Relativism, Subjectivity, Conscience, and the Church

 

 

The subject line of this posting reflects issues that we at the Mirror of Justice have been discussing and will most likely continue to address for some time. Volumes could be written on these topics individually and collectively as each has some bearing on the others. I do not intend to offer these volumes today. Rather, I would like to comment briefly on a new contribution to these issues that emerges from a recent address given by Bishop Kevin Dowling, the ordinary of the diocese of Rustenburg, South Africa, who is known in part for his disagreements with and dissent from Church teachings on important issues. His talk, delivered on June 1 of this year to what has been described as a group of leading laity, has been discussed in weblogs and periodicals (such as HERE which includes the bishop’s address).

In his conclusion, Bishop Dowling relies on the authority of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger’s contribution to the discussion of conscience in Gaudium et Spes, N. 16, which appears in the Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II edited by Herbert Vorgrimler. Last November in a discussion with Rob,  I attempted to correct a misattribution to Fr. Ratziner in this posting. [HERE] In view of Bishop Dowling’s recent address that misuses the Ratzinger commentary of 1968, a renewal and an amplification of the correction is in order. First of all, here is what Bishop Dowling said last month:

 

What we should have, in my view, is a Church where the leadership recognises and empowers decision-making at the appropriate levels in the local Church; where local leadership listens to and discerns with the people of God of that area what “the Spirit is saying to the Church” and then articulates that as a consensus of the believing, praying, serving community. It needs faith in God and trust in the people of God to take what may seem to some or many as a risk. The Church could be enriched as a result through a diversity which truly integrates socio-cultural values and insights into a living and developing faith, together with a discernment of how such diversity can promote unity in the Church – and not, therefore, require uniformity to be truly authentic. Diversity in living and praxis, as an expression of the principle of subsidiarity, has been taken away from the local Churches everywhere by the centralisation of decision-making at the level of the Vatican. In addition, orthodoxy is more and more identified with conservative opinions and outlook, with the corresponding judgement that what is perceived to be “liberal” is both suspect and not orthodox, and therefore to be rejected as a danger to the faith of the people. Is there a way forward? I have grappled with this question especially in the light of the apparent division of aspiration and vision in the Church. How do you reconcile such very different visions of Church, or models of Church? I do not have the answer, except that somewhere we must find an attitude of respect and reverence for difference and diversity as we search for a living unity in the Church; that people be allowed, indeed enabled, to find or create the type of community which is expressive of their faith and aspirations concerning their Christian and Catholic lives and engagement in Church and world….and which strives to hold in legitimate and constructive tension the uncertainties and ambiguities that all this will bring, trusting in the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the heart of this is the question of conscience. As Catholics, we need to be trusted enough to make informed decisions about our life, our witness, our expressions of faith, spirituality, prayer, and involvement in the world……on the basis of a developed conscience. And, as an invitation to an appreciation of conscience and conscientious decisions about life and participation in what is a very human Church, I close with the formulation or understanding given by none other than the theologian, Father Josef Ratzinger, now Pope, when he was a peritus, or expert, at Vatican II: “Over the Pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one’s own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him 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, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism”. (Joseph Ratzinger in: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol. V., pg. 134 (Ed) H. Vorgrimler, New York, Herder and Herder, 1967). Bishop Kevin Dowling C.Ss.R. Cape Town, 1 June, 2010

 

Bishop Dowling correctly reproduces a portion of Father Ratzinger’s commentary to N. 16 of Gaudium et Spes; however, several things are omitted that are crucial to understanding what Fr. Ratzinger was saying and what he was not.

This first thing omitted in this quotation is that Ratzinger was presenting not personal thoughts but, rather, the views of Cardinal Newman. Interestingly, Bishop Dowling omits the next important sentence of Fr. Ratzinger, which states: “Genuine ecclesiastical obedience is distinguished from any totalitarian claim which cannot accept any ultimate obligation of this kind beyond the reach of its dominating will.” If Bishop Dowling intentionally or inadvertently was suggesting that the Church is totalitarian by teaching the universality of moral norms, Fr. Ratzinger’s own commentary dismisses the conclusion.

But, Fr. Ratzinger did not stop there. He pointed out various lacunae in the passage from Gaudium et Spes, N. 16, noting that the Council fathers did not address the matter of conscience in detail. As Ratzinger noted, “How conscience can err if God’s call is directly to be heard in it, is unexplained.” In essence, Ratzinger acknowledges that conscience can be ill formed, it can be mistaken in its judgment, and it can be in error. Conscience may merit protection (but as Fr. Ratzinger pointed out, the Council was evasive about the constitutive elements of this protection), but this does not ensure that it is true, that it is right, or that it is correct.

He went on to explain that the Council, unlike Bishop Dowling who expresses interest in “difference and diversity”, recognized that conscience is transcendent, and that the conscience of which it addressed possesses a “non-arbitrary character and objectivity.” That is why the Council was careful in stating that a person’s conscience is where the voice of God—not contemporary culture, not human intelligence, not human experience—“echoes in his depths.” Moreover, fidelity to this kind of conscience inevitably must lead to the “search for truth” which is God (“the objective norms of morality”) rather than contemporary culture, human intelligence, or human experience.

In this context, Fr. Ratzinger stated: “The [Council] fathers were obviously anxious (as, of course was repeatedly shown in the debate on religious freedom also) not to allow an ethics of conscience to be transformed into the domination of subjectivism, and not to canonize a limitless situation ethics under the guise of conscience.” Bishop Dowling is inclined to the subjective when he demonstrates his attraction to “particular socio-economic, cultural, liturgical, spiritual and other pastoral realities and needs” and his eschewing the universality of moral norms. By contrast, Fr. Ratzinger stated, “the conciliar text implies that obedience to conscience means an end to subjectivism, a turning aside from blind arbitrariness, and produces conformity with the objective norms of moral action. Conscience is made the principle of objectivity, in the conviction that careful attention to its claim discloses the fundamental common values of human existence.” These are points with which or from which Bishop Dowling differs or departs.

While Fr. Ratzinger addressed other important points as well as shortcomings of Gaudium et Spes’s discussion of conscience, Fr. Ratzinger offered this summation: “The doctrine of the binding force of an erroneous conscience in the form in which it is propounded nowadays, belongs entirely to the thought of modern times.” In short, Fr. Ratzinger’s commentary offers a way to correct the erroneous conscience and why the dignity it deserves is not without limit. I am grateful that Bishop Dowling took time to acknowledge Fr. Ratzinger’s commentary about conscience; however, I am saddened by the fact that the brief passage he quoted does not accurately portray Fr. Ratzinger’s view of the conciliar document and the essence of conscience that is vital to Christian belief.

 

RJA sj