Father Martin, Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia--Takeaway II

Well to stir up the hornet’s nest, let’s return to Father Martin and his “ten takeaways” from Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia.  The issue today is the sovereignty of conscience.  In forming our conscience we must pay serious attention to the teaching of the Church—but the teaching of the Church cannot take the place of conscience nor can we be expected to give blind obedience to the teaching of the Church as that would be equivalent to resigning our personal responsibility for making moral decisions.  We need personally and seriously to consider the choices that face us in life.  The Church provides guidance, but it must be our interior adherence to the Holy Spirit that sets our course.   

2. The role of conscience is paramount in moral decision making. “Individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the church’s practice in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage” (303). That is, the traditional belief that individual conscience is the final arbiter of the moral life has been forgotten here. The church has been “called to form consciences, not to replace them” (37). Yes, it is true, the Pope says, that a conscience needs to be formed by church teaching. But conscience does more than to judge what does or does not agree with church teaching. Conscience can also recognize with “a certain moral security” what God is asking (303). Pastors, therefore, need to help people not simply follow rules, but to practice “discernment,” a word that implies prayerful decision making (304).

Where I think a lot of people go wrong in the process is that they take the teaching of the Church as one opinion among many and do not honestly wrestle with its authoritative angel.  But it is important to acknowledge that at the end of the dark night of struggle, God does ot always grant the victory to the magisterial angel.  

Franz Jäggerstätter was a farmer from Sankt Radegund in Austria.  He was born illegitimate though he was adopted by his mother’s husband after her marriage in 1917 and took his family name.  Jäggerstätter was not a religious, much less devout, youth and in addition to a life of general rowdiness, he himself fathered a daughter out of wedlock.  However in 1936 he married Franziska Schwaninger, a very devout Catholic and himself underwent a personal conversion.  He joined the Third Order of Saint Francis and undertook the duties as Sacristan in his local parish.  He was the only citizen of Sankt Radegund to vote against the Anschluss (the union of Austria to the Third Reich) in 1938 and although he was conscripted into the Army in 1940, his work as a farmer gave him a deferment from service.

As the war progressed Jäggerstätter began to question its morality.  He even had several interviews with his bishop whom he, Jäggerstätter, felt was avoiding the moral issues surrounding the War.  When called up for active service he felt that he could not in conscious serve despite the assurances of both his bishop and parish priest that it was his responsibility to his family and his duty as a citizen.  He was arrested and imprisoned and tried in a military court for the “undermining military morale” by his objections to the legitimacy of the War.   He was executed by guillotine on August 9, 1943.

Even in death he was excoriated by the Church for his conscientious objection.  Remember that in Jäggerstätter’s time the Catholic Church had established no criterion to justify conscientious objection.  His parish priest told him that by putting himself in the position where he would be executed he would be neglecting his duty towards his wife and children.  He died in disgrace and without the support of the Church.  It was only in the 1960’s through the efforts of Gordon Zahn and Thomas Merton that his story became known and he was perceived as a hero of conscience.  He was beatified in 2007 and his feast day is May 21. 

I think today there is no Christian who would disagree with Jäggerstätter that the Nazi cause was sinful and unjust but that is not how it was seen at the time.  To the contrary—the German and Austrian bishops and clergy supported the War and even the Pope was deliberately (and scandalously) vague, if not silent, about the atrocities of the Third Reich.  Jäggerstätter determined his conscience contrary to what he was being told were Catholic principles. 

A simpler example, though far less dramatic, is the one found in the Gospel of Luke (also found in Matthew and Mark) where the Disciples pick grain on the Sabbath to satisfy their hunger.  They were in violation of the Law.  Jesus could see, however, how the Law did not apply in their instance and reprimanded the Pharisees and scribes who criticize them.  This is only one of many examples in the Gospels where Jesus himself sanctions—and even practices—a violation of the Law of Moses because the particular situation is complicated by extraneous factors that require a moral response distinct from strict literal obedience to the Law of God.    

Father James Martin and Thoughts on Amoris Laetitia

Father James Martin, SJ

Father James Martin recently published in America magazine the top ten “takeaways” from Amoris Laetitia.  I think they are worth considering and I want to make some comments on them here as Father Martin gives us some great insights into what really is a historic shift in the way we perceive the moral issues affecting contemporary family life.  Here is number one. 

1. The church needs to understand families and individuals in all their complexity. The church needs to meet people where they are. So pastors are to “avoid judgments which do not take into account the complexity of various situations” (296). People should not be “pigeonholed or fit into overly rigid classifications leaving no room for personal and pastoral discernment” (298). In other words, one size does not fit all. People are encouraged to live by the Gospel, but should also be welcomed into a church that appreciates their particular struggles and treats them with mercy. “Thinking that everything is black and white” is to be avoided (305). And the church cannot apply moral laws as if they were “stones to throw at people’s lives” (305). Overall, he calls for an approach of understanding, compassion and accompaniment.

There has been in the past, at least in American Catholic culture, too great an emphasis on the objective moral values without placing them in the context of the every-day-life situations in which real people find themselves.  Despite the admonitions of Saint Paul both in Romans and in Galatians, we seem determined to live under the law—or at least make our neighbor live under the law—rather than under grace.  The old catechism, for all its flaws, reminded us that circumstances qualified the sinfulness of our wrongdoings.  In addition to the act having to be gravely wrong to be a “mortal sin,” we had to know that it was wrong and we had to give full consent of the will to it.   We were conditioned to interpret “know it is wrong” and “full consent of the will” in the most narrow of senses.  In fact it is not enough for a priest or a parent or a nosy neighbor to tell us something is wrong for us to know it is wrong.  To know that it is wrong we must have, if not a full understanding that it is wrong at least that interior conviction of its wrongness.  And full consent of the will is even more complex as a variety of exterior circumstances can seriously affect our freedom to make the best possible choice.  Moral decisions are often not easy and they are even less often “black and white.”  This is not to condone “situation ethics.”  Wrong remains wrong; right remains right but the degree of moral culpability is not a steady quotient.  Even more to the point, however, is that it is not left to us to evaluate the state of another person’s soul and to throw the stones of judgment at those with whose moral decisions we disagree. 

In the first session of the Second Vatican Council Bishop Emil de Smedt of Brugge (Belgium) declared that the Church had to move away from “clericalism, legalism, and triumphalism.”  Some progress on this migration had been made before the long winter’s night of John Paul II and Benedict XVI set in and now Francis seems to be returning to the previous course.  I think it no coincidence that those most upset by the distinctly unjuridical tone of Amoris Laetitia are the same voices that decry the fully conscious and active  participation in the Liturgy and who just get goose-bumps at the thought of a Pontifical High Mass at the Throne in the Extraordinary Form.  In other words, it is all of a package.  Of course this can be interpreted a number of ways.  The contemporary liturgy might be watering down our moral sensibility and diminishing our sense of right and wrong whereas the rubrical rigor of the old Mass kept us all corralled into sinless lives. Or, on the other hand, perhaps the contemporary Liturgy is allowing us to perceive the Gospel in a new light:  one that shows us through the Good Samaritan, through the good thief, through the Pharisee and the Publican, through Jesus having table fellowship with sinners, through the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and even through those gentile magi, that in God’s sight life is not lived in the black and white.  To whichever interpretation one is inclined, it is another clear indication that we have two Churches that are drifting further and further apart. 

Maybe If They Took Off Those Silly Hats, Bishops Could Listen Better

John Henry Newman,
now here is a Cardinal
for you!

Frank Bruni had an interesting editorial in this morning’s New York Times where he points out in light of last week’s Irish referendum on same-sex marriage, that Catholic countries are in the vanguard of societies that are coming to extend the benefits of marriage to gay couples.  He also makes this comment on American Catholics and the battles over same-sex marriage.

Catholics in the United States appear to be more, not less, progressive about gay rights than Americans in general are. In an especially ambitious survey conducted over the course of 2014 by the Public Religion Research Institute, about 60 percent of Americans who called themselves Catholic said that they approved of same-sex marriage, versus about 30 percent who didn’t. The spread among all respondents was 54 to 38, and the group that clearly stood in the way of same-sex marriage wasn’t Catholics. It was evangelical Protestants.

He waters down the link between Catholic faith and the battle for marriage equality however as he points out that “Catholics” include not only regular church-goers but all those who for ethnic or cultural reasons identify themselves as Catholics regardless of their worship patterns.  He points out—and I believe truthfully—that regular worshippers would tend to be more conservative on this and other social issues than those whose Catholicism is a more abstract participation in heritage than a concrete commitment to faith.  On the other hand, as a regular church-goer myself and one whose social circle is drawn pretty heavily from regular church-going Catholics, I don’t think one can say that “good Catholics” (those who attend Mass regularly) are any less supportive of human rights—and access to marriage is at least perceived as a human right—than the larger self-identifying Catholic population.  What I mean to say here is that when one looks at the basic issues of sexual morality, I think Church-going Catholics tend to a more traditional view of what is right and what is wrong than the more secularized segments of American society, but when it is framed in a question of “rights,” I think Church-goers are just as avid, and perhaps even more avid, for social justice than the larger American society.  As long as there are legal and economic benefits to marriage, access to marriage must be open to couples regardless of their gender-composition. 

Now I want to pair Bruni’s editorial with a posting I saw on Father James Martin’s Facebook Page. 

Cardinal Walter Kasper believes that Pope Francis wants a "listening magisterium," a hierarchy that listens to the faithful, to the "sensus fidelium." Also, in an interesting approach, he says that the hermeneutic of continuity (meaning the view that the church does not change) must be a hermeneutic of reform.

This is something I have been harping on for a long time.  John Henry Newman—so beloved of the Katholik Krazies who obviously have never read him—spoke of the necessary balance between the magisterium of the hierarchy, the work of the theologians, and the faith of the faithful and warned that when they get out of balance the integrity of doctrine suffers.  The faith of the Church is the faith held in the hearts and intellects of the faithful.  The predominance over the last five centuries of what Dulles referred to as the Institutional Model of the Church reduced the laity to recipients of the teaching of the hierarchical magisterium and this has created an imbalance from which the Church and its credibility has suffered greatly.  The hierarchy needs to carefully listen to the faith as it is held by the People of God.  The Holy Spirit puts the truth in the heart of the Church—not in the pen of the hierarchy.  I am not saying that my opinion or your opinion is the truth but precisely where there is that consensus fidelium—where the hearts of all the faithful line up in harmony—the Spirit is speaking.  That is why, even in the pre-Vatican II Church, it was always acknowledged that doctrine must not only be taught for it to be established as the teaching of the Church, but doctrine must be received by the faithful.  Doctrine taught but not received is not yet mature enough to be considered an authentic expression of our Catholic faith.  There is a lot of stuff that bishops—and even popes—have taught that is yet to be received by the faithful.  Maybe it is time for our pastors to be more attentive and less on their own agenda.  

I don’t think that this means that the Church must recognize marriage beyond the traditional boundaries of one man and one women “until death do us part.”  Perhaps we would do best to clearly delineate the Sacramental form of Christian Matrimony and civil marriage as two separate realities, only one of which is  within our purview as Church.  But very frankly many of us good, regular Mass-going Catholics, don’t want our faith in Christ to be tarnished by the homophobic injustices committed in Christ’s name.  

Faith in a Lord Who Cast Out Demons

Angelus Silesius 

My most recent posting was about a talk by Father James Martin who talked about the joy and humor that pervaded the lives—and ministries—of so many of the Saints from Teresa of Avila to John XXIII and from Francis de Sales to Bishop Sheen.  We are blessed to see again, in Pope Francis, a shepherd who is such a witness to a joyful and happy Christianity.  But in my occasional survey of the blogs of those woeful souls whose Jansenism wants us to keep our faith somber and sober, I saw that our friend Janet from Rockville Maryland is just so unhappy about everything these days from the bishops doing a wave-like dance at World Youth Day to the Papal interviews.  Troubled souls find it so distressing that others are able to move beyond their pain or rage and find a hope that allows joy and an inner peace to triumph over their misery and their anger.  They want us all to live beneath the cloud of their own unhappiness—but that is the problem with emotional illnesses.  Those who are physically ill want to recover but those who are emotionally and spiritually ill cling to their anger and their depression as their most precious possession. They dress it up in pious language, even refer to it as the “Dark Night of the Soul” in an attempt to sanctify what is not a Dark Night at all but an emotional illness, and they are just a disaster when it comes to the new evangelization. 

Well, Janet posted a video by Michal Voris that voices his deep suspicions of joyful Christianity, or of any Christianity that integrates the affective dimensions of a person into their spiritual life.  Voris offers us cold and embalmed doctrines and rules, a Christianity that not only knows pain—as does authentic Christianity—but wallows in it; a religion of the Tomb of Holy Saturday rather than a faith in a Lord who journeyed through suffering and death into the tomb but chose to move on into the Resurrection.  There is no Resurrection without the Cross and without the Tomb but our faith is in neither the Cross nor the Tomb but the Risen Lord who assures us that pain, suffering, and death are not God’s final Word.

But that is not my point.  Mr. Voris in his video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1hOQMizdFA&feature=player_embedded relates to us the story of his mother, a woman who had suffered for years from bi-polar disorder and compulsive behaviors, asked for a cross from God for the conversion of her sons, including himself.  Shortly after making this request, she was diagnosed with cancer from which she suffered for three years before dying.  This, of course, puts Michael and his particular brand of Catholicism in a whole new light.  One can understand why he clings to this embalmed religiosity.  He must preserve the religion that his mother prayed for for him or it invalidates her sacrifice.  Her own faith, colored by depression and bi-polar disorder, must be the norm not only for him but be the “gold standard” for all or his mother’s sufferings are robbed of their meaning.  His mother’s sacrifice for him and for his brother was a noble and generous self-gift which God obviously accepted with pity and compassion, but her faith—if it was this rigid and frigid Catholicism—did not and does not reflect our authentic Catholic tradition.  Each of us finds our faith colored by our own experiences and our own personalities—including our compulsions and disorders—and God loves us just as we are, but we must not confuse this personal twist on our Catholic heritage as ultimate orthodoxy.  Nevertheless, I think Michael Voris’ own story—and Janet’s—explain their particular perspectives but should not be allowed to represent what our Catholic faith is.  But in the lives of the saints we have examples we can trust.  Of course the saints run the gamut from the no-nonsense Jerome to the prankster Philip Neri.  There is a legitimate spectrum to accommodate all personalities.  But sorry Michael and Janet, your buddy Cornelius Jansen didn’t make the cut.  As for me, I have always liked the message of Angelus Silesius, the convert priest from dour Calvinism:  Start blooming frozen Christian—springtime is at hand.  When will you ever bloom if not here and now.