Category: Uncategorized

SDG here with some follow-up thoughts on conscience, sparked by comments in the last combox. A reader writes:

The proper formation of one’s conscience is at the heart of all the hypotheticals. Personally, I don’t know if I could count on my own conscience without lining it up with the Church’s teachings.

Yes indeed, proper formation of conscience is crucially important. However, the authority of a poorly formed conscience is just as absolute as that of a well-formed conscience. However well or poorly one’s conscience may be formed, one is always absolutely bound to follow one’s conscience, that is, one’s last best judgment of what one ought to do. If a man has a dreadfully formed conscience, he may be led to do dreadful things. But to go against one’s one’s last best judgment of what one ought to do, to do what one believes is wrong, is the essence, the very form, of sin.

Note what this doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean privileging your own sense of a particular issue over the voice of authority, whether the word of God, the Magisterium, or lesser authorities like parents, government leaders or social consensus. It does mean that when you have listened to all relevant authorities and arguments, taking everything into account, whatever you believe in the end you ought to do is what you must do.

If a person holds a moral opinion contrary to Magisterial teaching, it would certainly be well for him if his conscience, however flawed, were at least well-formed enough for him to conclude, “Even though my own sense of the issue is very far from what the Church says, and I really can’t see the reasoning behind it, at the same time I do believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church, and that tells me that I ought to listen to the Church even though I don’t understand.” In that case, his conscience — his last best judgment of what he ought to do — tells him to listen to the Church, and that is what he ought to do.

However, suppose his conscience is so poorly formed that he thinks, “I’d really like to be able to trust the Church here, but I just can’t. I think the Church is wrong, and I can’t do what the Church wants me to without violating my conscience.” That is certainly a disastrous conclusion — but, having reached that conclusion, as long as he remains in that faulty opinion, for him to follow the Church anyway (say, out of timidity, social pressure or for some other reason) would be to go against his conscience, and thus to formal sin. Given his faulty reasoning, he must obey the voice of his conscience, even though this means disobeying the Church and committing material sin.

Of course it would be better for him to correct his faulty reasoning at least enough to conclude that it probably makes more sense to trust the Church than his own sense of the issue. Better still, he should correct his conscience enough to understand and assent to the Church’s teaching on the basis of its own intelligibility. Obviously, a better informed conscience will lead you more reliably and safely than a poorly formed one. Doing what you believe is right is no shield against the bad consequences of sinful and destructive actions. But doing what you believe is wrong, pitting the will itself against the good, puts one as far from beatitude as it is possible to be.

Thus, when the reader writes, “I don’t know if I could count on my own conscience without lining it up with the Church’s teachings,” it sounds as if the reader’s conscience tells her that the Church’s teachings must inform her last best judgment of what she ought to do — and if she were to find herself at odds with the Church, she would conclude that she hadn’t yet reached a last best judgment. That’s as it should be.

In other words, if one’s thinking is, “My own sense of the issue is to do X, but the Church tells me to do Y, and in the end I trust the Church more than my own sense of the issue, so I think I should do Y,” then one is not trusting the Church instead of one’s conscience. Rather, one’s conscience tells one to do Y, not X, in keeping with the Church’s teaching.

Lots of people don’t understand this point.

SDG here with some thoughts on conscience and authority sparked by the combox from my last post.

Every man is bound absolutely to follow his own conscience. Hopefully, if and when a man finds that his judgments of conscience are contradicted by competent authority, he will take that fact into account in informing and revising his judgments of conscience.

But this doesn’t mean blindly following competent authority. Sometimes, competent authority is wrong, and good men can honestly conclude that competent authority is wrong — sometimes when it is, sometimes when it isn’t.

So there is still the possibility of contradiction. What happens then is … tricky.

If a man’s conscience tells him that something is morally licit, and competent authority tells him otherwise, he will often be well advised to refrain from the activity in question in deference to competent authority.

If, on the other hand, a man’s conscience tells him that something is morally obligatory — or morally illicit — and competent authority tells him the opposite, he must not act against his conscience in deference to authority.

If he is in sufficient doubt as to the rightness of his own judgment, and is swayed by the weight of authority, then he may arrive at a new judgment of conscience, putting his faith in authority to guide him. Assuming he is honest in this process, the responsibility for his actions now lies to a significant degree with that authority. If authority has led him astray, there are millstones for such things. If it has led him aright, there are rewards.

Conversely, if he remains confident enough of his own judgments as to reject the guidance of authority, then he himself incurs a new burden of responsibility for his actions. In that case, he had better hope and pray that he is right. Just as following authority can mitigate one’s responsibility, flouting authority can aggravate it. That doesn’t mean you can never, or should never, do it. It does mean you take your head in your hands.

If one is instructed by one’s bishop not to present oneself for communion, there is an obligation to honor that instruction, even if one is privately convinced that the bishop’s instruction is unjustified. If the bishop is right, he has saved a sheep from (hopefully unwitting) sacrilege. If he’s wrong, a soul has suffered unecessarily, but with merit before God for sumbitting humbly to authority and meekly accepting unjust punishment.

However, even in such a case I don’t think the obligation is necessarily absolute. Take the case of a couple — a pair of converts, let’s say — whose marriage is not recognized by the Church because of a previous union for which the tribunal could not find evidence of nullity. And let’s say the couple has appealed to Rome, attempted every recourse, all to no avail.

And now let’s say that the couple knows, with great moral certitude, that even though they weren’t able to prove it to the tribunal, the previous marriage was not valid, and so their current marriage is valid. In such a case, it seems to me, they are not morally obliged either to refrain from conjugal union or to refrain from receiving communion.

If they can do so without scandal — if, say, they attend a parish where the circumstances of their marriage are not known and no one has reason to suspect that their marriage isn’t recognized by the Church — then I think it is possible for them to continue to live together as man and wife and to receive communion with a clear conscience.

Now, if the tribunal was right and the couple are wrong, their moral culpability is all the greater. When you rely on the internal forum, you accept a greater weight of judgment, just as you do when you presume to instruct or lead another.

Conversely, if a tribunal judges wrongly, and gives a couple a clean bill of marital health when in fact there is no marriage because of an existing impediment, if the couple acts in good faith in following the tribunal, the moral responsibility is the tribunal’s, not the couple’s. (It’s also worth noting that there is an obligation to try to work things out through the external forum, not just settle for the internal forum from the get-go. One might possibly choose, with fear and trembling, to disregard the wrongful verdict of a marriage tribunal, but this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to bother petitioning for a decree of nullity in the first place.)

SDG here with no time to comment on encouraging developments on Canon 915 noted by Deal Hudson at Inside Catholic (hat tip to an AmP combox reader – I don’t think AmP has picked up on this yet).

The bishops of Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia, confirmed publicly they would uphold the declaration of her ordinary, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, stating that Governor Sebelius should not present herself for communion.

Good news for supporters of the application of canon 915 to pro-abort politicians. Give it four more years, and we may have a growing consensus that the canon means what it says (nuance from Ed Peters), and pro-abort politicians should be denied communion (you know, if necessary, after being counseled on the gravity of the issue, urged to abstain from communion, etc.).

Also, USCCB president Cardinal George found the guts to say something about the Notre Dame Obama scandal — an “extreme embarrassment” to Catholics, in his words. (Obligatory AmP hat tip.)

There's something about sci-fi writers getting sudden inspiration in the shower. Don't know what it is.

UPDATE (3/27): Just posted my review of Bolt, now available on DVD. If you haven’t seen it, trust me: It’s better than you think!

Coming soon: Gulliver’s Travels and Slumdog Millionaire.

SDG here with two quick notes:

1. My review of Monsters vs. Aliens is up at Decent Films.

2. Tune in tonight to my appearance on Catholic Answers Live!

Updates coming soon.

SDG here with nothing much to add to AmP’s typically insightful commentary on Obama’s invitation to speak at the Notre Dame commencement … just a reiteration of his invitation (and Archbishop Chaput’s) to sign the petition launched by the Cardinal Newman Society — and to otherwise contact university president Fr. Jenkins (contact info at the Newman Society website) expressing your objections.

There is also an open letter from ND students; I don’t know whether that means current students only or also alumni. The letter is, I think, too modest in scope: It says “There has been overreaction on both sides, and it is important to keep the discussion civil – Uninviting Pres. Obama would be a disrespectful move, and having students turn their back on his speech, as some have called for, would be an immature gesture” and then goes on to ask Fr. Jenkins to make a strong statement affirming the Church’s pro-life stance when Obama comes. I can maybe see settling for this if it’s the best you can get, but I don’t think I’d sign off on the idea that disinviting him would be inappropriately “disrespectful.”

The outcome here may depend in part on how the faculty responds. Remember when Pope Benedict canceled his scheduled speech at Sapienza University in response to protests? Is it impossible (like AmP, I argree it’s unlikely) that orthodox Catholics might score a victory this time?

A short and belated Decent Films update:

First, this coming Thursday, at 6:00pm EDT / 3:00pm PDT, I’ll be appearing on Catholic Answers Live. Tune in and listen!

Second, my review of the 1953 biblically-themed epic The Robe, now available in a new DVD edition (DVD | Blu-ray), is up at Decent Films.

Earlier this week we got an email from some friends at church with a prayer request from their sister, who sometimes comes to our church when she’s in town. Her employer, Natasha, was seriously injured in a skiing accident.

Later in the day we heard news reports that actress Natasha Richardson, wife of Liam Neeson, had been seriously injured in a skiing accident. It was a little surreal to realize that we had gotten a prayer request from Neeson and Richardson’s nanny, with Richardson simply identified as “Natasha.” (I’m not entirely sure that our friends, pious Irish Catholics, necessarily fully appreciate how famous their sister’s employers are, even their fellow countryman Neeson.)

That personal connection made the news last night of Richardson’s death more real to me than another news story about a tragedy involving famous people. Two young boys, 14 and 12, have lost a mother. Their nanny is a devout Catholic whom we’ve seen around our church. Neeson isn’t devout, though I’ve read that he’s been drawing closer to the Church. He seems to be impressed with the Church’s good works, and has talked about telling his sons about Jesus. He’s narrated CDs on “The Birth of Christ” and, this year for Lent, “The Way of the Cross” to benefit Catholic charities.

Last night we prayed our family rosary for their family. My children certainly know who Neeson is, both as Qui-Gon from The Phantom Menace and the voice of Aslan in the Narnia films. We’ve been praying for Amy Welborn and her sons, so they’re also aware of the recent death of Michael Dubriel. The possibility of losing a parent has become very real to them.

Their uncle, Suz’s brother, died only two years ago, not much older than I am. Their grandmother died the year before.

Recently, when someone asks me “How are you?” I’ve sometimes been tempted to reply, “Employed.” Right now, I’m tempted to reply, “Alive.”

P.S. I see I’ve written about at least one of Richardson’s films, in a review for the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting. Other people have told me they know her from the remake of The Parent Trap.

SDG here with a Decent Films update.

Yesterday I posted my review of Disney’s new Race to Witch Mountain, along with shorter reviews of the 1975 Escape to Witch Mountain as well as the 1978 sequel Return from Witch Mountain.

In the Race and Escape reviews I also touch on Alexander Key’s original 1968 book Escape to Witch Mountain, which I first read around the same time that I saw Return to Witch Mountain in theaters. I honestly don’t remember which I encountered first.

What I do remember is that I didn’t encounter the first Disney film until long after I had read the original book and seen the second film — and that, partly because of that, I found the first film disappointing.

The book was much grittier and more serious in tone than the film. In the book, the orphaned heroes have had various brushes with the law (Tony has been in trouble for fighting, and Tia was arrested for breaking and entering, though in fact she had gone into a store after hours to free a cat from a trap). Hackett House, the orphanage where the children are taken after their guardian dies, is more like a juvenile hall, and the matron is a world-weary, suspicious woman nothing like the kindly matron in the Disney film. Bullying Truck isn’t just a bratty twerp, but a serious thug who draws a shiv on Tony and gives him a couple of vicious cuts before Tony can disarm him.

On the other hand, the kids are aided in the book by a heroic Catholic priest, Father O’Day. Young, handsome, forceful, with broad shoulders and a crew cut, Father O’Day is immediately sympathetic to the plight of the kids, believes them implicitly — and isn’t above going out on a limb to help them evade their adult pursuers, even though legally the adults have custody of the children.

O’Day is meant to be pious and devout, crossing himself more than once in conversation with the siblings — a reference that, reading the book as a young Protestant, I literally didn’t understand; I had no idea it referred to the sign of the cross, and might not have known what that was — and imprecating against his “sworn enemy” the devil. One line, though, suggests that he may regard the devil as a non-personal reality: “Don’t think of him as a personage. Think of him as a disease.” (Key apparently described himself as a “freethinker” (source), but may have had some religious sensibilities, and surely meant his portrayal of the priest to be entirely positive.)

Possibly O’Day thought the priest character might help make it clear to readers that the “witchy” book title isn’t meant to suggest that the children’s powers are really occult, though some adult characters in the book do consider them “witch people” and there is even a witch hunt.)

In general, Father O’Day would have been right at home in a Golden Age Hollywood film, but in 1975 he didn’t make the cut. Presumably meant as an homage, the film’s “Jason O’Day” (Eddie Albert) feels to me like adding insult to injury, as if they were making a point of replacing the priest with a religiously unspecified character. (That’s Eddie Albert in the book cover photo above — ironically, since his character doesn’t exist in the book!)

Anyway, Father O’Day was certainly important in the version of the story I first read, and he made an impression on me, along with the Catholicism of J.D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain books that I was also reading at the time. (A year or two later, when my family started attending an Episcopal church, I felt that I already knew something of this world from my reading, and had a leg up on my siblings in that respect.)

Incidentally, like nearly all of Key’s books, Escape to Witch Mountain is out of print … and you can’t get it used online for less than about $20. It’s a good read for a kid, but not that good. It’s worth checking out of the library, though.

Oh, I also read the novelization of the second movie as a kid, and liked it pretty well at the time. At Arts & Faith a friend recently remarked on a device added by the novelist: “It used the conceit of an ‘inner Tony’ (the real Tony, trapped inside his own skull) and an ‘outer Tony’ (under the doctor’s control) and gives the inner Tony lots of angst-ridden internal monologue.” I remember that: It was neat, and compensated somewhat for the film’s most nagging weakness: The character of Tony is completely sidelined for nearly the whole story.

My review of Escape to Witch Mountain

My review of Return to Witch Mountain

My review of Race to Witch Mountain

IT'S TRUE!

Since it debuted six years ago, the Sci Fi drama about a rag-tag space fleet has offered challenging fictional depictions of problems afflicting our planet in the here and now.

And now a discussion of how those very issues have been handled on the show will take place at the United Nations.

On March 17, there will be a "Battlestar" retrospective at the U.N. in New York and a panel discussion of how the show examined issues such as "human rights, children and armed conflict, terrorism, human rights and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faith," according to Sci Fi.

The "Battlestar" contingent on the panel will consist of executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, as well as stars Mary McDonnell (who plays president Laura Roslin on the show) and Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama).