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Rau
Guest
So you are saying Perls conscience “correctly” guided her?
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Rau
Guest
The discussion absent this example is far more hypothetical!
If Perl is obligated to follow her conscience, she is obligated to do that which she knows the Church teaches definitively to be intrinsically evil. Is her conscience wrong or is the Church teaching wrong? Or are all teachings “subject to conscience”?
Perhaps Ender and Blue will add their thoughts.
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Thomas_White
Guest
She must obey the certain judgment of her conscience:
“Over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. Conscience confronts [the individual] with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official Church.” (Pope Benedict XVI [then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger], Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II
There is nothing new here. It seems those who oppose the teaching on conscience will forever persist in trying to find a non-existent argument around it. The real question is why? I admit I do not find the idea of “intrinsic evil” persuasive, but at least I can tell you why: “God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good” (Genesis 1:32).
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Rau
Guest
OK - thus - she is obligated to perform the abortions.
You are speculating, and I can’t speak for the actions of others.
You adhere strongly to one Church teaching, and reject another. How did you choose which to accept, and which to reject? Conscience, I presume?
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Rau
Guest
I don’t fully understand your point here. Could you directly answer the 2 questions in post #129.
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Thomas_White
Guest
No, she does not have to do anything.
No, this was not speculation. It is a matter of fact. Matters of fact are known by experience. The many comments are there to see.
Merely quoting the CCC does not indicate “strong adherence”. It was explained why the concept of “intrinsic” evil is questioned. It implies that God created evil. In any event, evil is evil.
No, it was not a question of conscience. You asked for someone to answer you comment, so I did. That’s all. But there is nothing new and won’t be until it is explained how CCC 1776 and 1800 could be incorrect.
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Rau
Guest
It can be debated whether one (ever) has a moral obligation **to act **in a positive way, as opposed to a moral obligation to refrain from a wrong act.
Sorry if I misread you. You quoted that section of the ccc multiple times and from the perspective that it is clear and definitive. I took that as “strong adherence” - perhaps I was wrong? In any event, there seems to be a stark contrast between your acceptance of that teaching and your position on the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the latter also being taught by the Church, and with considerable force - in Veritatis Splendor and numerous references in the ccc. Seems to me that it would be more straightforward to view conscience as the unequivocal arbiter of the “right” choice if there are no intrinsically evil acts. Because if there are instrinsically evil acts, conscience being in conflict with the prohibition on such an act may be hard to resolve. [My personal resolution is that I may not act contrary to the red light of conscience nor contrary to the red light of what is definitively taught.]
Actually, I asked 2 very specific questions:
- If while knowing this [the teaching re: murdering innocents], Dr Perl felt her conscience tells her to abort babies (see the link in post #129 for the reason and circumstances) would Dr Perl be obligated to refrain from abortion (in deference to unequivocal doctrine) or to follow her conscience and abort babies? Your answer is a little vague - simply saying “she is not obligated to do anything”. OK, but does the teaching (re: murder of innocents) obligate her to refrain? It’s a yes or no question.
- If it is Perl’s testimony that she acted on the guidance of conscience, could that in fact be correct, or must it be the case that she was driven by something else? **Your response appears clear: It could and would be correct to act to abort **[your post #164, citing ccc1800]. However, I’m not sure you answered the question I intended - I was not asking whether to abort was a “good” act, but rather whether her conscience could in fact exhort her to commit an act the Church has declared to be intrinsically evil?
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
When we are ignorant of something in our actions then we have a mixture of voluntary and involuntary mental acts. That which concerns what we do not know is involuntary.
For example:
(a) a doctor who does not know that abortion is a moral offence may well do what we call abortion but does not voluntarily commit sin.
(b) Actions can also be rendered involuntary when we are ignorant of some circumstance regarding an action. For example, if one has sex with a woman thought to be one’s wife voluntarily has sex, but he does not voluntarily commit adultery.
So the doctor may well have:
(a) voluntarily performed what we call abortion but did not voluntarily commit sin because she may have been ignorant of the fact that abortion is always morally offensive even if the mother was raped by a prison guard and the pregnancy would mean she (and the baby) would therefore be tortured and killed…because self-defence principles still do not apply with abortion.
(b) voluntarily chosen to kill the innocent semi-formed foetus but did not consider it at that stage to be fully human so did not voluntarily commit what she would recognise as murder.
The second case seems less realistic for a practising Catholic … but perhaps not for a pagan or even Judaism.
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Rau
Guest
Placing these “may well have” conditions serves to eliminate the need to address the specific issues I’m probing, since questions of conscience vs teaching become *irrelevant *if the Dr is unaware of the teaching, or believes it does not apply to a sufficiently young unborn!
The concrete scenario against which I posed the 2 questions (in post #129 and repeated in my above post #173) assumes: that the Dr is Catholic and knows full-well the teaching of the Church in relation to the murdering of innocents and the specific instance of which we call abortion..
Blue - to stay on track - viz. the potential for conflict between conscience and Church teaching - we must not introduce spurious (in this context) issues of “deliberateness” of act, nor whether the Dr held that this act was in fact the killing of a human. We need to take these things as a given if we are to confront the issue in question.
Are you able to answer the 2 questions I posed in this light?
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Vico
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Ubenedictus
Guest
I think your conclusion is wrong, that is what this debate is about.
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
My contribution discusses how ignorance classically renders actions that appear voluntary involuntary.
How else do you think certain but erroneous conscience relates to the 3 fonts that define an act as moral or immoral? Clearly it is on the basis of the 3rd font (lack of understanding).
Of course I am talking principles, nobody can get inside the heart or conscience of the doctor to make the sort of concrete, particular judgement you seem to want to make.
But I believe we can say there are valid principles to explain the possibility she possessed a non culpably ignorant conscience and so was without moral fault. If we could not find such a principle then we would have to conclude with certitude that such actions always indicate a culpably ignorant conscience.
That is far from convincingly provable as I see it.
I don’t understand your insistence this is a concrete example and then ask us to assume she is a well formed Catholic. The article seems to make clear she was fully Jewish.
Sure you can invent a fantasy…but then it isn’t a real world example anymore and not truly representative of what is possible in the real world.
Like I say, I do not believe a well formed Catholic would ever think like she does about what she did.
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Rau
Guest
Acres of words addressing the generality, yet you will not directly answer 2 clear questions.
A well-formed catholic? How is one to be recognized? If their conscience always aligns with church teaching?
What I conclude from your response is that you believe the conscience of the well-formed catholic could not be at odds with Definitive church doctrine. But if that’s the very definition of a well- formed catholic…
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Rau
Guest
It’s concrete - though hypothetical because I defined “my” doctor to be a catholic fully aware of the relevant teaching and accepting a fetus is an innocent human life.
If we can analyze the morality of the hypothetical trolley problems, then we can do so here too.
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Ender
Guest
I touched on the point before of being wrong regardless of which choice one makes: of not following one’s conscience and not performing an abortion, or following one’s conscience and performing the abortion. The fault in the first case is going against one’s conscience, and in the second it is in performing a grave sin.
I think the problem lies in the conscience. There can be no case made that performing an abortion is justifiable under any circumstance, nor is it possible for my conscience to accept it and yours to disavow it. If the conscience is the law of God written on our hearts then the same law applies to all; it is unthinkable that God would apply different standards to different people. There is one truth, and it applies to us all.
Therefore if my conscience allows for abortion, it is not my true conscience, but a distortion. I think it is this concept that Cardinal Ratzinger was referring to when he said: “a concept of conscience which leads to such conclusions must be false.” The “certainty” of our conscience does not justify what is unjustifiable: “I knew with complete certainty that something was wrong with the theory of justifying power of the subjective conscience.”
The person who has, performs, or supports abortion sins. The act is never justified, personal conscience notwithstanding. If one’s conscience believes otherwise, that conscience is deformed.
Ender
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Sorry, the value of this example, for me, was it’s inner truth as a concrete lived example of how conscience, which is ultimately a practical matter, plays out in the real world.
The real world offers truths and the visible results of inner workings of things we can never directly see…often contradicting our armchair hypotheses in the strangest ways.
By changing the doctor from being a Jew to a well instructed Catholic you forced your own preconceived answers into the example and so have completely distorted any truth (outside of your frame of reference) offered to you by the concrete example itself.
I myself have little faith in thought experiments of my own making as they still tend to simply reinforce my own prejudices and limited thinking projected by my unconscious into the thought experiment.
It’s a bit like wondering if it’s possible for husbands to ever stop beating their wives!
The very hypothesis assumes things that may not be true in the real world. Like the fact that some husbands “stopped” because they never did.
BTW the doctor as a Jew knows the Commandments as well as any Catholic does she not.
In any case the issue of conscience is about discerning God’s law in our hearts. Clearly it is capable of error even in well educated, heroic, religious and otherwise very good people…even in the matter of abortion.
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Rau
Guest
LOL! I could equally well never have mentioned the historical figure! I suspect you still would not answer.
There is no need for a thought experiment to reinforce your own prejudices, certainly not when the experiment is provided by me, anyway.
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Rau
Guest
^This is my view of it. And for this reason, we cannot do away with what the Church teaches, and it is dangerous to operate on the basis that conscience is always the overriding authority since to be sure one is in contact with conscience may not always be easy, particularly in circumstances of great emotion.
So the answers to post #129 I give myself are:
- one is obligated to refrain from abortion;
- concluding abortion is the good course is not a judgement of conscience.
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