SF archbishop is re-wording his strict morality code

[Suudy]

If they believe contrary to what the good Bishop is teaching, they are in fact wrong and do not have a “well-formed conscience”.

Beat me to it! I had a response all typed up and decided to continue to read the rest of the thread. This is exactly what I was thinking. Conscience conforms to Truth, not the other way around.

 

[Thorolfr]

nor is there change in morality.

There might not be changes in God’s morality, but there are certainly changes in what we human beings including the Catholic Church consider to be moral. For example:

In ‘‘A Church That Can and Cannot Change,’’ [John T.] Noonan drives home the point that some Catholic moral doctrines have changed radically. History, he concludes, does not support the comforting notion that the church simply elaborates on or expands previous teachings without contradicting them.

His exhibit A is slavery. **John Paul II included slavery among matters that are ‘‘intrinsically evil’’ – prohibited ‘‘always and forever’’ and ‘‘without any exception’’ **-- a violation of a universal, immutable norm. Yet slavery in some form was accepted as a fact of life in both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, in much Christian theology and in Catholic teaching well into the 19th century. Noonan says that Christianity achieved a radical transvaluation of slavery. Jesus presented himself as a slave; slaves became saints; slavery became a metaphor and model for Christian life. Yet neither Jesus nor his followers directly challenged the institution of slavery. The fathers of the church accepted the buying, selling and owning of human beings. So did the popes: Muslim slaves were manning papal galleys until 1800. So did religious orders: Jesuits in colonial Maryland owned slaves, as did nuns in Europe and Latin America. Even St. Peter Claver, who in Colombia befriended, instructed and baptized African slaves, bought slaves to serve as interpreters. Theologians challenged abuses of slaveholding but rarely the practice itself.

It was at the urging of Protestant Britain that the papacy condemned the slave trade in 1839. In 1888, after every Christian nation had abolished slavery, the Vatican finally condemned it – with a kind of historical rewriting and self-congratulation that palpably offends Noonan’s sense of honesty.

nytimes.com/2005/05/22/books/review/22STEINFE.html?sq=&_r=0

BTW, some of my ancestors owned slaves and I’m sure they thought that this was moral.

 

[Lapey]

There might not be changes in God’s morality, but there are certainly changes in what we human beings including the Catholic Church consider to be moral. For example:

nytimes.com/2005/05/22/books/review/22STEINFE.html?sq=&_r=0

You really went out on a limb with this post. Scripture is chock full of examples of slavery being part of the culture. Heck, St. Paul himself requests the service of anther’s slave for his mission.

Philemon 1:12-16;

“I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. 13 I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, 14but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary. 15Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, 16no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.”

Can you find where adultery, fornication, SS “M”, etc. are accepted then rejected? If not your point is mute. These truths have not changed and will not.

The good bishop is teaching truth in accord with sound Catholic doctrine given to us by Jesus Himself, it will not change.

 

[SWolf]

John Paul II included slavery among matters that are ‘‘intrinsically evil’’ – prohibited ‘‘always and forever’’ and ‘‘without any exception’’ – a violation of a universal, immutable norm.

Do you have a citation for JPII saying this other than the NY Times?

 

[Thorolfr]

You really went out on a limb with this post. Scripture is chock full of examples of slavery being part of the culture. Heck, St. Paul himself requests the service of anther’s slave for his mission.

Philemon 1:12-16;

“I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. 13 I should have liked to retain him for myself, so that he might serve me on your behalf in my imprisonment for the gospel, 14but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary. 15Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, 16no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more so to you, as a man and in the Lord.”

Can you find where adultery, fornication, SS “M”, etc. are accepted then rejected? If not your point is mute. These truths have not changed and will not.

The good bishop is teaching truth in accord with sound Catholic doctrine given to us by Jesus Himself, it will not change.

I was responding to your statement that morality does not change, but that is obviously not true since slavery was once accepted even by people in the church including popes but now Pope John Paul II said that it is ‘‘intrinsically evil’’ – prohibited ‘‘always and forever’’ and ‘‘without any exception’’. Isn’t that a change in morality?

So if homosexuality, for example, was once thought to be immoral, why can’t that view also change?

 

[McCall1981]

ncregister.com/daily-news/archbishop-cordileone-holds-firm-on-teacher-contracts/

Archbishop Cordileone Holds Firm on Teacher Contracts

The San Francisco shepherd’s initiative to strengthen schools’ Catholic mission will proceed.

by JOAN FRAWLEY DESMOND 02/26/2015

SAN FRANCISCO — Forcefully rebutting press reports to the contrary, the Archdiocese of San Francisco affirmed Feb. 24 that its shepherd, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, remains committed to adding new provisions to archdiocesan teacher contracts.
The proposed contract language calls on teachers to avoid public statements or actions that oppose Catholic teaching on a range of issues.

“The archbishop has not repealed anything,” Jesuit Father John Piderit, the moderator of the Curia and the vicar for administration for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, said in a statement posted Feb. 24 on the archdiocesan website. “He is adding explanations, clarifications and material on Catholic social teaching, via a committee of religion teachers he is establishing. … Nothing already planned to go in is being removed or retracted or withdrawn.”

The archdiocesan statement was issued as a specific repudiation of news articles published earlier in the day, suggesting that Archbishop Cordileone had decided to “backtrack” in the face of strident opposition from teachers, parents and students, as well as criticisms expressed by eight state lawmakers the previous week in a public letter to the archbishop.

“Under pressure from parents, students and staffers at the San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese’s schools, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said [Feb. 24] that he is re-examining strict guidelines he proposed for teachers that would require them to reject homosexuality, use of contraception and other ‘evil’ behavior,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported in a Feb. 24 news story filed just hours after the archbishop met with the newspaper’s editorial board.

The Chronicle’s story was picked up by other news outlets, including the CBS local affiliate, which promptly announced: “Archbishop ‘Backtracks.’”

The existing teachers’ contract for faculty in the four high schools under Archbishop Cordileone’s jurisdiction expires on July 31, and the new one is under negotiation with the local Catholic teachers’ union, the San Francisco Archdiocesan Federation of Teachers, Local 2240.

As teachers continued to express anxiety about the changes, Archbishop Cordileone issued a letter to them that announced some modifications to his plan in order both to engage their concerns and to clarify Church teaching.
“[A]fter speaking with your union negotiators, I have decided to form a committee consisting of theology teachers from the four archdiocesan high schools to recommend to me a draft which, while retaining what is already there, expands on these statements and adjusts the language to make the statements more readily understandable to a wider readership,” read the Feb. 24 letter.

 

[Lapey]

I was responding to your statement that morality does not change, but that is obviously not true since slavery was once accepted even by people in the church including popes but now Pope John Paul II said that it is ‘‘intrinsically evil’’ – prohibited ‘‘always and forever’’ and ‘‘without any exception’’. Isn’t that a change in morality?

So if** homosexuality, for example, was once thought to be immoral, why can’t that view also change**?

Because it is directly against Natural Law. Morality does not change. I challenge you to find any statement by the Catholic Church, in any time period, as a part of moral doctrine, made a statement that it was moral to enslave another. The Church may sit right next to great immorality, that neither means it endorses it or condones the immoral act.

Homosexuality is against Natural Law, therefore it has never and will never be considered moral. Again, please understand that the Church separates the act from the person. The act is intrinsically disordered, while the inclination of the person who sufferers from deep seated SSA is objectively disordered.

 

[SWolf]

I was responding to your statement that morality does not change, but that is obviously not true since slavery was once accepted even by people in the church including popes but now Pope John Paul II said that it is ‘‘intrinsically evil’’ – prohibited ‘‘always and forever’’ and ‘‘without any exception’’. Isn’t that a change in morality?

So if homosexuality, for example, was once thought to be immoral, why can’t that view also change?

Which slavery?

Chattel Slavery?
Indentured Servitude?
Forced labor of convicted criminals?
Force labor of POWs?

The Church has always condemned modern conceptions of slavery, chattel slavery.

We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
Pope Paul III, Sublimus Dei, 1537

1. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery.
   Pope Eugene IV, Sicut Dudum, 1435

 

[Thorolfr]

Do you have a citation for JPII saying this other than the NY Times?

It appears in Veritatis Spendor, paragraph 80:

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”.131 The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator”.132

With regard to intrinsically evil acts, and in reference to contraceptive practices whereby the conjugal act is intentionally rendered infertile, Pope Paul VI teaches: “Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (cf. Rom 3:8) — in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general”.

w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html

It just says that “slavery” is “intrinsically evil” and does not qualify between chattel slavery and other kinds of slavery.

 

[Suudy]

I was responding to your statement that morality does not change, but that is obviously not true since slavery was once accepted even by people in the church including popes but now Pope John Paul II said that it is ‘‘intrinsically evil’’ – prohibited ‘‘always and forever’’ and ‘‘without any exception’’. Isn’t that a change in morality?

No. It’s a change in the understanding of morality. Morality isn’t defined by us. I would argue that we only discover morality, we don’t create it and we don’t change it.

 

[SWolf]

It appears in Veritatis Spendor, paragraph 80:

w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html

It just says that “slavery” is “intrinsically evil” and does not qualify between chattel slavery and other kinds of slavery.

Ahhh, so the question is how is slavery defined. If it is involuntary servitude, one could argue the income tax is slavery.

Given the context, I think it is clear chattel slavert is what is being discussed.

In any case, it is a mute point since the document is not considered infallible.

 

[Corki]

If they believe contrary to what the good Bishop is teaching, they are in fact wrong and do not have a “well-formed conscience”.

There is perhaps diminished culpability with regard to conscience for some people who are not well-educated in the faith. But that should not apply to **Catholic school **teachers. They have no excuse not to know and assent to the teaching of the Church. And if they are in positions where their actions can influence youth, they have the extra responsibility of being proper role models and not risk the millstone around the neck.

 

[retire_early]

“… This generation does not believe in some of the dogma that is stressed by the Bishop of San Francisco - especially in the area of sexual ethics. Gay people are these students brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and friends and I do not believe that they will ever accept the CCC teaching that gays are intrinsically disordered.”

 Just because "this generation" does not believe.....does that make the Truth less than truthful?  Also, are "gays" instrinsically disordered, or is "gayness" intrinsically disordered?  As a teacher, were (or are) you teaching them the difference?

" In addition, when over 90% of Western Catholics use (or have used Artificial Birth Control) what do we expect our teens to think? "

That there are a lot of people who sin?  Or, do you teach them that majority rules as far as determining if something is sinful?

“The students do not want their teachers subjected to the “thought police”. The Bishop’s employment doctrine does not address personal (at home) beliefs, but if a teacher confides in a colleague that they are undergoing IVF to try and have a baby and the colleague reports this to the Bishop, he, at will, can fire said employee. Not exactly what these good kids want to happen to their teachers.”

 What makes the kids good?  They may or may not be, just as teachers may or may not be.   Kids don't get to decide Morals.  They sure do need to be taught what is Moral.

“Maybe San Francisco was not the best place for the Holy Father to place Cordileone. A more conservative place, such as Lincoln would seem to be a much better choice.”

Hmm-m-m-m-mmm.....flavors of Christianity, according to geographical area....who woulda thunk?

 

[Lapey]

There is perhaps diminished culpability with regard to conscience for some people who are not well-educated in the faith. But that should not apply to **Catholic school **teachers. They have no excuse not to know and assent to the teaching of the Church. And if they are in positions where their actions can influence youth, they have the extra responsibility of being proper role models and not risk the millstone around the neck.

That is what those who defend disobedience do not realize.

Matt. 18:6

“but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

 

[Brendan]

Ahhh, so the question is how is slavery defined. If it is involuntary servitude, one could argue the income tax is slavery.
.

Or when courts sentence a malefactor to community service. That is compelled labor, labor that is unpaid.

Hence we still have slavery in the US, by that definition.

 

[Thorolfr]

I saw this in the New York Times:

Asked if a teacher could post photos on Facebook of her gay son’s wedding, [Archbishop Cordileone] said that “if someone was upset and reported it,” then “the person with the Facebook page would have to be talked to.”

nytimes.com/2015/02/27/us/archbishop-cordileone-of-san-francisco-defends-changes.html?_r=0

It seems a little bit much that teachers might have their Facebook pages policed.

 

[oneofmany]

catholicvote.org/will-you-pray-for-him/

I got this in my email. You can sign the letter to support him and especially we should pray for him.

 

[el_dominguero]

If they believe contrary to what the good Bishop is teaching, they are in fact wrong and do not have a “well-formed conscience”.

You’ve hit the nail on the head Gary. There was a longstanding agreement in various cultures including Judaism and Chrstianity that owning slaves was acceptable and OK. However, homosexuality AKA same sex attraction had been condemned and prohibited since the time of Moses, Abraham, Lot because it goes against natural law and the Word of God.