Followup Questions on Loyalty Oaths

[[Dear Sister, are you really suggesting that so-called "Catholics" who struggle with aspects of the Faith are as fully Catholic as those who do not struggle? Should a person who cannot affirm the things in a loyalty oath be allowed to teach our children? Are they really a good model for our children? Would you want them teaching yours? What Bp Vasa and others are doing is making sure that people who do not respect the faith and who sometimes don't even believe in it cannot teach in hypocritical ways to our children or minister in half-hearted ways to the rest of us. Why should I want someone who doesn't hold the entire Catholic faith to give me Eucharist at Mass? I think you are missing the bigger picture here.]]

First, I assume your question about people teaching my children is rhetorical. It would be difficult to answer otherwise. But, seriously, thank you for your questions. And thank you for saying straight out what is implicit in a lot of the commentary I have heard or read by those approving the use of loyalty oaths, namely, that a person who struggles with aspects of Catholic doctrine (including authoritative, non-definitive, doctrine --- or matters of disciplne) are hypocrites. Thank you also for the chance to clarify what I am saying and to expand on why I am saying it.

Uncritical Appropriation: Swallowing things Whole

Clearly I believe that conscientious struggling with dimensions of the Church's teaching is appropriate. I say this because the only people I have ever known to NOT struggle with (aspects of) it at some point tend to have a juvenile faith which has swallowed things whole and uncritically. In short, they have swallowed, and may be able to regurgitate such teaching, but they have not digested nor assimilated it. You recall the story I told about the person who "Did just what the church teaches" but who could not think morally, had a fundamentally unformed conscience, and therefore, was incapable of being Church in complex situations with competing values and disvalues? I think that is, unfortunately, a fairly typical portrait of a person who never struggles with any aspect of the Church's teaching. To my mind the person who struggles or wrestles with these kinds of doctrines is more Catholic, or at least more maturely Catholic, than the person who was incapable of making a truly moral decision for herself (which, Richard Gula reminds us, is not the same as a decision made by oneself)!

Similarly I often think that the person who simply says, "I accept that" without any wrestling or struggle at all doesn't understand (or care about) what they are being asked to affirm. I say the creed at least every weekend and every weekend at least a little something more is brought to that profession and something more is either understood more profoundly or a little differently. I may understand something new about what it means to profess Jesus as Son of God or to affirm the One, Holy, Catholic, Church, and so forth. More, I understand afresh how really complex such truths are theologically and I thank God I didn't need to be a theologian with the level of understanding I have today to have been initiated into the faith. Now let me be clear. One does not need to have a ton of theology to make affirmations of faith. People can and do entrust themselves wholly to God without significant theological expertise. Still, just as knowledge can get in the way of such faith, it more often assists a person in making an act of fundamental trust we call faith. Answers ALWAYS raise more questions; understanding usually shows us how much we don't really know. Also, as one's knowledge grows one may well move through crises of faith, times when decisions about one's faith are especially needed, but it is in deepening knowledge that one comes to more profound faith.

Faith as a Centered Act of the Whole Person

In a like way I think people who accept things without struggle are accepting with one level or dimension of their selves, but compartmentalizing that and separating it from other levels, dimensions, or functions within themselves. Faith is not simply a matter of intellectual assent; it is, as Paul Tillich affirmed, a centered act of the whole person wherein one entrusts themselves entirely to the truth they are affirming. For instance, when I affirm the resurrection of Christ in faith, I say that my entire life is given over to this truth and that in fact, I expect the fulfillment of my life as a human being and my eternity with God to be promised by it. An article of faith both demands everything from us and promises everything eternal to us. But one may be intellectually in one place and emotionally or psychologically in another, for instance, and thus, growth in one area or another may yet be required for a truly integrated act of faith. A person who is aware of such lack of complete integration may honestly recite the Creeds but be unable to make a loyalty oath which spells out dimensions of the teaching one has not yet assimilated on some level, or which one disagrees with at this point in time. There need be nothing hypocritical in this. It can be rooted in the very nature of faith itself.

Obsequium animi Religiosum

Also bear in mind that at Vatican II the Church herself recognized the category of authoritative, non-definitive doctrine and the appropriate correlative level of assent known as "Obsequium animi religiosum" --- which in and of itself includes the meanings "willingness to be taught/learn", "willingness to give internal assent", etc. This says to me that the Church herself (i.e., the ordinary universal Magisterium of the Church) recognizes the importance of the human need to grow in one's ability to understand and embrace a teaching, and also that she respects a person who, in humility and docility, tries conscientiously to do so with mind and heart. If I were to ask you if you were okay with someone ministering to you who affirmed that they ". . .have read everything possible on the church's teaching on x but [are] still struggling with this doctrine out of love for the Church and for the truth" would you really consider them unworthy to minister to other Catholics? The Church herself teaches the appropriateness of such responses to these kinds of doctrine.

On a different level of truth, how about someone who affirms, "I don't see how this is more than a sign of Jesus' body and blood, but the church teaches it so I believe it!" or "I don't need to read about z or pray about x or understand the difficult bits if theology it involves; the church says it so I believe it"? Which of these shows greater, "Religious docility" or more reverence for the doctrine and for truth and the church? Which is the better disciple? I would hope this is hard for you to determine. Loyalty oaths will have lots of the second and third kinds of signers --- and probably a few who think its fun to show up others or simply choose to lie --- but they will most often rule out people on their way to a more mature faith, people who HAVE questioned and continue to do so because they are coming to terms with a very demanding and transcendent truth, people who love the Church God calls into being --- which is not necessarily identical to the Church we see in front of us day to day --- people who are dedicated to the Kingdom of God and who therefore serve a critical and prophetic role in the Church. (And remember, not everything in some of these loyalty oaths are matters of faith or morals).

Ministry and Communion: A Mutual Act

As for who you should want to give you Communion at Mass I honestly can't see where it makes a difference. The person is there to serve you and apparently desires to do so; they remind you (and themselves affirm) this is the Body of Christ and give you a chance to affirm this and receive it yourself. What is in their heart of hearts does not affect this exchange and you know nothing of it. I would expect the communicant, however, to assume the person serving them, ministering to them believes as they do. It is what they say in their ministry and if it is untrue, then the judgment falls to God in his good time. Meanwhile, the very act of ministering and affirming the reality of Eucharist again and again, as well as the sense of joy and completeness one gets in doing so while watching the faithful receive may cause the person ministering to come to profound faith in this matter. Loyalty oaths could effectively short-circuit the mutual growth of faith brought about in all acts of ministry.

Jesus calls the disciples to COME TO fullness of Faith

My final point is that I don't think I am the one missing the bigger picture here. I can cite all kinds of Scripture which supports ministries of the imperfect, ministries of those struggling with aspects of church teaching, ministries of those moving towards a more mature faith, and at least one who did not. Not least then let me point to Judas and Jesus. Judas was called to follow Jesus and follow he did. He followed and eventually betrayed Jesus. In the meantime he was keeper of the disciples' purse and seemed to have a role in organizing missions. Jesus allowed the situation to come to a head. He could have eliminated risk (and growth in faith) and asked for a loyalty oath right from the get go before he let Judas into the disciples' circle or ministry, but instead he allowed Judas the opportunity to come to fullness of faith in the process. Jesus did the same with Peter --- whose faith failed despite protestations that it never would (HE would have signed a loyalty oath in a heartbeat --- and then betrayed it!). But Jesus gave Peter the chance to minister and come to fullness of faith in the act of ministering --- just as he did with all the disciples.

One last example from those standing outside the circle of discipleship. You may remember in the Gospels (Mark 9:33-39ff) that the disciples who have just previously been arguing about who is greatest amongst them come to Jesus and complain that someone is ministering to others (casting out demons in fact) in Jesus' name, but that he is not one of them. They had told the man to stop ministering. Jesus says, "Do not stop him! He who is not against us is with us." Only after this does Christ speak of those who scandalize the little ones (which is not precisely the same thing as someone, like one of the disciples for instance, taking scandal or offense, by the way). It is not a matter of "anything goes" of course. The outsider is truly acting in Jesus' name (presence and power) --- if not as one of the disciples. The way Christ told us we judge such matters? "By their fruits", not their protestations (or professions) of loyalty, "ye shall know them."

P.S. I apologize for not answering your question about folks who teach your children. I thought my answer was getting a bit long. I may answer that part of things here when I have a bit more time as a kind of addendum or I may answer in a separate post because I do believe it is an important question. Thanks for your patience.

On Hypocrisy vs Imperfection: An indirect look at Loyalty Oaths

There are times when I struggle with eremitical life. Sometimes I just don't live it as well as I feel called to do. Sometimes I am not as generous, not as loving, not as faithful to my daily praxis and Rule as I am obligated to be by my profession. And yet I wear a habit which signals publicly that I am a hermit (for most it just says I am a nun) and I write about eremitical life here and elsewhere; I have even given interviews on the life as well a talk or two about it here and there --- and will likely do so again somewhere in the future. So, does this make me a hypocrite? Do I live a life of pretense while I show the face of fidelity to the world around me? I have certainly struggled with THAT piece of things as well!

But this year I also came to a bone deep, heart-level realization (I have been working on this for some time and, in a moment of profound healing, what I knew intellectually finally "clicked" in a deep-down way) that there is a profound difference between hypocrisy and imperfection. I am an imperfect hermit, an imperfect religious, an imperfect Christian who struggles to live fully the Gospel of God within the context of eremitical life, but I am not a hypocrite. As far as I can tell, struggle is part of my very vocation, just as it is, I think, with ANY really serious attempt to live out a divine call with integrity.

Similarly, I strive to believe what the Church teaches; as a theologian I work hard to wrap my mind and heart around every doctrine. I sometimes have struggled to give an assent of faith when that is required and I struggle to give "religious submission of mind and will" where that is required (which is a good thing since, among others, obsequium carries the senses of willingness to assent and struggle to assent). I struggle to believe that the episcopacy has a clear charism of truth in days when members of the episcopacy have made themselves incredible to me in any number of ways, and I struggle to see where Christ's church really is; I struggle, that is, to see where the Church that remains indefectible in the power of the Gospel of freedom really abides today in season and out.

I struggle with that especially in these days of "loyalty oaths" which conflate matters of faith with others that are not, which blur the critical boundaries between internal and external forums and imply (or state explicitly) that some of us are incapable of ministering to fellow Catholics because we are not "Catholic" enough or are deemed hypocritical because we wrestle with many things in today's church including the fundamental offensiveness of loyalty oaths themselves. I struggle in these days when women religious are misrepresented, demeaned and punished while members of the hierarchy commit heinous criminal acts and are rewarded anyway; I struggle in these times when it has become acceptable for the self-righteous to be happy with, indeed, to sometimes slaver over the prospect of a "leaner, purer church" while others they call "brother" and "sister" are forced, in good conscience, to leave the church for ecclesial communities where they can be genuinely respected and nourished in their faith,

I am not, however, a hypocrite. I am a Christian, a Catholic Christian whose faith is imperfect just as was the faith of Peter, or Thomas, or Mary of Magdala, or James and his group, or the disciples on the road to Emmaus. I am a Catholic Christian as imperfect as any Catholic Christian ever was or is who is set on maturing in their faith. I am a Catholic Christian who recalls that some have sometimes translated the word "perfect" in the evangelical counsel "Be you perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect," as "whole" or "mature" or "fully alive" or "holy." And, like the Church herself --- the entire Pilgrim People of God --- I am therefore "always in need of reform," always called to conversion, always summoned to a fuller understanding and embrace of the faith Christ has entrusted to me and to the whole Church.

I have no doubt that some in the Church would like to simply stamp out or force me to abjure those dark, yet-to-be illuminated areas of my mind and heart that do not yet reflect the light of Christ or the power of the Holy Spirit. I am sure that some in the Church would say that because of these imperfections I am unworthy to minister, or to do theology, or to be a canonical hermit who lives out her life in the name of the Church. After all, I am an imperfect Catholic Christian who struggles in these and other ways as well. But perhaps these folks should reread the admonition that one deal with the beam in one's own eye before blindly and recklessly plucking at the splinter in another's. Perhaps they should reread the parables of patience, faith, and quiet growth --- where, admitting their own inability to do anything more, farmers (and indeed, Popes like John XXIII who once prayed, " Lord, I am going to bed, the Church is yours,") do indeed go to bed and trust that God is doing in the depths and darkness what only God can do.

You see, I was taught --- indeed the Holy Spirit taught me, Christ himself patiently taught me, the one I call Abba gently taught me over the space of many years --- that I am part of the Church where the imperfect are called to belong, to be, and to be made whole; it is the Church of wounded healers, the communion of those with troublesome thorns in their sides and lance holes in their hearts. I was taught, not least by the Church Council called Vatican II, that she desired my full and active participation in the "work of the people" --- a full and active participation that includes ministry to one another (EEM, cantor, lector, acolyte, sacristan, lay presider, chorister, musician, etc. --- I have done them all) as an integral part of my act of worship. This, Vatican II reminded me, was my privileged right and responsibility as baptized --- with training, yes --- but without additional public acts of faith or manifestations of conscience beyond my profession of the Church's creeds.

The lesson I learned at the level of heart this year was one the Church hierarchy could do well to remind themselves of. It is one that the self-righteous minority of orthodoxy police would do well to learn themselves. We are imperfect, all of us, but this does not mean we are hypocrites. I struggle as my own faith grows and matures, but I am called to do so and can only do so within the Communion of the Church, not outside it. Within my mind and heart grow weeds and wheat together. Only the truly foolhardy would try to uproot the weeds while thinking they will not also harm the tender wheat that grows there too. Only the pastorally naive would ask me to show the wheat and not expect there also to be weeds interspersed.

But, imperfect as my faith may be, what is there for anyone with eyes to see is a life which nourishes the faith of others nonetheless, a life which, through the grace of God, ministers in season and out, in weakness and in strength. Even I, the once-consummate perfectionist can see that! In any case, I am a Catholic not because my faith is perfect, but because with the grace of God and (his) People's assistance I struggle towards the day it will be; I am Catholic --- and an effective minister of the Gospel I have given my life to and for --- not in spite of my struggle but because of it! I am imperfect in all the ways any serious, faithful, Catholic Christian is imperfect -- and probably more as well. But I am not a hypocrite. I am surer about that today than ever.

Obsequium Animi Religiosum and Loyalty Oaths

[[Dear Sister, if a loyalty [or fidelity] oath requires a "religious assent of mind" what does this mean?]]

The first thing it means is that one is dealing with a category of non-definitive teaching known as "authoritative doctrine." It is a level of teaching which is authoritative but at the same time does not rise to the level of either definitive doctrine (which requires "firm acceptance") or dogma (which requires the assent of faith because one trusts this is revealed by God) and it is a level of teaching which admits what some refer to as "a remote possibility of church error." It therefore means or should mean that the fidelity oath does not combine different levels of teaching in the hierarchy of truths and allows the faithful to take into account that the teaching requiring such a level of assent could change. Lumen Gentium affirmed this level of teaching as well as this level of assent (LG25).

The second thing it means, however, is more complicated. The actual meaning of the term "Religious submission of mind and will" hinges on the Latin obsequium, which has been defined in a variety of ways. Richard Gaillardetz lists the following meanings: obedience, submission, docility, due respect, or assent. (These are not synonyms but responses along a spectrum of responses.) Noting that there is great disagreement on this matter he also proposes [[that the appropriate response to authoritative doctrine requires the believer to make a genuine effort to assimilate the given teaching into their personal religious convictions. In doing so, the believer is attempting to give an "internal assent" to the teaching.]] He goes further in articulating the requirements of "religious docility" as meaning three things: 1) one will be willing to engage in further study of the issue; 2) if the teaching in question regards moral matters one will do an examination of conscience and "ask oneself some difficult questions" with regard to the difficulty one is having with the teaching. [[ Am I having difficulty because I cannot discover in it the will of God, or is it because, if true, this teaching would require real conversion]] or change in lifestyle? 3) Do I have trouble with this specific teaching or with the idea of a teaching office itself?

Gaillardetz's conclusion here is important: [[This is a fairly demanding regimen, as it ought to be if I am to take issue with accepted church teaching. However, if I have difficulties with a particular teaching and I have fulfilled these three steps and still cannot give an internal assent to that teaching I have done all the church can ask of me and my inability to give an internal assent to this teaching does not in any way separate me from the Roman Catholic Communion.]] By What Authority? A Primer on Scripture, the Magisterium, and the Sense of the Faithful, Richard R Gaillardetz Liturgical Press

Avery Dulles echoes much of what Gaillardetz says about the term "religious submission of mind and will" when he writes, [[. . .noninfallible teaching. . . as we have seen, is reformable. Such teaching is not proposed as the Word of God, nor does the church ask its members to submit with the assent of faith. Rather, the church asks its members for what is called. . . obsequium animi religiosum --- a term which, depending on its context, can be suitably translated by "religious submission of the mind, " "respectful readiness to accept," or some such phrase.]]

He goes on, [[This term actually includes a whole range of responses that vary according to the context of the teaching, its relationship to the gospel, the kind of biblical and traditional support behind it, the degree of assent given to it in the church at large, the person or office from which the teaching comes, the kind of document in which it appears, the constancy of the teaching, and the emphasis given to the teaching in the text or texts. Because the matter is so complex, one cannot make any general statement about what precisely amounts to"religious submission of the mind." (See on this subject Ladislas Orsy, SJ, "Reflections on the Text of a Canon," America, 17 May, 1986, pp396-99.)]] Dulles, Avery "Authority and Conscience" Readings in Moral Theology #6, Dissent in the Church pp 97-111.

Ladislas Orsy adds to this rich and hard-to-nail-down-to-a-single-meaning sense of the term when he writes about obsequium as a seminal word from Vatican II which therefore, like all such words, "must be assimilated, pondered over before its potential meaning can unfold." He goes on, [[When the council spoke of religious obsequium it meant an attitude toward the church which is rooted in the virtue of religion, the love of God and the love of the Church. This attitude in every concrete case will be in need of further specification, which could be "respect", or could be "submission," depending on the progress the church has made in clarifying its own beliefs.]] or a bit later, [[ To put it another way: the ongoing attempts to translate obsequium by one precise term are misguided efforts which originate in a lack of perception of the nature of the concept. Obsequium refers first to a general attitude, not to any specific form of it. The external manifestation of a disposition can take many forms, depending on the person to whom the obsequium must be rendered, or the point of doctrine that is proposed as entitled to obsequium. Accordingly, the duty to offer obsequium may bind to respect, or to submission --- or to any other attitude between the two.]] Orsy, The Church Learning and Teaching, Michael Glazier, pp 82, 87-88.

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.