C. Ellis Nelson, Liberal Protestants, and the Rise of the Catholic Theology of Conscience, 1944–1987

Mainline Protestant theologians constructed new definitions of conscience in the 1960s and 1970s by appropriating Catholic sources. Protestant theologians, after previously seeing Catholics as suppressors of conscience, had come by the 1970s to acknowledge the Catholic Church's expertise on the theology of conscience. While the Second Vatican Council and the ecumenical movement provided a backdrop for the exchange of ideas on conscience, they were not the driving force behind the Protestant engagement with Catholic perspectives. Rather, theologians like C. Ellis Nelson (a Presbyterian who taught at New York's Union Theological Seminary) turned to Catholic sources after becoming intensely critical of Protestant teachings on the autonomy of conscience. Increasingly, Protestants dismissed their own conceptions of conscience as inadequate, prompting a search for new sources with which to develop a positive theology of conscience. Both groups found themselves studying psychology and psychoanalysis to apply their findings to conscience. Psychology proved a gateway to Catholic theology. Protestants found that the Catholic theology of conscience—particular its emphasis on formation—helped them to construct new understandings of conscience.