On Following One’s Conscience–and Suffering the Consequences

A few weeks ago, when much of the U.S. was focused on resisting Donald Trump’s bombastic threats for our nation to take over Greenland–by invasion, if necessary–Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the Archdiocese of the Military Services made the remarkable statement that Catholic military personnel did not necessarily have to obey an invasion command. “Within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order,” the archbishop said.

Of course, Catholic teaching has long supported the idea that one’s conscience is the highest moral law and must be obeyed even if contrary to other authorities:

“All are bound to follow their conscience faithfully in every sphere of activity so that they may come to God, who is their last end. Therefore, the individual must not be forced to act against conscience nor be prevented from acting according to conscience, especially in religious matters” (Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, no. 2).

Catholic leaders do not promote this teaching frequently, and rarely do so in regard to sexual matters, but Catholic lay people having been obeying their consciences from time immemorial, and sometimes they have done suffered punishments for doing so.  Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant whose refusal to fight for Nazi Germany resulted in his martyrdom through execution by the guillotine comes immediately to mind.

America magazine recently published a personal essay by Edward Hoyt, a freelance writer, about his father’s decision to resist an order by following his conscience. In the elder Hoyt’s situation, the choice was not between whether or not to engage in military service, but whether or not to participate in police raids of  gay bars in the 1960s.  As member of the NYPD’s vice squad, he was tasked with breaking up gambling operations, prostitution rings, and gay bars. But one night, he had an epiphay. The essayist explains:

“My father was a young, mid-century Catholic man who did not question the church teaching that homosexuality was wrong. At the same time, he didn’t see any victims when men chose to socialize where and with whom they chose. But he was young and trained in the military, and he obediently did his duty.

“During one such raid, as he was making an arrest, he looked up at the man on the next stool and saw the desolate face of a famous singer. A very famous singer at the time. It was probably this man’s records he put on when he was wooing my mother. He looked to his fellow officer, moving to arrest the mortified crooner, and waved him away. Such an arrest would end up on front pages across the country and lead to his great humiliation, destroying his career and leading to who knows what kind of repercussions.

“Simply because of where the guy chose to drink.

While he chose not to arrest this man, he was later conflicted thinking about the penalities suffered by the men he did arrest:

“They would generally not be prosecuted aggressively, but these arrests could end up costing them their families, their jobs and their reputations. But these men had no hit songs to save them—and the double standard he had applied did not sit well with my father. The compassion and relatability he felt for the singer could not let him unsee the humanity of these other men, and the wrongness of what he was doing.”

The elder Hoyt resigned from the vice squad the next day, and was “punished” by being assigned to humdrum desk duty in the police deparment.

The essay commented poignantly about his father’s conscience decision:

“Ironically, the same church that taught them that the acts of homosexuals were wrong also helped form in him a conscience that led him to turn away from being their persecutor.”

Edward Hoyt ends his essay by urging Immigration and Customs Enforcer (ICE) personnel to follow his father’s example of  not following an unjust order.  Kudos to him.  I want to apply the same principle to another arena.

After more than 30 years working in LGBTQ+ ministry in the Catholic Church, I can’t help but think of all the people I have met whose lives ended up adversely impacted by church officials because they followed their consciences by coming out, acknowledging a relationship, speaking out for civil rights and human dignity, or supporting an LGBTQ+ loved one.  The “punishments” varied from being fired from church employment or a volunteer commitment, being ostracized by others in the parish, suffering the barbs of vicious and ignorant religious condemnations, or having to leave a church they had loved their whole liveslong and still wanted to love.

It’s a truism in Catholic life that when a person stands in solidarity with an oppressed group, that person will soon suffer the same harms and penalties of the oppressed group.  The classic example of this is when missionaries are killed for working with people living under repressive regimes.

But the call to conscience will not come to everyone in dramatic ways.  But more times than not, that call will come with some sort of price.  Of the scores and scores of people I’ve met who have had to make a conscience decision that opposed dominant thought and practice, not one, no matter what the price, was ever sorry they did so.

In the meantime, let’s pray for the day when Catholic leaders will call on members of the church to follow their consciences boldly when it comes to opposing LGBTQ+ oppression or working for LGBTQ+ equality.

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, February 4, 2026