On Primacy of Conscience, Certain Conscience Judgments, and Acting in Good Faith

[[Sister Laurel, Do you think Nancy Pelosi can act out of primacy of conscience if her conscience is not well-formed? Abp Cordileone said that Pelosi needed to form her conscience further. If that is true how can she claim primacy of conscience?]]

Thanks for the question. It is not that I believe Rep Pelosi can act out of primacy of conscience; the Church teaches and I accept completely that she must act in this way and she must do so no matter the degree of formation and information that conscience has been given or achieved up to this point. To fail to act according to one's certain conscience judgment is always a sin because it means acting against the voice of God as one has discerned it in a given instance. (Note that this means one must follow one's conscience even when one is mistaken in one's prudential judgment!!) Conscience is absolutely sacrosanct. There we are alone with God. No one else can enter here, no authority, no institution, and no one can tell us what we must decide. In coming to what is called a "certain conscience judgment" we discern all of the values and disvalues present in the situation and preference these. Additionally, we pray, consider seriously what the Church and other authorities have to say which may and must be brought to bear on the situation. Even so, ultimately, the analysis, listening, discernment and deciding are our responsibility. Only we and God can know whether we act in good faith or not.

The point I made in my prior post is that one may, in fact, err in one's conscience judgment and still act in what we call "good faith". (The reference to a "certain" conscience judgment refers to the fact that one has discerned how God requires one to act, not to the inerrancy of the judgment one has come to.)  If Nancy Pelosi, for instance, were to try to come to a certain conscience judgment and in the process decide she had not taken sufficient care in forming or informing her conscience up to this point, the certain conscience judgment she could come to would involve recognizing she was not ready to make a decision in the matter and would impel her to greater formation/information. Ideally one's conscience judgment is both certain AND correct, but a conscience judgment can be "certain" without being correct so long as one acts in good faith.

It is important to realize that our consciences can always be better formed and informed. We can only decide and act as we are able at any given time. And we must act in terms of the conscience we have! It is therefore also important to understand that even if we are in error or our prudential conscience decision runs counter to Church teaching the Church herself still teaches we are obliged to follow our conscience. Both Aquinas and Innocent III wrote on this matter. Aquinas taught that if one's conscience required one disagree with the Church in any specific situation, then one must follow one's conscience even if it meant following it humbly right out of the Church due to excommunication, etc. Again, while one must continue throughout one's life to think, pray, and generally continue to form and inform one's conscience, when the time comes to decide, one must do so and act on the certain conscience judgment one comes to. This is part of the process of further forming one's conscience -- something that truly happens only as we learn to discern, prioritize, and preference the values and disvalues present in any given situation.

One misunderstanding regarding the formation and information of a conscience is that one's conscience judgment must comport with Church teaching or one has not got a well-formed conscience. I have heard this objection a lot, and it may be that Abp Cordileone was implying this when asked about Nancy Pelosi's conscience; here he replied she needed to [continue to] better form her conscience. During Vatican II a minority of Church Fathers sought to codify this position in the documents of the Council. The majority  of Fathers rejected this as counter Church tradition, which, they asserted, had already been well-represented in the documents and Tradition. Because we make conscience judgments in the presence of unique circumstances and competing values and disvalues which may be preferenced in different ways, no one but the person themselves can truly say that the person's conscience was badly formed nor that their conscience judgments were wrong. Again, no one can second guess us in this. Primacy of conscience is still the absolute requirement. As soon-to-be Cardinal Robert McElroy (San Diego) said recently: [[We (Bishops, the Institutional Church) are not replacing the consciences of our people. We are trying to help them as men and women [to] exercise those consciences in the political sphere.]]

Here too then, is one place where the recognition that "we are (all of us baptized) Church" becomes absolutely critical. The Institutional Church does not and in fact cannot pronounce on the "right thing" to do in every situation except in the abstract. She can pronounce on what is intrinsically evil and on the gravity of certain actions and, of course, we take such pronouncements very seriously indeed. Still, it takes a person of faith on the ground to discern the situation with all its values and disvalues, apply Church teaching as best we can, and then decide in light of one's own communion with God and wisdom how one is called to decide and behave in any specific situation. We bring the wisdom of the Church and the compassion and justice/mercy of God into specific situations where the institutional Church will never go otherwise. The capacity to do this, the ability to reason morally in complex and demanding situations with competing values and disvalues, is what moralists and Catholic Tradition mean by having a well-formed conscience. 

Here again it is important to restate that while the ideal conscience judgment is both certain and correct, one can come to a certain conscience judgment and be in error. This does not necessarily mean one has a badly formed conscience or was careless in exercising prudential conscience judgment. And neither does it relieve a person from the obligation of primacy of conscience and all that entails. Primacy of conscience does not mean "do whatever you want and justify it in the name of conscience"! Primacy of conscience means that what must always come first and cannot be questioned by those outside us are the judgments we come to as we sincerely, carefully, faithfully, and intelligently attend to the voice of God in our heart of hearts. 

Given all of this, I will say I have seen no evidence that Nancy Pelosi is not continuing to inform and form her own conscience in a way that allows her to make good faith conscience judgments for which she should be disciplined in such a highly public and political situation. Neither do I see evidence that her conscience needs to be better formed any more than is necessary for any intelligent person with a developed capacity to reason morally in a complex and changing situation. My sense is Pelosi opposes abortion and she opposes foisting that Catholic position on others. She has discerned and preferenced the values (life, freedom of choice or from coercion, etc) and disvalues (the impacts of carrying the fruit of incest or rape, forcing a choice, the death of the child, etc) and decided as she has after significant consultation, reflection, and prayer. Given the sincerity of her faith and the depth of what Archbishop Cordileone called her maternal sensibilities, I have to believe she holds her positions in the matter "in good faith". She is required, therefore, to act according to those certain prudential conscience judgments. To do otherwise is, without any doubt whatsoever, to sin against God, and to do so directly and (likely) gravely.

Interview With Archbishop Cordileone on Denying Rep. Pelosi Access to Eucharist

The following interview with Archbishop Cordileone is excellent and no matter where one stands on the action he has taken with Nancy Pelosi, it addresses (and raises!) some important questions. (The interviewer does a really good job with a wide scope of significant questions while not antagonizing Abp Cordileone or demonstrating particularly her own bias.) 

One thing that strikes me as inconsistent (or insufficiently articulated) is Abp Cordileone's focus on the complexity of his own and other bishops' prudential conscience judgments in this regard while apparently not clearly recognizing that Rep. Pelosi may well be acting in good faith on the very same complex prudential conscience questions and judgments. The other point which requires greater clarity is an apparent implication of guilt or culpability on Pelosi's part when in fact, Abp Cordileone cannot honestly speak to this issue without Nancy Pelosi admitting to him that she acted in bad faith. More specifically, Cordileone actually needs to deny her culpability is a known issue (or point out his own inability to say at all because what he knows is, for instance, confidential or covered by the seal of confession). Again, one may act in good faith and also err in their conscience judgment; in either case there is no sin and one is not culpable, nor, therefore, does one need to repent.) Unfortunately,  ABp Cordileone specifically says Pelosi needs to repent, even as he affirms her sincerity of belief.

In responding to the question, "but what about Nancy Pelosi's conscience?" ABp Cordileone distinguishes the way some treat abortion from other objectively evil acts and argues that we would never allow slavery to be made legal again, for instance, something that is also objectively evil even if one determined it could be done in good conscience. But this fails to speak to the question of the primacy of Nancy Pelosi's conscience judgment, which he was purporting to answer. He wanted to make the point that everyone recognizes the objective evil of slavery and so, we would never 1) make it legal, or 2) argue that one could hold slaves in good conscience. But in point of fact, there are several forms of contemporary slavery people justify today, despite their illegality and their immorality. Some of these persons may actually be acting "in good conscience" --- though their conscience judgments would be seriously errant.

In such a case one might mistakenly approve an objective evil (like slavery) because one sincerely thought one heard God's voice in the matter, and that person will certainly need to bear the consequences of such a conscience judgment including any civil, political, and ecclesiastical penalties and/or acts of censure that apply, but they cannot be said to be sinning in holding this viewpoint or acting accordingly. One opines and acts wrongly (in fact, one commits an objective evil) in these circumstances and will bear the consequences, but subjectively, one is not required to repent of personal sin in such a case because subjectively one acted in good faith according to what they believed God called them to believe and do. (I have written about this distinction before in citing Benedict XVI, so please check labels to the right.)

Especially important in considering what Abp Cordileone has done in taking this action is understanding the distinction between being blocked from Communion and excommunication which Abp Cordileone is clear about: Pelosi's access to the Sacrament is blocked but she is not excommunicated, and so, she is still Catholic with all of the rights and obligations of any Catholic excepting the right to receive the Eucharist. (This question came up in an online group to which I belong, so I am concerned that and expecting the media et al, to mistakenly claim Pelosi has been excommunicated.)

On Conscience and One-Issue Voting

[[Dear Sister, I think you wrote a piece about elections and one-issue voting in 2012 or 2016. Could you summarize that article here now? I have family who are arguing that anyone who votes for a candidate who is not anti-abortion  who votes for a party that supports a woman's right to choose is necessarily damned to hell. I don't believe the current President is really anti-abortion but even if he is everything else he is about does not exactly scream "pro-life". . . . At the same time I don't think VP Biden is necessarily anti-life because of his support for abortion. . .]]

Thanks for asking about this; I posted this piece in August but decided that might have been missed by many. So here it is again. I also noted then that I had seen a post around then which criticized a bishop for restating Benedict XVI's analysis, so yes, there is significant misunderstanding on what the Catholic Church teaches about conscience judgments/decisions and the difficulty with one-issue voting. Abortion tends to be the single issue around which such misunderstandings and their attendant arguments are marshalled. Here is the article you were asking about. I have cut some of it to limit it to the key points: 1) what it means to have an informed and a well-formed conscience, and 2) how one determines one is to vote in a situation which is ambiguous or (misleadingly) marked as a "one-issue" situation.

Hermitage Chapel and Cave of the Heart

. . .Let me restate 1) the pertinent part of the Church's teaching on the nature and primacy of conscience, and 2) Benedict XVI's analysis of elections which involve, for instance, the issues of abortion and contraception when neither candidate or party platform is really completely acceptable to Catholics.

First, we are to inform and form our consciences to the best of our ability. These are two separate but related processes.  This means we are not only to learn as much as we can about  the issue at hand including church teaching, medical and scientific information, sociological data, theological data, and so forth (this is part of the way to an informed conscience), but we are to do all we can to be sure we have the capacity to make a conscience judgment and act on it. This means we must develop the capacity to discern all the values and disvalues present in a given situation, preference them appropriately, and then determine or make a conscience judgment regarding how we must act. Finally we must act on the conscientious or prudential judgment that we have come to. (This latter capacity which allows us to reason morally about all the information is what is called a well-formed conscience. A badly formed conscience is one which is incapable of reasoning morally; such a conscience is incapable of discerning the values and disvalues present, preferencing these, and/or making a judgment on how one must act in such a situation. Note well: those who merely "do as authority tells them" may not have a well-formed conscience informed though they may be regarding what the Church teaches in a general way!)

There are No Shortcuts, No Ways to Free ourselves from the Complexity or the Risk of this Process and Responsibility:

There is no short cut to this process of informing and forming our consciences. No one can discern or decide for us, not even Bishops and Popes. They can provide information, but we must look at ALL the values and disvalues in the SPECIFIC situation and come to a conscientious judgment ourselves. No one can do this for us, nor can we abdicate our own responsibility to embody Christ in this given situatiuon. The human conscience is inviolable, the inner sanctum where God speaks to each of us alone. It ALWAYS has primacy. Of course we may err in our conscience judgment, but if we 1) fail to act to adequately inform and form our consciences, or 2) act in a way which is contrary to our own conscience judgment we are more likely guilty of sin (this is  actually certain in the latter case). If we act in good faith, we are NEVER guilty of sin --- though we may act wrongly and will always have to bear the consequences of that action. If we err, the matter is morally neutral at worst and could even involve great virtue. If we act in bad faith, if we act against our conscience judgment, we ALWAYS sin, and often quite seriously, for to act against a conscience judgment is to act against the very voice of God as heard in our heart of hearts.  Please note: in moral theology we speak of "certain conscience judgments"; this does not mean we are certain we are absolutely free from error but rather, this is the judgment our own (always imperfectly) informed and formed consciences have come to in this place and at this time. This we know certainly and for this reason, because we are acting in good faith, we do not fear we are in error. We must act on such a judgment.

And what about conscience judgments which are not in accord with Church teaching (or in this case, with what some Bishops are saying)? I have written about this before but it bears repeating. Remember that at Vatican II the minority group approached the theological commission with a proposal to edit a text on conscience. The text spoke about the nature of a well-formed conscience. The redaction the minority proposed was that the text should read, "A well-formed conscience is one formed to accord with Church teaching." The theological commission rejected this redaction as too rigid and reminded the Fathers that they had already clearly taught what the church had always held on conscience. And yet today we hear all the time from various places, including some Bishops, that if one's conscience judgment is not in accord with Church teaching the conscience is necessarily not well-formed --- never mind that church teaching can never acount for all of the values and disvalues present in a given situation; this is what the individual believer can and is called to do. But this minority position is not Church teaching --- not the teaching articulated by Thomas Aquinas or Innocent III, for instance, who counseled people that they MUST follow their consciences even if that meant bearing humbly with excommunication! Again, the certain conscience judgment MUST always be followed or one sins and can be sinning gravely.

Benedict XVI's Analysis on one issue voting:

Now then, what about Benedict XVI's analysis of voting in situations of ambiguity where, for instance, one party supports abortion but is deemed more consistently pro-life otherwise? What happens when this situation is sharpened by an opposing party who claims to be anti-abortion but has done nothing concrete to stop it? MUST a Catholic vote for the anti-abortion party or be guilty of endangering their immortal souls? Will they necessarily become complicit in intrinsic evil if they vote for the candidate or party which supports abortion? The answer to both questions is no. Here is what Benedict XVI said: If a person is trying to decide for or against a particular candidate and determines that one candidate's party is more consistently pro-life than the other party, even though that first party supports abortion or contraception, the voter may vote in good conscience for that first candidate and party SO LONG AS they do not do so BECAUSE of the candidate's (or party's) position on abortion or contraception.

In other words, in such a situation abortion is not  and cannot be the single overarching issue which ALWAYS decides the case. One CAN act in good faith and vote for a candidate or party which seems to support life as a seamless garment better than another even if that candidate or party does not specifically oppose abortion. (Please note that in this analysis a candidate may support a platform which includes the right to abortion or the "right to choose" and not be a supporter of abortion itself.) One cannot vote FOR intrinsic evil, of course, but one can vote for all sorts of goods which are clearly Gospel imperatives and still not be considered complicit in intrinsic evil. By the way, this is NOT the same thing as doing evil in order that good may result; it is about maximizing the good one chooses while avoiding choosing evil!! Benedict XVI's analysis is less simplistic than some characterizations I have heard recently; theologically it seems to me to be far more cogent and nuanced than these. For more on Benedict XVI's own position, please look for original articles on Benedict's analysis.

Another look at Religious Obedience and the Ministry of Authority

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I am not a Catholic and I have no real knowledge of religious life except what I've heard here and there or that I just grew up believing. I read an article you wrote on obedience and on what you called "the ministry of authority" which you defined in terms of love. I have to say I was kind of floored by it. It is nothing like what I thought a vow of obedience or the way superiors worked in a nun's life. When you speak of your Delegate I get the sense you are very close but also that she can exercise authority any time she feels it is necessary. Have I got that right? Does she ever just tell you what to do? Does she ever tell you to do things you don't want to do or feel are wrong? Can you give me some specific examples of how obedience and the "ministry of authority" actually work? Do you ever worry that a vow of obedience might make you somehow less than an adult? I don't mean any offense! I am not sure why this is so interesting to me but you are dispelling some long-held misunderstandings and I don't know where else I could ask these questions. Thank you!]]

Thanks for your questions. My own family is not Catholic and I suspect they hold (or held) some of the same misunderstandings so I am grateful you have asked about the topic. First though, let me thank you once more. You have read the article you mention well and summarized it accurately. Obedience is linked to the ministry of authority and that authority is (in my experience) exercised as an expression of love. Neither do I mean it is exercised as an expression of an abstract love, but as an expression of a genuine love rooted in knowledge of and care for the person's truest self. (A superior in a congregation must cultivate a love not just for an individual Sister but for the house, the congregation and its charism and mission; working with a diocesan hermit is somewhat different. The delegate cultivates a love for the hermit, her place in the parish and diocese, and the eremitical tradition she represents in a canonical way; it is in this smaller context that she exercises the ministry of authority with a solitary Catholic hermit.)

As you can see exercising a ministry of authority is about much more than telling someone what to do. Encouraging another's growth in Christ requires its own attentiveness, faith, and fidelity to truth, both personal and institutional. Similarly then, obedience is a much richer and significant reality than simply "doing what one is told". Obedience is about listening attentively, to God, to one's deepest self, to the needs and potential one has within, to the nature and quality of one's commitments,  and to the way life summons one to greater and greater fullness in the service of others. We may use the short hand phrase "will of God" for all of this but cultivating this kind of attentive listening is at the heart of a vow of obedience and all contemplative life. One of the more privileged sources of discernment regarding the ways love and life call us to fullness in our transparency to God is one's delegate or Director. One's Director/delegate knows us (indeed, they have worked with us usually for years, listened well to us, prayed for and with us, and in part have been chosen for this role precisely because they know us well) and love us in the way every person needs most. They will also be chosen for their experience in religious life (including formation and leadership) as well as their wisdom and faithfulness as a consecrated person living an ecclesial vocation.

On the other hand, by the time one becomes a diocesan hermit (i.e., is professed and consecrated in a life commitment under c 603) one has lived eremitical life for some time, written a liveable Rule of Life (usually after several drafts and lots of notes made over time), and become accustomed to vows of the Evangelical Counsels. One may or may not have been a religious in another chapter of one's life, but in any case one has learned what is essential for one's relationship with God, and developed the skills and tools necessary to respond to God faithfully day in and day out. The Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, study of Scripture, a fair theology and spirituality will have become foci for one's life. One will have worked with a spiritual director regularly for some years, fostered a relationship with the Church (usually through one's parish) and accepted an adult  leadership role (not necessarily a formal one) in the faith community. In other words, one is an adult in one's faith and does not need someone telling them what to do day in and day out. But one will also be profoundly committed to grow 1) as a Christian, 2) as a contemplative, and 3) as a hermit representing a significant, prophetic, but rare tradition. It is the role of a hermit's Director (delegate) to make sure one's arc of growth in these ways occurs in a way which is edifying to the diocese and church universal.So, what does this look like "on the ground" so to speak?

As I have noted several times, my own Director rarely tells me what to do --- though she will do a fair amount of encouraging, especially in connection with inner work we also do or when I am considering doing something new ministerially! In the past three and a half years I think she has given me what I might consider a demand rooted in obedience perhaps three times. You asked for examples. A couple of times recently she has told me to do something I didn't much want to do, but the directive was a way of allowing my trust for M. (and, ultimately, for the God who is active in our work together) to triumph over my own fear, reluctance, or reticence. The one somewhat different example that stands out in my mind comes from a time when I was juggling a few different things and was also at a very difficult part of my own growth work. My pastor was travelling and that meant the daily schedule of services for the chapel community had to be worked out in his absence. We try to have priests fill in at these times, but it is not always possible. Although 6-7 days needed to be covered and I was willing to try to do what I could along with a couple of others, my delegate simply said, "Two services, no more." It was a limit I might eventually have set for myself at that time, and it was a directive I could perhaps have blown off had I chosen to, but this simple directive recognized not only my role in the parish but the importance of the other dimensions of my life and the difficulty and energy required for the inner work I was doing as well my parish's needs. My Director saw what I could not and set the limits for me; the limits were actually a relief and it never occurred to me to transgress these.

When I reflect on how this worked I think it illustrates well why ministry and authority are combined in the designation, "Ministry of authority". Sister was ministering to me in this instance and she was doing so on the basis of both knowledge and love. She was protecting me so my own ministries in the parish, diocese, and universal Church could continue in a fruitful way --- not only my ministry of prayer in the silence of solitude, but also what I do as pastoral assistant as well as my own inner work, blogging, and writing on eremitical life itself. Those four words, had a bit of steel in them but were gently spoken and came from a place of love. What I want you to hear here is that no one else (except my bishop) could have said those same words to me ("Two services, no more!"), not my best friend or a favorite professor, not a confessor nor a spiritual director, but only someone with the authority associated with my public vow of obedience. My pastor might well have asked I do or feel free to do only two of the services and he could have said "Let the other two work out the remainder", but he could not have said precisely what my Director did in the same way she did. He does not have that authority. What I also want you to hear, however, is that there is nothing infantilizing in setting such a requirement. That is precisely because it is rare and rooted in a love focused on my own well-being and growth.

Obedience binds in situations where there is no directive, of course, but not in quite the same way. If my Director (delegate) asks or encourages me about something with regard to my health, spirituality, relationships, ministry, work, etc. I will certainly give whatever it is serious consideration, explore what it will take to implement or follow up on it appropriately, as well as pray about and take what action is appropriate. But in these kinds of things I am also free to make what decisions I will. In other words, I listen attentively, discuss things with relevant people, work through them (prayer, journaling, research) and do what is clearly needed in light of my own integrity and vocation. I would say that this is the way obedience generally works for vowed religious (professed diocesan hermits) these days. It is the same pattern I described in another example when I asked my Director if she could see any problem with me doing something very much outside my usual routine (protesting governmental action at a major airport). In that instance she said, "So long as it comports with your Rule, respects your own physical needs, frailties, and health concerns, and is consistent with your own deep conscience, I don't see any problem with it." She also reminded me since this action was public I needed to decide about wearing my habit/cowl but that too was left up to me.

No Director (delegate or superior) can demand someone do something they consider wrong, or rather, no religious/professed hermit can obey such a demand, not without sinning seriously. We  (every Christian) is/are required to follow our certain conscience judgments. Conscience is the very voice of God within us and we cannot act counter to such a conscience judgment without acting against God. If a superior requires we do something contrary to conscience, conscience must always trump the superior's directive. As St Thomas once pointed out, if one is condemned unjustly for following one's conscience, even to the point of being excommunicated, one must follow one's conscience and bear the punishment humbly. Conscience judgments  always have primacy for they are they very voice of God within a person's heart of hearts. I hope this is helpful. The ministry of authority has been conceived variously over the centuries and many folks' only sense of what it means may come from movies or TV. There's lots of good literature on obedience generally and the vow specifically, but mostly only religious read such stuff!

On Primacy of Conscience and Voting in Difficult Situations

In 2012 I posted the following as part of another piece occasioned by situations involving partisan political positions being taken on parish grounds of distant US local Catholic Churches. In that post I reminded folks that this kind of activity was contrary to Church teaching, contrary to the separation of Church and State, and something which actually endangered freedom of religion and the Church's tax-free status. At the same time I had been asked something about how I was voting, especially when neither party seemed particularly acceptable to Catholics and may differ from Church teaching and praxis --- for instance on the issues of abortion and contraception. It's probably a good time to restate some of this, especially the Church's teaching on the primacy of conscience.

Reprise:

The Cave of the Heart

So, since a couple of people have asked me about voting (they actually asked about how I am voting but I am not going there) let me restate 1) the pertinent part of the Church's teaching on the nature and primacy of conscience, and 2) Benedict XVI's analysis of elections which involve, for instance, the issues of abortion and contraception when neither candidate or party platform is really completely acceptable to Catholics.

First, we are to inform and form our consciences to the best of our ability. This means we are not only to learn as much as we can about  the issue at hand including church teaching, medical and scientific information, sociological data, theological data, and so forth (this is part of the way to an informed conscience), but we are to do all we can to be sure we have the capacity to make a conscience judgment and act on it. This means we must develop the capacity to discern all the values and disvalues present in a given situation, preference them appropriately, and then determine or make a conscience judgment regarding how we must act. Finally we must act on the conscience or prudential judgment that we have come to. (This latter capacity which reasons morally about all the information is what is called a well-formed conscience. A badly formed conscience is one which is incapable of reasoning morally, discerning the values and disvalues present, preferencing these, and making a judgment on how one must act in such a situation. Note well, that those who merely "do as authority tells them" may not have a well-formed conscience informed though they may be regarding what the Church teaches in a general way!)

There are No Shortcuts, No Ways to Free ourselves from the Complexity or the Risk of this Process and Responsibility:

There is no short cut to this process of informing and forming our consciences. No one can discern or decide for us, not even Bishops and Popes. They can provide information, but we must look at ALL the values and disvalues in the SPECIFIC situation and come to a conscientious judgment ourselves. The human conscience is inviolable, the inner sanctum where God speaks to each of us alone. It ALWAYS has primacy. Of course we may err in our conscience judgment, but if we 1) fail to act to adequately inform and form our consciences, or 2) act in a way which is contrary to our own conscience judgment we are more likely guilty of sin (this is  actually certain in the latter case). If we act in good faith, we are NEVER guilty of sin --- though we may act wrongly and have to bear the consequences of that action. If we err, the matter is neutral at worst and could even still involve great virtue. If we act in bad faith, we ALWAYS sin, and often quite seriously, for to act against a conscience judgment is to act against the very voice of God as heard in our heart of hearts.

And what about conscience judgments which are not in accord with Church teaching (or in this case, with what some Bishops are saying)? I have written about this before but it bears repeating. Remember that at Vatican II the minority group approached the theological commission with a proposal to edit a text on conscience. The text spoke about the nature of a well-formed conscience. The redaction the minority proposed was that the text should read, "A well-formed conscience is one formed in accord (or to accord) with Church teaching." The theological commission rejected this redaction as too rigid and reminded the Fathers that they had already clearly taught what the church had always held on conscience. And yet today we hear all the time from various places, including some Bishops, that if one's conscience judgment is not in accord with Church teaching the conscience is necessarily not well-formed. But this is not Church teaching --- not the teaching articulated by Thomas Aquinas or Innocent III, for instance, who counseled people that they MUST follow their consciences even if that meant bearing with excommunication.

Benedict XVI's Analysis:

Now then, what about Benedict XVI's analysis of voting in situations of ambiguity where, for instance, one party supports abortion but is deemed more consistently pro-life otherwise? What happens when this situation is sharpened by an opposing party who claims to be anti-abortion but has done nothing concrete to stop it? MUST a Catholic vote for the anti-abortion party or be guilty of endangering their immortal souls? Will they necessarily become complicit in intrinsic evil if they vote for the candidate or party which supports abortion? The answer is no. Here is what Benedict XVI said: If a person is trying to decide for or against a particular candidate and determines that one candidate's party is more consistently pro-life than the other party, even though that first party supports abortion or contraception, the voter may vote in good conscience for that first candidate and party SO LONG AS they do not do so BECAUSE of the candidate's position on abortion or contraception.

In other words, in such a situation abortion is not the single overarching issue which ALWAYS decides the case. One CAN act in good faith and vote for a candidate or party which seems to support life as a seamless garment better than another party, even if that candidate or party does not oppose abortion. One cannot vote FOR intrinsic evil, of course, but one can vote for all sorts of goods which are clearly Gospel imperatives and still not be considered complicit in intrinsic evil. By the way, this is NOT the same thing as doing evil in order that good may result!! Benedict XVI's analysis is less simplistic than some characterizations I have heard recently; theologically it seems to me to be far more cogent and nuanced than these, and it is [an analysis] Bishops who are supposed to be in union with him when they teach as the ordinary Magisterium should certainly strongly reconsider and learn from.

In Thanksgiving for my own Parish:

Meanwhile, I want to take this opportunity to say how very grateful I am for my parish. We stand together around one Table; we share one Word; we drink from one Cup. We are very different from one another politically, theologically, economically, and so forth --- and we are all aware of it. Yet we trust one another to vote their consciences and pray that the will of God will be done. We do NOT allow differences in politics to divide us in a literally diabolical way. We may not agree on a specific issue or candidate, but we recognize the Church's theology of conscience allows that and respect one another in our disagreements. Thus, we continue to worship together and grow together in Christ. As the USCCB's  1999 document, "Faithful Citizenship" reminds us, "Our moral framework does not easily fit the categories of right or left, Democrat or Republican. Sometimes it seems few candidates and no party fully reflect our values. We must challenge all parties and every candidate to defend human life and dignity, to pursue greater justice and peace, to uphold family life, and to advance the common good." I find that in my parish at least, we are generally Christians first and trust one another to be that to the best of their ability. In this time especially, that is a very great gift and precisely what the Universal Church should be as a sign to the world!

Questions on Loyalty Oaths

[[Dear Sister, in today's NCR a man who has been a catechist for 15 years in the diocese of Arlington spoke about the problem of loyalty oaths and conscience. He said he would need to cease teaching catechism. Why would someone have a problem with a loyalty oath? Would you have a problem signing one if asked?]]

Personally, while I have no problem being asked if I do or would profess the Church's official creeds, I have a number of problems with the proposed loyalty (or fidelity) oaths.

In the first place I don't personally see how such loyalty (or fidelity) oaths are even legal. The Church's own teaching on the inviolability of conscience is so absolute that Canon 630.5 makes clear that in religious institutes a superior is [[prohibited from inducing a subject in any way whatever to make a manifestation of conscience.]] While this canon is situated in the section on religious life it is so categorically stated that there is no doubt it expresses a fundamental theological principle of conscience and justice which should obtain in any situation between superior and subject. A loyalty oath certainly is a manifestation of conscience, a showing of one's internal dispositions, a laying bare of what is in one's heart of hearts. I think I have to ask, when does such a principle cease to be binding on the Church as a whole?

Though not a canonist I would submit a pastor is, for purposes of such an oath, a parishioner's superior, as is a Bishop. After all, they are the ones demanding and implementing such oaths for those who, hierarchically, are "under" their leadership. (In some dioceses Bishops have stated ministers are assigned to serve in this Bishop's name; this seems to me to be the statement of a superior speaking of a subject.) As superiors then they have the right to ask about external activities: "Do you teach x?" "Will you teach y?" "Do you affirm you will live your faith the best you can?" "Will you continue to strive to greater understanding of and living out of your faith?" etc, but never about the interior dispositions of those they are placed over (Do you believe x? Do you agree with y? Do you struggle with z?). Again, in religious life superiors are forbidden to even ask questions which approach requiring a manifestation of conscience. How then can loyalty oaths which go far beyond a profession of the creeds be acceptable in the Church?

To further complicate the situation, if one's pastor (who is often one's confessor and thus, one to whom one does and is expected to be able to pour out one's heart in perfect confidentiality) is required to administer such an oath and in some cases verify the sincerity of the one signing it (cf the affirmation required by Bp Vasa and the clarifications on the nature of the assent required in his Baker Oregon Diocese; he places the pastor in precisely the position of one who judges the sincerity of the one making the "affirmation"), then I would suggest this is an unconscionable blurring of the boundaries between internal and external forums. At the very least, such a requirement would affect the ability of the pastor to truly shepherd one who struggles in a conscientious way with issues of faith or morals and the penitent to truly celebrate the Sacrament of Penance in complete openness. No matter the legality or content of such an oath, I would personally not be able to sign such a one for this reason alone. It would be a violation of my own conscience. After all, these reasons are very weighty ones to my mind and they negatively affect the very nature of the Church at her heart.

And if these difficulties are not enough, additional problems obtain when a single level of response is applied to teachings which have different weights or degrees of authority. While we have seen the erosion of the church's affirmation of a hierarchy of truths in past decades, this is a frontal assault. When we are asked to say "I affirm and believe" a whole spectrum of statements which range from matters requiring an assent of faith to matters which allow for an affirmation which indicates one's struggle and willingness to assent, for instance, the Church is doing violence to her own teaching on the hierarchy of truths and corresponding hierarchy of assent. (Other objections aside, not all loyalty oaths do this however; I have seen one form which was carefully divided into matters of faith, definitive doctrine, non-definitive but authoritative doctrine, and finally matters of discipline.) Even more problems crop up when things which are NOT properly matters of faith or morals at all, but are tangential to these or touch on them only remotely, are made part of such oaths (for instance, what one holds with regard to what is a proper reading of Obama's healthcare bill), or when one is required to relinquish the only absolute moral right and obligation any person has, namely to freely and responsibly form one's conscience and act on one's conscientious judgments. (The morality of implementing the Obamacare bill can only be determined by individual conscience judgment --- a consideration of the objective values and disvalues it supports or fails to support, a preferencing of these, and a judgment on the way one will act and the person one will be in light of this process.)

The Church has never taught "One is free (or obliged!) to form one's conscience EXCEPT with regard to x or y." (One loyalty oath (Baker Diocese, OR) requires one to affirm that "no one has the moral right to form one's conscience with regard to [abortion]"; this is simply antithetical to Catholic teaching on conscience. If the Bishop meant one may not simply follow one's whims and justify that with a facile nod to "conscience" then it would have been better to have said that. Unfortunately, he did not.) The Church teaches both the right and obligation to inform and form one's conscience in a serious way, and to continue doing so throughout the whole of one's life. This obligates each of us to work towards forming a conscience which is capable of thinking morally or discerning the (objective) values and disvalues in a situation, preferencing them as THIS situation requires, and making a (conscience or conscientious) judgment on how one will act --- not simply a conscience which believes what one is told one must and at the same time not simply a conscience attuned to one's own whims. The Church accepts that one's conscience judgment may err; if acting in good conscience is merely a matter of doing what the church teaches, how could one do so and err? The situation, and the church's own teaching on conscience is more complex than this.

Finally then, an important misunderstanding must be addressed. An erring or errant conscience does not mean a conscience which disagrees with or cannot act in accordance with church teaching in a given instance, whether in ignorance or not. It means one which makes an errant judgment on how to act in a given situation. There may be many causes for an errant conscience judgment. Neither, as I have noted here before, does a "well-formed" conscience merely mean one which is made to accord with church teaching. Again, it means instead, having a conscience (a discerning and critical faculty of judgment) which is capable of thinking morally, of discerning and preferencing the multiple competing objective values and disvalues present in a given situation, and which has the courage to make a judgment upon which one acts accordingly. As I wrote in an earlier post, the theological commission at Vatican II was asked to change statements in one document relating to conscience which affirm the individual's responsibility to listen attentively to church teaching in informing and forming one's conscience. The minority group asked that the passage be changed to read "in (or "to") accord with church teaching" so that a well-formed conscience was defined in these terms. The theological commission rejected this formulation and affirmed that the text accurately stated church teaching despite the tensions present in the church's own teaching as it already stood. They found the minority suggestion both too narrow and too rigid. Thomas Aquinas and Innocent III, among others, would have agreed with this assessment.

What I believe this means is that besides being potentially canonically illicit, loyalty (fidelity) oaths which include limitations on the right and obligation to form one's conscience in all matters in attentive dialogue with God (in one's heart of hearts), as well as with the church, science (including medicine), and other appropriate authorities or sources of pertinent guidance, or oaths which define an errant conscience judgment as one which is not in accord with church teaching and which confuse the various levels of assent required in a hierarchy of truths, are actually contrary to the church's own teaching here.

Followup Questions on Conscience

[[Dear Sister, you wrote a couple of weeks ago [July 6th] that, [[ Simply knowing and believing what the Church teaches abstractly is not the same as having a well-formed conscience which can make moral judgments in specific situations.]] I was very struck with that and surprised by your comment that the church depends on people being able to be church by making moral judgments in concrete situations, but some of the language was new to me and I am not sure I understood completely. Can you give some examples of preferencing, discerning, etc?

You also said that conscience is inviolable and that one must act on a conscience judgment even if one errs in doing so. How can the church teach that?? What happens if one errs? What happens if one makes a judgment which is contrary to what the church teaches? Does one still act on that? What happens if one believes one thing is right which is against church teaching and then decides to do what the church teaches instead?]] (redacted, especially by culling questions from longer text)

These are great questions and I am not surprised the comment that the Church depends on us being Church (that is, being the presence of Christ) in concrete situations is new to you. Remember that the Church cannot discern or preference all the possible values and disvalues present in any given situation from amongst those we each run into every day. I was taught this as an undergraduate in theology but don't think I have heard the matter put in exactly those terms by anyone else; other theologians teach the same thing, but the language was my professor's. The possibilities are infinite. Of course the Church can and does tell us what is intrinsically evil; she can and does tell us what objective values should be affirmed and what disvalues must be eschewed. She can remind us of basic moral principles like "one may not do evil in order to do good", but the application of these in concrete situations require a human heart and mind schooled by the spirit of Christ. You may recall that Friday's gospel passage from Matthew centered on Jesus' admonition that his disciples be simple as doves and shrewd as serpents. One application of this admonition is that of conscience formation. Jesus asks that we become people moved simply by the love of God but who are capable of negotiating the moral demands of a complex and complicated world. That is, in fact, our mission as those sent by Christ.

Discerning and Preferencing Values and Disvalues

When I speak of discerning values and disvalues and then preferencing them I am speaking of determining the values and disvalues present in a situation which, because they are objectively real, make an existential claim on us in some way and then "sorting" these in terms of which will have priority over the others and in which way that occurs. The simplest kind of situation might be a dilemma about feeding one's family and facing the choice whether to steal food to do that or not. Remember that the Church teaches that values are objective realities and that these are also keys to understanding the very call of God to us. So closely linked are these that we even speak of people who discover the existence of values as discerning the presence of God or we deny that persons who affirm the existence of values are truly atheists, for instance. So, with regard to this situation there are a number of objective values present which make a claim on the person and there are certain disvalues (usually the opposite of the values) which are also present. In most of what follows the disvalues are merely implicit and I mainly leave them to you to articulate explicitly.

Honesty (the value) and dishonesty (the disvalue), the commandment's prohibition not to steal and fidelity to divine law, compassion (both for one's family and for the store owner's own need for reimbursement and the ramifications of stealing from him), one's responsibility to provide for one's family, the health or well-being of that family, the example one sets for them in stealing (both positively and negatively), the demands of personal integrity and what that means in this situation, the presence of other options which might mitigate the need to steal in other ways (shelters, food banks, welfare programs) and any number of other values or disvalues and mitigating or aggravating circumstances are present in this simple situation. A person needs to be able to discern these, preference them (by which I mean determine which is more or less important than the others at this moment in time) and then to make a conscience judgment (a decision on how one is called to act) on the matter. We need to be able to do this not only because God calls us to do this but because WE literally are the Church incarnated in this specific situation, and so, we need to make the best moral judgments we possibly can.

The Inviolability and Primacy of Conscience, and the Erring Conscience

Essentially the Church teaches that one may act in either good faith (good conscience) or bad faith (bad conscience). This is the most fundamental division recognized in the Church's teaching on conscience. What this means is that at any point in time, no matter how well-formed and informed one's conscience is, one will be called upon to make conscience judgments and to either act on those judgments or to act against them. This recognition is based on the fact that conscience is, in one sense, the place where God dwells within us and summons us to embrace the good, the true, etc. This place or event within us is sacred ground and no one can enter in here or ask us to show them this "place" unless we freely give them that right. Neither can anyone coerce us to act in a way which is contrary to the call we hear here. In another sense, conscience is defined in terms of judgments. We make what are called conscience judgments on the basis of the entirely inviolably personal conversation that goes on between ourselves and God as we discern and preference the values before us. This conscience judgment also has primacy. Once we have gone through the process of informing ourselves as best we can, of discerning and preferencing the values and disvalues present in a situation and made a judgment from this deep, immediate, and original place of truth within ourselves, we must either act on it or act against it. There is no other choice open to us.

If we act on our conscience judgment, that is, if we do what our conscience tells us we must then we may be right in our judgment or we may err in our judgment, but still we MUST act on this conscience judgment if we are to act in good faith as we personally hear God calling to us to do. Even if we were mistaken in our judgment we have acted according to the voice of God as we heard it and for that reason there is merit in the act (St Alphonse Liguori, et al). if, on the other hand, we act against what we have deemed to be the right thing to do at this point in time, then we act in bad faith and go against what we heard God calling us to do. Because of this, to act in bad faith or bad conscience is ALWAYS a sin, and often a very grievous one. Note that all of this reasoning stems from the theology which regards conscience as involving the very voice of God within our heart of hearts (as well as the other ways this voice is mediated to us) which NO ONE can oppose or gainsay. Even if what our sincere (or literally conscientious) judgment tells us is God's will goes against Church teaching the Church herself affirms that we MUST act on it or sin.

The classical version of this was set forth (based upon the teaching of St Paul in Rom 14:23) by Thomas Aquinas who said that if a person found that they acted in good conscience (followed the dictates of their conscience) and were unjustly condemned to excommunication as a result, they "ought rather to die under the interdict than obey superior orders he knew [in his heart of hearts] to be mistaken". In other words if, in acting in good faith one opposed the church's teaching in a way which resulted in even the church's worst penalty, one was still obliged to act in precisely this way. Obviously Aquinas recognizes that acting in good faith ("in the spirit of faith") does not mean merely doing what the Church teaches or he could not have raised the question he does nor given this answer. Further, while he recognizes that actions have consequences and one must bear the consequences of one's choices, he also recognizes that a good conscience act should NOT result in a severing of one's relationship with the Church or he would not have referred to "unjust" excommunication.

Innocent III put the matter this way: [[What is not done from faith is sin and whatever is done contrary to conscience leads to hell. . .as in this matter no one must obey a judge against God, but rather humbly bear the excommunication.]] (By the way, the fact that Innocent III said one is to "humbly" bear the penalty also implicitly affirms that one remains in communion with God since humility is a kind of remaining in the truth and since the presence of humility implies communion with God. ) Thus, even if one's conscience is in error one is obliged to obey it. (If one suspects it is in error or doubts the conclusion or knows one has not done what one could to inform it, then one has not yet made a conscience judgment and is obligated to do what one can to rectify the situation.) In other words, to follow one's conscience and to act on the voice of God one hears in one's heart of hearts involves some risk. We may hear incorrectly; we may discern and preference values wrongly. YET, we are obligated nonetheless to follow the dictates of our conscience. The corollary is that when we do so we must also bear the consequences of this obligation, whether those are ecclesial or civic.

Conscience: How about just Acting in Accord with Church Teaching?

In order to do away with this risk should we simply do what the Church teaches? My previous post dealt with one dimension of this question, but another revolves around the following question: should we assume that if we are in apparent disagreement with the Church that we have not adequately formed or informed our consciences? This is a position put forward often today by conservatives trying to smooth out the tensions inherent in the Church's own teaching on the primacy of conscience. At Vatican II however, when a minority group approached the Theological Commission with this position they were rebuffed. The group suggested that a text that read (paraphrase) "one should always listen attentively to church teaching in forming one's conscience" should be rewritten to read instead, "a well-formed conscience should be formed in accord with church teaching. . .." The Commission effectively said,"No, what we have written is church teaching," and found the proposed redaction too narrow and rigid. And they were right; Innocent III said essentially the same thing. Nothing, no other judge or authority can remove our obligation, nor the risk of informing, forming, and acting on our own sincere conscience judgments. Nothing relieves us of the obligation to be obedient to the voice of God which speaks in our heart of hearts.

If one sincerely determines that x is the right thing to do and simply instead does y (even if y is what the church rightly teaches one should do), then one sins. Now, let me be clear: if one determines x is the right thing to do and then realizes she has not informed or formed her conscience properly, she can then determine that doing y or acting in accord with what the church teaches is the right thing to do. In such a case she has reached a second conscience judgment and is obligated to act on it. Similarly if one comes to a decision regarding a way to act but doubts she has formed or informed her conscience properly, then she cannot really act in good faith in terms of the decision marked by doubt. (Such a decision does not actually rise to the level of a certain conscience judgment.) In all cases one must continue to discern as well as inform and form one's conscience. One must especially continue to do so if one finds after the fact that she has erred. Even so, sincere conscience judgments bind despite the risk that the person making them is in in error.

Finally, one caveat with regard to this last paragraph. One NEVER reaches the end of informing and forming one's conscience, nor is one ever relieved of the obligation to continue doing so. When I refer to "adequately" doing so I mean that one has sincerely done the best they can at this point in time and knows that to be the case. The fact that one may err while acting in good conscience underscores the fact that one MUST act in always-imperfect circumstances and cannot become paralyzed by the prospect that a judgment is not perfectly informed. While real indecision or doubt must ALWAYS be attended to whenever a judgment can be safely put off, we cannot always simply wait until there is greater information and formation to judge and act. We must make decisions in concrete circumstances with temporal and spatial limits and constraints and this is the reason developing the ability to discern, preference, and make a judgment on the values and disvalues present is so very important. That is simply part of being human and incarnating the word of God in our own lives and world.

Where is the real Sin???

This morning at coffee with a group of parishioners we got to telling stories of how the church taught about morality before Vatican II. One person told the story of a classmate in high school @ 1959 whose sister was getting married to a non-Catholic. While this person wanted to attend the wedding she was told by the nuns at her school that doing so would be a "mortal sin." 55 years after the events this person's classmate attended a reunion with her old friend. At some point she discovered that her friend HAD attended her only Sister's wedding but because of what she had been taught by the Sisters she felt she had committed a mortal sin and therefore had NOT been to Communion for 55 years! Why had she not gone to confession and dealt with the matter there? That wasn't known but for a person to remain separated from Communion all these years for something she was TOLD was a mortal sin is appalling. But where is the real sin in all of this? God knows fingers can be pointed in several directions but the failure to actually assist a person in informing and learning to form their consciences in a responsible and dynamic way has to be a central target.

We are called to make moral (or conscience) judgments and to act on those conscience judgments. We are not called simply to do as we are told is right or wrong by an outside authority --- no matter how well-placed, well-informed, or well-intentioned and authoritative that external authority is. Instead we are called to listen to our heart of hearts and respond to that personal revelation of God's will in a given situation. (More about informing and forming our consciences below.) One of the most important insights of Catholic moral theology is the inviolability of conscience and the imperative that we must act in good conscience even if we err in doing so. What Catholic teaching recognizes is the presence of God within us, speaking, summoning, calling us to authentically human and holy action in our world. This is the more original and immediate voice of God than even that mediated to us by the Church. We are called to extend morality into those places and situations which the Church cannot address apart from our own discernment and action. We do this, in part, by learning to discern and then listening to the Voice of God within us as well as without, and responding as we believe is best at any given moment. To act otherwise, to act contrary to a certain (that is, a fixed or "reached") conscience judgment (even if it is in error) is ALWAYS to sin.

But what of formation and informing of our consciences? Aren't we obliged to take care of these demands? And what is the difference between truly forming and informing our consciences and merely doing what we are told as in the original example? Perhaps another example will help here. A few years ago a person in a discussion on conscience and formation of conscience said, "I always do just what the Church teaches." When asked what they did when there was no clear church teaching on the matter the person was a bit stymied and had not considered this might be the case. We were talking about the Commandments, for instance and this person affirmed "the Church teaches thou shall not kill or cooperate in killing. She values life and asks that we choose life. That's clear enough!" He asked for an example of a situation which was ambiguous. The one given was the conundrum we now refer to as "Sophie's choice." You know the story: A Jewish woman (Sophie) has two children. All three are transported to Auschwitz and eventually end up in a selection line where either the mom will be separated from her children and taken to a labor camp while they are taken to the gas chamber or all three will be taken and killed. Sophie, who has caught the eye of a Nazi soldier is given a different choice when he intervenes --- one he thinks is more sympathetic: "You may save ONE of your children, or you will all die!"

What does the Church teach about such situations? While a number of moral principles apply, there is no single one-size fits all answer here. Instead the Church DEPENDS upon people being able to think clearly and morally, to discern and preference the values and disvalues present in the situation, and to respond with one's own conscience judgment. The Church actually depends on individuals to BE Church in such situations and to do the very best they can; she expects us to extend Christian morality into situations which she cannot simply address with a one-size fits all answer. To form one's conscience means to be increasingly able to think morally; it means to be able to discern the multiple values and disvalues in a given situation, to preference them, and then to act courageously on one's "certain" conscience judgment. (Again, "certain" does not exclude the possibility of error; it means that at this point in time this is the conscience judgment one has come to in listening to one's heart of hearts and that this cannot, must not be violated or betrayed.)

As horrifying as the decision asked for in Sophie's Choice is, what was more immediately horrifying was that in the discussion which raised it as an example, the person who asked for the example did not know how to think about such a situation or how to make a moral decision where there were competing values and disvalues. He was not able to say how he would make such a decision or think about any of the values or disvalues present. Since the Church had not said, "this is the answer" (she cannot do so when there are serious competing values) he was at a complete loss. In other words he was used to doing what the Church taught, but had NOT managed to develop a well-formed conscience which allowed him to make mature or --- in this case anyway--- ANY decision. Like the situation brought up at coffee this morning, this person had been taught that certain actions were never okay, but could not think morally (could not really preference the values present), nor had they learned to assist in the formation of their own consciences or listen to God's voice in their own heart of hearts. Simply knowing and believing what the Church teaches abstractly is not the same as having a well-formed conscience which can make moral judgments in specific situations.

So where was the real sin in this morning's story? Well, in my humble opinion it lays in large part with a Church that never taught the fullness of its own theology of conscience. In both of these stories persons were in fact victimized by an overly simplistic approach to authority and the church's own teaching on what it means to act in good conscience. Vatican II specifically rejected such an approach to conscience as inadequate. We really have to do better in fidelity to the WHOLE of what the Church teaches on conscience.

Support for Sister Margaret McBride: Lift the Sanction!

[[Sister Laurel, do you support what Margaret McBride did? And why should her Bishop lift the automatic excommunication. If she really did what she believes is right, then all she needs to do is go to confession to get back in the Church.]]

Yes, I absolutely support Sister Margaret's decision. I pray that I would have the courage to make and bear the consequences of such a difficult choice myself, but I do believe she discerned and preferenced the values and disvalues in the situation in a truly conscionable way. Let me be clear, as I understand the situation she did NOT make a choice for abortion. She made a choice for life, not only the life of the Mother, but the (quality of) life of her other four children, husband, etc. Even if I agreed that the abortion was direct rather than indirect (something I am not convinced of except in a very narrow sense), I believe Sister Margaret acted in the most loving, life-affirming way possible given the circumstances. However, even if I am completely wrong in this regard, the question before us now is whether McBride's Bishop should lift the sanction or not. As I also wrote earlier, in such a case (especially where every option seems to involve real evil) and the person acts in good conscience in the most rigorous sense of that term, we cannot allow a Church law (in this case, the imposition of automatic excommunication), no matter how significant, or well-intentioned and helpful in most instances, to trump God's own Commandment to Love in the most effective way we can in concrete situations. This principle was important for understanding Sister McBride's own decision, and it applies with regard to the sanction imposed on her by the Church in canon law. God gives us law to help us, but it is up to us to act in ways which make law serve love, not thwart it.

Your comment about just going to confession is problematical in several ways. I believe Sister Margaret's Bishop should lift the sanction in the first place precisely because Sister Maragaret acted in good conscience and CANNOT therefore just confess and return to full communion with the Church. One does not confess what one was convinced in one's heart of hearts was the most moral thing to do. One does not receive absolution for doing what one knows to be the right thing even if one changes her mind down the line (such a change does not alter the nature or quality of the original action). One confesses sin, not error (if error one concludes there has been) for which one is not culpable. For Sister Margaret, the option open to those who carelessly, thoughtlessly, or even maliciously have an abortion or cooperate in the process, and then have regrets about it all, is not a possibility. After all, Sister Margaret DID act after serious reflection; she acted in good conscience; that is, she acted with care and fidelity to the Gospels, the teaching of the Church generally, her understanding of the espiscopal directives to hospitals, and to God's own voice within her. This is one of the reasons Aquinas wrote that if one acts in good conscience and is excommunicated, one must bear the excommunication humbly (that is, in the power of God with whom one remains united!). Even should Sister Margaret decide she erred in her decision to commit one evil rather than another, she still acted according to her heart of hearts and committed no sin. Without denying the truth and trivializing the Sacrament of Reconciliation in the process, what would she confess?

I believe Sister Margaret's Bishop should lift the sanction for other reasons as well. As noted, Sister Margaret has no other option. The second reason flows from this. Surely the Church does not wish to leave people in such a situation pastorally. This would conflict with the commission Jesus gave to Peter when he affrimed that what was bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and what was loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven. Clearly Jesus meant the Church to act in ways which allowed love, mercy, and all the power of the Spirit to triumph over more abstract codes or notions of justice. This is the reason the Church allows confession as the remedy for serious sin. It is even the reason she applies a penalty as severe as excommunication, after all! The desire is to bring a person face to face with the seriousness of their sin and allow for repentance. But what about a case where a penalty falls automatically or even unjustly on one who has not sinned and cannot confess and be absolved? Aquinas analyzed the aituation well with regard to the individual's primacy of conscience, but what of the Church's own conscience and responsibility here? The Church (via her hierarchy and law) is often able to publicly affirm her powers to bind, but it is far less common to see her exercise publicly her authority to loose. This, it seems to me, would surely be a worthy case for this.


Thirdly, the Church knows there is a tension in her own teaching on conscience. While some try to soften or remove this tension by defining "good conscience" in terms of "acting in accord with Church teaching," as I already mentioned this is not how Aquinas views the matter of conscience, nor is it a position Vatican II accepted. When individuals clearly act in good conscience in circumstances which are morally difficult or conflicted, when they exemplify thoughtfulness, courage, fidelity, compassion, integrity, honesty, and all the other kinds of values we recognize as signs of God's existence and Christian discipleship --- despite what law says --- we must recognize the tension which is at the heart of the Church's own teaching and find ways to act justly. Allowing an automatic excommunication to stand in the face of clear indications a person has acted as a true disciple of Christ hardly supports justice or a gospel which defines this in terms of mercy and forgiveness. Canon Law itself allows for consideration of extenuating and mitigating circumstances (C 1324) and notes that even in the case of Latae Sententiae excommunication, punishment is allowed only if the violation is seriously imputable due to malice or culpability (i.e, one has acted with due dilligence --- otherwise the penalty is not imputed!)." (C 1321) While imputation is presumed (C 1321), there is plenty of room for ecclesial consideration in these relevant canons, and many exculpatory reasons which apply automatically to the impaired, minors, or even the simply thoughtless. To let this stand in the current difficult and ambiguous moral situation removes the personal element of discernment and judgment which is at the heart of the way the Church is clearly told to deal with (all of us) sinners in 1 Corinthians in favor of an impersonal, abstract, and so, arbitrary and unjust judgment.

Further, the Church needs the witness such an act would give. It certainly need not be seen as supporting abortion. Nor was Sister Margaret disobedient in some way, so lifting the sanction need not be seen as acquiescing in this or other acts of arrogance or selfishness. On the contrary, it would support the difficult act of obedience and faithfulness she undertook on behalf of life. On another level we see the Church bending over backwards to deal mercifully and generously with pedophile priests for whom there is neither automatic excommunication or (usually) excommunication by virtue of a deliberate judgment, no laicization, and continued church support even if the priest is shipped off to a monastery. At the same time we see women religious being investigated, accused as a whole group via the LCWR of heresy or heterodoxy, of unfaithfulness to the fundamentals of their vocations, and so forth. There is a desperate need to see the Church's own application of penalities as evenhanded and commensurate with the individual situation. At the present time, this is simply not possible.

Another factor in the Church's own need for this witness is that today we have an episcopacy which is increasingly seen, whether rightly or wrongly, as made up of canonists rather than proven pastors. (The two things need not be mutually exclusive in my experience, but often they have proven so.) Whether perceptions are accurate in this regard or not these factors together have helped lead to a serious inability of most of the laity (and many clerics) to trust the authority and pastoral sensitivity and expertise of the episcopacy. The hierarchy may not be able to change the direction of these trends (on both sides!) to demean, distrust, and accuse, overnight, but they can certainly make it clear when the case merits it, that they are capable of putting love above law, the Gospel above Canonical norms, and that they recognize when one has behaved morally as a Catholic Christian and incurred an unjust penalty.

Finally, on a more political level perhaps, should Sister Margaret's bishop lift the sanction, his act will also help to indicate that such penalities and such decisions are significant and cannot simply be ignored or trivialized. Instead they must (and will) be dealt with by those with the authority (and the courage) to do so. In this case Sister McBride's decision became a matter of the external forum, and not through her own publication of the matter or the actions of her congregation; the solution therefore needs to take place on this level. To lift the sanction is appropriate and prudent for her Bishop for these reasons as well.

I hope this answers your question. Please note that my position and many of my reasons will also apply to at least some of those who acted with Sister Margaret or as a result of her decision. As always if this post raises more questions or is unclear in some way I hope you will email me again.

Peter, Do You Love Me? Part 2

Tomorrow's Gospel portrays the reconciliation between Jesus and Peter occasioned by a dialogue in which Jesus questions Peter, and thereby reminds him of what is deepest and truest in himself. As noted in part 1, through Jesus' questions, Peter gets in touch with his heart of hearts and with the reality of agapeic love that objectively inspires him most profoundly. (What Peter feels subjectively is affirmed in his responses, which are expressed in terms of filial love.) From this experience, this reconciliation with what is deepest in himself comes Jesus' triple commission of Peter to "Feed my Lambs, feed my sheep." And of course, Jesus then reminds him that when Peter was younger he could dress himself and go wherever he wanted, but now that he was older (more mature), someone else would gird him in a new role and lead him where he did not want to go.

The point of course, besides referring immediately to the kind of death Peter would die, is that an Apostle's vocation and commission is a difficult one; it represents a kind of freedom which is far more mature and responsible than the liberty of youth. More, while Love speaks to us in our heart of hearts and is the basis of all Christian morality and ethics (something the Church affirms again and again, not least in her teaching on the primacy of conscience coupled with the idea that conscience is that sacred and inviolable place where God speaks to us), discerning how the imperative of that voice of Love works out in concrete terms is sometimes difficult and will always have significant consequences because the stakes are very high.

In recent days we have been reminded of this latter part of tomorrow's Gospel in a particularly striking way, not only of the difficulty of working out what is most loving and most inspired in concrete situations, but of the fact that sometimes our commitment to communion which is our deepest reality and the Love which grounds it and our vocation will take us places we would really rather not but certainly must go if we are to be true to ourselves and our God.

You may know the story: Sister Margaret McBride, a Sister of Mercy and member of a hospital ethics committee was presented with a really terrible situation. A mother of four children with an 11 week pregnancy had a condition which was exacerbated by the pregnancy. If she continued the pregnancy the prospect of both mother and baby dying was nearly 100%. If the pregnancy was terminated the mother had a chance of living. In either case, the baby would die. Church directives on the matter were clear and unambiguous: direct abortion is never allowed. One may not intend evil in order to do good. The demands of love, however, were not so clear in this particular situation. The abortion was done and Sister Margaret and all who participated in it in any way were automatically excommunicated, meaning the Church hierarchy did not act to excommunicate these people but rather, those involved incurred this ecclesiastical (not Divine!) penalty themselves as a consequence of their very action.

Now the classical position on the teaching of the absolute primacy of conscience foresees such a situation. Aquinas was very clear that one MUST act in good conscience (to do otherwise is to sin) and that if one's actions will take one outside the church, that is, if they will result in excommunication, one must act according to one's conscience judgment and bear the excommunication humbly. Again, to fail to act according to one's conscience judgment is to sin; to act in good conscience is not, no matter what the consequences or the correctness or incorrectness of that judgment. Sometimes we hear people suggest that if one acts in good conscience it can only be with a well-formed and informed conscience (this is true), and further that this must mean that one can only act in accord with Church teaching (this is not true). Of course, if this latter part of the statement were true, Aquinas' analysis with its prominent conflict between law and love would be meaningless; excommunication when acting in good conscience could never occur. Similarly at Vatican II it was proposed by some Bishops/Curia that the Council's teaching on conscience be modified to state explicitly that a well-formed conscience was one which was formed to be in accord with Church teaching in any given situation. The theological commission in charge of such a modification rejected it as too rigid and narrow to reflect the scope and wisdom of Church teaching on primacy of conscience.

What we see is that sometimes there is a disconnect or conflict between law (which deals with universals) and love (which not only is a universal imperative but which deals more adequately with concrete situations than law can ever do). Church teaching and the magisterium honors the fact of this disconnect by refusing to soften the crisis (krisis is the Greek term for a moment of decision) that can occur as a result and by commissioning us each to act as Love itself demands. Only we can bring love to a situation. Law cannot. Only we can act in an inspired and creative way given specific circumstances require. Law cannot. Only we can courageously negotiate the transition from universal legal norms in a way which truly chooses life in the best way possible. We are not prevented from erring, nor assured that every decision we make is correct, but the task and challenge of discipleship is this momentous and compelling nonetheless. The charge in tomorrow's gospel passage is a somewhat stronger version of Augustine's famous dictum: Love and do what you must! Love, and do what only you can do. Feed My Sheep!!

My own prayer as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost is a prayer for the Wisdom, Love, and Courage of the Spirit (and any other gifts) necessary to accept the commission which comes with our acceptance of a mature Christian identity; it is a prayer for the Spirit which grounds, reveals, and allows our affirmation of that communion ---that agapeic reality which is deepest, most true and real within us. I especially pray for Sister Margaret who acted in good conscience (quite a high value and demanding reality), and showed us how the face of God is made manifest in the concrete situation. She did this not by thumbing her nose at law, but by relativizing it in light of the Great Commandment and the Voice of God she heard in her heart of hearts. I also pray that her Bishop will lift the automatic sanction, not because abortion is acceptable, but because sometimes, as Sister Margaret has shown us, there are even worse threats to innocent life in the concrete situation. Difficult as this situation is, we cannot allow people of faith, courage, and exceptional integrity to be automatically excluded from the Body of Christ in a way which suggests that church law trumps rather than imperfectly serves God's own Commandment.

May we, each of us, from the lowliest hermit, religious or lay person, to the highest Bishop or Pope act in ways which effectively bring the face of Christ's love, mercy, and compassion into the concrete situation. Law can assist us in significant ways, but will always fall short here. A heart forgiven by Christ and reconciled with him, a heart which knows its own frailties and failures even while it is inspired by and obedient to his Holy Spirit will not.