Steve Bainbridge asks, in his posting below: “To what extent is it proper for a Catholic to dissent from non-infallible but presumably magisterial teaching? We are not Protestants, after all.”
No, but neither are we mindless. As John Noonan said, “the record is replete with mistakes–the faithful can’t just accept everything that comes from Rome as though God had authorized it.” What mistakes, you ask? Well, you may want to begin here: Robert McClory, Faithful Dissenters: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church (2000).
mirrorofjustice.com/mirrorofjustice/2005/11/we_are_not_prot.htmlFor those who, like Steve, want to think about this issue, Father Bernard Hoose’s writings are a good place to begin: Bernard Hoose, “Authority in the Church,” 63 Theological Studies 1207 (2002); Bernard Hoose, Authority in Roman Catholicism (2002). See also this collection, edited by Father Hoose: Authority in the Roman Catholic Church (2002).
He was executed for his refusal to serve.Jägerstätter’s resolution not to obey men, in the case of military service, won him the opposition of priests. They, and even a bishop, told him that as a husband and father, he should not risk execution. He was told that in serving in the Nazi army he would be obeying orders from the constituted government and, thus, would not be morally culpable if the war were unjust. Jägerstätter, however, said, “I believe God asks me to live by my conscience.” He understood the threat to his family (his eldest daughter was only six years old), but he thought it better for them to have a dead father who was a martyr than a living one who was a Nazi.