Pro-Life Catholics, how do you respond to this?

[Ender]

Everyone agrees what it is? No difference of opinion? Everyone interprets Church teaching in exactly the same way? You’ve got to be kidding me.

That there are disagreements in some areas doesn’t change the fact that on most issues we can in fact easily discern church teaching. That there are tremendous differences of opinion on how to apply church teaching does not suggest there is disagreement on the teaching itself. “Aid the poor” is easy to understand as an obligation. Figuring out how best to do it (raise/don’t raise the minimum wage) is not.

But you are assuming you KNOW what the church teaches, that there is absolutely 100% no differences in interpretation. That’s simply wrong.

Perhaps an example would help. What is a teaching about which you think there is considerable disagreement (other than this thing on conscience)?

You cannot be guilty before God if you follow your conscience, which you have formed to the best of your ability.

The catechism explicitly states otherwise.

1783 …the education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.

1790 … it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

You are making a HUGE erroneous assumption: That whatever the Church says in terms of morality is NOT subject to interpretation.

Let’s at least distinguish between those cases where church doctrines are ambiguous and not clearly understood, and those where they are clear but rejected. Nor are we discussing arguments over applying the law where disagreement is natural and acceptable.

If, as you say, we simply have to follow Church teachings, why would we need a conscience at all? We would just be robots, following orders. No free will, no conscience. Does that make any sense? I don’t think so.

God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth, hence they are bound in conscience but they stand under no compulsion. God has regard for the dignity of the human person whom He Himself created and man is to be guided by his own judgment and he is to enjoy freedom. (Dignitatis humanae, 11)

 

[Erikaspirit16]

That there are tremendous differences of opinion on how to apply church teaching does not suggest there is disagreement on the teaching itself.

Now you’re just playing with words. “Divorce is forbidden…except for 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.” Some would say #2 is acceptable, others would argue it is forbidden. It’s interpretation. Whether you say “We disagree on Church teaching” or “We disagree on the interpretation of Church teaching” is not a distinction I would agree with. ANY Church teaching must be interpreted: by national conferences, bishops, individuals.

Perhaps an example would help. What is a teaching about which you think there is considerable disagreement (other than this thing on conscience)?

Amoris Laetitia is a recent and notorious case of disagreement, with bishops and cardinals on both sides. And it involves conscience. To be specific, can you take communion if you are divorced, re-married, but for whatever reason your local church will not annual the first marriage? Or, to go back to abortion, should a politician who is openly pro-choice be allowed to take communion? Some bishops say yes, some no. There are examples all over the place.

You cannot be guilty before God if you follow your conscience, which you have formed to the best of your ability.

Since my quotation “You cannot be guilty…” is directly from the catechism, I’m not sure how you can say “The catechism explicitly states otherwise.” So you’re saying the catechism contradicts itself? Or are you saying YOUR INTERPRETATION of the catechism contradicts MY interpretation? I suspect you are saying the latter. I am unaware of any factor that would make your interpretation more accurate or valid than my interpretation.

And of course the passages you quote have nothing to do with my position (or quotation). I have said over and over and over and over that a person’s conscience must be properly formed and may be in error. Nevertheless, in the end, you will be judged on whether or not you violated your conscience, not whether you broke some “law.”

Let’s at least distinguish between those cases where church doctrines are ambiguous and not clearly understood, and those where they are clear but rejected.

No, we CAN’T agree on that, since it’s the essence of the argument! I don’t believe there are any “clear” doctrines (on morality) that are NOT subject to interpretation. They all are. It’s not mathematics: words have many meanings. You can unintentionally write something that is ambiguous. And so on.

*God calls men to serve Him in spirit and in truth, etc. . (Dignitatis humanae, 11)

I’m not sure why you are quoting that. That simply supports exactly what I have been saying! “they are bound in conscience…” “they stand under no compulsion…” “man is to be guided by his own judgment…” “he is to enjoy freedom…” Isn’t that what I have been saying?

 

[Ender]

Amoris Laetitia is a recent and notorious case of disagreement

I have already acknowledged that disagreements in interpretation can and do exist, but because they exist for some doctrines surely doesn’t suggest that all doctrines are open to interpretation. Some are quite easy to understand, if quite difficult to accept, the most obvious perhaps being the doctrine on contraception. The question there is straightforward: if my conscience tells me that there is nothing wrong with it, and I reject the clear teaching on the matter and employ it, should I expect not to be held accountable for that decision?

Since my quotation “You cannot be guilty…” is directly from the catechism…

I don’t believe it is. I went back to find your citations (1782, 1790), and none of them actually says that. That is what you take them to mean, but that is not what they say.

So you’re saying the catechism contradicts itself?

My citation is what the catechism actually says; yours is how you interpret other passages that don’t directly address the point. As you say, if we are both right then the catechism would in fact contradict itself. Since that seems unlikely then one of us must be wrong, and the question is whether it is me (in quoting exactly what was said), or whether it is you (in providing your own interpretation of a different passage)?

… in the end, you will be judged on whether or not you violated your conscience, not whether you broke some “law.”

Given that we are explicitly told that we may be accountable even when we follow our conscience this doesn’t seem like a safe conclusion.

No, we CAN’T agree on that, since it’s the essence of the argument! I don’t believe there are any “clear” doctrines (on morality) that are NOT subject to interpretation.

Doctrine: abortion is intrinsically evil. This means there are no instances where abortion is moral. You may disagree with this but it is hard to believe anyone could actually fail to understand it.

I’m not sure why you are quoting that. That simply supports exactly what I have been saying! “they are bound in conscience…” “they stand under no compulsion…” “man is to be guided by his own judgment…” “he is to enjoy freedom…” Isn’t that what I have been saying?

That all went to the question of freedom. The question of responsibility is something else. It is because man is free to choose that he can be held accountable for his choices.

Freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, for it is called to accept the moral law given by God. (VS 36)

God’s moral law is expressed by the church:

The knowledge which the Church offers to man has its origin not in any speculation of her own, however sublime, but in the word of God which she has received in faith. (Fides et ratio,7)

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Since my quotation “You cannot be guilty…” is directly from the catechism…

You are right: I was quoting myself! What can I say, I’m getting old. My full quotation (of myself…) was “You cannot be guilty before God if you follow your conscience, which you have formed to the best of your ability” which, it seems to me, paraphrases #1790 in the catechism: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”

The question there is straightforward: if my conscience tells me that there is nothing wrong with it, and I reject the clear teaching on the matter and employ it, should I expect not to be held accountable for that decision?

You are STILL talking about “straightforward” and “clear teaching.” I’m going to take a guess: are you an engineer?

Should you be accountable for your decisions? Of course. I never suggested otherwise. But that does NOT mean that you are wrong to follow your conscience or that you are going to be punished. You could be “held accountable” and go to Heaven.

My citation is what the catechism actually says; yours is how you interpret other passages that don’t directly address the point. As you say, if we are both right then the catechism would in fact contradict itself. Since that seems unlikely then one of us must be wrong, and the question is whether it is me (in quoting exactly what was said), or whether it is you (in providing your own interpretation of a different passage)?

I just quoted #1790 above. Your quotations from #1783, 1790, and 1791 stress being “tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings…moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments…ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility…” and yet 1790 says " “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.” Contradiction? Difference in interpretation?

abortion is intrinsically evil

Terrific. A nice sentence. But what does it MEAN? What, exactly, IS “abortion”? You are making a huge leap by assuming that everyone understands this the same way. It’s clearly not true–you are interpreting it one way, and I am interpreting it another.

but it is hard to believe anyone could actually fail to understand it.

What you are REALLY saying is “It’s hard for me to believe that anyone could have a different interpretation of this than I do.” Trust me, hundreds of millions of people interpret it differently.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

part 2–

Finally, freedom, will, etc. Your quotation “Freedom is not unlimited…” is a conclusion drawn from some fairly sketchy propositions (from the same source): that we are not free to create good and evil (whatever that means…); that freedom MUST be subordinate to good (why?); and that the moral good MUST have priority over freedom (why?). All very interesting philosophy, but if you don’t accept the propositions, you don’t accept the conclusion. How can you have free will if you are not free to choose evil? To limit freedom to choose is to limit free will. No free will, no accountability; no sin. Makes no sense to me.

Your VS 9 (I’m not even sure what that is) also says this: “Only God can answer the question about what is good, because He is the Good itself.” And that’s what I’ve been saying ad nauseum. There is an absolute morality. God knows it. God conveys it to man using imperfect symbols (nature, language…). Man then tries to interpret it. Men interpret it in different ways. Again, go back to Isaiah 55: 8-9 and Isaiah 58. We cannot comprehend the mind of God; to claim that we can is to make ourselves equal to God. We can try to get an imperfect glimpse of the mind of God–if we’re lucky.

I’ll leave you with a quotation from Plato’s Apology (quoting Socrates): “Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know.” Isaiah and Plato could have been good buddies. I’m a fan.

So, what kind of engineer are you?

 

[midori]

You are right: I was quoting myself! What can I say, I’m getting old. My full quotation (of myself…) was “You cannot be guilty before God if you follow your conscience, which you have formed to the best of your ability” which, it seems to me, paraphrases #1790 in the catechism: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”

But we’re throwing around the word “conscience” a lot in a context that is clearly indicating “self-will” rather than “an inner voice regarding one’s moral behavior.”

For example, if someone wants to ring up his steak as bananas at the self-checkout, there are plenty of people in my town whose conscience will allow them to do that. And their conscience will probably congratulate them— “Way to go! You just saved $20!” And they’ll laugh and get on with life and not think twice about it.

But that’s not their conscience that allowed them to steal; it was their self-will. Goshdarnit, I want to buy steak, but I don’t want to pay $10/lb for it. They don’t stop and consider “is this moral behavior”; they only think, “This is what I want to do, so I’m gonna do it.” And they’ve ignored their conscience for so long that there’s a good chance they can’t even hear it, although I can’t speak for what goes on inside their head. All I can speak to is how they brag, or what they say.

Looking at 100 people around you— how many of them actually have bothered to “form their conscience” in the first place? It’s more like, you get advice to “ring up organic bananas as plain bananas” or “ring up honeycrisp apples as red delicious” or whatever.

You’re giving way more credit to way more people than they deserve. I suppose, if by some odd internet anomaly, you actually had a theological discussion about it, they would justify themselves by saying, “I followed my conscience! I’d be punished if I didn’t!” but in reality, they didn’t follow their conscience-- they ignored their conscience, and did whatever they felt like, because whatever rationality they came up with excused them.

And that’s the kind of behavior we’re calling out as being, no, that’s not what you get to do if you “follow your conscience” and excuse you from guilt.

Just like, no, I can’t go kill someone, even if I excuse it as, “They needed killin’!” and I can live with myself for dealing out some vigilante justice because their crime was so horrendous.

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[goout]

You have a duty to form your conscience to objective truth. Merely claiming the authority of your conscience does not mitigate culpability, because your conscience is not God. God is God. God speaks in the conscience, and to the degree that you are docile and well attuned to the voice of God, you will “hear” for better or worse.

A person might have an ignorance of conscience that mitigates culpability. But, ummmm, here we are talking about the issues, and so the claim of ignorance would be hard to justify.
It’s like sitting and talking with your heart doctor about your heart problems, and at the same time claiming that you are not responsible for your heart condition if you don’t know cigarettes are bad for you.
Well, you do know, and if you claim ignorance you are not ex-culpable, you are simply willfully arrogant in your assertion of conscience. And that’s not following your conscience, it’s claiming license to do what you want.

But that’s between you and God in the end.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

As I said earlier, it’s like I’m writing “I think it’s black.” and the response is “I think it’s white.”
Or maybe a better analogy: “I think it’s square.” Good discussion!

 

[goout]

The other thing to realize is that conscience does not operate in the theoretical, it operates “in the real”. And that makes all the difference.

[1777] Moral conscience,48 present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil.49 It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

[1778] Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed.

 

[1cthlctrth]

Thank you for your interest in this topic.

• The United States has an economic system that best fights poverty: Only 3% of United States population is considered to be low income, and only 2% poor rate by World Bank global standards (per Pew Research Center). The rest of the world: 56% low income and 15% poor by World Bank global standards.
• Those who demand open borders for ILLEGAL immigrants lack compassion for victims of drug cartels (more than 80% of our heroin comes through the southern border), child and other sex-trafficking, MS-13 gangs and other law-breakers, and for middle class families who struggle to get by week-to-week. We welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do it the right way.
• I always enjoy how leftists want freedom to choose abortion, but they do not believe we should have the right to choose our private health insurance plan.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Thank you for your interest in this topic.

• The United States has an economic system that best fights poverty: Only 3% of United States population is considered to be low income, and only 2% poor rate by World Bank global standards (per Pew Research Center). The rest of the world: 56% low income and 15% poor by World Bank global standards.

There are many aspects of the “US System”, some of which we will agree are best and some of which we may not agree on. I can agree that the US System in general is the best (meaning those aspects of the US system I believe are good) without agreeing that every aspect of the US system is best.

• Those who demand open borders for ILLEGAL immigrants lack compassion for victims of drug cartels (more than 80% of our heroin comes through the southern border), child and other sex-trafficking, MS-13 gangs and other law-breakers, and for middle class families who struggle to get by week-to-week.

I advocated for more compassion for immigrants, so that they may enter legally. I do not advocate for open borders or for illegal immigration. But when legal immigration is so restricted as it is now, the pressure to immigrate illegally is magnified. Under these conditions you might understand why hearts may be moved to offer sanctuary on a case-by-case basis.

• I always enjoy how leftists want freedom to choose abortion, but they do not believe we should have the right to choose our private health insurance plan.

If you truly detested abortion, you would not enjoy watching others advocate for it. And you would do well to refrain from trying so hard to put everyone in a labelled box so that you assume everything about them and their beliefs based on what box you put them in.

And talking about the freedom to choose a health insurance plan, that is a bit of mischaracterization. The real problem is that some people do not want to pay for other people’s insurance. Even with universal health care (under all plans except for Bernie’s) you could still form a private contract with an insurance company for your own health insurance. But doing so would not relieve you of the obligation to pay (through your taxes) for the universal plan. So you would be, in effect, paying twice. But you would have your choice.

 

[1cthlctrth]

Thanks for your reply to my reply.

• I agree that we should make it easier for immigrants to get into the United States legally. But the solution is to change the law, and NOT to just blindly let everybody in without vetting them. We are the most generous nation in the world, with over a million immigrants per year. Immigrants enter because the United States might be the greatest country in the world.
• Regarding government-controlled healthcare, how would people like a healthcare system similar to that of the Veterans Administration? Government-controlled healthcare increases wait times, decreases choice, and decreases quality of healthcare.
  The United States has the best healthcare system in the world. I know many Canadians who come to the United States for healthcare, but I don’t know any Americans who go to Canada for healthcare.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

• Regarding government-controlled healthcare, how would people like a healthcare system similar to that of the Veterans Administration? Government-controlled healthcare increases wait times, decreases choice, and decreases quality of healthcare.
  The United States has the best healthcare system in the world. I know many Canadians who come to the United States for healthcare, but I don’t know any Americans who go to Canada for healthcare.

The VA health care, for all its troubles, is still better than doing without health care, which is what would happen to many of those getting care through the VA if it was not there.

 

[midori]

I was chatting with a friend this afternoon. She has medical care through the VA system. She also has cataracts. But the VA wouldn’t cover her eye surgery, because they deemed her “too young” to have cataracts.

So she ended up paying for her surgery out of pocket, rather than waiting for herself to become nearly-blind for the VA coverage to kick in.

 

[Ender]

You are STILL talking about “straightforward” and “clear teaching.” I’m going to take a guess: are you an engineer?

I cannot accept that there are many ambiguous teachings. We may not understand why a particular act is forbidden (e.g. contraception), but we can surely understand that it is forbidden. We know when we act contrary to doctrine even if we convince ourselves that in our case the action is justified.

But that does NOT mean that you are wrong to follow your conscience or that you are going to be punished.

It seems in those cases where we know what the church teaches (which I believe is most cases), if our conscience leads us to reject that teaching we will in all likelihood be culpable for the sin we commit. “Following our conscience” in such instances does not justify the sins we commit.

A nice sentence. But what does it MEAN? What, exactly, IS “abortion”? You are making a huge leap by assuming that everyone understands this the same way. It’s clearly not true–you are interpreting it one way, and I am interpreting it another.

I really struggle to understand what is ambiguous here. An abortion is act directed at terminating a pregnancy. It is the act that does end it as well as the desire and intent to end it. Again, while there may be some odd and unusual cases, for the most part there is really no debate at all about what constitutes an abortion. Why is this an issue?

 

[Erikaspirit16]

I really struggle to understand what is ambiguous here.

You still haven’t answered my question: What type of engineer are you?

 

[TheLittleLady]

And better than poverty due to serious health problems. My Canadian, British, French, Sweedish, German, Russian, friends cannot fathom that US Citizens are forced into begging on the internet to pay medical bills.

 

[Ender]

You still haven’t answered my question: What type of engineer are you?

This type of question is not just irrelevant but inappropriate. It suggests that an argument can be refuted by ad hominem comments about the person who made it. Nothing about me personally matters.

 

[Tenzin]

Now that people are political, Has anyone seen the Orange Party platform?

 

[Erikaspirit16]

This type of question is not just irrelevant but inappropriate. It suggests that an argument can be refuted by ad hominem comments about the person who made it. Nothing about me personally matters.

No, the question is right on the money. I have a lot of friends who are engineers and mathematicians. In their world, facts are unambiguous and universally (literally) true. Chemical formulas, mathematical proofs, engineering concepts, etc. are universally accepted and hold true throughout the known universe. No ambiguity.

The problem comes when these people try to deal with language. They approach it the same way you do: “This is clear! It’s unambiguous! How can anyone think differently!” When they run into someone like me (educated in languages and linguistics, not to mention history and economics), they think they are talking to an alien from outer space. “What do you mean ambiguous? How can you possibly say that?” Sound familiar? Sound like your posts? It sure does to me.

This is why, for example, it’s almost impossible to do computer translations accurately other than for the most simple subjects. It’s why we have endless (well, 2,000 years…) debates about what the authors of the New Testament meant. It’s why people from another culture, even if they speak another language well, very rarely reach native proficiency.

Let’s take Roman Jakobson, for example. He was a Russian-born linguist who worked mostly in Czechoslovakia and the US. One experiment he did was to find out the different meanings of the same concept in different languages/cultures. He did this by asking people from different cultures the top 10 or so associations they had when they heard a word in their native languages. Now of course some words are culturally loaded: ‘mother’, ‘God’, ‘revenge’, etc. But the interesting thing is that even simple objects (‘table’, ‘night’, ‘spoon’, etc.) had totally different sets of associations in different cultures/languages. So if I say ‘table’ in English and then use the word ‘tabelle’ in German to my German friend, am I communicating EXACTLY the same thing as I would be to an English-speaking person when I say ‘table’? No, I’m not. It’s close, but it’s not the same. And if I translate ‘table’ into Chinese, it gets further away from my own associations.
(For example, if I say ‘table’, what pops into my head? --flat, hard surface, wooden, seats 4-6, about 2 1/2 feet tall, expensive, for eating…etc. Same list as you, in the same order? Probably not, but averaged over a lot of people who speak English, we have similar lists.)