Abstract

 What one observes in the contemporary ecumenical movement is that ethical differences between churches and church communities are becoming increasingly important. This difficulty can be seen in different, sometimes contradictory, moral judgments formulated by Christian denominations. For this reason, much attention is given to ethical issues in the dialogue documents. The article discusses the different understanding of the relation of conscience to the moral teaching of the Church in Catholic-Protestant ecumenical dialogues. These differences manifest themselves clearly in the approach to the problem of abortion. This paper presents selected ecumenical documents on this subject. It indicates that for the Protestant Communities (except Evangelicals) freedom of conscience is the most important issue in the moral judgement of abortion. For this reason, the moral teaching of the Protestant Communities does not explicitly prohibit abortion, but refers to moral decisions made by believers individually in accordance with their conscience. From the Catholic point of view, it makes Protestant moral teaching (theological ethics) highly individualistic and subjectivist. Therefore, doubts arise about its meaning and importance because it is not able to give clear ethical guidelines for believers. As a result, the ethical differences between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Communities become sharper. This, in turn, raises serious questions about the credibility of the ecumenical movement.

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