James Bretzke did not take the position that Richard describes. Father Bretzke maintains, as did Aquinas and the Catechism, that a person is morally bound to follow his or her conscience. He does not maintain that following one’s conscience is a guarantee of correctness. As he puts it, “It is the constant teaching of the Church that an individual always follow his or her conscience, even when that conscience might be in “objective” error on what is morally right.” He, of course, recognizes the obligation to form and inform our consciences and discusses the obligation at some length. What he rejects is the view (which he attributes to Grisez) that we are obliged in virtually every situation to follow the Magisterium instead of our conscience.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Bretzke and Conscience
Saturday, May 10, 2008
another response on authority/conscience
I had a couple of quick reactions to the useful discussion of authority/conscience.
First, the view that Steve mentions (as set forth by Father James Bretzke SJ) is precisely the view of conscience critiqued by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor (and critiqued by Pope Benedict in his numerous writings on conscience). In paragraph 32 of VS, JP II mentions that "certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values....The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one's conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one's moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origins in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and 'being at peace with oneself,' so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment."
This last point is quite important. Under the subjective understanding of conscience, the concepts of good and evil lose meaning. Under the subjective view, we are "infallible," and I realize that there is a attractiveness to that position. (I think that was the only time the idea of infallibility was used in the encyclical.) Our choices are beyond criticism (except in the rare cases when the choice is insincere).
Second, Pope John Paul tried in VS and other writings to counter the idea that adherence to a view of moral truth means that one is subject to the heteronomous commands of an arbitrary sovereign. In the Pope's view, the moral law is something that is built into our human nature. Living in the truth is the key to our genuine fulfillment and authentic freedom. Our adherence to the truth is our participation in the wisdom and providence of God.
Richard M.
Friday, May 9, 2008
A Response to Authority/Conscience
I would like to thank Steve for his thoughts about authority and conscience. Over the last few years, he and I have respectfully exchanged views on both subjects separately and together along with other members of MOJ. I plan to offer a few thoughts to his early posting today on the subject of “authority/conscience.”
It may well be that there are some folks who would follow the Magisterium regardless of what it teaches. I for one think that most people who know what the Magisterium teaches and follow it do so because they have thought about what the Magisterium teaches and they also think about views which are not consistent with those of the Magisterium on the topic before consideration. They follow the Magisterium not out of blindness but out of a well-formed conscience and right reason.
For what it’s worth, human beings have always lived in a complex world, but that does not make the moral choice complex if one thinks about what is at stake. If all moral choices are “complex,” then relativism will triumph—be it the relativism of the “mystery of life” passage from Casey or the relativism of the individual who insists that “I was only following orders.”
The moral law, if it is true to its identity and what is constitutive of it, must be objective. The exercise of conscience, which is always crucial to moral decision making, must also be objective. With due respect to those who assert that conscience is first and last a purely subjective matter, I cannot agree with their contention. This view reflects the problematic formulation of Casey that it is up to the individual to determine the meaning of life, the mystery of the universe, etc. If, indeed, this understanding is correct, then how, as I have argued or suggested in previous postings, is the conflict about any moral decision, great or small, that will inevitably emerge, to be resolved? I take no dispute with the issue that it is ultimately the voice of God, but how is God’s voice to be received and understood? If it is always by the individual and nothing more, then Casey wins and God loses. Why?
John Courtney Murray was on target when he mentioned that “the right to do what my conscience tells me to do, simply because my conscience tells me to do it” is a “perilous theory.” As Murray further explained, the particular peril of this approach “is subjectivism—the notion that, in the end, it is my conscience, and not the objective truth, which determines what is right or wrong, true or false.” I can imagine that each of us who contribute to MOJ could claim that God has revealed to her or him what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false without any other mediating influence. In this case, we could all claim to be right and true. But, what happens when our views to which we claim rightness and truth conflict with one another?
It is, as I have suggested, the voice of God that mediates, but it is not the voice of God as presented by the view of purely “personal revelation.” God’s voice is an outside authority, and so is the voice of Peter and his successors which are essential to the process of the proper exercise of conscience. Without both, my exercise of conscience is simply what I think or what I feel, and not much more. Making into God that which is not is idolatry, even when that is only my naked conscience and nothing more. The well-formed conscience, as I have previously stated [HERE and HERE], is something more.
I again thank Steve for his interesting points and look forward to further discussion with him and others on this subject. RJA sj
God's sovereignty and Myanmar
Georgia law prof Randy Beck responds to my post on God and Myanmar as follows:
Coming from a Reformed Protestant perspective, I think you're right that for a theology grounded in Scripture, the sovereignty of God will be unavoidable. The theme is equally strong in the New Testament and the Old. The crucifixion of Christ, for instance, occurred "by God's set purpose and foreknowledge." (Acts 2:23) The problem comes when people claim to know why God allows particular events to occur. Scripture offers a wide range of reasons why God might permit someone to suffer, and punishment for sin is only one of the possibilities. Christ dealt with this issue in Luke's gospel, rejecting the crowd's facile assumption that those who suffer must be worse sinners than other people. (Luke 13:1-5) One thing Scripture does affirm is that God works all things for good--that he brings good even out of evil. (Rom. 8:28) I think that's the point of Joseph's comment to his brothers after they sold him into slavery, a sin that ultimately led to their survival in spite of famine: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (Gen. 50:20) To my mind, the sovereignty of a good God gives believers reason to hope even in a situation like the tragedy in Myanmar. Even this is not outside of God's control and He will bring good from it that we can't as yet anticipate.
The Communion of Saints and the Big Tent
Susan on her blog wonderfully expressed a view of Catholicism: “I saw an image of the apostolic line stretching forward from Peter through the Popes over the years through to the present day Pope. I saw that it is that apostolic line that holds the structure of this tent we call Catholicism.” Others in the tent are moved by a different image (the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive), namely the communion of saints. Consider a part of the description of the communion of saints from Joan Chittister’s wonderful book on the Apostle’s Creed, In Search of Belief 178, 182 : “The Creed is talking . . . about the unity of strangers that forms about the image of Christ who calls us beyond our past into a demanding and sometimes lonely present. In communion with these people who have lived their faith to the end before us, we all trek on, alone but together, together but alone, depending on the hand and the sight of the other to take us further still . . . . The communion of saints is not about the sinlessness of those who went before us. It is about sinfulness transcended, made holy in the milling of everyday life, of everyday politics, of everyday ecclesiastical consternation. The communion of saints is every color, every level, every challenge of mankind. It is the cosmic vision of Christ made plain. It crosses time and culture and the quagmires of national politics and Church conflicts to leave us with the face of a Church that is human [and] is us at our best. It is the Christ-face drawn differently in every age by every people.”
Authority/Conscience
There is a tendency to confuse the responsibility of the bishops to teach with the responsibility to determine in conscience whether the teachings of the bishops are acceptable. Some think it warranted to decide that they will follow the Magisterium regardless of what it teaches. James T. Bretzke, S.J., forcefully argues that the latter position is untenable in his A Morally Complex World: Engaging Contemporary Moral Theology 112: “To replace the authority of conscience as the ultimate voice of moral authority, even if it be the pope or the bishops, would open up a huge number of problems concerning authority and mature human action. Heteronomy, the imposition of the moral law from some outside source . . . is not the traditional Roman Catholic position. Whatever authority one believes is absolute is, in effect, the voice of God for that person, and if we allow any outside authority – no matter how respected – to supplant the individual’s conscience, then we are, in effect, making this heteronomous moral authority into God for that person. Making into a “god” that which is not truly God is idolatry . . . .”
Senator Grassley, religious freedom, and tax exemptions
Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) is not happy with "prosperity gospel" ministers. More here, by Steve Dillard. Thoughts? Is the Senator overreaching?
Vouchers, evidence, and ideology"
An excellent post -- with implications, I think, beyond the education-reform issue -- by Jay Greene, here.
Response to God and Myanmar
MOJ-reader Jonathan Watson had this to say regarding my post on God and Myanmar:
"You ask, 'What is it that prompts people to regard disaster or disease as God's punishment for being bad?' My response is that I believe that humans have an innate desire to see good action rewarded (hence, many Christians now and in the past viewing wealth as a reward for living virtuously) and evil activity punished (see the comments on Myanmar).
"In the end, we are left with Fr. Araujo's statement, and a similar from First Things here, by David Hart, an Orthodox theologian, [which states in part]: 'I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God's goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.'"
God and Myanmar
I share Susan's distress over comments attributing the Myanmar disaster to God's will. But I don't find the comments especially puzzling -- in some cases, they are legitimate attempts to reconcile the world we see with God's sovereignty. It's one thing to write off school shootings as products of free will, but it's much harder to do that with a natural world that seems hard-wired for human misery. Explaining Myanmar as an exercise of God's sovereignty also makes a certain amount of logical sense after reading Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. If God hardened Pharaoh's heart in order to keep him from freeing the Israelites, necessitating more plagues, why wouldn't it make sense that God would "clean up Myanmar" in this horrific manner? One reason I have such a hard time reading the Old Testament is that it seems that God is continually breaking eggs in the course of making his proverbial omelet. Modern sensibilities suggest that God's love for every single human person precludes Him from willing any amount of suffering for any single human person. I hope that's the case. The Bible does not exactly boost my confidence, though.
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