You are badly mistaken about conscience trumping dogma. You need to go back and read the CCC more closely. Check out 1786, “Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgement in accordance with **reason and divine law **or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.” Check out 1790 through 1794; simply put a Catholic conscience must be formed in communion with divine law as revealed by scripture and Christ’s Church. Catholics do not have the right to dissent from Catholic dogma…period ( check out Vatican I, a dogmatic council). Following your line of thinking people, based upon their personally formed conscience, can pick and choose what Church teachings they want to believe and follow whether it be female priests, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, or anything else. There are many Catholic dissident groups that have chosen to toss elements of dogma under the bus…do you think they are right in doing so?
One more thing. The Church as never made an ex-cathedra pronouncement on abortion…do you think the Church will permit abortion in the future? How about contraception and other life issues, will the Church bow to culture?
The Church and Pope John Paul II have spoken definitively on this matter. This means this belief must be held by ALL of the faithful. To teach to the contrary is to teach error.
God Bless,
Iowa Mike
Please note the portions of the post I am specifically responding to highlighted in red above.
As a hypothetical, yes teaching about abortion or birth control could become a doctrine about which the teachings of the Church change. We do not disagree on what the Church or the Magisterium teach normatively, nor do I disagree with these teachings. I think we may have a disagreement in here somewhere about how much real latitude the Church might have to change these teachings–but I don’t actually expect any changes to occur as per my following comments.
As a practical matter, I rather expect that issues such as abortion, female ordination, birth control etcetera are much more likely to be elevated to the status of formal dogmas. I’ve looked at some of the arguments put forward for women’s ordination–Episcopalians have been quarreling over the issue for decades. They fall mainly into two camps: evidence from tradition that is largely speculative or which stretches the context unreasonably. Or evidence which rejects tradition out-of-hand. I don’t look for any radical changes to take place in Church teaching based upon such reasoning.
(I am, btw, leaving Episcopalianism and returning to the Catholic Church precisely because I think the CC will actually stand up for what it believes is the truth, as opposed to drifting with the culture as it will. This does not mean that I think it utterly impossible that some changes may occur in the CC, if serious reason eventually arises. I don’t think it is likely, but I recognize it is within the realm of possibility–John Newman for example made a perfectly-reasonable case for the ‘development of doctrine’, even before he became a Catholic).
People who dissent from official teaching based on **grave reasons **(not willy-nilly, without anything but their personal preferences or biases to go upon) retain the right of conscience to do so. I’ll have to dig around a bit in the CCC to find the precise passages but so long as a person has done their absolute level best to inform their consciences and so long as they have absolutely
grave reasons for reserving their consciences on a matter they not only may do so but
must do so. As per the following:
**1782 **Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. “He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters.”
**1790 **A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.
**1800 **A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience.
(Granted that I had to gloss over probably three passages apiece, admonishing the obligation to rightly form one’s conscience, to find each of the three passages I cited above–but I am not arguing that one does not have the obligation to rightly form one’s conscience, any more than I am arguing for women’s ordination, birth control, or abortion. I know some folks have a hard time with nuance and subtlety, but it’s a rather limited aspect of this issue that I am arguing for).
They have an absolute duty to conform their practice
within the Church to the official teachings
of the Church. This means, no ordaining women priests in fake ceremonies that would have no standing in the Church even if women could be ordained. It also means no forming of ‘encounter groups’, ‘focus groups’ or ‘teaching groups’ speculating on the ordination of women. (It
should imply no nuns teaching even in a secular university on an unrelated secular topic speculating as an aside that the class could expect to see women ordained to the priesthood in their lifetimes–but I heard at least one nun speculate precisely along those lines in the middle 1980’s).
So, I don’t disagree with the disciplinary actions being taken against the priest. He acted outside of his authority on so many levels it is as if he is attempting to provoke the Church into taking strong action. Do we know, by the way, if the priest was ever actually excommunicated?
