Conscience is about more than conforming your will to teaching - it is about listening to God and doing the right thing, even when the teachings of the Church or society are wrong.  Real natural law is from within, not from the circular reasoning of the CDF or the nostalgic and simplistic moralism of Raymond Burke.

I would dearly love to hear Garry Wills response to this disastrous interview by Chaput.  By the way, only western Rome fell.  Constantinople went strong for almost another millennium and still holds more moral authority than the western Church.  Rome showed the problem of the end of militarism and imperialism.  Of course, the new President is building more weapons, if he can, while at the same time wanting to isolate.  What he is trying is worse than Rome - and his only Gospel seems to be the prosperity gospel - hardly something a Catholic Cardinal can endorse.