Infallible conscience not Catholic

"We need to be humble and pliable to seek and receive God's will for us, and thoughtful and "mature" in sharing it in our relationships and actions toward others. Misguidedly relying defiantly on the absolute truth of our own conscience' is not Catholic."

In my continuing research to discern the veracity of Father Paul Byrnes' "Why Catholic" presentation yesterday on the topic of "conscience," I found a wealth of information that further debunks his teaching. I shared a sampling of my additional findings and thoughts with Deacon Loren Mooney (St. Patrick Church in Cumberland):

Loren,
The more I research/read, the more reassured I am that my understanding of the Catholic teaching (as opposed to Protestant or Eastern, which is what it seems we heard yesterday) is the authentic one; and the more convincned I am that Fr. Byrnes, sadly, holds a distorted, stunted, misguided view of "conscience."

Look at this: http://www.beginningcatholic.com/conscience.html. The article notes: "It's a long story, but a lot of people have been taught weak or bad doctrine for many years...."

Speaking of the "long story," here's the article I was recalling yesterday: http://www.catholicepaper.net/eeusers/catholicreview/. It's by Archbishop O'Brien.

And while Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae encyclical ((http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html) may not be ex cathedra, it is a solid, inspired teaching that we Catholics are obliged to respect and obey.

I believe that "conscience," as a reasoned judgment to discern right and wrong, good and evil, in the context of our life's past, present and future, is intended to employ moral law, not usurp it; and to be a catalyst for seeking good information and guidance in order to discern facts or movements in a situation and then make sound decisions for promoting a poisitive personal impact in society; and to help us to develop the ability to learn from our mistakes or misjudgments and to know when and how to make amends with God and others for our errors or transgressions within the guidelines of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Church's teachings and the laws of the land; and to grow a solid foundational understanding of moral truth that results in maturity -- that is, well-roundedness and responsibility -- in thought and aciton.

God is God: We are not. Our consciences are not the source of moral truth. Our consciences are ever forming, and they are falible. We need to be humble and pliable to seek and receive God's will for us, and thoughtful and "mature" in sharing it in our relationships and actions toward others. Misguidedly relying defiantly on the absolute truth of our own "conscience" is not Catholic.

Prayers 4 u (and 4 Father Byrnes),
Nancy (10-24-08)

Update: See my additional October 25 post.

Debunking 'the conscience principle'

"Rather than being our own innate moral compass, always pointing us instinctively, infallibly on the right path, our conscience is our innate sonar, a "homing" device, that calls us humbly to seek God's will for us, and to desire to listen to it, and to discern through reason -- sometimes failing, often times correcting -- the right path to take for His glory on our life's journey."

Quite a lively discussion took place in our "Why Catholic" session today. Retired Monsignor Paul Byrnes, former pastor at St. Michael Catholic Church in Frostburg, Maryland, presented his view of "conscience." Father Byrnes' view fits within the context of what Dr. Frank Mobbs calls "The Conscience Principle," an erroneous and irresponsible interpretation, the defender of the faith characterizes it in his article titled "'Follow your conscience'": but what does that mean?", of the Catholic teaching; and it is called a "heresy" in an article simply titled "Conscience" by Scripture scholar and apologist Father William Most.

Father Byrnes espouses what appears to be a distorted, stunted, out-of-context personal interpretation of a catechetical doctrine, stated in part as such in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1782): "Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions."

Father Byrnes interpreted that passage for us, among others in Scripture, saints' and popular writings, and he cited (a bit incorrectly, and blatantly out of context) Pope Paul VI's Vatican II Council "Declaration on Religious Freedom" document, to teach that personal conscience overrides moral law as equally as it does civil law.

Sadly, Father Byrnes is sorely mistaken. The Catechism teaches, and the Catholic Church has always taught, that conscience is a gift from God, a divine desire for truth imprinted in our souls, that urges us and helps us to reason and discern right from wrong -- in accordance with moral law, not in objection to it.

To obey one's conscience is to be prudent in considering the fullness and complexities of a situation and to be courageous in deciding to do what is morally right, in accord with God's and nature's laws as we understand them, especially in the face of opposition or corruption that would persuade or coerce us to do wrong. Many of the saints' biographies tell heroic stories of choices made in defense of morality, often to their own peril. The saints are our role models throughout time for exercising conscienable objection to societal pressures that would distort or corrupt our relationships with God and others.

Conscience is not an individual source for moral law, as Father Byrnes espouses. Moral law originates wtih God and emanates form Him. God writes the desire to follow moral law in our hearts: At Baptism, we receive His invitation to the wedding feast; and we spend our lives seeking to know Him, to be ready to recognize Him and to respond when He calls us.

Rather than being our own innate moral compass, always pointing us instinctively, infallibly on the right path, our conscience is our innate sonar, a "homing" device, that calls us humbly to seek God's will for us, and to desire to listen to it, and to discern through reason -- sometimes failing, often times correcting -- the right path to take for His glory on our life's journey.

Following is an email that I sent today to Deacon Loren Mooney at St. Patrick Catholic Church, the host site for the "Why Catholic" program.

Loren, Hi,
I appreciate and enjoy the Why Catholic presentations at St. Patrick, but I truly was surprised at Father Byrnes' (apparently, thankfully/hopefully, now quite outdated and never officially adopted) post-Vatican II popular concept of "The Conscience Principle" today.

I've done some research and found the following that I want to share with you. I hope you'll enjoy seeing them.

http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/1991/decjan1991p14_716.html

http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/CONSCIEN.TXT

AD2000 is a JPII-influenced group of Christians in Australia who aim to revive and promote an understanding there of authentic Christian teachings.

Dr. Frank Mobbs is recognized in the Catholic Weekly, the official Catholic newspaper out of Sydney, as a defender of the faith.

The late Fr. William Most is consdiered to be a distinguished Scripture scholar and apologist.

(View my posts for "Why Catholic" sessions from October 9 and October 16.)

by Nancy E. Thoerig 10-23-08

Port Bolivar recovering after Ike

Associated Press photo by Sharon Steinmann: Michael Clow carries a box of Meals Ready-to-Eat given to him by the Texas National Guard on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2008, in Port Bolivar, Texas. Clow rode out Hurricane Ike with his two cats and does not plan to leave.

All the familiar places and old landmarks are gone; and
eveything is covered with that grey mud. Now she cries: "It's awful.
It's just awful."

My mother and I talked recently with her suster, my aunt, Veronica whose home is on the Bolivar Peninsula in Texas, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Ike. Veronica is broken up but holding strong emotionally, hoping to get back into her house in the next couple of weeks. Sounds optimistic to me, but she believes in her own -- and the Texans' -- resiliency.

Veronica has seen her house; and things look much better for her than were anticipated at the time I wrote my post on September 14. The first floor is decimated, but not a window is broken on the second; and the roof is intact. Veronica says everthing upstairs is just as she left it.

Her house, she says, is one of two in her block still standing. The brick house across the street from her, too stiff to bend with the wind, is shattered. And the one next door is gone. Her fig and pear trees are dead; and her backyard and basement -- and the entire area -- are littered with debris, dead fish and six inches of grey mud. Anyone working on the island -- she says residents are doing their own clean up -- is adivsed to wear protective gear to avoid risking illness and infection.

"Comeaux is staying, so I know my house is safe," Veronica jokes about her young, tough Cajun friend who went in to see what was left, then refused to leave. Residents were allowed to return to work on their properties from dawn 'til dusk; then officials were forcing them off the peninsula. Comeaux said he was staying. And so, apparently, he did.

Veronica said then as time went on and the officials got to know and trust the residents, more were allowed to stay. Her son Michael had begun spending nights in her house.

Mike lost everything. His home was a trailer. It's destroyed. Among the meager belongings he found inside was a quilt his mother had made for him; and he retrieved two pairs of jeans and a belt that he found wrapped up in trees. He also found one of his cats near the top of a tree dead. He found three kittens, too, and took them back to the hotel in Beaumont, where his mom, a retired nurse, is feeding them and caring for their injuries.

Mike had been hired by the city of Beaumont to help clean up in town there; but as soon as he could get to his mom's house, she hired him. Mike works on the property, then drives the hour and a half back to the to hotel in Beaumont to clean up, then back to the house to spend the night. Armed with a portable generator, he can work by day; but there's no electricity or water or amenities in the house. Sounds scary to me for Mike to be there alone at night -- even with Comeaux nearby -- guarding the house against looting....

Veronica says it's very quiet. There are few people and no animals -- not even snakes or rats. And the lay of the land is unrecognizable. All the familiar places and old landmarks are gone; and eveything is covered with that grey mud. Now she cries: "It's awful. It's just awful."

Her son Pat spray-painted "Pat's Tries" on a piece of plywood with a message "We'll be back" and propped it up where his business had stood. But his mom wonders where he would begin to restart. Pat's house survived and is rebuildable, she says. But he lost his business, his plane, his recreational vehicle and heavy eqiupment, other property; and he lost his invesemtns in the stock market crash. Pat is 60 years old.

"But I'm gonna rebuild," she says. She'll need to be sure the house is shored up before she can move back into it and begin to make repairs on the bottom half.

After Hurricane Clara in the 1960s, when they rebuilt then, Veronica's (late) husband Pete sunk marsh anchors around the house and strung steel cables across the roof and tied them into the anchors. We believe that system saved her house this time.

"It's a hundred-year storm," she says, speculating that she should be okay for another hundred years....

by Nancy E. Thoerig 10-10-08

Mysteries in Loretto Chapel miracle unraveled

"When the Sisters of Loretto needed a staircase built for their new Chapel in 1872, they brought in a French carpenter by the name of Francois-Jean Rochas, a member of les compagnon, a French guild of celibate and secretive craftsmen." -- Arts Alliance, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Everyone loves a miracle; but some do have explanations --though well guarded, apparently, in the case of the staircase at Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The fable of that miracle, which seemingly has been explained and documented, lives on in an email that I recently received from a friend in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The email titled "Miraculous Staircase" notes that as many as 250,000 visitors pass through the chapel annually to view the suspended circular staircase. Built in the late 1800s, the chapel's construction plans apparently did not include a staircase to the choir loft. The nuns supposedly prayed for a solution that came in the form of an anonymous stranger who appeared mysteriously and offered to biuld a staircase, then disappeared without a trace -- and without his pay.

Believers specualted that St. Joseph was the carpenter -- mystery number one. A second mystery ponders on how the suspended staircase can balance without any apparent cnetral support. A third mystery wonders where the wood came from, since it is not native to the Santa Fe region.

In her book, Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel (published in 2002), as reported in Wikipedia.org, Mary Jean Straw Cook cites an 1895 obituary in The Santa Fe New Mexican for native Frenchman Francois-Jean Rochas that claims he was "an expert worker in wood [who] built the staircase in the Loretto chapel." The Wikipedia article also notes that Ms. Straw Cook "found in the Sisters' logbook an entry for March 1881: 'Paid for wood Mr Rochas, $150.00.'" And the Arts Alliance in Albuquerque states: "When the Sisters of Loretto needed a staircase built for their new Chapel in 1872, they brought in a French carpenter by the name of Francois-Jean Rochas, a member of les compagnon, a French guild of celibate and secretive craftsmen." The Arts Alliance article notes that Mr. Rochas later moved to southern New Mexico and was murdered in 1895 by cattlemen who seemingly wanted to take his water rights. Mystery number one solved.

Regarding the staircase's suspension and balancing act, Wikipedia notes that "the central spiral of the staircase is narrow enough to serve as a central beam." Mystery number two revealed.

Ms. Straw Cook alsso has found eveidence, acdording to Wikipedia, that the staircase probably was built in France, then fitted into the chapel by Rochas -- explaining, perhaps, the exotic origin of the wood. Mystery number three explained.

Today, the Wikipedia article notes, the chapel is privately owned by a company that owns an adjacent hotel. It can be booked for weddings; and visitors may enter the Gothic Revival style chapel, a small-scale replica of a larger one in Paris, to see the staircase and stained-glass windows for a fee of $2.50.

by Nancy E. Thoerig 10-09-08

picture from Wikipedia.com

New Christian film burning up box office

Check out this GodTube clip of a Fox News segment that touts the success of Fireproof. a new low-budget Christian film that opened September 26 and has surpassed bigger industry films, like one showing at the same time starring Brad Pitt, to take fourth place at the box office.