Roamer’s column

Catechesis on the hoof

Suddenly we are being taught about conscience courtesy of a crash course plus all the sound bites crashes entail. Thus – ‘Church cannot play God in people’s conscience’ – nor I imagine the headline Fr Emmanuel Agius, the Dean of Theology at the University, would have chosen for his contribution; but perhaps it was. Fr Joe Borg selected an even more dramatic headline, taken from Thomas Aquinas, for his blog: ‘We ought to die excommunicated rather than violate our conscience.’ Which is all very well, but.

Not a few reactions to recent contributions on the subject from zealots on both sides of the divorce question (for zealots exist a-plenty in the secular camp) and non-zealots (for nobody wishes to be described as one) have been profuse and confused. Comments on Fr Charlo Camilleri’s submission on ‘Conscience, authority and divorce’ were suitably various. And the backlash re Mgr Anton Gouder’s interview on RTK attempted to create more than a stir in a tea-cup – with some intentionally mischievous refe­rences to the 60s.

There is, of course, no comparison between the religious-political environment of those days to that which exists today. For two things, neither party has declared itself formally against the teachings of the Church and the Church has not declared itself against either party. But you would have thought, so manipulative was some of the reporting, so selective in its treatment, that Gouder had brandished some form of an interdict, or that he was threatening spiritual harm – which in fact he was hysterically accused of doing. Yet he only said what any number of Catholic bishops and arch­bishops say in the United States and elsewhere when certain matters in conflict with Church teaching arise.

What struck me as I waded through print and electronic stuff was the strong suspicion that since the 1960s, two, three generations have learned, or were offered, little or no catechesis at school, and pursued none later. This “pillar of the Church”, a term recently used by the archbishop of Buenos Aires Cardinal Bergoglio to describe catechesis, has not been a foundational experience for tens of thousands.

That is bad enough; worse are the sight and slights and sound of moral theologians turning on their fellow-priests-in-God, I assume, with an air of intel­lectual and dogmatic superiority best left to those who are not wearers of the cloth. Try this, from Fr Charlo Camilleri: “I am much more troubled as a Catholic priest and theologian by vocation and profession to listen to poor argumentation on the part of over-zealous citizens presenting the Catholic stance on the issue (of divorce). This becomes especially unbearable (my emphasis) when the one in question happens to be (with all due respect to his person and ministry) a Curia spokesman.” I had great difficulty in detecting respect, there, still less charity in that remark and quite a few others. Being a moral theologian by profession does not exempt one from courtesy of tone.

Is sin a me-God thing?

One or two days later, in stepped the Dean of the Faculty of Theology, who came up with this, if he was reported correctly – by no means a given: “But when we talk about sin we’re talking about something bet­ween the individual and God, and that is something where we can’t play God ourselves.”

The truth of the matter is that when we talk about sin we are talking about something that is not solely between the individual and God, but in many cases between man and man, man and woman, and God: thieving, coveting, lying, murdering, adultery – each of these activities takes place between the individual and the person stolen from, lied to, murdered, cheated upon; and because each moral infringement goes against God’s law, it is a matter between the individual and God. But the point is that sin is social as well as personal. This much, I trust, the Dean will concede.

But no; he goes on to back the observation made by Fr Camilleri, who I understand is also active in the faculty, “Sin is a matter related to one’s own personal conscience.” Well, try telling that to the person left for dead, the woman left for another woman, the child or children whose mother or father has opted to present either with another father or mother, the robbed and the mugged, the mother and the father who have not been honoured by their children, the children who have been battered to death, the person who has been crucified by defamation.

From the neck of the Catholic woods I come from – and all of this is addressed at believers, not those who airily exclude God, never mind sin, from their argument – I keep hearing words of command that have survived 2,000 years, challenged only by non-believers. They are simple words, mostly of one syllable, so that it is impossible not to understand them:

“Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.” God seems to need an intermediary. Why should we ask for our sins to be forgiven – by a man acting not as God but in the name of God – unless they are an offence against God and our neighbour? Some stand this question on its head, where it sways perilously before crashing to the ground, and query why we should ask for our sins to be formally forgiven once we are sorry for them? Why not just consult God?

Primacy of conscience, but...

There is more I wish to quarrel over, in the nicest possible manner of course, with the Dean of the Faculty of Theology, whose task it is, among other serious commitments and obligations, to help with the formation of Malta’s future priests. “The Church has the moral authority to teach and to enlighten the conscience of its members, but one should always respect the decision of the individual.”

Should one? Always? Even when the effect of that decision is, or can be, harmful to others? In this case Fr Agius is careful to point out that “obviously, one should always keep in mind the risk of self-deception. One could easily deceive himself he is taking a good decision in conscience while he is not striving for the truth”. Quite; and if I know this to be the case, I, the victim of any self-deception, will certainly not respect his decision, made in good or bad faith.

But I can give far worse examples; should I respect the decisions of tyrants who, incontrovertibly, do not think for a split second that they have deceived themselves, who paraded throughout the 20th century as Adolf Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao Zedong, or Pol Pot, or a phalanx of other dictators who marched across that pre-eminently secular century with a clear conscience?

This is what I meant about a crash course in catechesis on the subject of conscience, a matter so delicate it should be approached with a holy and scrupulous fear lest those of us being taught pick up the wrong end of the stick and start demolishing concept after concept of morals because our conscience so informs us; when what is often meant is, because that is my opinion and no Church on earth, least of all the Roman Catholic Church, will persuade me otherwise.

Conscience has rights; it has enormous responsibilities, too, when it comes to truth, or, if you prefer, Truth.

One last remark. The Dean was quoted as saying: “The Church must always be in dialogue with experts in the area (of divorce) to enlighten its teaching and individual deci­sions.” Which experts does he think the Church needs to call upon in the matter of divorce in order to “enlighten its tea­chings”. For here again I seem to hear a voice declaring with a terrifying bluntness, in an environment when the social reality was coloured by a pro-divorce sentiment, that what “God has joined together, let no man put asunder” – and much more.

My personal views on divorce are not grounded merely in that utterance, but clearly it is an expression that has helped to form them; there is also the matter of the common good, the effect of divorce and a rash of anti-family legislation under Blair and Brown on British society has persuaded Britain’s current government and other governments, too, that divorce has played a considerable role in the creation of a ‘broken society’.

Writing in The Times last Thursday, Ranier Fsadni remarked: “Gouder likes to say that wherever divorce has been introduced, certain behaviour patterns have followed, clearly implying a causal connection, where there is only correlation.” Only correlation? So I thumbed through my Oxford Thesaurus and found, under correlation, ‘bearing’, ‘connection’, ‘parallel’, words that to my mind do not stray far from ‘causal’.

And to those who placed Gouder among the clouds, playing God, Fsadni came up with an antithesis to that and headed his column ‘Problem with playing Karl Marx’. “I myself” he writes, “think the problem is not that he (Gouder) is playing God. It is that he is playing Karl Marx, a great thinker who brought to attention various unpalatable truths about human society but who exaggerated the role of a single dimension of human history… and overestimated his ability to explain the mess his society was in.”

Poor Gouder; when he is not accused of playing God, he is passed off as an exaggerative Marx. Let me hasten to add that Fsadni himself hastened to add that Gouder is no Karl Marx. Well, that’s a mercy.