As you likely know, I have written a lot on the Magisterium and particularly on Amoris Laetitia. I have a whole guide on it linking to my various posts. I take a very hermeneutic of continuity approach.
In 2023, I offered a presentation on interpreting Veritatis Splendor in light of Amoris Laetitia. This was a pretty normal, not too well-attended academic talk. However, in writing this talk out from my proposal, I ended up spending most of the talk on the issue of conscience. I took the ideas from this part of the talk and expanded them into an academic article on the conscience in these two documents.
Today the Journal of Moral Theology published it. This is clearly an academic paper so I know it will be beyond some of my readers.
Here is the abstract or summary of “Amoris Laetitia Develops the Subjective Conscience from Veritatis Splendor”:
The subjective and objective aspects of conscience often exist in tension in Catholic theology: there is a need to affirm that an objective law exists by which proper conscience formation is judged, while acknowledging a subjective aspect in each person, obliged to follow her, even erroneous, conscience. Although not the focus of either Veritatis Splendor or Amoris Laetitia, these two papal documents demonstrate these dual aspects of conscience well and allow a better understanding of conscience together than they could apart. Reading each in light of the other provides a fuller view and illuminates the tension between the two aspects of conscience. Veritatis Splendor provides a clear explanation of the objective aspect of conscience while briefly mentioning the subjective. Amoris Laetitia briefly reaffirms the objectivity of conscience and then dramatically expands on its subjectivity, spending significant time on mitigating factors and the formation of conscience as both a starting point and an end goal. This paper analyzes these documents in dialogue with Charles Curran as contrary view to the two popes.
You can read the rest over there as it is open access.
