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Dear All,
In the balance I tend to agree with Frank Donovan's assessment
of Dr George Pell's address on "Human Dignity, Human Rights
and Moral Responsibility" delivered at the John Cardinal
Krol Chair of Moral Theology Symposium on "Catholic Moral
Teaching in the Pontificate of John Paul II" at St Charles
Borromeo SeminaryÝin Philadephia.
In effect, this is also Dr Pell's response to the criticism
that was raised following his address on May 30th this year
to the Catalyst for Renewal Bishops' Forum in Sydney. (A copy
of that address can be found on the Archbishop of Sydney's
website at http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/2003530_62.shtml.
You can also find a copy of the part of the address on Primacy
of Conscience that caused the subsequent discussion in a series
of responses I wrote in this discussion forum and which I
have now archived on my own website at http://www.viastuas.net.au/Reflection/78374.html.)
The Archbishop's address raised a lot of comment in this forum,
a tiny little of which can still be found at the foregoing
link besides my own comments, in other media around this nation
and, perhaps most significantly, in a major article in the
September 2003 edition of Eureka Street published by Jesuit
Publications by Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ which can be found at
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/articles/0309hamilton2.html.
There is an enormous amount of reading to consume even in
what I have already provided and this new address stretches
to a further 10+ A4 pages when printed out. It can be found
on the Archbishop's website at http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/2003104_279.shtml.
It is important reading though particularly in that with this
latest address the Cardinal-elect has now projected this discussion
onto the international canvas and one can confidently expect
that, in time, this will lead to some further modification
of Church teaching at the very highest level. I believe, in
the main, that the direction of any change will be in an overwhelmingly
positive direction and, although Dr Pell might deny it in
the text of his new address, I do believe he has significantly
better nuanced what he has been endeavouring to say as a result
of all the comment that his original remarks in May caused.
I should point out that this question of Primacy of Conscience
raised by the Archbishop extends back a lot further than
30th May this year. His remarks had previously generated
significant discussion in this forum some twelve months
ago when, I think it was Kate or TonyC, drew our attention
to the comments he had made some years earlier at Latrobe
University and which had been picked up and published nationally
in The Bulletin magazine. I think our own discussion forum
here can claim some credit in having contributed in a positive
way to this important discussion that has been going on
in the Church and even wider afield and I would like to
thank those who put in considerable effort in sometimes
serious and sometimes very humorous ways to carry this discussion
forward.
What I really like about the Archbishop's new take on this
subject are the following things which, in some ways follow
the criticisms that I had of his original comments. The
Archbishop makes the strong point in this new paper that
the ultimate matter that we are talking about here is in
trying to discern what God says to us. In his own words
he explains it this way:
"My basic object is twofold: a) to explain that
increasingly, even in Catholic circles, the appeal to the
primacy of conscience is being used to justify what we would
like to do rather than to discover what God wants us to
do; and b) to claim that conscience does not have primacy.
One should say that the word of God has primacy or that
truth has primacy, and that a person uses his conscience
to discern the truth in particular cases. Individual
conscience cannot confer the right to reject or distort
New Testament morality as affirmed or developed by the Church.
To use the language of Veritatis Splendor, conscience is
ěthe proximate norm of personal moralityî whose authority
in its voice and judgement ěderives from the truth about
moral good and evilî." [emphasis added]
I have no disagreement with that whatsoever ‚ I do think
we do all have to recognise that both in wider society,
and within the Church, there is enormous confusion in people's
minds as to what this expression "Primacy of Conscience"
means. It is not an invitation to some "free for all" where
humankind is invited to follow "how I feel" when I wake
up each morning. I believe, in using that expression, the
Church is inviting us into this business of each morning
‚ indeed, each second of our lives ‚ trying to discern "what
is God asking me to do now?"
I do still though have some disagreement with the Archbishop.
While I agree with him that many people have either deliberately
‚ or simply by not paying attention closely enough to the
meaning in this teaching ‚ try to elevate personal feelings
or human rights to a place where they equate that with conscience,
I think he does not pay enough attention to another sense
in which the Church uses this expression "Primacy of Conscience".
This is how I phrased it in my earlier criticism of his
May 30th article:
The insight of this doctrine is that in all the
parts that make up "being" this one of "the inner core of
conscience" is the single one that most intimately links
us to God ‚ this Mystery at the very core of our lives and
of all life. Nowhere in the make-up of our entire "being"
do we come closer to understanding God than we do through
this part of our being called our conscience.
This is a profound insight. As I read it, the
insight the Church is trying to give us is that Conscience
has a Primacy over all the other parts that make up our
"being" ‚ such as our minds, our emotions, our feelings,
even those things that we tend to follow sub- or un-consciously
in our lives because they might be programmed into us in
some genetic way or through social conditioning. Conscience
is something deeper than mere mind. It is something deeper
than mere emotion or feeling. It is hard to describe what
it is. It is easier to describe what it is not ‚ for example,
it is not merely a process of thinking or mental reasoning.
It is not merely a process of intuition. As hard as it might
be to describe what it is, this is not sufficient reason
to argue that it is bunkum, misleading or something that
ought be "publicly rejected".
What worries me about the Archbishop's approach is that
in his endeavours to correct an abuse of interpretation
in a teaching his endeavour may have the effect, particularly
within certain sectors of the Church, of seeming to substitute
what God is asking us to do with some sense of sychophantic,
unthinking, unreflected adherence to what some particular
Archbishop or Pope or piece of paper might have to say on
some subject. That is as misguiding to people in the
business of getting their souls into heaven as the threat
they face on the other side of the river where there are
people inviting them to go off chasing their own feelings
or, to quote Pell, chasing "a long-sighted selfishness ...
or a desire to be consistent with oneself". I do not
think Dr Pell at all understands the threat being posed
to the Church from within by those who seek to elevate what
the Church says or, more correctly, what THEY think the
Church says, over what God says to the individual in the
privacy and primacy of their own conscience.
The challenge we all face in life is to discern "what is
God saying to little old me in this particular challenge
I am facing in my life right now". Our life is nothing but
an almost endless succession of those prayers to this Mystery
at the very heart of our lives. The Church is there to help
us learn how to listen to God. But the Church is not
our conscience! That is the constant risk of the communication
strategy that has been adopted by Dr Pell and I want to
address that in a second post which I hope to get to in
the next 24 hours.
In the meantime, I do highly recommend that everyone does
take the time to quietly read and reflect on what Archbishop
Pell has written in this latest paper. I have not mentioned
his thoughts on human rights in the later part of his address
which are well worth reflecting upon also. I do think
the whole address is highly intelligent and packed with
common sense but, most pleasing of all I do think it reflects
that the Archbishop has listened to the criticisms that
his earlier remarks have caused and he has now more finely
nuanced precisely what the problem is and how it might be
addressed. May there be a heck of a lot more of such dialogue
between the grass roots and the higher levels of the Church.
BrianC
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