When is it licit for a Catholic to have an abortion? Just as there are two pillars that are coequal in revelation by God to the Church, scripture and tradition, there are two coequal ways for the laity to respond to the pronouncements of popes and Magisterial teaching: obedience and acting on one's informed conscience. Unfortunately, since the theologian Vincent of Lerins wrote Commonitorim (The Commentaries) in 434 that proclaimed the pope's authority to speak and act in the name of the Church is absolute and that he can even overrule the Councils of the universal Church, obedience to papal pronouncements and the teaching of the Magisterium have been presented as absolute with no mention of the equal validity of acting according to one's conscience.

However, there is a rich tradition within the Church that one must follow one's conscience even when to do so is against papal pronouncements and the teaching of the Magisterium. St. Paul makes this case in Second Corinthians 1:12

For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we have behaved in the world, and still more toward you, with holiness and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God.

and 4:2

We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

as well as in his defense of Felix reported in Acts 24:16

So I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward God and toward men.

In fact, St. Paul supports acting according to one's conscience 30 times in his epistles.

The primacy of conscience is found throughout the writings of St. Augustine whose theology still informs the Church today. St. Alphonsus Ligouri, who founded one of the most conservative Orders, the Redemptorists in 1732, said, I would rather have the Order I founded destroyed than be forced to betray my conscience. Both St. Augustine and St. Ligouri are named among the Doctors of the Church.

In 1874 Prime Minister Gladstone of England wrote, The Vatican Decrees in Their Bearing on Civil Allegiance that said the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility that made the pope infallible in matters of faith or morals when he speaks ex cathedra (in the name of the entire Church) created in 1870 by Vatican Council I, made it impossible for any Catholic to participate in government as a matter of conscience. In response John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote, A Letter Addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation in which he defended the primacy of conscience. Newman quoted St. Thomas Aquinas (another Doctor of the Church) who said, The Natural law, known as conscience in an individual, is an impression of the Divine Light in us, a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature [put there by God]. He also quoted Cardinal Gousset who quoted the Fourth Lateran Council that proclaimed, It is never lawful to go against our conscience…conscience is the voice of God . From this Gousset wrote in his book Theological Moral, He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.

What happens if we act on our conscience and later find we were wrong? Many Catholic theologians have written on this subject including St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Caietan, Vasquez, Durandus, Navarrus, Corduba, Layuman, Escobar, etalii. Cardinal Newman speaks in their names when he wrote, Of course, if a man is culpable in being in error, which he might have escaped had he been more in earnest, for that error he is answerable to God, but still he must act according to that error while he is in it, because he in full sincerity thinks the error to be truth.

Contemporary Catholic theologians support those who came before them including Bernard Haring, Daniel McGuire, Timothy O'Connell, and Charles Curran to name a few. O'Connell states the case for acting on ones conscience most clearly. He states that conscience is: Concrete as it is the concrete judgment of specific persons pertaining to their own immediate action and as such is infallible because it constitutes the final norm by which a persons' action must be guided.

When is it licit for a Catholic to have an abortion? The history of the Church is absolutely clear. It is licit for a Catholic to have an abortion when after prayer, reflection, and examination of conscience, she believes having an abortion is the morally correct thing to do. It is central to the Church's teaching that it is a woman's conscience, not the pronouncement of popes or Magisterial teaching, which must be the final arbiter of whether or not she has an abortion.

To a Catholic woman contemplating an abortion know that you are well within the bounds of Catholic moral theology even though the right-to-life community, many priests and bishops, and even the pope himself will tell you that you cannot have an abortion because to do so is an intrinsically moral evil.

Yes, to have an abortion is always a moral evil. However, the greater moral evil than having an abortion is the moral evil of being disobedient to your conscience.