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This thesis critically examines the cases of Vatican intervention with the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR) and Charles Curran to explore the question of whether legitimate dissent is possible as an act of conscience. The Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, as well as the exchange between Sr. Pat Farrell, then-president of the LCWR, and Bishop Blair, the one who conducted the investigation on the LCWR, on “Fresh Air,” a radio show on National Public Radio raise questions about how the Church is to understand truth, obedience, and conscience. This event also raises questions about why this controversy occurs at this point in history. To critically examine the differing perspectives of dissent and conscience, I analyze the case of Charles Curran, a Catholic priest and former professor at Catholic University of America, to exlore how dissent might be understood to be an act of a holistic conscience – one that takes seriously the subjective/ affective elements of human experience as well as the objective pole of morality. By applying the insights of the Curran case analogously to the LCWR case, with the help of Robert K. Vischer’s articulation of the relational dimension of conscience, this thesis articulates how the Church might understand its role in being a venue for consciences to thrive while preserving its claim of authentic teaching authority.

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As the most well-known modern Japanese philosopher around the world, Nishida Kitarō’s (西田幾多郎) (1870–1945) Buddhist-inspired synthesis of Western philosophy into a mature and sophisticated non-dualism has been studied from a variety of angles. As the main focus of his works tends to be on the expansion of true self-awareness, less attention has been paid to his account of human relations, especially as developed in his essay “I and Thou” (Watashi to nanji, 私と汝). This dissertation aims to address this with a thorough analysis of this essay, including comparisons with other thinkers such as Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and his own student Nishitani Keiji. The pair of “I” and “thou” will be examined through the lens of temporality, alterity, and ethics as it emerges in this text and connects with his other works. These analyses will be bookended with an overview of Nishida’s early philosophy on one side and his entry into political thought late in his life, with an eye to how persons and their relation to the world and each other was theorized at these points. Although much has been made of the significant changes in Nishida’s philosophy over time, I conclude with some thoughts on his relative unity on the nature of the true individual personality, which is established within a complex dialectic of oppositions to others grounded in the non-dual foundation of absolute nothingness. / Religion

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