In pursue of the Council : perspectives of the conciliar doctrine on conscience

Abstract

Even though the Second Vatican Council II was not able to elaborate a specific document on Moral Theology, its influence on this discipline has been decisive. One of its most important contributions is the doctrine on conscience in Gau dium et spes 16. In spite of its undeniable ambivalence, this text contains a personalist vision of this matter, which would progressively transform the moral method, whose centre would no longer be the law, but the moral subject, endowed with the capacity to discern the objective demands of love in the “here and now” of history. Far from fostering attitudes of individualism or relativism, this shift to the subject has stimulated a greater engagement of catholic ethicists in the struggle against all those situations of suffering and injustice which threaten human dignity.