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9780226762050

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This splendid book sheds new light on recent US history by recounting the vast reach of Catholic debates over conscience. Cajka skillfully narrates the church's legacy of conscience as a double agent for both obedience and liberation from state as well as religious authority. That legacy, he shows, has been present in larger American political conflicts over war, sex, and abortion, and is alive and well today. Follow Your Conscience is a fascinating read that clarifies the church's inner wrestling with authority and the entrenched divides among American Catholics, illustrating the broader repercussions of conscience claims on the nation's splintered politics. -- R. Marie Griffith, author of Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics This rich and textured book deftly links centuries of theological reflection on the sanctity of an individual's subjective conscience to powerful currents of political and cultural transformation in the twentieth century. Cajka illuminates new angles on recent US history, demonstrating how Catholic moral teaching acquired currency in the secular realm and served as an important touchstone for social movements on the left and the right. Follow Your Conscience is intellectual history--and religious history--at its best. -- James McCartin, author of Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics

“A fascinating book. . . [Cajka] makes a persuasive case that Catholics, with priests leading the way, did indeed 'change the terms of American freedom'—though not always for the best.” * Commonweal * “This splendid book sheds new light on recent US history by recounting the vast reach of Catholic debates over conscience. Cajka skillfully narrates the church’s legacy of conscience as a double agent for both obedience and liberation from state as well as religious authority. That legacy, he shows, has been present in larger American political conflicts over war, sex, and abortion, and is alive and well today. Follow Your Conscience is a fascinating read that clarifies the church’s inner wrestling with authority and the entrenched divides among American Catholics, illustrating the broader repercussions of conscience claims on the nation’s splintered politics.” * R. Marie Griffith, author of Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics * “This rich and textured book deftly links centuries of theological reflection on the sanctity of an individual’s subjective conscience to powerful currents of political and cultural transformation in the twentieth century. Cajka illuminates new angles on recent US history, demonstrating how Catholic moral teaching acquired currency in the secular realm and served as an important touchstone for social movements on the left and the right. Follow Your Conscience is intellectual history—and religious history—at its best.” * James McCartin, author of Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics *

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Peter Cajka is assistant teaching professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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