What if you cannot reconcile your conscience with church teaching?

[catharina]

I think I grasp the meaning, I just don’t see it as a virtue.

Since you’ve said that you don’t desire to have faith - meaning you are unwilling to ask for it - and since you seem to be in the process of inventing your own belief system (including whatever standards you might apply to “virtue”), I have to conclude you are offering commentary on serious matters that you’ve never experienced in your own life.

The nurturing of a properly formed conscience is essential to all who intend that they, in good conscience, can and will submit to Church teaching.

 

[nkbeth]

People like to cite the “doubting Thomas” episode (“Blessed is he who has not seen, and yet has believed”) as evidence that “faith” means “belief without evidence.” But is that really what the Lord was saying? I submit that it was not.

Remember, Thomas was not just some schmo off the street who had never heard of Jesus before and was now asked to believe in His resurrection. No, Thomas was one of the Twelve, one of Jesus’ inner circle of devoted followers, who had been with Him for years. He had heard Jesus’ authoritative teaching, he had witnessed countless miracles and confirmations of His power and mission, he had received His personal assurances that He would be killed and rise again… and yet after His execution, he couldn’t summon the faith to believe that his Rabbi had indeed kept His promise and risen from the dead, until he saw Him in the flesh.

With all that in mind, I think Jesus was saying something like this: "Blessed is he who has not seen [the proof of this **latest

miracle], and yet has believed [based on ample past evidence of My trustworthiness and power]."

What do you think? I feel a bit nervous making statements like “I believe Jesus really meant X”… but the above interpretation makes the most sense to me in light of how faith is talked about elsewhere in Scripture. What does the Church say?
Very good.

Doesn’t St. Paul say faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”?

I understand that the evidence of things (truths) unseen is primarily the evidence of God who teaches them (Christ teaching directly or through His Church).

St. Thomas had great evidence that Christ was God. Very likely he BELIEVED by faith that Christ was God, and KNEW that Christ had said He would rise again. But He didn’t believe what Christ told him, until he had seen for himself.

 

[Cristiano]

Thanks, and yep, we’re playing Pflugerville Saturday in the Championship.

You better have a lot of faith if you think that you guys are going to beat the Panthers. 15-0 does is an information of the past not a prediction of the future.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Hi everyone…

It’s a simple question really…what if:

You cannot reconcile your conscience with church teaching?​

and you:

know you are morally obliged to follow you conscience (at all times?)

have fully, or to the best of your ability, informed your conscience

have read book after book and tried discussing this issue around other topics

have gone away from the forums for months to think and still feel the same way, but know that the church does not teach how you feel you should act on an issue​

I’ve left the issue I’m thinking of as a blank as in a way it’s kinda not relevent to the question… but I don’t mind if anyone needs to know to answer me better or if anyone PM’s me… and also I guess a lot of people struggle to unify their own thoughts with the church’s… what do you do if you cannot do this? What happens if you never manage it and should follow your conscience?

Thanks a lot,

S

I have three (semi-)solutions:​

• patience
• prayer
• the fact that faith in Christ is a way of life - not a theology exam with a pass mark of 100 %
  Our ultimate responsibility is to Christ - not to the Church. Nothing can alter that, not our failing & infidelities, nothing whatever in all creation (see Romans 8). If the Church were our Saviour, Creator, or Judge, things would be different. They are not. It’s not - He is.

Doctrine & practice are both important - but not more important than Christ.

 

[fix]

Our ultimate responsibility is to Christ - not to the Church.

Christ and His Church cannot be separated.

 

[catharina]

Christ and His Church cannot be separated.

Thank you for stating the obvious so succinctly.

As Christ is the Head of the Mystical Body, so too He is the Head of the Church. As for final judgment of souls, after Christ has judged all, His judgment is submitted to the Father’s judgment. There is no hiding from the greatness of Almighty God.

 

[estesbob]

I have three (semi-)solutions:​

• patience
• prayer
• the fact that faith in Christ is a way of life - not a theology exam with a pass mark of 100 %
  Our ultimate responsibility is to Christ - not to the Church. Nothing can alter that, not our failing & infidelities, nothing whatever in all creation (see Romans 8). If the Church were our Saviour, Creator, or Judge, things would be different. They are not. It’s not - He is.

Doctrine & practice are both important - but not more important than Christ.

They are one and the same.

 

[TMC]

I have three (semi-)solutions:​

• patience
• prayer
• the fact that faith in Christ is a way of life - not a theology exam with a pass mark of 100 %
  Our ultimate responsibility is to Christ - not to the Church. Nothing can alter that, not our failing & infidelities, nothing whatever in all creation (see Romans 8). If the Church were our Saviour, Creator, or Judge, things would be different. They are not. It’s not - He is.

Doctrine & practice are both important - but not more important than Christ.

They are one and the same.

Would that they were, but they are not always.

This is the saying I hear here constantly that bothers me most. That Christ and the Church are the same, and that the words of the Church are the words of Christ. I cannot believe this, and cannot believe that so many would say that pronouncements from the human institution of the Church, no matter how important and worthy of respect, are equivalent to the words of Christ. Does the Church teach this? I do not believe so.

 

[estesbob]

Would that they were, but they are not always.

This is the saying I hear here constantly that bothers me most. That Christ and the Church are the same, and that the words of the Church are the words of Christ. I cannot believe this, and cannot believe that so many would say that pronouncements from the human institution of the Church, no matter how important and worthy of respect, are equivalent to the words of Christ. Does the Church teach this? I do not believe so.

669** As Lord, Christ is also head of the Church, which is his Body.552** Taken up to heaven and glorified after he had thus fully accomplished his mission, Christ dwells on earth in his Church. The redemption is the source of the authority that Christ, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, exercises over the Church. “The kingdom of Christ [is] already present in mystery”, “on earth, the seed and the beginning of the kingdom”.553

**795 **Christ and his Church thus together make up the “whole Christ” (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity:

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God’s grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man. . . . The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does “head and members” mean? Christ and the Church.
Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself.
Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person. A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: “About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.”

 

[TMC]

669** As Lord, Christ is also head of the Church, which is his Body.552** Taken up to heaven and glorified after he had thus fully accomplished his mission, Christ dwells on earth in his Church. The redemption is the source of the authority that Christ, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, exercises over the Church. “The kingdom of Christ [is] already present in mystery”, “on earth, the seed and the beginning of the kingdom”.553

**795 **Christ and his Church thus together make up the “whole Christ” (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity:

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God’s grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man. . . . The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does “head and members” mean? Christ and the Church.
Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself.
Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person. A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: “About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.”

The fact that Christ is the Head does not render everything that comes from the Body to be His. The catechism also says that the Church is not perfect and cannot be in this World:

769 "The Church . . . will receive its perfection only in the glory of heaven,"179 at the time of Christ’s glorious return. Until that day, "the Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world’s persecutions and God’s consolations."180 Here below she knows that she is in exile far from the Lord, and longs for the full coming of the Kingdom, when she will "be united in glory with her king."181 The Church, and through her the world, will not be perfected in glory without great trials. Only then will "all the just from the time of Adam, ‘from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect,’ . . . be gathered together in the universal Church in the Father’s presence."182

 

[Jean_Anthony]

This thread is closed. Thank you, all.