Magisterial Irresonsibilty

 https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/10/magisterial-irresponsibility

Luis Francisco Cardinal ­Ladaria Ferrer of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has announced to the bishops Pope Francis’s approval of new material addressing capital punishment in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (number 2267). The inserted passage notes “an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” “a new understanding . . . of the significance of penal sanctions,” and “more effective systems of detention.” It concludes, “Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” This addition to the Catechismis widely either heralded or attacked as a major doctrinal departure, an abrogation of the Church’s teaching of two millennia that the death penalty is an essentially just penalty. Yet this claim of essential doctrinal change is gravely misleading.

First, it is an absolute norm of Catholic doctrinal interpretation that magisterial documents be read in a collegial fashion. It is assumed that the document belongs to the Church and that the entirety of the Church’s prior teaching and tradition enters into its proper understanding. For this reason alone, the recent statement cannot be a doctrinal “break” or “rupture.” The word for doctrinal breaks is heresy. The Church has taught for two millennia that the death penalty is essentially valid. This is taught in Sacred Scripture, and has been affirmed by popes, numerous catechisms, the consensus of the Fathers of the Church, and the teaching of St. Thomas ­Aquinas. If this teaching is erroneous, then the whole of the ordinary universal magisterium of the Church—­especially its moral magisterium—is merely a contingent effect of ecclesial will. The nihilistic voluntarism of such a view is incompatible with Catholic faith.

Second, the new teaching about “inadmissibility” is expressly predicated on a composite prudential antecedent judgment (indeed, “inadmissibility” is a legal and prudential term). Two of the three considerations offered as supporting the conclusion of inadmissibility are in the prudential order (judgments about the significance of penal sanctions and about the effectiveness of criminal detention systems). Accordingly, the conclusion is predicated on prudential judgments that are susceptible to falsification. Thus, however strong the language of the conclusion, it can specify only prudentially. The conclusion about the inadmissibility of capital punishment in today’s circumstances is an instance of the fourth (and weakest) form of church teaching, prudential admonitions that command the attention of the faithful, but for which believers who conscientiously disagree are never denied communion with the Church.

A third reason why the recently inserted matter does not constitute a break with the prior tradition is that nothing in the Catechism is elevated in authority merely by being included in the Catechism. In this instance, the authority of the insertion arises from the traditional teaching of the essential legitimacy of the penalty and the qualifying, prudential admonitions of Pope John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae. Indeed, John Paul II refused ever to teach that the death penalty is essentially evil, offering only prudential grounds for its restricted use. In the list of intrinsically evil acts in Evangelium Vitae, the death penalty is not to be found. If, as Cardinal Ladaria suggests in his August 1, 2018, letter to the bishops announcing the addition to the Catechism, the new teaching is a development of John Paul II’s actual magisterial teaching—“following the footsteps of the teaching of John Paul II” (cf. paragraph 7)—it must be a prudential development; otherwise, it would contradict, not develop, this teaching. The stronger rhetoric regarding the application of the penalty cannot remove this teaching from the realm of prudential admonition susceptible to falsification.

For these reasons, the inserted material in number 2267 of the Catechism is not and cannot constitute a doctrinal rupture. However, this does not mean one ought to be unreservedly happy about it. There are four reasons for viewing this revision critically and with measured dismay.

The first concerns the “dignitarian” ­premise: the assertion that we now understand human dignity better than did earlier epochs of the Church, especially insofar as we now know that felons retain human dignity despite their crimes. But the Church has always affirmed, and has never denied, that the felon executed for a grave crime possesses human dignity, the imago dei ordered to, and specified by, noble goods in nature and grace. The Church has stipulated only that those engaging in gravely sinful action do not enjoy the further dignity of actual virtue and grace (the imago gratiae or imago Christi), which of course also obtains for others whose grave transgressions in the moral order do not rise to the level of legal felony. Nevertheless, the possibility of repentance—a possibility rooted in the dignity of the felon—has always been affirmed. In fact, the possibility of repentance is rooted in the first human dignity: the spiritual nature of the rational soul shared by all. This spiritual nature makes it possible for a felon to suffer the penalty in a way meritorious of salvation, just as any sinner can enter into suffering in a fashion that purifies his soul.

The Church sends a priest to the condemned felon, not merely a gravedigger, precisely because the felon possesses human dignity and remains a potential subject of sanctifying grace. Further, human dignity has long served as the ground for justifying the penalty. In the tradition, capital punishment is understood as one of the penalties that may be due to a rational agent who uses his freedom to commit the severest crimes. The Church has also held that the human dignity of the innocent merits the most rigorous defense, potentially including punishment by death for those who wrongfully assail the human dignity of others.

Given these considerations, the inserted claim about “increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes” seems both parochial and condescending with respect to prior Catholic teaching. There is no evidence that the Church ever has denied the dignity that felons possess by reason of being created in the image and likeness of God. Some read Thomas’s analysis of felons falling into the servitude of the beasts as a denial of human dignity, but this is a misreading. Thomas refers to the further dignity in virtue and grace toward which the imago dei is ordered. When we fall from this dignity (as do all who gravely sin), we lose the higher dignity to which we are called, as distinct from the inceptive dignity of nature with which we are born. In this sense, criminals, like other sinners, fall into the servitude of the beasts and become worse than beasts: because beasts, lacking the imago dei, are not capable of sin.

Thus it is untrue that the Church has not properly understood human dignity until the modern period. At various times individuals have adopted dehumanizing views of murderers and perpetrators of other grave crimes, but it is both historically and doctrinally false to suggest that the Church has in the past failed to understand that unrepentant felons retain their natural human dignity.

The truth of the matter is that there are differences in sentiment regarding criminal penalties in different historical epochs, differences that have little to do with essential church teaching. We see this in the refinement of sentiment that limits vulgar display of civil penalties today. We rightly no longer approve of treating the public aspect of punishment as though it were a species of “carnival event” or merely a public spectacle. But this is not itself a ground, nor has the Church ever taught it to be one, for denying the essential validity of grave penalties, including the death penalty. Nor are modern times bereft of public indulgence in obscene spectacles.

It is far from obvious that our times are characterized by moral progress in affirming human dignity. Widespread complacence characterizes social attitudes toward the tragedy of abortion. We live in an age not quite sure that children deserve a mother and a father. Meanwhile, secular contemporaries are liable to claim superior sensitivity by reason of sentimental postures, including that of opposing the punishment of the guilty. That we today enjoy a sensibility more averse to vulgar displays of severe penalty does not imply that the Church did not understand human dignity in the past, any more than the tendency of some professed Catholics today to be indifferent to grave sins means that the Church does not understand their gravity. The Church must cope with the sensibilities of epochs, and frames her teachings with due regard for cultural conditions. But these considerations must not be misconstrued as foundational. Indeed, between the previous error of vulgar display of penalty and the modern error of incomprehension of its moral necessity, prior centuries arguably hold the advantage over our own.

In the Catholic tradition, it is the dignity of the human person—not its denial—that undergirds the legitimacy of capital punishment. Only a free, spiritual creature can merit penalty when guilty of grave offense. Only a free, spiritual creature is capable of suffering the death penalty without failing of his final end, because the human spirit is susceptible of conversion. It is this dignity of the human person that guarantees that no earthly suffering, including the need to suffer death as a penalty for grave crime, can of itself prevent anyone from attaining the highest good of union with God. Human dignity also merits the sternest protective legal sanctions, potentially including the death penalty. Genesis 9:6 identifies the imago dei as the very reason for the penalty: “Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.”

A second, ecclesial reason why a lover of the Church cannot simply celebrate this revision of the Catechism is that it is being presented and publicized in a misleading way. Given its widespread reception as abrogating prior teaching, the prudential character of this small insertion in the Catechism ought to be made clear. Failure to do so invites, and causes, confusion and error. The lowest level of ­doctrine—prudential admonition—lacks the central and defining nature of the higher tiers of Catholic teaching. Not to make clear the prudential character of the insertion escalates the gravity of the question, and the danger of needless division, beyond the immediate matter of the death penalty.

A third reason why this revision of the Catechism is objectively problematic is that the language of the conclusion about the death penalty appears violent and excessive. Taken by itself, it suggests that the penalty is essentially unjust. I have constructed the argument showing that the prudential antecedents make this conclusion impossible. But this nuanced characterization of the teaching is easily overwhelmed by the excessive force of the concluding language of the statement. To speak of the death penalty as an “attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”—taken in itself and apart from its prudential antecedents—suggests a wholesale break with tradition. There is an ultra vires excess in this formulation that is likely to be misunderstood and assimilated wholly to secular humanitarianism. The rhetoric of the conclusion, if predicated on the prudential reasons given, ought to be prudential. But the language used does not sound prudential and is inordinate. This exacerbates the confusion and is a grave defect. It ought to be corrected.

A fourth and final reservation regarding the catechetical insert is that in all frankness, the prudential counsel it asserts seems at best equivocal. The claim that new discoveries about the nature of penal sanctions and new methods of detention do away with further questions concerning the protection of society from the wicked, or the deterrence of crime (to say nothing of changing the essential justice of the death penalty itself), is false. There are many murders performed in prison by murderers who have been given life sentences. Clearly, the claim that the method of their detention—even in North America—renders this impossible is empirically false. The issue of deterrence is also complex and not one-sided. The Catholic tradition is not Kantian: There may be several penalties that are proportionately and essentially just, and further questions of their relation to the common good may make one preferable over others. Both rehabilitation and deterrence are such medicinal considerations beyond just retributive proportion. Finally, it is not clear that dignity is invariably better served by withholding the death penalty. A rational creature may merit a penalty that accordingly honors rather than impugns his rational dignity, and the foreknown proximity of death is not infrequently an occasion for the grace of conversion.

These are reasons why many believing Catholics could not and did not concur with John Paul II’s prudence on this matter when he spelled it out in Evangelium Vitae and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. For his part, John Paul II understood that they had every right as Catholics to their judgment in this matter. The revision to the Catechism more forcefully asserts this prudential counsel and thus does not break with tradition. Nevertheless, as a universal proposition, it does not seem to be unequivocally good counsel.

For secularized populations in the West, the death penalty may appear to encourage final acts of despair rather than repentance. For a society that has no living belief in the immortal soul, capital punishment may seem a pitiless assault on the only hope we have, which is earthly life. Yet the sentimentalism lurking behind this reasoning invites perverse conclusions. Why shouldn’t today’s “increasing awareness” of human dignity lead to the conclusion that all should be given greater control over our deaths so that we suffer from less fear and despair at the end? If death, rather than sin and the rejection of God, becomes the greatest threat to human dignity, then someone might judge there to be a prudential need to permit euthanasia, the benevolent subjugation of death to human autonomy. No matter how much better this might make someone feel about approaching death, it would not be just. Similarly, it is not just to derogate the common good by excluding capital punishment in circumstances where the legitimate ends of criminal penalty are not otherwise prudentially achievable.

The presence of better technologies of detention, along with other concerns, doubtless provides reasons for a more sparing use of the death penalty. But it does not seem sufficient to ground the contingently universal prudential proposition now urged on us. Further, it is legislatures and courts who must judge prudential factors. A one-size-fits-all prudence is simul­taneously subversive of prudence and indifferent to the real grace of state bestowed by providence on those called to assess the prudential factors.

The universality implied in the rhetoric of the catechetical revision is not and cannot be essential and normative; it can only be prudential and contingent. In my judgment, the evidence is not unequivocally supportive even of the claim to contingent universality. The argument for it does not seem intellectually credible. However, a normative, necessary, and essential claim—the kind suggested by the inordinate concluding language of the catechetical insert—is more hazardous than questionable counsel. Taken by itself (apart from its prudential grounds), it leads to conclusions contrary to Scripture, contrary to tradition, contrary to the teachings of all the popes until the present, and contrary to the unanimous consensus of the Fathers, whose profound Christian aversion to bloody punishment—man was not created for death!—did not keep them from affirming the essential justice of the penalty.

If a pontiff were to claim an independent authority to suppress Scripture, tradition, and defined doctrine—as though one did not need to be a Catholic believer in order to be pope, and Christ founded the papacy to undo his teaching—we would be faced with an antipope controversy arising from papal schism and heresy. That this situation is possible in a pope is proven by the example of Honorius. He may not have been a formal heretic, but there is no doubt that he issued heretical judgments and was condemned for it. I do not believe that the present pontiff intends to claim that the papacy has a power of doctrinal abrogation, which would be an utterly strange claim. Can God be a trinity one day, and not a trinity the next, or adultery a sin one day, and a good act the next, because a pope has decided to abrogate teaching? The thing is absurd on its face. The papacy serves Scripture and tradition.

In the matter of capital punishment, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clearly evinces concern with continuity. The new matter added to the Catechism is a prudential admonition expressed more strongly than has been done before, but still at the lowest level of doctrine, that of prudential admonition. Nonetheless, concern for continuity is not necessarily achievement of continuity. The needless impugning of the Church’s past understanding of punishment and human dignity, the failure of the CDF to correct the widespread misportrayal of the statement as a condemnation of the penalty as such, and the excessive force and violence in the language of the conclusion—all this is unsettling and ominous. These aspects of the statement and its promulgation are worrisome insofar as they indicate the ease with which the constant teaching of the Church may come to be viewed not as a source of intelligible richness, but as a dead weight of history from which somehow, through a great inversion, the Church is supposed to “liberate” us.

Today, many outside the Church seem at ease with the subordination of the Catholic tradition in the service of wholly secularist categories. It does not aid the pastoral mission of the Church when those responsible for handing on this tradition seem to join in the dismantling of their own theological heritage. Presenting a prudential inflection of teaching as a species of major “doctrinal development” (as though it were indeed abrogation) foments needless division inside the Church. For the earnest believer, the derogation of the doctrinal patrimony of the Church on this matter—as though Scripture, tradition, the consensus of the Fathers, the teaching of Aquinas, and the teaching of all papacies up to the present had been swept away—is in its way as saddening as is the derogation of spiritual and moral integrity in the case of Theodore McCarrick.

Indeed, the losses of doctrinal and moral light are essentially linked: “But if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt. 6:23). The “eye” of the soul is the mind. To illustrate: Many contemporary clerics seem incapable even of naming the genera of the sins recently addressed by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report detailing its investigation of priestly abuse. These are preponderantly but not exclusively sins of sacrilegious homosexual vice (performed by consecrated persons), of vicious and primarily homosexual rape, and in some cases adding to the evil of rape a horrifically inverted use of Catholic sacramentals to harm the innocent. The protection of such grave evil is not “clericalism,” but vicious contempt for justice and for the absolute norms of Catholic life. In a time of widespread blindness toward the truth—extending far beyond the abuse crisis—even the most marginal or accidental suggestion of abrogating the Church’s two-millennia-old moral doctrine in an ecclesial document is genuinely saddening. Calling things by their right names finally requires an understanding of the natural law and of revelation: Everything is what it is and not another thing. 

Steven A. Long is professor of theology at Ave Maria University.

 

What Covers a Multitude of Sins?

• STEPHEN P. WHITE

There is no such thing as a private sin.

 

Our moral failings — whatever they may be — have consequences that extend out far beyond our own personal guilt or innocence.  My own moral failings have consequences for my wife and children, for my friends, and so on.  My failings cause others to suffer, often in invisible ways.  My sin breeds sin and stymies virtue, in myself and in others.  How much better off would those around me be if I were a saint?

Sometimes, we are only just able to glimpse the moral filaments that connect our actions to the lives of those arounds us.  At other times, the consequences of our sins are all too apparent.  Every father who has caught his own uncharitable words in the mouth of one of his children knows the power of his own bad example.  Sometimes sins we foolishly hoped would remain secret are drawn into the light for all to see, to our own horror and humiliation.

Such moments of recognition can be occasions for grace to stir the conscience — like the cock crow that brought Peter to bitter tears.  But such occasions, in which we are put on the spot by our own consciences, do not always result in repentance and conversion.  At least not immediately.

In Mark's Gospel, a rich man comes to Jesus eager to do what he must do to inherit eternal life.  The man is at first pleased to hear that he has done all that is required, but his pleasure turns to disappointment when Our Lord asks for more.  We all know the story:

"You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

The rich man was so close; he was lacking only one thing.  But he would not give up his attachment.  And Christ, who "looking at him, loved him," let him go.

Iwas reminded of this passage this week by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's response (here) to a question about "blessings for unions of persons of the same sex."  The CDF's ruling, backed by Pope Francis, is that same-sex unions cannot be blessed: "[God] does not and cannot bless sin."  This has caused anguish among those who have long hoped that the Church would find a way around Scripture and Tradition to embrace same-sex unions.

That this comes from Pope Francis — the pope of "Who am I to judge," the pope who offered measured support for same-sex civil unions, the pope in whom so many had placed their hopes for a sweeping change in doctrine — has made this an even more bitter pill to swallow.

The German bishops, who many expected to openly embrace such blessings through their Binding Synodal Process, are "not happy."  Hundreds of German priests are openly defiant.  Many other Catholics are outraged.  Some are simply walking away.

Which brings me back to the story of the rich man.

God offers mercy to all, but His offer of mercy does not spare us difficult choices.

For those of us who see the CDF's clarification as necessary and welcome, as I do, it might be tempting to dismiss this anger and dissent with, "Good!  If they will cling to what is dear rather than follow the truth, then let them go!"

It may come to that.  Some may leave, but it would not be happy thing.  The Church is for sinners.

No.  To jeer at the defeat of others in the face of hard truths is hubris.  We are all of us in need of mercy; knowing that ought to humble us.

I was reminded of the story of the rich man, not by those who are walking away from Christ and His Church on account of a hard teaching, but because it is so easy to see myself in the place of the rich man: proud, content, and unwilling to let go of what prevents me growing closer to God.

What the Church asks of Catholics with same sex-attraction may be unambiguous and simple chastity — but that does not make it easy.  God offers mercy to all, but His offer of mercy does not spare us difficult choices.  In a sense, God's greatest mercy is that choice: he offers us a way out, narrow though it may be, rather than leaving us as we are.  And though He looks at us and loves us, as he did the rich man, he leaves it to us to accept the offer.  Or not.

That thought should make us all tremble.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will be much discussion of the CDF's statement.  There will be many hard truths to defend and arguments to be made.  The issue will undoubtedly get dragged into our political debates: think of the Equality Act currently before Congress.  And it is likely to continue generating acrimony between and among Catholics.

But if sin breeds sin and stymies virtue, then love accomplishes the opposite.  As welcome as the clarity of the CDF statement may be, that clarity does not absolve any of us from the work of loving our enemies, let alone our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We pass up the opportunity to love at our own peril.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2021/03/18/what-covers-a-multitude-of-sins/

 

Acknowledgement

Stephen P. White, "What Covers a Multitude of Sins?" The Catholic Thing (March 18, 2021).

Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Thing.  Image credit: Heinrich Hofmann, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Author

Stephen P. White is a fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. White's work focuses on the application of Catholic social teaching to a broad spectrum of contemporary political and cultural issues. His is the author of Red, White, Blue, and Catholic.

The Remarks of Pope Francis on the Legal Recognition of Homosexual Unions

NOVEMBER 13, 2020 BY DCN. TRACY JAMISON, OCDS 2 COMMENTS

In the documentary “Francesco,” which premiered on October 21, 2020, Pope Francis is recorded in an interview as arguing for the legal recognition of homosexual civil unions:

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it.”

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.”

The following day there were news reports that these remarks were originally made in an interview recorded on May 19, 2019, and then edited out by the Vatican. The director of the documentary denied that report and claimed that the comments were made directly to him. But the footage is clearly from 2019, and the remarks are taken out of context and pieced together in an artificial order for greater effect to suit a personal agenda.

In 2010, before being elected to the papal office, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio did in fact propose a limited form of legal recognition of homosexual civil unions as an alternative to the political movement in Argentina to approve homosexual marriage and conduct, to which he firmly and publicly objected. Legal recognition of homosexual couples may be made in two essentially different forms.One form simply grants legal rights to any given couple, regardless of sex, to make a contract in which one party designates the other party as his or her “significant other,” allowing them to share their earnings, to file their taxes jointly, to have access to each other’s personal records, to be covered under each other’s insurance, to inherit a preferential portion of the other’s estate, and the like. The other form of recognition is more radical and specifically permits homosexual couples to make a contract which is legally equivalent to marriage and grants legal rights which are proper only to marriage, such as the right for couples to practice sexual intimacy legally as spouses, or the right to adopt children. The latter form of legal recognition treats homosexual civil unions as equivalent to marriage and is clearly immoral and harmful to society, and Cardinal Bergoglio always opposed it.

Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina explicitly and publicly taught that homosexual practices are intrinsically evil, and that as a matter of moral necessity homosexual friendships and all other friendships outside of true heterosexual marriage must remain chaste. He recognized that the Catholic Church’s position that homosexual conduct is intrinsically evil is not revisable or changeable. Any proposal or endorsement of a limited legal recognition of homosexual civil unions can be controversial for Catholics because it appears to contradict the authentic teaching of the Church. The Church has consistently opposed all proposals of nations to grant legal recognition to homosexual civil unions, but without making any distinction between the two forms of legal recognition. The bishops of Argentina, invoking the authentic teaching of the Church and John Paul II, understandably rejected Cardinal Bergoglio’s suggestion in 2010 to endorse the more limited form of legal recognition in the attempt to avoid the legal approval of same-sex marriage.

In 2003 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and with the express approval of Pope St. John Paul II, had published the document “Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons.” The language used against all such proposals is very strong. The bishops of Argentina carefully considered the papal guidance given this document. It is important to be aware of what the document actually says, so we should take time to review some of its relevant guidelines:

“[A]ccording to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies ‘must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.’ They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity. The homosexual inclination is, however, ‘objectively disordered,’ and homosexual practices are ‘sins gravely contrary to chastity’.” (4)

“[R]espect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself.” (11)

“As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.” (7)

“Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfill the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.” (4)

“When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.” (10)

“When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth. If it is not possible to repeal such a law completely, the Catholic politician, recalling the indications contained in the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, ‘could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality,’ on condition that his ‘absolute personal opposition’ to such laws was clear and well known and that the danger of scandal was avoided. This does not mean that a more restrictive law in this area could be considered just or even acceptable; rather, it is a question of the legitimate and dutiful attempt to obtain at least the partial repeal of an unjust law when its total abrogation is not possible at the moment.” (10)

“Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil. In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.” (5)1

It is apparent from this document that St. John Paul II in his authentic papal Magisterium (his authority to teach and interpret the deposit of divine revelation as a successor of St Peter) taught that the legal recognition of homosexual unions is not morally justifiable as material cooperation in evil. And he reaffirmed that we have a moral duty to practice conscientious objection with regard to all unjust laws. Whenever a CDF document carries the express approval of the pope, as this one does, it participates in the ordinary Magisterium of the pope and is therefore authentic teaching.

It is also apparent from this document that St. John Paul II believed that whenever material cooperation in evil cannot be justified by the principle of double-effect and a reasonable estimation of the proportion of the good intended to the evil tolerated, the act of cooperation is morally wrong and must not be committed. Unjustified material cooperation in evil, like formal cooperation in evil, must always be opposed on the grounds that it is morally evil, not merely imprudent. A morally unjustified act of cooperation in evil is objectively evil in virtue of its circumstances, even though its species and motive may be good. This is a basic principle of natural moral law. We therefore ought not to excuse such cooperation as merely imprudent. If we deliberate carefully but make an honest mistake in thinking an act is permissible when it is actually evil, and we go ahead and do it, then subjectively we are not culpable since no evil was intended, but objectively we have nevertheless committed an evil act.

In the 2003 CDF document it appears that St John Paul II believed and intended to teach that no legal recognition of homosexual unions is ever morally justified, and therefore that no nation state is ever morally permitted to grant any legal recognition to homosexual unions whatsoever. Discerning the specific intention of St John Paul II in the document, however, is complicated by its puzzling terminology. It is clear that the practice of same-sex marriage is intrinsically evil. The legal rights proper to marriage (e.g. sexual intimacy, adoption of children) must be granted only to heterosexual couples. The principle of double-effect and the proportion of the intended good to the tolerated evil cannot morally justify the kind of legal recognition of same-sex marriage as material cooperation in evil. Such unjustified cooperation in evil is morally wrong.

But did St John Paul II intend to require conscientious objection not just to same-sex marriage but also to allowing same-sex couples to enter into non-marital contracts in which one citizen designates another citizen as his or her “significant other”? Canonists who are faithful to the Magisterium think not. Dr. Edward Peters, for example, has cogently argued that the terminology in the 2003 CDF document is problematic.2 Indeed, if a state has civil laws which permit non-marital contracts to designate a “significant other,” then it would seem to be a form of unjust discrimination to prohibit same-sex couples from entering into such non-marital contracts. Every citizen has the moral right to form legal contracts with other people for various purposes other than sexual intimacy and the procreation and nurturing of children. There are moral grounds to restrict marital contracts to adult heterosexual couples, but it was not the intent of the 2003 CDF document to require conscientious objection to same-sex couples forming any contracts whatsoever. The intent was only to require conscientious objection to same-sex marriage, where the legal rights proper to marriage are extended to couples naturally incapable of being married, and thus legal approval is given to immoral conduct. The use of the term “homosexual unions” in an unqualified manner is confusing.

The teaching of the Church in general that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is gravely immoral is authentic interpretation of natural law. So is the teaching of the Church that all people of good will have a moral duty to oppose unjust civil laws. The authentic (third-level) teaching of the Church, however, is somewhat reformable by the Magisterium itself. It is admittedly not infallible. Only first-and-second-level doctrines (the deposit of faith and morals and all Catholic truths which follow from that divinely revealed deposit by logical and historical necessity) have been infallibly taught. But even though authentic (third-level) interpretations of the deposit of faith and morals could contain errors, every legitimate exercise of the authentic papal Magisterium must be interpreted with a hermeneutic of continuity and a principle of charity. Even though it is possible for a legitimate exercise of the authentic papal Magisterium to be in error, it is nevertheless not probable for it to be in error unless the authentic papal Magisterium itself acknowledges that it made a mistake. The faithful owe every exercise of authentic Magisterium an internal assent of mind and heart, even though the teaching is not infallible. Many Catholics nowadays need to be informed or reminded of that obligation.

It should be clear that a pope’s casual public remarks have no authority in Church teaching. Such remarks are often taken out of context and badly distorted in public media. The Church teaches authoritatively at various levels, but the remarks of Pope Francis or any other pope in an interview are not even Church teaching at all. Even if Pope Francis is again suggesting that a more limited legal recognition of homosexual civil unions is a social structure that is a justifiable material cooperation in evil, as he suggested previously in Argentina before accepting the papal office, he is not imposing this opinion on us as a matter of doctrine. The faithful do not owe any kind of assent to such non-magisterial remarks. Furthermore, the non-magisterial interpretations and comments of any pope or bishop on existing magisterial teaching, even his own, are often in error and are not a reliable guide to the authentic Magisterium of the Church. So we are free to disagree with the casual remarks and opinions of the Pope Francis, just as we are free to disagree with the exegetical opinions offered by Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) in his Jesus of Nazareth books.

Clarifying the actual intent of the 2003 CDF document through a legitimate exercise of the authentic papal Magisterium could be very helpful, however, though many people might be inclined to misinterpret and condemn any such qualification, especially if it were made by Pope Francis, whose acts are frequently and unfairly interpreted as advancing a progressive agenda. It is true that the Catholic faithful have an obligation to assent to the approved teaching of St John Paul II in the 2003 CDF document on the legal recognition of homosexual unions, but Francis or another pope could decide to revise and clarify it. Any such revision would merely qualify and essentialize the teaching it by an authoritative interpretation. The Church’s position is not that any legal recognition of homosexual unions is intrinsically evil, but that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage would be a material cooperation in evil that cannot satisfy the principle of double-effect because the overall harm that it does is proportionately greater than the overall good that it does.

Those who do not understand the difference between intrinsically evil acts and acts which materially cooperate in intrinsically evil acts find this confusing. The confusion can only be eliminated by good moral catechesis and better education. And the more limited form of legal recognition, which simply grants legal rights to any given couple, regardless of sex, to make a contract in which one party designates the other party as his or her “significant other” for non-marital purposes, is a remote material cooperation in evil that is morally justifiable because it can in fact satisfy the principle of double-effect. The intent is not to approve of homosexual conduct but only to avoid unjust discrimination with regard to unmarried persons, including people who have a homosexual orientation and a same-sex “significant other.” As Pope Francis has emphasized on many occasions, the real world is morally messy, and the real world is getting messier everyday as the infallible moral teaching of Christ and his Church is rejected.

On various occasions, Pope Francis has in fact publicly practiced conscientious objection to legalizing same-sex marriage. It should be clear at the very least that he firmly upholds the infallible moral teaching of the Church. Nothing in his authentic papal Magisterium even comes close to suggesting that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is morally justifiable. The principle of charity demands that we interpret the comments of Pope Francis with a hermeneutic of continuity. Pope Francis thus in fact believes that true marriage is inherently heterosexual and procreative, that sexual intimacy is moral only in the context of the proper marital act within a true marriage, that homosexual civil unions are not true marriages, that homosexual unions ought to be chaste friendships, that abortion and contraception are intrinsically evil, that we have a moral duty to oppose civil laws which are contrary to the common good, that every person needs a male father and a female mother to help them shape their identity, and the like. None of these moral doctrines is in question or changeable. Catholics who want these doctrines to change are either ignorant or living in denial. Dissenters ignore the inherent conservative dynamic of the Magisterium and unreasonably expect the Catholic Church to reverse its infallible moral doctrines. The Catholic Church will never make any such changes. That which is intrinsically evil will be always be regarded by the Catholic Church as intrinsically evil, even though the secular world will often disagree and attempt to rationalize immoral conduct.

Pope Francis’ primary concern seems to be with material cooperation in evil, which he thinks is morally justifiable in certain legal, political, and pastoral contexts. The conditions under which material cooperation in evil is morally justifiable are sometimes difficult to judge, and Catholic bishops sometimes disagree on how to make particular applications. We might consider for example the recent disagreement over whether voting for political candidates who have a pro-abortion platform is morally justifiable. In my opinion, it is not morally justifiable. But with regard to the legal recognition of homosexual couples, we need to be careful not to become so concerned to avoid material cooperation in evil that we fall into an unjust form of discrimination.

Those who are conservative in their estimation of the respective proportion naturally regard any legal recognition of homosexual unions as imprudent and inexcusable. Those who are more liberal in their estimation of the respective proportion naturally regard the absolute refusal to grant any legal recognition of homosexual unions whatsoever as rigid and intolerant. If Pope Francis were to clarify the authentic teaching of St. John Paul II magisterially and grant that we can tolerate and materially cooperate with the legal recognition of homosexual non-marital civil unions but must resist and conscientiously object to the legal recognition of homosexual civil unions which pretend to be marriages and which unjustly demand legal rights which are proper to true marriage, then there would be a path of reconciliation open between the two opposing positions.

We must keep in mind that since 2003, most of the Western world has rejected Catholic moral teaching on the issue of homosexual unions and has in fact radically legalized them as if they were marriages, as it previously legalized abortion and other evils. Such legalizations are scandalous and morally corrupting of society. They are unjust civil laws which must be opposed and reversed if possible. The most pressing question now is how to help the faithful to function and maintain employment and raise families in societies which are increasingly secularized and immoral. We need more guidance on this issue, and the authentic teaching of the Church on the issue must continue to undergo legitimate development. Pope Francis and his successors must guide us in how to practice conscientious objection to evil, as well as in how to judge correctly the conditions under which material cooperation in evil is morally permissible. Both of these practical judgments are currently unavoidable, and we need pastoral guidance in both. Like it or not, additional pastoral guidance from Pope Francis is probably coming soon. The teaching of St John Paul II might be slightly revised. But the doctrine that homosexual behavior is intrinsically evil is not changeable. Neither is the doctrine that contraception is intrinsically evil. Those who compromise the doctrine against contraception within true marriage inevitably compromise the doctrine against same-sex marriage. Pope Francis, as a disciple of St Paul VI, understands that dynamic and will not compromise the Church’s moral teaching on human sexuality.

In authentic Church teaching there are clear limits on what is reformable. The point is not to undermine what St John Paul II taught about homosexual civil unions, but to adapt it to the present circumstances, bringing out what is essential in it. As a successor of St. Peter and St. John Paul II, Pope Francis has the authority and power to reform that teaching, but he has not yet done so. Perhaps he is indicating that he intends to do so; perhaps not. If he does decide to qualify the 2003 CDF document on the legal recognition of homosexual unions, he will need to give papal approval to some new CDF document or other teaching instrument which would clearly state the conditions under which legal recognition to non-marital civil unions could morally be given. Many ecclesiastical leaders hope that he will allow the 2003 CDF document to stand unqualified, while others regard this attitude as scrupulous. But the document does need clarification. The concern to avoid being too rigid and the concern to avoid being too lax are equally legitimate and fundamental to having a mature Catholic attitude about material cooperation in evil. Toleration of evil is often morally necessary, but approval of evil is never morally permitted.

In the face of public episcopal disagreement about what the pope should do with regard to legitimate development of Catholic doctrine, every Catholic should recognize and affirm that no infallibly taught moral doctrines can ever lose their doctrinal weight or be changed. We must trust the Holy Spirit and not be alarmed. The devil often uses fear in his attempt to undermine divine authority and encourage rebellion. We should reassure the faithful that the moral teaching of the Church is permanent and will not be compromised. At the same time, following the example of St Francis of Assisi, we should help the faithful to maintain due obedience and reverence to Pope Francis, who stands in continuity with Vatican II, St. John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. To abandon the hermeneutic of continuity is to move in the direction of schism. To understand the actions and intentions of Pope Francis correctly requires us to exercise charity and patience. There are many people nowadays who either intentionally or unintentionally misinterpret his actions and intentions to suit their own agenda either to the political right or to the political left. Pope Francis has a difficult job and must maintain a delicate balance. Let us pray for him.

https://www.hprweb.com/2020/11/the-remarks-of-pope-francis-on-the-legal-recognition-of-homosexual-unions/

God made you like that, (homosexual) and I do not care, said Pope Francis

God made you like that, and I do not care

In today's news story about a sex abuse victim's understanding of the personal counsel of Pope Francis (Chilean abuse victim: Pope said I should be happy as a homosexual), we have Juan Carlos Cruz quoting the pontiff as saying: "God made you like that and he loves you like that and I do not care." I do not intend to argue that this is what Pope Francis actually said, nor to clarify what Pope Francis must have meant if he said it.  We cannot know either of these things.

But I do want to use this now-famous sound bite as a teaching moment.  For by themselves, these assertions easily admit of a profoundly evil understanding, one all too common in our own time.  Without context and interpretation, assertions like this can stifle the awareness of the need for conversion (such as we see repeatedly in the letters of St.  Paul, for example).  And so they can do great harm.

In his book Why I don't Call Myself Gay, David Mattson reports that he could not find any sort of progress or peace until he recognized that his fundamental identity was that of a beloved son of God, not a bundle of desires.  We already know that Pope Francis places great emphasis on God's love as truly constitutive of who we are as persons.  We can see as well that there is a way to interpret the quotation in the previous paragraph that is absolutely true and good.  Consider the following understanding:

God loves you.  He has loved you into existence.  He knows that you are same-sex attracted, and He permits you to feel that attraction only because this particular suffering can help you to turn ever more to Him — to grow into an ever-greater bond of love with Him.  We do not know all of the causes of same-sex attraction.  But we do know that God permits us all to suffer and struggle in different ways because every form of suffering, with our own precious cooperation, can help us to turn to Him, to depend on Him, to confide our lives to Him.  This is a response of our own sacrificial love to God's sacrificial love.

In relying on Him, we will enable Him to increase His Presence in our lives, in our very selves.  And so God loves us even in and through whatever is broken in us, whatever needs healing, whatever needs to be perfected through grace.  In the name of God's Church, I too love you in this way, for I have God's sacramental life within me, and all who experience this life can love as God loves.  I love you in your experience of your own crosses, just as I love God in my experience of my own crosses.  For it is by accepting our crosses, and embracing again and again the will of God, that we grow into union with Him, and so into eternal life.

Now that is a long restatement of a central Catholic idea which is proper to the counseling of all sinners (that is to say every one of us).  But in the form reported by Juan Carlos Cruz, it is subject to a series of potentially deadly misunderstandings — misunderstandings which any good Christian will take great pains to avoid.  Here they are:

God made you like that

 This is true of our genuine imperfections only if we are speaking of God's permissive will.  The Jews in the Old Testament frequently speak in this way, as in "God hardened Pharaoh's heart."  But what this means is that, after the Fall, God permits all kinds of disorders to affect us, including fairly serious physical, intellectual, psychological, and affective disorders within our human nature, challenges to our integrity as persons that we experience more or less continually.

But this does not mean that the "way we are" is a license to sin.  The person who has anger management issues does not thereby have a license to fly into a rage, though his affective disorder may mitigate his guilt.  The person who suffers from what we call kleptomania does not have a license to steal, though his psychological disorder may also mitigate his guilt.  In the same way, the person who experiences same-sex attraction does not have a license to engage in sexual activity with a person of the same sex, although once again the disorder may mitigate the degree of guilt involved in his or her falls from grace.

When we say "God made you like that", we must not mean that God does not regard the disorders we suffer as disorders.  This expression must not be taken to mean that God creates, intends, or blesses our rage, our theft, our sexual sins.

God loves you like that

This statement is true only if we are acknowledging what should be a challenging Christian understanding of love.  God always loves us in His infinite desire that we might return that love, and so draw into union with Him.  But sin frustrates that love, because it directly opposes Who God is.  God's will is that we become perfect as He is perfect, fulfilling our lives in the only way we can be fulfilled, in Him.

Sadly, insofar as we refuse God's will, we choose evil.  Evil is the absence of good, and choosing it is to choose nothing over something.  It is to reject love.  It is to prefer our own radically proud isolation; it is to prefer the absence of God.  "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," cried Our Lord, "How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Mt 23:37; Lk 13:34)

When we say "God loves you like that", we must not imply that God actually loves "that", if "that" includes not just our suffering and our struggles but also our sins.

And I do not care

Clearly we ought not to love someone less because that person's particular faults are less congenial to our own personalities than some other faults would be.  It is a weakness of our nature to find it easier to love people who sin in ways we do not find "so bad", but it isn't part of the logic of Christ to succumb to this weakness.  In this sense, when it comes to loving another person, a good Catholic does not care in the least what particular habitual sins characterize that person's life.

We are all "poor sinners", yet we are all loved by God so much that He sacrificed His only begotten Son to free us from bondage to sin.  We are supposed to be astonished by this love, and to be startled into an unguarded movement of love in return.  But there is no room for complacency.  Too easily does the expression "I don't care that you are tempted by this particular sin" become an expression which is entirely different: "I don't care if you sin".  This is grotesque.  This is the word of Lucifer, the so-called Angel of Light, pretending that he knows what it means to love.

Therefore, when we say, "and I do not care", we must not mean "I do not care if you sin".  For when we truly love anyone, their sins must fill us with unspeakable sorrow.  This is the sorrow of the agony in the Garden, the sorrow of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It is the sorrow we are supposed to feel more than any other sorrow — the sorrow which cuts us more deeply than anything else in this weak and weary world.

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/other-topics/god-made-you-like-that-and-i-do-not-care.html

Good News: God Didn’t Make This Mess--Homosexuality

Good News: God Didn’t Make This Mess

Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek

Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek writes that God does not make us sin, although He permits us to choose sin. And our sins are the reason for the Incarnation of Christ.

Pope Francis is reported to have told a homosexual, “God made you that way and loves you.” In the last six months, I have responded to the miscarriage of a three-month-old baby, the sudden death of a hospice nurse due to an aneurism, and the terminal diagnosis of a middle-aged husband and father. In these situations, I have continually insisted on God’s love and providence. I have never said God made it happen.

One of the most astonishing features of the Biblical creation account is that the entire cosmos is declared “very good.” This flies in the face of human experience. In fact, the creation myths of many cultures hold that good and evil are inherent elements of human nature and the world order. It is the way things are made.

Genesis corrects this error by revealing that evil is not rooted in creation, but in humanity’s abusive decision to turn away from God, one another, and God’s created order through sin. At the same time, the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve unfolds in the context of God’s continual love and providential care in the face of sin and the evils unleashed by it.

The Scriptures tell the story of God opening a path to salvation that frees us from the effects of personal sin and the evils that befall us so that we might fully share His divine life through nuptial union with Christ. In Jesus, we discover that God foretold this saving union when He created the human race as sexually differentiated persons united in indissoluble marriage. (Mt. 19:56, Gen. 2:24, Is. 62:5, Eph. 5:31-32)

Despite the fallen nature of the human race and the cosmos, therefore, we can still affirm that God created us and loves us. But we cannot simply say, “God made me this way.” If “this way” refers to the image and likeness of the Trinity and the calling to be a member of the body and bride of Christ, then the statement is true. If “this way” refers to the ill-effects of the messed-up world or of our personal sin, then the statement is false.

God loves sinners, the handicapped, the sick, the mentally ill, the imprisoned, the enslaved, the abused, the starving, the doubting, the grieving, the dying, etc. In some cases, these people contributed to their situation, in others they did not. God loves them all, but He has not made them that way.

It can be said truly that God tolerates these situations since, evidently, He chooses not to enter into history to prevent these particular wrongs from happening. The nature of this toleration, however, warrants our careful attention. It is not indifference, acceptance, or welcoming. It is a “bearing with” (Latin: toleratio) or a “suffering with” (Latin: compassio).

*

The full revelation of God’s compassionate toleration of sin and the effects of evil is found in the passion, death, and glorification of Jesus. Precisely because Jesus loved us with the Father’s love, He carried in his humanity the burden of all the ill that we do and that we bear. In doing so, He made our innocent and culpable sufferings a place of encountering God and his love, that is, a place of conversion, healing, and communion.

God brings about our salvation, our “well-being” (Latin: salus), not by preventing, denying, or eradicating evil at each moment, but by fundamentally altering our relation to it through our union with Christ. He thereby enables us to carry and suffer every form of evil that afflicts us and others without entering into further sin.

This is the Good News we have been sent to live and to proclaim: “God did not make us the way we are and He loves us. That is why He carried the burden of the sins and evils that distort our lives and invites us to carry that burden with him. He wishes to espouse us to himself so that we might share his divine life now and forever. And I love you enough to tell you this.”

Experiencing same-sex attraction, being divorced by a spouse, feeling a compulsion to abuse others, having an addiction, and the myriad of other troubles of body, psyche, and soul that we face as members of the fallen human race are not made better by being declared the handiwork of God. Nor, of course, are they helped by being treated as sins if we have not deliberately willed them or if we have repented of the sin that gave rise to them.

What is helpful, indeed the only thing ultimately able to sustain us, is the truth about our fallen, sometimes sinful, condition and the union that God offers us in Christ. That union requires, as Jesus said, that we take up the Cross daily. We do so by acknowledging our sins, our distorted inclinations, the burden of evil in our lives and the lives of those we love, and by carrying those with Christ who first carried them for us. Because of this union, we can carry these burdens without yielding to sin.

That is the Gospel. It is not something to hide or to evade. We are called to announce it unambiguously to the world. Consequently, when our witness to Jesus is misunderstood we are obliged to take reasonable steps to offer a correction.

Were a priest to be misquoted about the Gospel in the local paper or by a parishioner publicly recounting a private meeting, the priest would need to remedy the error. I have myself faced this situation.

The solution is simple and involves no accusation of deception or violation of confidence. A priest need only say, “The position attributed to me is mistaken. It mischaracterizes (or contradicts) the Gospel of Christ that I profess. I regret any misunderstanding and am happy to clarify the matter.”

To do less would harm those misled by the report. Besides, my brother, a priest, would charitably but firmly insist on it.

*Image: “Go and sin no more.” The Woman Taken in Adultery by Lorenzo Lotto, c. 1528 [Louvre, Paris]

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