Water Shaping Stone: Faith, Relationships, and Conscience Formation by Kathryn Lilla Cox (review)

In Water Shaping Stone, Kathryn Lilla Cox synthesizes select historical and contemporary theologies of conscience. She identifies conscience as a metaphor for the moral agent, whose ongoing formation occurs through participation in a variety of relationships and communities, engagement in practices of prayer and service, and awareness of and reflection on one's body, emotions, and convictions. Cox situates this position between false understandings of conscience as either solely grounded in personal experience, thought, and feeling or purely obedient to an external authority and therefore lacking accountability.

The first chapter provides an orientation to contemporary Catholic understandings of conscience, focusing on Gaudium et spes and Dignitatis humanae as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II's Veritatis splendor. In her reading of Dignitatis humanae, she observes that "any claim to following 'conscience' cannot be a trump card overriding any other argument or rationale for action. The validity of conscience claims can be subject to an appraisal by one's community or society" (22). This relational grounding of conscience makes possible a middle way between morality based solely on emotions and personal experience and morality as strict obedience. Her comparison and synthesis of twentieth-century perspectives provides a baseline for her treatment of conscience "through the ages" in the second chapter of the book, where she touches on biblical understandings, Aquinas and John Henry Newman's definitions and discussions, and Bernard Häring and Anne Patrick's interpretations after Vatican II. Cox's argument in these early chapters is not as novel as it is synthetic, drawing together the work of select theologians to demonstrate the relational nature of conscience. A limitation of the book is the cursory treatment of each of these theologians, but they are meant only to set the stage for her discussions of formation, dissent, and scandal in the second half of the book.

Some of Cox's most helpful insights arise in her chapter "Rethinking Dissent," in which she argues that dissent is often less a departure from the general norms held by the Church than it is a practical judgment about how to apply these norms in particular situations. In other words, not every disagreement with magisterial teaching implies "unfaithful Catholic," but may rather be a different interpretation of a norm. Cox contends that "multiple interpretations might need to sit alongside each other as authentic truth instantiations of the norm or teaching" (131). In this way, Cox establishes middle ground between traditionalist and revisionist moral theologians and dismisses the divisive, binary nature of a legalistic approach to morality. Resonating with virtue ethics, she acknowledges that a norm's meaning is always unfolding and that we must live the tradition in order to know it fully and to determine what counts as authentic practice. She concludes that making a judgment of conscience is not about asking "Is this right or wrong?" but rather about determining whether a judgment or action fits into the larger picture of God's reign. We must ask, "Does my action foster healing, reconciliation, forgiveness, inclusion, and/or justice?" (145).

This is a text meant for a wide audience. Cox herself notes that it was written in response to people's desire to know about conscience, its formation, and how to navigate disagreements with the magisterium. She makes several valuable contributions to the post–Vatican II study of conscience and provides a helpful overview of a variety of sources on conscience. Specialists might yearn for deeper engagement with some of the thinkers cited, but undergraduates and nonspecialists will find it a useful introduction to conscience and the contemporary landscape of moral theology.