A few weeks ago, the Washington Post ran an article, "Down's Syndrome Now Detectable in First Trimester: Earlier Diagnosis Allows More Time for Decisions." The "decision[]" discussed, of course, is the decision to abort the unborn child diagnosed with Down's Syndrome. Commenting on the article, Kathryn Lopez had this to say: "If we shrug off a majority of Down kids being aborted now, how far off can deeper cultural inoculation to the impossible quest for reproductive perfection be? It's a spine-chilling road we're walking on." (There's more. Check it out).
Monday, December 5, 2005
Down's Syndrome testing
Down's Syndrome testing
A few weeks ago, the Washington Post ran an article, "Down's Syndrome Now Detectable in First Trimester: Earlier Diagnosis Allows More Time for Decisions." The "decision[]" discussed, of course, is the decision to abort the unborn child diagnosed with Down's Syndrome. Commenting on the article, Kathryn Lopez had this to say: "If we shrug off a majority of Down kids being aborted now, how far off can deeper cultural inoculation to the impossible quest for reproductive perfection be? It's a spine-chilling road we're walking on." (There's more. Check it out).
Sunday, December 4, 2005
Conscience and Public Dissent
Assuming arguendo that McCormick (see Steve's post here) is correct that “[A] community without it is a community in comfortable stagnation,” it still does not follow that an individual community member is bound by conscience to publicly speak of his or her dissent. Instead, the individual is making a judgment that speaking would be in the best interest of the community. My point is that there are two separate movements when someone says "I dissent from teaching "X" or instruction "Y." An exercise of conscience and a judgment (not bound by conscience) to speak of the dissent.
Pax, Michael S.
Saturday, December 3, 2005
A bit more on Dissent and Conscience
Thanks to Steve for his post on Conscience and Dissent. The late Richard McCormick of the Society of Jesus was a gifted man whom I did not have the opportunity to meet. But if I did have that opportunity, I would ask him to elaborate his point so that I could understand why dissent within a community is essential in order to avoid its “comfortable stagnation.” I have the article to which Steve referred before me, and I have been going through it. Is it not possible that those who are faithful to the community and take the intellectual life and honesty seriously may regularly subject their positions to exacting scrutiny testing them with logic and objective empirical evidence and the critique of other views which stand in disagreement to their own? If so, and the positions of their community stand and maintain their integrity after being subjected to such rigorous, periodic examination, why is dissent from within the community needed to fend off stagnation, comfortable or otherwise? RJA sj
Dissent and Conscience
Two points/questions in response to Steve's most recent posting. First, if Fr. McCormick S.J. means that "dissent" is a necessary condition of a healthy tradition, then I think he's just dead wrong. A community actively engaged in asking and answering questions over time, allowing the cumulative and progressive entrance of knowledge, is a healthy tradition. One can register and pursue a question about the received learning without "dissenting" from it, no? Second, whatever one's judgment as to what the Second Vatican Council taught on the question of "subjective conscience," the subjectively innocent but objectively wrong conscience lands its owner in a dangerous position. God may reward the person possessed of a subjectively innocent (but objectively mistaken) conscience (a thesis Jack Coons and I explored in our By Nature Equal book), but still that person is in trouble: She is, in fact, cut off from the truth until her conscience becomes correct, and, meanwhile, pursuing the objectively erroneous course may cause ontic harm.
More on conscience and dissent
Why is dissent appropriate in Catholic life? I think Richard
A. McCormick, S. J., put it well: “[A]
community without it is a community in comfortable stagnation.”
It is difficult enough to know when dissenters are or are not lead by the Holy Spirit (as Sullivan discusses with great subtlety), but it is clear to me that if dissent is suppressed, voluntarily or not, the process of correcting error is harder to get off the ground.
Father Sullivan’s discussion of Vatican II makes it clear to me that there is a role for subjective conscience and judgment in Vatican II. Among other things, he observes that the Council rejected an amendment to the statement in the Declaration on Religious Freedom that the faithful “ought carefully attend to” the sacred and certain teachings of the Church. It was proposed that the text “ought carefully attend to” should read “ought to form their consciences according to.” This amendment was rejected when the Theological Commission in charge of the text maintained that the amendment was unduly restrictive and that the obligation of the faithful was “sufficiently expressed in the text as it stands.” It is hard to read the Council as saying something it precisely refused to say and that the Theological Commission specifically renounced.
Steve
Slavery and Church Teaching
I would like to respond to Eduardo’s challenging observations about the Church and slavery in the nineteenth century. If Eduardo was making the point that the Church did not speak out against slavery in the nineteenth, I must respectfully disagree. If his point was that some members of the Church did not abide by its teaching, then I would agree that there were Catholics involved in varying degrees of supporting slavery or its trade.
It is important to be mindful of what the Church teaches and has taught. It is also important to know that we, as Catholics (clerical and laity), are sinners who do not always follow the teachings of the Church. This is true when the practice of slavery is examined. With the European exploration and colonization of the globe in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, slavery became a growing business and, therefore, a subject of the Church’s teachings. We might recall the writings of de las Casas, Suàrez, de Vitoria, Molina, Claver, and others during this period. While Councils and Popes condemned various aspects of slavery and the slave trade in the first millennium of the Church, we need to be mindful of the teachings of Eugene IV (1435), Paul III (1537), Pius V (1568), Urban VIII (1639), Benedict XIV (1741), Pius VII (1815), Gregory XVI (1839), Leo XIII (1888), and the Second Vatican Council (1965) condemning, by different methods, slavery and the slave trade. The faithful—clerical and lay—have not always abided by these teachings, as I have mentioned. My own order was suppressed at the insistence of their Catholic majesties of France, Portugal, and Spain in 1773 for several reasons including its work against slave practices in colonial regions of the world. Perhaps they, their Catholic majesties who pressured the Pope to suppress the order, had in mind the words of Henry II: “who will rid me of this meddlesome priest!” It is also true that members of the Jesuit order in the Maryland Province participated in America’s “peculiar institution.” Perhaps those who participated in slavery had in mind, “when in America, do as the Americans.”
My point is this: the Church has held and taught for a long time that slavery and its trade are wrong. Nevertheless, some who considered themselves Catholics did not abide by this teaching. It appears the same is true when other issues of contemporary interests are studied. In these matters where the Church’s teachings are clear, some members do not always observe and practice what the Church teaches. RJA sj
Neuhaus on Noonan on "John Paul the Great"
Peggy Noonan is one of my favorite writers. She first achieved fame as Ronald Reagan's best speechwriter - the combinaion of the Gipper's delivery and Noonan's words produced some of the greatest political speeches of our time. Her book What I Saw at the Revolution remains one of the best books on the Reagan Revolution. So I jumped to order her new book on Pope John Paul II.
My copy hasn't arrived yet, but Father Richard John Neuhaus of the mostly Catholic, mostly conservative opinion monthly First Things, which also is one of my essential reads, has read Noonan's book and praises it highly:
I have had a chance to read her John Paul the Great (Viking) and am pleased to report that it is a wondrous gift. It does not purport to be a biography, although it draws intelligently on the work of Weigel and others. It is, rather, Ms. Noonan’s powerfully affecting story of how she found in John Paul “a spiritual father.”
She writes with remarkable grace and candor of the times of storms and crashes in her own life when she reached, frequently in desperation, for a truth that might ground the world and her place in the world. There was Bible study, mainly with evangelical Protestant friends, and then the discovering, for the first time, of the adventure of the Rosary. All along she was sustained by the companionship of John Paul, and through John Paul the companionship of Christ. Her personal encounters with the pope were few and fleeting, but, as she tells so movingly, his presence to her was, and is, a constant grace.
Along the way, she has incisive things to say about the joys and afflictions that attend being a Catholic today, as well as bracing reflections on the leadership of the Church that might have a startling and salutary impact on some bishops. John Paul the Great is an edifying and instructive read, and a gift you might want to share with others.
Friday, December 2, 2005
Conscience and Silence
I have been following with great interest the discussion on dissent/disagreement and the rights of conscience, here, here, here, and here, among other places. As for myself, I am always leary of concluding that my conscience is well-formed when it comes to concluding that the Church is wrong, and I am right. After all, I have been through a three year program in the art of rationalization (law school), I am bound by intellectual and spiritual limitations, I am a product of a particular time and culture, etc. But suppose hypothetically that after much prayer and study, I conclude that I must dissent or disagree with the teachings of the Church, must I also speak about it?
In other words, even if I disagree/dissent, does my conscience compel me to say so out loud? If so, why? In most cases, I wouldn't think that I have a duty to speak and publicly proclaim my dissent/disagreement, and I think there are powerful prudential reasons for keeping my private conscience private. What is gained by public disagreement/dissent? Do I hope to help inform the Church? Might I cause scandal or confusion among the Catholic faithful, the separated brethren, and non-Christians by my public dissent/disagreement? If I must speak, am I acting in love and humility, open to the possibility that I may be wrong and with firm belief that the Holy Spirit will guide the Church in the right direction in the long run?
The fact that my private conscience leads me to dissent/disagree seems to me to be a completely separate issue from making the contents of my conscience known publicly.
What do you think?
Michael S.
Engaging the Church
Rob asks "isn't the bridge we're constructing between the Church and the legal culture open to traffic in both directions?" I think the answer is yes. This is precisely Michele Pistone's project regarding the Church's view of brain drain emigration. She argues (persausively, I might add) that the Church's view on brain drain emigration is based on faulty or incomplete sociology and economics. And, she is asking the Church to reconsider its position in light of new data.
Michael S.
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