Perhaps no other post that I have written in recent months has received as much response as the article immediately preceding this post. Entitled “Teach, Don’t Judge”, the article repeats a theme that I have repeated consistently ever since this blog was created.
I suggest that it is the mission of the Church to enunciate and clarify the moral doctrine contained in the Scriptures. Together, the Living Word of God and the teachings of the Church’s Magisterium constitute the Deposit of Faith, wherein the Divine Will is expressed and human beings are provided with a pathway by which they order their lives in conformity to that Will.
I further suggest that it is the proper function of the Church and the Bishops to inform human conscience as it seeks to determine the rightness or wrongness of individual human choices. However, the Church and the Bishops often and inappropriately assume to themselves the unique and critical place which the exercise of the individual conscience plays in moral judgments and their consequences.
Thus, I suggest it is the role of the Church and the Bishops to inform the human conscience, but never to usurp its inviolable sanctity.
A good number of readers have taken exception to this position.
Either by coincidence (which my belief in Divine Providence denies) or by virtue of Divine Providence itself, I listened today to a video message from the Holy Father this past Saturday to participants in a conference organized by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) on Pope Francis’ post-Synodal Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.
Under the theme, The Gospel of Love between Conscience and Norm, participants are exploring how to respond to the desire for family that emerges in the soul of the young generations, and seeking together ways to help the faithful assimilate and develop Amoris laetitia’s content and style.
In the video, the Holy Father states, “The family born of marriage creates fruitful bonds, which reveal themselves to be the most effective antidote against the individualism that currently runs rampant; however, along the journey of marital love and family life there are situations that require arduous choices, which must be made with rectitude.”
And here is where I find some vindication. Pope Francis insists upon the proper role of Pastors in forming consciences, so that the Christian faithful are capable of acting with moral integrity. The Holy Father states: We are called to form consciences (citing Amoris laetitia 37) not to pretend to substitute them.”
The precise and sacrosanct role of the conscience – beginning with a right understanding of it – was a central focus of the Holy Father’s recorded remarks.
“The contemporary world,” the Holy Father says in the message, “risks confusing the primacy of conscience, which is always to be respected, with the exclusive autonomy of the individual with respect to the relations that he entertains in life.”
“In the very depths of each one of us,” Pope Francis says, “there is a place wherein the Mystery reveals itself, and illuminates the person, making the person the protagonist of his story.”
“Conscience, as the II Vatican Council recalls, is this, ‘most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths (Gaudiam et Spes, 16). To the Christian falls the task of being vigilant, so that in this sort of tabernacle is no want of divine grace, which illuminates and strengthens married love and parental mission. Grace fills the amphorae of human hearts with an extraordinary capacity for gift, renewing for the families of today the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana.”
So to those readers who have voiced either outrage or concern at what I wrote in my previous post, let me reassure you that my words echo the words and the wisdom of the Council Fathers of Vatican II as well as the consistent teachings of the Church regarding what Saint Thomas Aquinas referred to as the “cathedral of the conscience”, a cathedral which no human agency is permitted to invade or violate.
In that context, then, I repeat my consistent plea: teach, don’t judge. Let the Church exercise its mission to inform and enlighten our hearts and minds. But leave the judgment of our choices to the Lord alone Who perceives our innermost thoughts and motives and Who alone is worthy of judgment.
No comments:
Post a Comment