You knew, when Benedict announced his resignation, that everyone and his brother would comment, and that some of those comments would be really goofy. The conservative Anglican website Stand Firm has started a series on what the writer calls “Papal Malarkey Syndrome” — my thanks to William Tighe for pointing me to it — and the first entry comes from the writer Mary Hunt.
Writing for the Religion Dispatches website, she points to Benedict’s explaining that he had examined his conscience before God and decided he could not continue as pope. And then:
Conscience, Benedict reminds us today, is still primary for Catholics. Examination of conscience: that is just the formula millions of us use to explain why we use birth control, enjoy our sexuality in a variety of ways, and see enormous good in other religious traditions. Conscience is the ultimate arbiter, and the Pope relied on his. Good on him, and good on the rest of us.
There has been a lot of fudging on the matter of conscience in recent decades. The post-Vatican II hierarchy has claimed that conscience is primary if, and only if, it is informed as they see fit. But Pope Benedict XVI is giving conscience a new lease on life. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander—the appeal to conscience cannot be denied now that the Pope himself has had recourse to it.
Oh. The pope examines his conscience to decide whether he should do what he is allowed to do and Mary Hunt finds this reason for doing what she wants to do under an entirely different — and exceedingly vague and expansive — understanding of “conscience.” Even if her version of Catholicism were the real one, Benedict’s action gives no support for it. Invoking him is a little smarmy.
As is her idea that someone, meaning those bad old post-Vatican II hierarchs, has been “fudging” the idea of conscience by insisting that the conscience be exercised in obedience to Catholic teaching (or “informed as they see fit,” as she puts it). The Church has reflected on this matter for a very long time (see this for a simplified explanation of Aquinas’ teaching and this for Newman’s most famous writing on the subject). It is a subtle one, but the “fudging” has come not from those who explore the relation of conscience to authoritative Church teaching but those, like Hunt, who reduce it to personal choice exercised (inevitably) in open rebellion against Church teaching.
For more on this, read Conscience and Truth, an address delivered in 1991 by one Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
February 13th, 2013 | 1:19 pm
Fasting already makes me grumpy. And you draw my attention to this.
February 13th, 2013 | 1:36 pm
Thank you for such a nice, short, well-written, thoughtful piece with links to encourage a deeper understanding. I really like the flowchart on the 2nd page of the Aquinas link!
February 13th, 2013 | 2:11 pm
She’s got a very Enlightenment idea of conscience — an inborn sort of “force” that, conveniently always steers you right without your having to do, learn, or practice anything. It’s just there! And never wrong! How lucky we all are…
February 13th, 2013 | 3:39 pm
Funny how that enlightenment conscience generally steers towards the wants of the powerful, corrupt and unethical.
February 13th, 2013 | 4:13 pm
Even a fairly cursory web search will disclose that “Catholic theologian” Mary Hunt is an “out” lesbian — and therefore I have no more regard for her “Catholic conscience” than I do that of any other professed Catholic who thinks that they can shape “Catholic truth” to their own predilections.
If she were a member of the Episcopal Church, or, say, the Metropolitan Community Church, I would have more regard for her “conscience” than I do for that of a Catholic of such perverse views.
February 13th, 2013 | 5:06 pm
It seems to me conscience here is being approached from two very opposite origins; the writer’s pride and the Pope’s humility.
February 13th, 2013 | 5:07 pm
Here is Newman on the difference between the Catholic and popular meaning of the word “conscience”:
“…now let us see what is the notion of conscience in this day in the popular mind. There, no more than in the intellectual world, does “conscience” retain the old, true, Catholic meaning of the word. There too the idea, the presence of a Moral Governor is far away from the use of it, frequent and emphatic as that use of it is. When men advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the Creator, nor the duty to Him, in thought and deed, of the creature; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without any thought of God at all. They do not even pretend to go by any moral rule, but they demand, what they think is an Englishman’s prerogative, for each to be his own master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one’s leave, and accounting priest or preacher, speaker or writer, unutterably impertinent, who dares to say a word against his going to perdition, if he like it, in his own way. Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a licence to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will.”
February 13th, 2013 | 5:32 pm
My conscience tells me to ignore Mary Hunt
February 13th, 2013 | 5:41 pm
William Tighe,
Could you compare and contrast being an “out lesbian” with being a married couple who secretly give themselves permission to use contraception?
It strikes me that the only people many Catholics really and truly expect to follow Catholic sexual morality are gay people. What do you suppose the rate of cohabitation is among Catholic couples prior to marriage? I’d guess 80%. And what about the rate of contraceptive use among married Catholics in their childbearing years? I’d guess 90% or higher. Finally, the best statistics I have found estimate that at any given time, only about 50% of priests are practicing celibacy.
But those “Catholic” lesbians! They are perverse!
February 14th, 2013 | 4:12 am
Does no one read Pascal’s Les Provinciales any more?
Lettre IV, in particular, is a devastating critique on most modern views on conscience and Lettres V to X form one of the most biting satires ever written on the evasions of moral theologians, with the logic of a great mathematician and all in the most incisive and limpid prose of which the French language is capable
Almost all the propositions lampooned by Pascal were subsequently condemned at Rome by Alexander VII and Innocent XI
I would commend them for Lenten reading.
February 14th, 2013 | 8:57 am
David Nickol asked,
“Could you compare and contrast being an “out lesbian” with being a married couple who secretly give themselves permission to use contraception?”
Both reject the Catholic Faith (if the “out” lesbian is anything other than chaste and celibate); both risk damnation. The married couple, by keeping their sinful behaviour secret, pay the old tribute that vice pays to virtue, and, in doing so, seem to demonstrate a residual glimmer of awareness that there is something shameful and wrong about what they are doing. The “out” gay person (if such a person is “out and partnered”) demonstrates by that very fact the lack of anything resembling a properly formed conscience (cf. Cardinal Newman’s explanation, above, of conscience). I will say no more about Mary Hunt’s partnered or non-partnered status, save to remark that so much can be found on the internet, but I have never really understood why a faithful Catholic would want to “out” himself as gay, any more than he would wish to “out” himself as an alcoholic, a coprophage, or a paedophile.
As to your statistics, what else do they show that so many Catholics find it more congenial to dwell in the City of Man rather than the City of God, Babylon rather than Jerusalem (cf. St. Augustine’s “two loves have built two cities”)? I do, however, resent and repudiate, your insinuation that I (with “many Catholics”) single out “gay people” in any way. Rather, if I were (to speak like a fool) were to single out any category of Catholics meriting condign public discipline, it would not be “gay Catholics,” but the rabble of pro-choice Catholic public figures and politicians.
February 15th, 2013 | 7:40 am
David Nickol (inevitably) wrote “Finally, the best statistics I have found estimate that at any given time, only about 50% of priests are practicing celibacy.”
Would that be the fruit of “research” from the years 1960-1985 published by Richard Sipe in his 1990 book “The Secret World”, by any chance? If so, shall we have a conversation about what that “research” really identifies? Or are you content just to recycle the numbers (as you did on this website back in October 2012, and on the America website back in April 2010)?
February 15th, 2013 | 11:34 am
Would that be the fruit of “research” from the years 1960-1985 published by Richard Sipe in his 1990 book “The Secret World”, by any chance?
Bain Wellington,
I base the 50% figure largely (but not entirely) on the ongoing work of Richard Sipe, not just his 1990 book. If you have a source of better estimates of how many priests actually practice celibacy, I would be more than willing to cite those estimates instead of Sipe’s.
Or are you content just to recycle the numbers (as you did on this website back in October 2012, and on the America website back in April 2010)?
There are certain points I make repeatedly, including the fact that 41% of children in the United States are born out of wedlock, and 28% of women who have two or more children have conceived them with two or more fathers. I don’t think of that as “recycling” numbers.
In any case, my point remains the same if we leave priests out of the discussion. “It strikes me that the only people many Catholics really and truly expect to follow Catholic sexual morality are gay people.”
February 15th, 2013 | 2:48 pm
[David Nickol] “I base the 50% figure largely (but not entirely) on the ongoing work of Richard Sipe, not just his 1990 book. If you have a source of better estimates of how many priests actually practice celibacy, I would be more than willing to cite those estimates instead of Sipe’s.”
Doesn’t this get to the same problem as a previous conversation on a contraception “crackdown”? How exactly are we to arrive at and place any weight in any such estimates at all; how is this information to be verified? How many priests might see this as an unhelpful and intrusive question and simply hang up the phone, decline an interviewer’s question or decline to return a survey of this sort? May I ask, if “not entirely” on Mr. Sipe’s conclusions, what else have you based your figure on?
February 15th, 2013 | 3:38 pm
Well now, David, let’s just try and assess Sipe shall we, without dragging in extraneous points.
Sipe’s major work was not scientific, the sample being self-selecting: one third (out of 1,500) comprised priests who had gone to him for therapy, another third comprised priests who had disclosed intimate details in group settings, and one third were people who claimed firsthand knowledge of priests’ sexual behavior.
Because it was neither random nor appropriately weighted, it is useless for extrapolating (as Sipe pretended to do) figures for the whole of the USA – and the USA is but a small part of the Church Universal, as Americans tend to forget. So it is beyond bold to rely on Sipe (as you repeatedly have done) when seeking to make any point whatever about the celibacy of “Catholic priests” whether “at any given time” or at all.
In fact, to be precise about this rather useless “estimate” which you recycle (as in “use over and over again”), Sipe announced in 1990 that his study (conducted between 1960 and 1985, remember) indicated 39% of American priests were sexually active. I missed where he upped that to 50%.
Maybe in his “ongoing work” (candid interviews, again, with more self-selecting subjects). At any rate, in 2004 the best he could do was claim corroboration from studies in Switzerland, Spain and South Africa – all of which were published in the 1980′s or 1990′s, hardly a temporal advance over his own 1990 book.
Most damningly, the author of the Spanish study (if it merits that name) explains, in his account of his own methodology, that in order to fill in what were, at best, sketchy indications of sexual activity by priests, he drew on . . yes, Sipe. Now that really is “recycling” with a vengeance.
Regards,
Bain
February 18th, 2013 | 7:05 am
Let us hope that this has given the quietus to that supremely useless “estimate” of priests who “practice celibacy at any given time”.
In any event, even if some priests fail to live chastely all the time, what has that to do with conscience? A man can conscientiously try to live chastely despite falling into sin – even repeatedly.
February 18th, 2013 | 1:43 pm
Let us hope that this has given the quietus to that supremely useless “estimate” of priests who “practice celibacy at any given time”.
Bain Wellington,
It has not. What you have done is disputed a widely quoted estimate. You have not given any evidence that any given percentage of priests do practice celibacy. One of the defenses some make of the Church is that the percentage of priests credibly accused in the abuse crisis is comparable to the percentage in other similar professions. That raises the question of whether the priests that do not practice celibacy have sex only with children.
In any case, as I note for at least the third time, I am not all that interested in coming up with an estimate of how many priests do or do not practice celibacy. I am saying that cohabitation before marriage and use of contraception in marriage do not raise eyebrows. Homosexuals are the only group that many people seem to believe the rules of Catholic sexual morality must be strictly applied. Even the divorced and remarried are welcomed in parish life (although they may not receive the sacraments).
February 19th, 2013 | 12:58 am
Some basis flaws here, David. You claim to have researched the matter at least to the extent of deciding that (among, let us suppose, more than one source – although you didn’t bother to respond to JDD’s request for the other sources) Richard Sipe’s number was the “best estimate”.
I responded by showing that Sipe’s number has no credibility whatever. Do you attempt to defend Sipe? No. All you can say is that it is “widely-quoted”. Is that your criterion?
Well, so be it and good luck to you out there in the real world.
But you have thrown out at least three times on various blogs over the last two years this supposed “best estimate”, and now you have the effrontery to claim :- “I am not all that interested in coming up with an estimate of how many priests do or do not practice celibacy”.
And yet, you still obstinately refuse to abstain from citing Sipe’s nonsensical figure. Intellectually, that is pretty much indefensible. I gave you the reasons why Sipe’s figure is worthless, which you seem not to have assimilated ; and the best you can do is reproach ME for not giving “any evidence that any given percentage of priests do practice celibacy”.
That is, frankly speaking, a puerile riposte to my point, and you are intelligent enough to know it. I don’t claim that all priests are able to live chastely all the time – that is the human condition.
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