways that, in their roles as ministers, mothers, daughters, scholars, and neighbors, women are made to feel less valuable than men. When women are excluded, it’s the whole Body of Christ that suffers—all of us who could be benefiting from their ministry and their gifts.

Read the symposium articles here:

“Women at the Altar” - Jane Varner Malhotra
“Moving the Center” - Mary E. Hunt
“Distorting the Gospel” - Teresa Delgado
“Why Not Women?" - Alice McDermott

And if you're interested in discussing this series of articles with your classroom, parish, reading group, or Commonweal Local Community, click here for a free discussion guide.

Interested in discussing this article in your classroom, parish, reading group, or Commonweal Local Community? Click here for a free discussion guide.

On Thanksgiving in 1975, my aunt Anne stopped by our home in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on her way to a conference in Detroit. I was intrigued about the event she helped organize, which focused on women and Catholic priesthood. As a seven-year-old girl preparing for First Communion, I had wanted to become an altar server and ring those little bells someday, but the role was limited to boys. In International Women’s Year, there was reason to be hopeful.

That first Women’s Ordination Conference in Detroit was attended by two thousand people and helped shape the conversation on inclusive priesthood for decades to come. Altar serving opened to girls about ten years later. Changes were afoot, but embarrassingly slow in my view, so as a young adult I drifted from Church involvement.

But my aunt, Anne E. Patrick, SNJM, theologian, author, and religion and women’s studies professor at Carleton College, kept up a gentle nudging. She recognized my desire to nurture a close relationship with the divine and to share God’s love with others. She supported and counseled me as I raised my children in the Church. She encouraged me to accept a job at Georgetown University, and later wrote my recommendation for grad school.

By her lived example of sticking by the Church—in the Church—while trying to reform it, she showed our family a way to respond creatively to injustice. Her life is what I have come to understand as the kind of life Jesus himself led. He didn’t abandon the imperfectly practiced tradition of his family, but offered guidance on how to put love at the center of how we treat one another, even when it means breaking unjust rules.

I learned more about the 1975 conference only recently. Participants traveled from forty-five states and overseas to explore the possibilities for a renewed, inclusive priesthood. Renowned theologians including Margaret Farley, RSM, Anne Carr, BVM, and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza presented at the conference. Attendees and public endorsements came from most major orders, many theologians, and other university faculty and Catholic leaders. In other words, this conversation was happening in the mainstream. But this open, visionary dialogue was silenced by the Vatican in the years to come, and today, most Catholics have never even heard of the assembly.

Why does this matter so much? For me, the exclusion of women from ordination is the most important issue facing the Church today because it results in so much pain. It’s an age-old system of supremacy that needs radical removal—taking it out by its roots, literally. Until women are at the table in large numbers, the Church can’t begin to fully hear the cries of the poor, the young, the disabled, the abused, and the marginalized whom the Church claims to prioritize. As creators who have the potential to give birth, women are agents of the sacred, with unique experiences and perspectives that must be shared in order to know a fuller picture of the divine. We, too, reveal God’s image.

At sacred assemblies at Georgetown, I’ve witnessed women chaplains of other faiths singing and praying and preaching, and every time I felt a pang of sadness that the Catholic Church is missing out on this. We are depriving ourselves of the divine as embodied by women. How much more fully would we express the sacraments if women were administering them, too?

In April 2023, hundreds gathered in person and online from around the world to tune in for “Faith, Feminism, and Being Unfinished,” which I co-organized. Angele White, a health minister and founder of the Black & Women’s History Ministry at St. Martin of Tours parish in Washington D.C., spoke of the history of discrimination against Catholics since the founding of this country. “Change takes time,” she noted. “And it takes determination, strategy, risks, patience, compassion, and passion.” If people didn’t stick with imperfect institutions, they would never be transformed. “There would probably be no women in positions of power to make meaningful changes, with the exception of ladylike, wifely, or motherly duties designated by men. And there would be no Black Catholics in the Church!”

Last October, I traveled to Rome to join the activities surrounding the Synod. These included a global lay-led synodal assembly with the group Spirit Unbounded, which is dedicated to human rights in the emerging Catholic Church. Speakers offered more than a hundred powerful testimonies from forty organizations working on Church reform. In her presentation, Ally Kateusz described a fourth-century ivory box which clearly depicts a man and woman concelebrating the Eucharist at the altar in Old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. This is one of the oldest images of early Christian liturgy. The significant location is identifiable by the unique spiral columns given by Constantine and represented today in Bernini’s altar, with the original buried below.

On my final day in Rome, I went inside St. Peter’s for the first time in twenty years. I was surprised how moved I felt, and my heart was drawn to the stunning baldacchino. No service was going on, so I walked up close and soaked it in, then took a selfie with it behind me, with a combination of smirk and prayer: “How long must women wait to be on this altar, O God?” I sighed and wandered away. A few minutes later, I looked back: lo and behold, a woman stood on that altar. An elderly sister in her habit, she held a spray bottle and rag and was wiping down the table. I shook my head and chuckled—God has a wicked sense of humor! And then I realized, God’s not joking.

Women have been at this altar all along, God was saying. You are my daughters, my queens, my caretakers, my coworkers, my companions. Soon women will be fully restored to our God-given leadership roles in places of worship, including this one, with all the challenges and blessings that will bring.

Not long after I returned home, the Vatican’s synthesis document was released. It described the working questions, reflections, and findings for this closing year of the Synod on Synodality. I noted the first two words in Italian and refer to it that way. Care sorelle (“Dear sisters”) offers some useful thoughts, but continues to fall short where women are concerned. Until we are welcomed by the Church fully into every role that God calls us to—including bishops, deacons, priests, and pope—this “hot-button issue” of inclusive ordination should not only be on the table but at the altar. It is indeed sacred to polish the chalice and ring the bells. But, assembly of women, shall we consider sharing all our gifts again in the co-responsibility of Christ?

This article is part of a symposium on women and the priesthood. Read the other articles here:

“Distorting the Gospel” – Teresa Delgado
“Moving the Center” – Mary E. Hunt
“Why Not Women?” – Alice McDermott

T

he week before I gave birth to my son, I went to the library and checked out some novels. This was one of the last tasks on my list. I’d stored up diapers and blankets, hung paintings on the walls of his nursery. I’d packed my hospital bag with chapstick, toothpaste, and pajamas. And now, I had my books. I didn’t know who I would be in the days after he was born. But I assumed I’d still want to read.

Having a newborn meant noise, mess, and visitors. My love for my son was so intense it often expressed itself as panic. But those early weeks also created stillness, separate from the world of obligation. While other people were working, going out, or sleeping, I read with my baby.

I read East of Eden in the living room, the baby sprawled asleep on my lap. When I got an infection and nursing became painful—an understatement—I read The Ninth Hour and The Topeka School and Our Man in Havana, stories from Brooklyn and Kansas and Cuba to take my mind away from my body. When I couldn’t sleep, I read works by Julian Barnes, Christian Wiman, and Jamel Brinkley. I read standing up in the nursery, the baby strapped to my chest, swaying and pacing to keep him asleep, eating forkfuls of reheated dinner as my free hand turned the pages.

As the weeks passed, my son began to read, too. At least, that’s what it looked like. He stared intently at the pages of various Curious George adventures and Jamberry. He read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, a fugue state of pink-ink-drinking Ginks and Zans opening cans; Frederick, the radical tale of a mouse who writes poems instead of helping his family lay in food for the winter, a veritable artist’s manifesto; and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, an avant-garde dreamscape of colored letters climbing a coconut tree. Every night, we ended with Goodnight Moon. I watched my son flick his eyes from page to page, taking in color, shape, the pair of mittens and the bowlful of mush.

This was ridiculous. He couldn’t really be reading. I was doing that annoying thing parents do, trying to shape a child in my own image.

But I couldn’t bring myself to feel guilty. Teaching my son to love reading felt different than trying to train him up for the sake of my own ego. It was more akin to giving him a set of ethics, a particular vision of reality. Language was powerful, I wanted to insist, even from these very first days of Little Hoot and But Not the Hippopotamus. Language could change things; it was a gift. The world was full of stories and ideas that would shape his imagination, foster his empathy, provoke his delight, win his allegiance—stories and ideas he’d done nothing to earn, but inherited simply by virtue of being human. I watched his mouth make shapes, newly pairing consonants and vowels. He said “wah” and “gee” and “ho” as he studied the slashes and curves on the pages. He was learning to make meaning, learning that it cohered in tales and fables, parables and poems.

Plus: reading was fun! Books were cheap and portable. The same old volumes would always surprise you, revealing something new with each encounter. I felt that way returning to the stories of my childhood, suddenly getting the jokes in Winnie the Pooh and understanding the elegance of The Very Busy Spider.

The books of my adulthood were different, too, now that I was a mother. My son’s birth coincided (not entirely accidentally) with my rereading of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead quartet. In this multigenerational Midwest story, I found myself—not so much in the particulars, but in the “big questions” underneath them. The “big questions,” especially “What are we doing here?” and “What comes next?,” are impossible to ignore when you have a baby. Books were one of the ways I could engage with them, at least in the interval before the baby woke up and needed a diaper change.

Was every novel in the world about children? It suddenly felt that way as I read through my haul from the library, and then the next, as the weeks of my son’s life turned into months, as I started sleeping more and eating at the table and nursing, at last, stopped hurting. It was uncanny how many babies and toddlers and teenagers and adults with parents of their own appeared in these books, crucial to the plots and themes. I hadn’t noticed them before.

At the very least, every novel was about time and its passage. And about the suffering we inevitably experience, the love that inevitably prevails, the great generosity undergirding it all. These were more legible to me now, watching my baby. One day they’d be legible to him, too. For now, he slept. The pile of picture books sat next to the rocking chair, waiting for our next new day.