Follow your conscience, sort of !

I really shouldn't read the Irish Times. Not even when the article is written by that nice Patsy McGarry.

He was close to giving me apoplexy today by drawing my attention to an article in the current (January 2007) issue of the Word magazine on the theme "what is meant by an informed conscience?".

I used to know what a pre-Vatican II "informed conscience" was - very much so. It was a wonderful concept which allowed the Roman Catholic Church to defend itself against the taunt of Protestants that it imposed its views on its flock willy nilly. "Not so", the Church would reply, "every Catholic is not only allowed but is obliged to follow his conscience."

"So", you might ask, "why are we not all Protestants, then?" Indeed, when I heard this line for the first time myself, that is precisely what I wondered.

Ah, but there is a catch, there had to be. And it lies in the definition of conscience for the Catholic. He is obliged to follow his informed conscience. "And what is an informed conscience?", I hear you ask. Well it is a conscience that is informed by the teaching of the Catholic Church. The Catholic is obliged to inform himself of the teaching of the Church, and not only that, but to accept it as a matter of obedience/discipline/faith, or whatever you're having yourself. So there is never any dilemma here. Pity the poor Protestants in their anguish. Martin Luther and Henry VIII sold them a bum product, designed to raise their adrenalin and cholesterol levels and all to no good purpose.

Anyway when Vatican II came along (40 odd years ago) it seemed to me that the pre-Conciliar Catholic position had eased up. You were only obliged to gen up on the Catholic position, in good faith, and then act on the basis of your newly informed conscience, so to speak. Mind you, there were still a lot of unresolved issues here for the Church's authority but the position seemed to be veering towards the human.

John XXIII was a nice man but he mistimed his exit to the other world very badly and left a half formed new theology for the traditional vultures to unpick, a gobful at a time.

And now we're back whence we came.

Fr. Twomey, in his Word article, gives a virtuoso exposition of the traditional informed conscience. The current formulation is neatly summarised in the axiom that to be a Catholic is to accept that the Church cannot teach what is wrong in itself.

Bottom line.

That's the sort of stuff that got it into trouble in the first place and has kept it skewered on the hook of Humanae Vitae for decades.

In the beginning was the Word, and it used to be a most readable and lookable at magazine produced to the highest aesthetic and production standards.

Maybe in keeping with this new-old theology it should now carry Divine Ads, such as for budding exorcists, which the Pope wants to recruit by the bucketful, to give the Devil a taste of his own pointed tail.

I joketh not. Check it out.

As they say in the cinema, I think this is where I came in.

Ut omnes unum sint

Is it the Antichrist at work sowing the seeds of confusion or are people just plain stupid?

Perhaps I should spell it out?

The Roman Catholic Church has always been in favour of ecumenism, healing the wounds of Christianity, call it what you will, but subject to very specific conditions which add up to unconditional surrender on the part of the non Roman churches:

• the Vatican has recently spelled out that, while elements of the one true church may subsist in other churches — who really should not have the cheek to call themselves such, them being only second class congregations of half believers — there is only one true apostolic church, which is the Roman Catholic Church.
  
  
• Reunification will therefore have to include:
  
  
  
  • acceptance of the Pope, successor to Peter, as the head of the Church with ultimate power to define dogma and pronounce infallibly, when this is considered appropriate
    
    
  • belief in the real presence, or to give it its proper scientific name, transubstantiation. This one gets harder to pin down as we enter the world of subatomic particles and wave propagation, but a suitable affirmation of faith in the matter, so to speak, may suffice here. After all, it's the thought that counts.
    
    
  • acceptance of the presence in heaven, with full plenipotentiary powers of mediation, of all those canonised as saints by the Popes, and including those so elevated by popular acclamation in the old days when people knew no better. (George and Patrick please note. Philomena, go away.)
    
    
  • acceptance of the bodily assumption into heaven of Mary the mother of Jesus, and her status there as the mediatrix of all graces. The physics of all this can be referred to a committee of experts who can sit on it in perpetuity.
    
    
  • acceptance of the infinite benefits which flow from the Mass, which is why regular attendance is advised/mandated. The philosophical rationalisation of this apparent contradiction could also be referred to the above committee.
    
    
  • acceptance of the property of remission which goes with indulgences. While precise quantification of these is no longer required, the mathematics of matching up the time-limited concepts involved with the infinite attributes of the divine world could also be referred to the above committee.
    
    
  • acceptance of the homeopathic properties of holy water, ie one drop contaminates all infinitely. The guy who succeeds in applying this process to beer will become the only saint by popular acclamation in modern times. (Blessed Bock seems to be already half way there.)
    
  
  
• there will be no à la carte menu here. You take the full shilling and drink all of the soup.
  
  
• outside the church there will be little, if any, salvation. Non members in possession of skills in short supply can make the usual application for entry visas.
  
  
• PX: Admission of Allah, Jehovah and any other deities outside the Blessed Trinity, will be subject to all of the above conditions.
  

If you think the above is intellectually taxing, try summing this up in one phrase, and forget the stamped addressed envelope.

Sicut erat in principio ...