Conscience/Dissent, IV

Further to Steve's post of Dec. 8, I am taking it for granted that we affirm that there is such a thing as truth and that we believe that it will set us free.  The question, then, is what the Church says about those who through no fault of their own are not in conformity with the truth.   Gaudium et spes provides this answer:  "Through loyalty to conscience Christians are joined to other men in the search for truth and for the right solution to so many moral problems. . . .  Hence, the more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups rurn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by the objective standards of moral conduct.  Yet it often happens that conscience goes astray through ignorance which it is unable to avoid, without thereby losing its dignity."  This is good news for the involuntarily erring conscience, I suppose; it does, after all, occur in a document called Gaudium et spes.  But the good news does not change the fact that the subjectively innocent conscience at issue remains in error, and, as I mentioned before, that error can lead to ontic harm.  But the simple fact of being in error is already somehow to be unfree; the dignity possessed by the involuntarily erroneous conscience beckons onward to the truth.  Until his conscience is correct, the person is in some sense perplexus; without the truth, freedom is compromised.  What the Church wants for all people is that they be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (I Tim. 2:4).  But why should be look to the Church for the truth in matters of faith and morals?  Because the hierarchical teaching office is that of the bishops in communion with the pope; the Second Vatican Council denies, along with the whole tradition, that the laity have the power authoritatively to teach on matters of faith or morals.  See Lumen gentium; and Dei verbum 10.  According to Vatican I, papal definitions of doctrine are not invalid without the "consent of the Church."  See DS 3074   (Which is not to say that sometimes the magisterium is not sometimes moved to use its teaching power in new ways on account of the stimulus of the laity.  See J. Robert Dionne, The Papacy and the Church: A Study of Praxis and Reception in Ecumenical Perspective (1987)).  But again, why look to the Church?  Here Karl Rahner is helpful in preempting a certain regress:  "Catholic theology sees and affirms that the institutional element in the Church does not ultimately function on its own.  The assurance comes only from the Spirit, who is never simply identified with any institution, and this is the reason why one can rely with confidence on the permanent maintenance of the institution.  This is no point, therefore, in arguing against the primacy and against the doctrine given in the Constitution [on the Church, Lumen gentium], on the synondal structure of the Church that it leaves it open to the Pope to do everything autocratically in the end and to exclude the college of of bishops in practice.  The simple answer is that he 'can' do so, but he will not.  The Catholic does not demand a juridical norm by which the Pope could be impeached, he relies on the power of the grace of God and of the Holy Spirit in the Church . . . ."  (1967).  Finally, not everything proposed by the Church must be believed by the faithful, of course; the definitions concerning what must be believed by faithful Catholics are important, but for the most part they are overlooked in arguments driven by the desirability of "dissent."  Frequently, in my experience, people feel moved to "dissent" from teachings that are not in fact proposed by the Church as part of the deposit of revelation.  See canon 750.   (As something of a contrarian myself, I see the pleasure in it -- don't get me wrong)!  In any event, the obligation of conscience is always to seek the truth and to adhere to it as known.  Given the Church's teaching, mentioned above, that the magisterium does not depend upon the laity for the valid exercise of its teaching function, I cannot agree with Steve's aspiration for the Church as a "community of discourse, . . .  an ongoing collaborative effort" in search of the truth.  Outside the Church, collaboration and discourse seem to be the method by which truth enters.  Within the Church, according to the Church, the magisterium does not share its teaching function with the laity (though, as I said above, sometimes the magisterium is moved by the learning of the faithful).  According to Lumen gentium (37), the laity "should accept whatever their sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, decree in their role as teachers and rulers of the Church."  I do not suggest that this is always easy to do.