[[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?
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.)
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.
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.
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