What if someone in RCIA doesn't accept all of the Church's teachings?

[OraLabora]

I can’t go there with you. To say “my conscience tells me that I am right and the Church is wrong” is to put the faith of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, through the shredder, and to proclaim that I know better than seventy generations of Catholic Christians before me. Truth is one. In the case of moral doctrines, to say “what’s true for the other guy isn’t true for me” sounds like having an open line to God and having special permission to follow one’s own ideas instead of the Church’s teachings. Were Ted Bundy and Charles Manson “in good conscience”? They could have been. What then?

An important nuance: it is possible to not assent to a doctrine or dogma, while still submitting to it. I know a lot of monastics and I can tell you more than one has a problem with this or that teaching of the Church. However their solemn profession includes the word obedience (Stability, Obedience and Inner Conversion are the three elements of Benedictine and Cistercian profession), and all strive to obey. And when they fail, avail themselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Moreover as the Catechism says:

1784 The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience. Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear, selfishness and pride, resentment arising from guilt, and feelings of complacency, born of human weakness and faults. the education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.

As for Bundy and Manson: straw man. The Catechism also says:

1789 Some rules apply in every case:

• One may never do evil so that good may result from it;
• the Golden Rule: “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.”
• charity always proceeds by way of respect for one’s neighbor and his conscience: "Thus sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience . . . you sin against Christ."Therefore “it is right not to . . . do anything that makes your brother stumble.”[58]

There is no way that they could have been acting in “good conscience”.

 

[Dovekin]

But to outright dissent, to for example state, “I’m a good Catholic and as a good Catholic I support gay marriage and contraception and abortion”. . . And then to say that…

I would have quoted more, but I couldn’t follow who was saying what to whom that said what to them. I think this is enough to make my point without misrepresenting what you are saying.

Of “gay marriage and contraception and abortion” only abortion even comes close to being something “that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” Evangelium vitae connects abortion to the revelation of the Ten Commandments. But the basis for these is the natural law, not revelation.

The church certainly teaches , and is an interpreter of, the natural law. But as a catechist, I think my job would be to teach what has been revealed, the intrinsic value of human life and human dignity. Love as the nature of God and as the greatest gift to our lives.

 

[JerryZ]

Yes I knew that, it was just a rhetorical question to point out that we can’t assume all who go through RCIA have not been Baptized.
Peace!

 

[HomeschoolDad]

An important nuance: it is possible to not assent to a doctrine or dogma, while still submitting to it. I know a lot of monastics and I can tell you more than one has a problem with this or that teaching of the Church. However their solemn profession includes the word obedience (Stability, Obedience and Inner Conversion are the three elements of Benedictine and Cistercian profession), and all strive to obey. And when they fail, avail themselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

No disagreement there. As I said above, I have difficulties with, among other things, sacramental validity of non-Catholic marriages where one or both parties does not believe marriage in the abstract is indissoluble, the back-and-forth on the church’s teaching on usury (and, for that matter, how usury, even moderate taking of interest, could have ever been considered wrong in the first place), and looser interpretations of extra ecclesiam nulla salus that seem to vitiate the whole concept. There are others. I seek to assent, and I do submit. That’s not willful and pertinacious dissent.

As for Bundy and Manson: straw man. The Catechism also says:

1789 Some rules apply in every case:

• One may never do evil so that good may result from it;
• the Golden Rule: “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.”
• charity always proceeds by way of respect for one’s neighbor and his conscience: "Thus sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience . . . you sin against Christ."Therefore “it is right not to . . . do anything that makes your brother stumble.”[58]

Well, I think maybe they could have been. People do things contrary to the Gospel, and the Golden Rule, every day of the world, and think they are doing good and noble things. More to the point, every sin whatsoever is “doing evil so that good may result from it” — any sinner is seeking a good, only problem it, that “good” is not the ultimate Good That is God. I think some of our pro-choice legislators are so self-brainwashed that they are indeed acting in good conscience, they think it is a kind, compassionate, caring thing, to make abortion possible and to facilitate it for others, even if they say they wouldn’t do it themselves.

Just as a thought experiment (a rather macabre one, I will admit), I have to wonder what a society would look like, where (let’s say) 60% of the people thought it was their God-given right (or nature-given right, or reason-given right, or what have you) to have the first month after a child was born, to decide whether they wanted to allow the child to live, or pursue some other option. That’s essentially what we have now — it’s only a question of timing and location. What if that 60% maintained that their consciences told them this was all right to do? What then?

 

[pnewton]

I can’t go there with you. To say “my conscience tells me that I am right and the Church is wrong” is to put the faith of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, through the shredder, and to proclaim that I know better than seventy generations of Catholic Christians before me. Truth is one.

Including this truth from the Catechism:

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. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right.

RCIA prepares one to be received into the Church, not Heaven. As it is not reasonable to expect one to have a fully formed conscience based on a year of RCIA, it would be rather a surprise to me if someone came through knowing everything the Church has taught and agreeing to it, what is a work of a lifetime for most of us. That is why this is a matter for the priest, to determine if there is an unwillingness to further form the conscience, a stubbornness of will; or is there simple some point on which the person has not yet reached the understanding of the Church, and the matter is one of doctrine, not dogma.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

I can’t go there with you. To say “my conscience tells me that I am right and the Church is wrong” is to put the faith of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, through the shredder, and to proclaim that I know better than seventy generations of Catholic Christians before me. Truth is one.

Including this truth from the Catechism:

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. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right.

Nothing in this quote suggests that a person is entitled to dissent from the Church’s moral teaching on this matter or that matter. We are to form our consciences in conformity with the teachings of the magisterium.

I submit that a lot of the Church’s contemporary insistence on freedom of conscience is directed against evil regimes and social orders that seek to force people to violate their consciences. We’ve had quite a bit of that in the past 100 years or so. Christians in ancient Rome were also terrorized into either following their consciences or losing their lives.

My son’s grandparents in eastern Europe were given the choice of either joining the Communist Party and gaining certain social and material advantages, or adhering to their faith, going to Mass, and being shut out of many occupations and managerial positions. Party members were not allowed to go to Mass.

 

[njlisa]

@HomeschoolDad: When I was going through the RCIA, I struggled with some doubts. So I sat down with my RCIA director. She told me I had to fully inform myself of the church’s teachings. I accepted her advice. But she never grilled me to make sure I was fully orthodox. And everything worked out in the end.

 

[otjm]

I asked him if he wanted to become Catholic so he could marry his girlfriend without issue. He looked off into space and stood quiet for a long time before he answered. Poor guy… I asked him that right in front of her lol I did not think much of it but it seems like that was his plan but he had not discussed it with her or something.

Every once in a while, that pesky Holy Spirit pops up in the most interesting places and in the most interesting way.

 

[otjm]

Just as a thought experiment (a rather macabre one, I will admit), I have to wonder what a society would look like, where (let’s say) 60% of the people thought it was their God-given right (or nature-given right, or reason-given right, or what have you) to have the first month after a child was born, to decide whether they wanted to allow the child to live, or pursue some other option. That’s essentially what we have now — it’s only a question of timing and location. What if that 60% maintained that their consciences told them this was all right to do? What then?

Well, then, they would fit in very comfortably with the philosophical musings of Peter Singer, who proposed that parent should have the right t=o kill their child up to the age of about 6 months, since;it was a logical extension of the drivel of the pro abortionists that since the child is in the womb, it is incapable of sustaining itself.

 

[TheLittleLady]

I would like to see every priest, who is instructing a potential convert where marriage or courtship is an issue, to find some kind of tactful, possibly even humorous way, to draw out of that convert whether they would still want to join the Church if they lost their fiance(e). Something along the lines of “now, we know this will never happen, but let’s say you and [name] here broke up, or if she ran off with the lead vocalist of some rock band, or something — how would you feel about joining the Church then?”. Even a moment’s hesitation is a danger sign.

Our team asks this, not as a one time haha question, but as a dialogue that begins at the beginning.

This is the reason our parish has a policy that girlfriend cannot sponsor boyfriend, finances cannot sponsor each other, spouses, etc. We are clear that each needs a sponsor who is not a stakeholder in a romance. An inquirer etc. may have doubts and questions that they tamp down because they don’t want to lose the deposit on the hall, or break up the relationship.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

RCIA prepares one to be received into the Church, not Heaven. As it is not reasonable to expect one to have a fully formed conscience based on a year of RCIA, it would be rather a surprise to me if someone came through knowing everything the Church has taught and agreeing to it, what is a work of a lifetime for most of us. That is why this is a matter for the priest, to determine if there is an unwillingness to further form the conscience, a stubbornness of will; or is there simple some point on which the person has not yet reached the understanding of the Church, and the matter is one of doctrine, not dogma.

I am quite agreed that you are not expected to know everything the Church teaches after coming out of RCIA (though two years is a pretty long time, certainly you could read the entire catechism in that time). What I would be looking for, is more of a docility of heart and mind, a willingness to accept without reserve or hesitation everything the Church teaches, regardless of what it is.

If I find out, years after the fact, that it is a mortal sin to play tiddly winks (assuming that tiddly winks are something I’ve grown fond of and would not want to give up), then my task is to accept the Church’s teaching the moment I learn it, and to give up tiddly winks for life, and to despise the very thought of playing tiddly winks. It is not my task to say “oh, nooooo, this isn’t what I signed up for, I have got to have my tiddly winks, if I can’t play tiddly winks, terrible things are going to happen to me!”, nor to say “my conscience doesn’t tell me there’s anything wrong with playing tiddly winks, and I am going to keep playing tiddly winks, I will keep going to communion, and if that pesky priest in confession asks me whether I am living by the Church’s teaching on tiddly winks, well, not sure how I’m going to handle that, but they never ask, so I just won’t bring it up”.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Just as a thought experiment (a rather macabre one, I will admit), I have to wonder what a society would look like, where (let’s say) 60% of the people thought it was their God-given right (or nature-given right, or reason-given right, or what have you) to have the first month after a child was born, to decide whether they wanted to allow the child to live, or pursue some other option. That’s essentially what we have now — it’s only a question of timing and location. What if that 60% maintained that their consciences told them this was all right to do? What then?

Well, then, they would fit in very comfortably with the philosophical musings of Peter Singer, who proposed that parent should have the right t=o kill their child up to the age of about 6 months, since;it was a logical extension of the drivel of the pro abortionists that since the child is in the womb, it is incapable of sustaining itself.

I actually borrowed this hypothetical example from Dr Singer.

As yet another thought exercise, pretend that a late-medieval priest grew disenchanted with orthodox Catholicism, went through a crisis of faith, and finally came to the conclusion that reason is the only rule of Christian faith and practice — sola ratio. Scripture can inform, but cannot guide us, everything we need to save our souls is to be found in reason, and reason alone. Half of the world becomes convinced by this, and follows this religion — let’s call them “Lightbearers”. Lightbearer theology takes off like a rocket. The Lightbearers go to a remote part of the world and establish a vast and powerful empire that endures to this day, an empire to which people from around the world emigrate in search of the freedom that only reason can give. Fast-forward to the 20th and 21st centuries. The Church comes to a certain peace with the Lightbearers. The Pope urges us to seek what unites us, not what divides us. A Council of the Church asserts that many elements of truth and sanctification are found among the Lightbearers. After all, they’re not wrong about everything. Then let’s suppose that Lightbearer theology, at least among more liberal Lightbearers — there are many factions, because reason means different things to different people — evolves to assert that until a baby is a month old, it is more like a dog or a cat. It doesn’t have an immortal soul until that month is up. There are many reasons not to continue with the baby. Sometimes you just can’t afford one more child. Sometimes children are born with disabilities and they will have a horrible life. And so on. Lightbearers sincerely believe in conscience that it is not murder, not a mortal sin, humanely to end the life of the child. Therefore, we must not oppose them, we must not try to prevent this from happening, we have to respect their consciences… right?

Just a thought exercise. Couldn’t possibly happen. No way.

 

[Dovekin]

A person with a well formed conscience can recognize that Tiddlywinks is not a mortal sin. Or that capital punishment is. It cannot simply be left to an arbitrary authority. Someone who objects to the Church’s teaching on Tiddlywinks is a suitable candidate for baptism.

Similarly, the lightbearers need an understanding of what God has revealed that goes beyond a list of rules. They have to be engaged in their heart, in the deepest sanctuary within them, where God reveals love to us. This may call for a conversion, to abandon some of what they have believed. More likely it will strengthen what they already believe.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

A person with a well formed conscience can recognize that Tiddlywinks is not a mortal sin. Or that capital punishment is. It cannot simply be left to an arbitrary authority. Someone who objects to the Church’s teaching on Tiddlywinks is a suitable candidate for baptism.

If the Church did teach that playing tiddly winks was a mortal sin — or rather, in the realm of traditional Catholic moral theology, TW had been perennially taught as mortally sinful — I wouldn’t baptize or receive a catechumen who insisted that it is not sinful. Obviously I used TW as an absurd example, a reductio ad absurdum of sorts, but there are things the Church condemns — I am deliberately not naming them, this one time I’m going to keep that out of the equation, any adult Catholic over the age of 14 who hasn’t been living under a rock the past 60 years knows what they are — that are not obviously sinful, certainly not to a non-Catholic, and not even to most contemporary Catholics. It’s not “left to an arbitrary authority”. When the Church teaches something is mortally sinful, that doesn’t mean the Pope wakes up one morning and says “hey, playing TW is a mortal sin, I’m going to write an encyclical to bind all the faithful”. It is part of the tradition, part of the continuous teaching of the magisterium. He doesn’t dream it up on his own.

Incidentally, capital punishment per se is not mortally sinful, or sinful at all for that matter. The Church has determined that in modern circumstances, with all of the good, effective alternatives to CP that exist, CP is inadmissible. Take away those circumstances, catapult us (no pun intended) back to medieval times, and yes, CP would once again be a legitimate, if tragic, way for society to defend itself, and to mete out just punishment for capital crimes. To say otherwise, is to assert that the Church was in error for 2000 years. Right and wrong never change.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Similarly, the lightbearers need an understanding of what God has revealed that goes beyond a list of rules. They have to be engaged in their heart, in the deepest sanctuary within them, where God reveals love to us. This may call for a conversion, to abandon some of what they have believed. More likely it will strengthen what they already believe.

“God reveals love to us” through the teachings of His Church. If somebody’s “conscience” tells them something other than what the Church teaches, they are wrong and the Church is right. Not all consciences can reflect the truth — some are right, some are wrong — otherwise, all human persons would agree on all matters of faith and morals, it would “bubble up from within them”, and there would be no need for apostolates such as CAF, nor any need for a magisterium for that matter, because truth would be “hard-coded” into all men. Clearly it’s not. The Catholic Church, and all individual Catholics in their mandate to fulfill the Great Commission, need to proclaim the truth — all of it — as loudly as possible, with one voice, never relenting, never mincing words — so as to break through the fog of error and unbelief among those who do not share her truth, and finally become convinced and convicted of it.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Our team asks this, not as a one time haha question, but as a dialogue that begins at the beginning.

This is the reason our parish has a policy that girlfriend cannot sponsor boyfriend, finances cannot sponsor each other, spouses, etc. We are clear that each needs a sponsor who is not a stakeholder in a romance. An inquirer etc. may have doubts and questions that they tamp down because they don’t want to lose the deposit on the hall, or break up the relationship.

That is a very wise policy, and I absolutely agree with it.

One thing I’ve also noticed, is that in entertainment, in the media, in public life, there are many, many Gentile spouses (usually the wives) who convert to the Judaism of their partner. Sadly, it’s hardly ever the other way around. If they are Christians, they have rejected the Messiah, and Our Lord had some pretty strong words for those who reject Him. One public figure said of his daughter who did this, that he was perfectly okay with it. I told my son that if he ever did anything like that, no, “perfectly okay” is one thing I would not be. That’s not an anti-semitic comment, that’s an anti-apostasy comment. Two different things.

 

[OraLabora]

“God reveals love to us” through the teachings of His Church.

I wouldn’t say that’s always true. The Natural Law for instance, speaks of the law of God written in our hearts, and that is even revealed to non-believers.

In my own case the “teachings of His Church” are not what drew me back to Catholicism after 22 years in the wilderness. It was simply a deeper yearning for a sense to our lives. Reading the New Testament over the summer made me look for that in the place that came naturally, in the Church in which I was baptized, confirmed and received my first communion.

In fact I would say that the “teachings of the Church” nearly drove me away, in the sense that I ended up reducing them to a set of rules to follow.

That left my soul incredibly dry. There had to be something more than simply following doctrine and dogma.

I was that close to bailing again until I discovered the Benedictines. That too was not God revealing His love for me through the teachings of His Church. It was God seeking to have me enter into a deeper union with Him that was based foremost on trust and love. It was through them that I learned the limitations of dogma and doctrine and the boundless benefits of love, charity and trust in God.

Doctrine and dogma are merely glue that helps the Church deliver a consistent message, and while that is necessary, that is NOT how God shows me His love. He showed it by sending me a spiritual director who helped me pick up the pieces at a low point in my life. He showed it by giving me a loving monastic family when my own birth family was entirely extinguished by death. He showed me by enrapturing me in Eucharistic adoration in the Blessed Sacrament chapel. He showed it to me by unconditional acceptance of all my foibles by some of His monks. He literally picked up my cross for me. And when I failed Him, he repeatedly forgave me.

If you hang around with Benedictines enough, you’ll soon discover that they just about never discuss doctrine. They know it well enough through their formation, and they apply it consistently in their daily lives even if not all members believe this or that doctrine. Believe me it is not doctrine and dogma that keeps a community of disparate men with very different personalities, endearing traits, and annoying habits living together for a lifetime, even when you need to spend 70 years sitting next to someone who slurps his soup loudly.

No, God reveals love to them by making them grow in chaste love for each other. He slowly reveals His love to men who yearn to be with Him. He helps them through their dark nights, years in the desert, and acedia (all of which a monk experiences at one time or another in his lifetime). Believe me, it His love, not His teachings, that pull monks out of it.

 

[ioannes_pius]

If that teaching is one to be held by Divine and Catholics Faith, then an obstinate denial or doubt of it automatically places one outside of the Church.

 

[OraLabora]

If that teaching is one to be held by Divine and Catholics Faith, then an obstinate denial or doubt of it automatically places one outside of the Church.

No. One is always in the Church by virtue of one’s baptism, a sacrament that leaves an indelible mark on the soul.

What obstinate denial does is put one in imperfect communion at best, in grave sin at worst. But those don’t make you a non-Catholic. They make you a Catholic who is not in a state of grace.

 

[ioannes_pius]

Two questions:

1: Does the obstinate denial or doubt of an article of faith procure excommunication?

2: Does excommunication not mean that one is separated from the Church?