"It was three against one, at least … jumping a guy like that is dishonourable, obviously.

"It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly, I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him.

"I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it." Soon after, "an alarm went off" in his brain, Carlson added, telling his producer he realised he was "becoming something" he didn't "want to be."

It was the casual racism that ended up drawing the most attention.

But the more interesting element was the glimpse into a person's conscience at work.

Carlson wasn't at the fight. He saw it, as so many of us see such things online. He identified with the brawlers, despite misgivings about how those like himself should behave.

As Carlson watched, he found himself rooting for their violence, wanting to hurt their victim—actually tasting it.

"An alarm" in his brain kicked in, warning him that he's becoming something he didn't want to be — a murderer, someone who would participate in a lynching.

How conscience works

Tucker Carlson's admission of self-awareness seems to me a good place from which to talk about conscience.

Conscience kicks in when something we might do could seriously re-write the story of who we are. And everything about both the doing and the being is how we relate to others.

It's about who we have been given to be through our relationships and who we will find ourselves becoming if we allow those relationships to run us in this way rather than that.

Now, of course, who we are is always given to us relationally.

We are utterly dependent on others' treatment of us, from conception onwards, and it is not as though we become independent upon reaching adulthood.

What we become, at least legally, is equal to other adults in navigating our different forms of dependency, owning our decisions and accepting consequences.

My "I," my "self," is the way that this body, born at such a time in such a place, navigates viably in the midst of the "we," the social body, which brought it into being.

Most of the time, we go along with the way that the social body runs us.

We pick up its language, its gestures, its customs and the stability given by its legal system, as part of what sustains us and gives us identity. We learn to desire through what it models to us.

And we may, at certain times, make decisions not to do things suggested to us by some sort of apparent authority, simply because we like other ways of doing things.

(For instance, choosing white wine with meat, or red wine with fish. But we would hardly refer to that as a matter of conscience.)

Issues of conscience arise on relatively rare occasions when we detect that "our a — is on the line" with an issue that presents itself.

If we carry on imitating and being drawn along in the way that we have been, suddenly, a line will have been crossed, and we will become someone else.

That is what Tucker Carlson described: his fully-functioning "mirror neurons" were allowing people like him, of whom he more than half approved, to lead him on.

They started to reproduce in him the same desires, emotions and passions that he saw being enacted, to the point that he was even able to "taste" the thrill of being caught up in the lynching mêlée.

Then his conscience said to him, "I see who I am becoming and, woah, I do not want to be that person."

Conscience and the LGBTQ person

I bring this up in an Outreach article, specifically for LGBTQ readers and their friends and allies, since I suspect that the issue of becoming who we are (and feeling "on the line" in the decisions we make) has been strong since we were very young.

After all, even in the best circumstances of a loving family, we begin to discover that we don't know how to go along with expected behaviours.

We discover that we don't share the expected desires and emotions of the majority around us. And we may discover this at quite a young age before we're able to talk about it.

We may or may not have role models, others like ourselves, who can help us imagine coming to viable adulthood. We may be in places or families where who we are is referred to with contempt.

Eventually, "who we are to be" becomes related to "who we love," and this, at puberty, will have consequences related to sexual acts.

Indeed, many of us, especially those who have grown up in strongly religious households, are taught to doubt our feelings and emotions from a very young age.

We come to agree that those feelings are our enemy and not to be trusted as telling us anything true about ourselves.

And in the midst of all this, Christians know of the strength of Bible verses where Jesus tells us that it is better to lose your life, but save your soul, than it is to save your life but lose your soul (Mt. 16:25).

In other words, the biblical equivalent of being "on the line," the existential issues to do with discerning who we are to be, come at us very forcefully in our youth and take many years to work through.

Here, there is a difference between a certain evangelical culture, such as the one I was brought up in, and Catholicism, which I received the grace of entering many years ago.

Evangelical culture, teaching our radical depravity after the fall, effectively freezes into permanence our inability to trust our feelings, thinking of our body as only a source of lies and inspiring a radical lack of confidence.

It tells us not to trust any natural or scientific claims.

So to claim that we are bearers of a non-pathological minority variant is automatically suspect as "the wisdom of this world," a diabolical illusion. The only thing trustworthy is the written Word of God.

This means that, for LGBTQ people from an evangelical background, the entire battle for survival of the soul is fought over "those passages": the clobber texts.

Catholic theological culture is subtly but significantly different. Everything that is created is good, even after the fall. We may be screwed up, but we are still basically good.

Desire is essentially a good thing, however, distorted by our own and other people's waywardness. Our bodies are essentially truth-tellers, bearers of the glory of God in whose image we are made; however much we may make liars of them.

Our goodness is lived out in ways which are often ignorant and always disordered; with these, we have to wrestle over a lifetime.

And this, our lifelong vulnerability to God's creative forgiveness, is something shared with everyone else so that none of us can be judges of another.

Conscience is focused on what really is

Because of this, the question of conscience in Catholic LGBTQ circles is not so much about the interpretation of "the clobber texts" as it is about what really is.

We understand that there is something about being a human — this body in a process of humanisation — that automatically and intrinsically tends to what is true.

Conscience is inherently related to what is true, and our journey is one of stepping out of rumour and falsehood into the freedom of truth.

So, the question is: Is the thing that I am discovering myself to be real or just a phase?

Then, after a time when it clearly isn't a phase, the question becomes: Is what I am discovering myself to be some sort of defect in who I'm supposed to be, something that should be "straightened out"?

Or is this what I am created and gifted to be, and so to be lived with enthusiasm and gratitude as I come to discover what it's all about?

What is true here?

If it were some sort of "defect," then any loving same-sex relationship that includes sexual acts would tip me over into becoming someone that I'm really not — a gay or lesbian person.

And I would have to hold out against that, alerted by some sort of "brain alarm." If you do "y," you will become "x."

However, at this stage, there is no credible evidence that being gay or lesbian is some sort of defect in a human being who ought to be straight.

From everything we have learned over the last 150 or so years, it seems much truer to say that we are bearers of a regularly occurring, non-pathological minority variant in the human condition.

And this has not been "deduced" by boffins in some sort of closed laboratory.

It took quite specific social and historical changes to enable a traditionally half-hidden group, its members often victims of violence, to be recognized, observed and confirmed as bearers of this non-pathological minority variant.

However, once that started to become clear, it has become ever more obvious to the public that the gay and lesbian people whom they meet, and who can be increasingly open about who we are, are not defective straight people.

LGBTQ people tend to flourish as well as anybody else when treated with the same dignity as everybody else.

Moving towards what is "authentically good"

Why is this so important to conscience, from the Catholic perspective?

Because from the Catholic perspective, there is no specifically Christian moral teaching. There is merely teaching about what is authentically good for humans.

And this means that we would have already fulfilled Catholic teaching in large part by allowing ourselves to be guided by what is true about LGBTQ people: that this is just who we are.

The next step in Catholic conscience formation would be the recognition that in ethical matters, "how we behave flows from who we are" (in Latin, agere sequitur esse).

And this, of course, is linked to the Catholic understanding of grace perfecting nature rather than abolishing it or replacing it with something different.

Our flourishing, which is what the Creator wants for us, is to be worked out by all of us, starting from what we are and not in spite of what we are.

All this is available to the Catholic conscience the moment it becomes clear that we are the bearers of an almost banal thing: a regularly occurring, non-pathological minority variant in the human condition.

Is there anything else? Does the Catholic Church have anything else to say about this variant?

Personally, I would claim that formally speaking, it doesn't. There is nothing in divine revelation concerning sexual relations between unrelated consenting adults of the same sex who also share a certain social equality.

"Nevertheless," you might properly reply, "are there not traditional claims by Roman teaching authorities? Do they not have a couple of things to say to us, one of long-standing and one very recent, which has something to do with homosexuality?"

Why, yes! Funny you should mention them.

Traditional claims of Roman teaching authorities

Going back to the second century, the first is that there is no such thing as a good same-sex sexual act.

This claim is made entirely as a negative deduction from the conviction that the only genuinely good sexual act is one between spouses open to procreation. Anything else is a defect from that good sexual act.

There is no other source than this negative deduction for the claim that a same-sex act is "intrinsically evil."

And it should be pointed out that the word "intrinsically" is not a pointer to the gravity of the act.

It is not adding a factor of increased terribleness, however much we may tend to hear it that way. It is merely saying that there is no occasion when this sort of act might be a good act since, for obvious reasons, there's no possibility that it could lead to procreation.

The second claim, in case we were to say, "But we're not trying to achieve procreation, we're sharing love and friendship," is made in a church document as recently as 1986, which I'm paraphrasing here.

"Well, your bodies are, by their very nature, aiming at procreation, and your deeply disordered desire means that you fail to tend towards your appropriate object, an act with someone of the opposite sex".

In other words: "Your tendency itself is disordered as to its object, not part of who you really are.

"You are an intrinsically heterosexual person who suffers from a grave disorder of desire called ‘same-sex attraction,' which you can fight against. And only fighting against it will make you flourish."

Roman dicasteries give no evidence for this position.

Once again, the only source for this claim about who you are is the presumption that all humans have intrinsically heterosexual bodies, and therefore anything other than heterosexual intercourse open to procreation is wrong.

None of this is taught either by the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus or St. Paul.

Furthermore, those who propose this claim about who you are have notorious difficulty in producing witnesses to the flourishing that supposedly comes from fighting "same-sex attraction."

A number of the early groups proposing "conversion therapy" folded precisely because the opposite became undeniable to them: the flourishing came in those who found themselves in loving partnerships.

Is it too much to suggest that the following is scarcely a lampoon?

"We know more than you do about who you really are. We are confident that what we know is from God, handed on to us through our tradition from the second century and solidified in the 13th.

"It is true that during that period we, along with the rest of humanity, knew little to nothing of the relationship between desire and biology, nothing of how human reproductive organs worked, indeed nothing about sexual orientation at all until the last century or so.

"Nevertheless, we are confident that it is your desire that is leading you astray from our truth."

Learning something new and genuinely true

Now, let us suppose that you have followed a Catholic conscience concerning the possibility of our learning something new and genuinely true about who we are in the midst of fallen reality.

Let us suppose that you have seen that slow, solid learning instantiated in the recognition of the non-pathological minority variant that we bear.

Let us suppose that you have recognized that creation is good, and that there is some ordered-ness toward the Creator in being a bearer of this minority variant.

Let us suppose that you have recognized the principle that grace perfects nature, and that how we act flows from who we are.

If you take on board all those Catholic things, in which you have been obedient to the Magisterium, then perhaps, like me, you will find it odd that some brethren claiming to be "the Magisterium" have an automatic right to be believed, when they behave as if speaking from God, telling you that "you must deduce who you are and how you are to behave from something you are not."

Although our very best available knowledge about Creation tells you that you are not a defective heterosexual, "God, the Creator, demands through us that you so treat yourself."

However, as "Amoris Laetitia" made clear, the Magisterium is only ever alongside and never above the conscience of the faithful. It can only ever be a sibling teaching for us, and never a paternal teaching, for no one on earth is to be called our Father.

The deliverances of the Roman dicasteries in this area are predicated either on untenable claims about who the people involved really are, on bad readings of Scripture, or some mixture of the two.

More seriously, the claims they make seek to oblige a Catholic to suspend a well-formed Catholic conscience in this area, in favour of brethren who claim to know more than we do about who we really are.

Yet, their "knowledge" in this area is only meant to be one of natural learning; it is manifestly less true to reality than what we have appropriately learned from natural sources ourselves. The implied "We know more than you who you really are" is automatically suspect as not an appropriate form of sibling teaching.

Personally, I think it would be disrespectful to church authority to insist that these deliverances are genuinely part of the Magisterium, rather than to recognize them for what they evidently are: theses of venerable antiquity maintained forcibly by Roman dicasteries long after their sell-by date was signalled by the Second Vatican Council.

Maybe it would be better to see them as temporary "instead-of-teachings"— placeholders which "worked" to uphold general norms at a time when human subjectivity, and its own forms of bodily objectivity, were little understood.

Placeholders until we can allow the one Magister, who teaches us all from within our hearts, and can never teach falsehood, time to make available to us what is true about LGBTQ people, and how to live starting from what we know.

Our one Instructor, the Christ, longs to teach us to give ourselves away in love.

And among the things he taught us, in order to make that possible, was how to distinguish between obeying the Word of God, and holding fast to human traditions that make that Word void.

Above all, what Jesus made available for us, and his Spirit still does, was and is how to receive the conscience of sons and daughters of God, heirs to the kingdom, so that we may learn freely how to follow him.

We may learn mercy and generosity starting from where we are. And to do so without being frightened of those who promote hatred and fear of our boldness in discovering what is true and bearing witness to its goodness in our lives.

True Catholicity of conscience

So what is left? Gay and lesbian persons working out for ourselves, alongside and with our pastors, how to follow Christ and what is true and good in our lives, our marriages and so on.

We must draw creatively from the most traditional general sources concerning human flourishing since there is no obvious jurisprudence relating to the newly understood reality we bring to the table.

This confidence inspires an ability to speak about these realities in the first person, unafraid of making mistakes and so learning.

So we may come gradually to un-frighten those who live under the terrible burden that they must sacrifice who they are on the altar of some deity who supposedly demands sacrifice.

Taking up our cross each day and following Jesus does not mean making such a pagan sacrifice.

It means being prepared to live truthfully and lovingly even in the midst of persecution and the threat of persecution.

It means being prepared to lose reputation, livelihood and maybe even life itself in bearing witness to how Jesus detoxifies all our places of shame.

Christ makes possible, and shares love that bears witness to God in places and ways that no sectarian could ever imagine. It is this that allows our shame to be held tenderly in love and gifts us with true catholicity of conscience.

• James Alison is a Catholic priest, theologian and scholar with a particular focus on the philosophy of René Girard. He was educated by the Dominicans at Blackfriars, Oxford and earned his doctorate from the Jesuit School of Philosophy and Theology in Brazil. He is the author of several books, including "Faith Beyond Resentment."
• First published in Outreach. Republished with permission of the author.

Alison (pictured) commented in a recent virtual conversation on the website ‘Outreach' in its monthly series of virtual talks ‘Outspoken.'

In the conversation with Fr James Martin, SJ, Alison discussed natural law and conscience, important topics for all Catholics, but especially for LGBTQ Catholics who often face arguments against them using these concepts.

"The notion of natural law is something that is absolutely essential to Christianity," Alison said.

But, he says, we must remember that part of what the Holy Spirit does is make us "participants, on a very small scale, in understanding what creation, which is much more than us, is actually about."

But Alison noted that natural law has, unfortunately, been used in some cases primarily to restrict people, especially LGBTQ people.

However, homosexuality is now seen as what Alison calls a "non-pathological minority variant in the human condition."

And from the moment it becomes clear that some people are bearers of this minority variant, "which is neither good nor bad," their way of being is "going properly to flourish starting with that, instead of in spite of that."

Becoming children of God

Alison also discussed conscience, emphasising that we are becoming children of God rather than mere servants. "I no longer call you servants…but friends," as Jesus says in the Gospel (Jn 15:15).

Alison sees this as a fundamental insight.

We are, all of us, in the process of becoming children of God.

This doesn't mean that we are perfect, but that we can learn to do things wrong and then do things better—much as a child might do under the care of a loving parent.

Alison said love plays a significant role in this process. "Love turns you into who you really are going to be," he says.

In God's eyes, "the ‘you who I'm calling you to be' has to do with how you learn to give yourself away."

Alison also spoke about what it means for LGBTQ people to encounter "discord" with some aspects of church documents and offered pastoral advice about how natural law and conscience can be understood in this context.

Sources

• Outreach

Then he smiled and said: 'We probably won't see them again the following week, but that's OK.'

I was pleased to hear that.

It is of the very nature of Catholicism that we welcome people but don't demand they conform to our expectations.

We're not a sectarian or exclusive church. The very word 'catholic' means universal, big, and embracing. I'm reminded of debates at clergy conferences about whether priests should baptise the children of non-practising Catholics. My view has always been 'yes', reach out to people, be like Jesus and welcome them.

But there's a flip side to this.

Earlier this month in La Croix, the bishop of Odienné in West Africa's Ivory Coast, Alain Clément Amiézi, complained that 'People are baptised without becoming Christian, the sacraments are given without evangelising.'

He says that 'the number of faithful who are truly committed to … the virtues of the gospel is infinitesimal.'

Speaking of African converts, he said that just being seen at church is insufficient, and that committed Christians have to break the tribal logic of social convention and be willing to critique societal norms and practices in the light of the gospel.

That requires a spirituality of faith and courage.

My purpose here is not to critique of African Christianity. You can see exactly the same superficiality in the conversion of Europe in the first millennium.

We have an entirely romanticised notion of the medieval 'ages of faith' and the notion of Ireland as 'the island of saints and scholars.'

Recently historians like Anton Wessels and Jan Romein have questioned whether Europe was ever really Christian. Wessels argues that medieval missionaries attempted to convert pagan Europe by Christianising the culture, and transforming it by re-interpreting it.

Jan Romein says that 'medieval Christianity was only a thin veneer,' a superficial overlay with people's basic pagan beliefs remaining unchanged.

This is understandable when mass baptisms followed the conversion of the local ruler or when people like the Saxons under Charlemagne were faced with the choice of either baptism or death.

The church has always embraced people with different levels of commitment

The result was that medieval 'Christendom', the combined power of church and state, dominated people's lives from birth to death. Sure, there were many people in the medieval period deeply committed to the teaching and person of Jesus and to a life of service, but they were the small minority.

Another historian writing in this vein is Frenchman Jean Delumeau, whose work focuses specifically on early modern Catholicism after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the period that still influences us today.

He says that as late as the seventeenth century, 'the intellectual and psychological climate [of Europeans] … was characterised by a profound unfamiliarity with the basics of Christianity, and by a persistent pagan mentality.'

While Christendom still prevailed, there was a thriving underworld in which sub-Christian beliefs and pagan folk practices flourished.

When enclosure and a population explosion turned the landless peasantry into the urban working class in the emerging industrial cities of the early nineteenth century, their superficial faith quickly disappeared.

Delumeau argues that the church didn't lose the working class; they were never really Christian in the first place.

Now, this may be interesting historically, but you're probably asking: what's the point? The answer: the church has always embraced people with different levels of commitment.

Actually, modern secularism has done Christianity a big favour. First, by closing down Christendom and separating church and state; and secondly, by removing the social supports that made church-going 'respectable'. People can now choose to be or not to be Catholic.

Nowadays, particularly following the sexual abuse crisis and the failure of the church to address the issues that concern our contemporaries, commitment to faith and Catholicism is seen by many as irresponsible, if not unethical.

People deeply committed to the gospel is small

In addition, to many, the church projects an unattractive, unwelcoming image and seems besotted with a narrow range of issues focusing on gender, sex, reproduction and euthanasia, leading to the impression of a closed-door, hard-nosed, uncompromising institution.

The damage done to the church by a 'boots-and-all' approach is terrible.

In this context, we should, like my PP, be welcoming people.

Yes, it's true that the number of people deeply committed to the gospel is small, but that doesn't make us judges of the lives of others.

The word 'Catholic' is derived from the Greek 'katholikos' meaning universal, of the whole, and the entire tradition is the very opposite of sectarian, particularist, or narrow. It is most truly itself when it's embracing and inclusive.

This is where I think Catholic schools have been particularly successful.

With only a tiny number of students coming from committed-Catholic households and increasing numbers of non-Catholic students (in Sydney archdiocesan schools about 25 per cent and in South Australia 44 percent), the schools face a real challenge to form an approach to life that is genuinely Christian and Catholic, yet allows room for freedom of conscience to operate.

They need to form what theologian David Tracy has called a 'catholic imagination.'

That is the whole educational ethos of the school must be founded in the Christ-like values of love, compassion, acceptance and forgiveness and on a genuinely Catholic understanding of inclusivity and freedom of conscience.

For sure, staff, students and parents need to know they are embracing a whole 'package' when they come to a Catholic school, including religious education, liturgy, retreat days and explicitly Catholic values and spirituality.

That said, these are expressed in a welcoming, embracing way; no one should have Catholicism forced on them. And here 'embracing' includes LGBTQI+ students.

Here we're back with my PP last Sunday. We welcome people, whether we see them next week or not. Just like Jesus, really!

• Paul Collins is the author of 15 books, several of which focus on church governance and Australian Catholicism.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Indeed, the institution Archbishop Okolo represents displays a breathtaking disrespect for human rights, trampling on them and believing it has the right to do so with impunity, even going so far as to threaten the victims of such gross violation of human rights that if they tell anybody about it, the punishment will be even greater.

Such was the situation of Fr Seán Fagan, a Marist priest who died in 2016.

Over his 60-year priestly ministry, Fr Seán Fagan's service to all God's holy people earned him the lifelong gratitude of those he helped.

Fr Fagan was a priest committed to the service of those he called "God's holy people".

Ambition-fuelled advancement within the church - careerism - was never his driving force - his whole focus was on mediating the prodigal love of God to all comers.

Over his 60-year priestly ministry, this service to all God's holy people earned him the life-long gratitude of those he helped, but also a fat file in the Vatican's doctrinal department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Fr Fagan never knew for sure who kept the CDF supplied with copies of his writings, comments, details of broadcasts, etc, from Ireland. But whoever they were, they were assiduous in keeping Rome appraised of the pastoral efforts of this Irish priest and not for any positive, affirming reasons.

Transgression

This exercise in spying and reporting went on for many years until 2008, when the CDF lost all reason and pursued Fr Fagan with a determination that trampled all over his natural and objective rights.

His transgression? In a letter to the editor of this paper, he tangentially touched upon the matter of women's ordination as one of several solutions to the shortage of priests.

But this was only one transgression in Fr Fagan's list of "sins".

He believed in the full acceptance of LGBT people, sacraments for married couples in second relationships, the right of couples to decide on the most helpful form of birth control, the full participation of women in church life and continual ecumenical dialogue.

As it is unlikely the prefect of the CDF was reading The Irish Times, the Irish spy was very active and attentive in supplying copies of Fr Fagan's work.

But Fr Fagan was a bigger and better man.

He refused to be browbeaten.

For him, consistent with the church tradition, conscience reigned supreme.

A formed and informed conscience was the continuing work of a mature adult, not the infantile uncritical appropriation of what the "pope says" or "the church says".

Conscience

He refused to write to The Irish Times and withdraw his comment, as the CDF directed, because, in conscience, he could not.

For his fidelity to conscience, he was coerced into silence for the remainder of his life with the threat of dismissal from both priesthood and his congregation if anyone found out, even without his co-operation. Continue reading

• Angela Hanley is an author of What Happened to Fr Seán Fagan? Published by Columba Books

Fr Scott Nolan recently informed Kent County District Court Judge Sara Smolenski she should not receive communion at his church.

The Diocese of Grand Rapids said it supports the decision.

"No community of faith can sustain the public contradiction of its beliefs by its own members".

"This is especially so on matters as central to Catholic life as marriage, which the Church has always held, and continues to hold, as a sacred covenant between one man and one woman," the diocese said in its statement.

Smolenski was baptised in the parish church, educated in the parish school. Her parents were married there and she recently donated $7000 to the building fund.

Smolenski said that St Stephen church helped form her faith.

"My faith is a huge part of who I am, but it is the church that made that faith, the very church where he is taking a stance and saying ho-ho, not you," she said.

Smolenski married her life long partner in a civil ceremony in 2016.

Open about her sexuality, she had never been denied communion before.

On November 17, 2019, Nolan offered her Holy Communion, however on November 23 Nolan phoned her to inform her of his new rule.

Nolan has not responded to media who want to know what brought about the change.

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a professor at Manhattan College who studies Catholic ecclesiology, is calling the communion denial a "very violent act".

"To deny a parishioner who approaches the altar for communion ... is to replace her conscience with his own, and to usurp the mercy of God," Imperatori-Lee told HuffPost.

"I can't think of anything more antithetical to ministry than that."

While Catholic teaching on same-sex marriage is clear, some are asking if LGBTQ people are being singled out.

Lisa Sowie Cahill, a theology professor at Boston College says it seems the reason for a Catholic priest denying someone communion is more about sexuality than any other issue.

The Church does little about those who contradict Church teachings on e.g. environmental justice, welcoming the stranger or the death penalty she says.

Source

• Huffington Post

This is certainly the case with Newman, a 19th-century English intellectual giant and Catholic priest who at the height of his very considerable public renown left a distinguished post at Oxford to start a school and work among the poor of Birmingham.

His groundbreaking theological and literary contributions led Pope Paul VI to call Vatican II "Newman's Council" and James Joyce to say that Newman was the finest English stylist of the 19th century.

Newman didn't write a theological treatise on conscience, but the theme played a prominent role in some of his greatest works — especially the Apologia Pro Vita Sua (his classic account of his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism); Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent and Before Newman, the Catholic theological tradition affirmed a two-part, integrated understanding of conscience.

First, conscience referred to an inalienable and general human orientation to seek truth, do good and shun evil.

Second, conscience also referred to practical and specific moral judgments about something that has been done or is to be done.

Newman adapted this tradition in a distinctive way.

He recast the notion of conscience as a general orientation by emphasizing more the connection of conscience to freedom, responsibility and belief in God.

"Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts … I shall drink — to the Pope, if you please — still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards."

Newman found classic proofs for the existence of God to be wanting.

By contrast, his personalist and felt experience of conscience provided all the "proof" he needed.

He said of this experience: "When I obey it, I feel a satisfaction; when I disobey, a soreness — just like that I feel in pleasing or offending some revered friend.

The echo implies a voice, the voice a speaker.

That speaker I love and fear."

In turn, Newman connected the practical judgment of conscience to his vivid sense that, in concrete moral matters, there is always an exception to the rule.

Conservative Catholics have praised Newman's writing on conscience for its emphasis on truth: The truth that Newman found in becoming a Catholic and the truth that he fought to defend against the relativizing forces of 19th-century philosophical liberalism.

Similarly, conservatives have praised his rejection within the church of a singular reliance on what he called "private judgment" or conscience.

But this conservative appreciation of Newman has often overlooked how he situated conscience within a richly personalist, affective, social and historical world.

Indeed, he rejected a singular emphasis on a subjectivist, "private judgment."

But, at the same time, he affirmed an indispensable role for conscience in the life of the church when he said: "Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide … ."

Here Newman anticipates a mutuality of which Francis has similarly said: "We should not even think, therefore, that 'thinking with the church' means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church….No; it is the experience of 'holy mother the hierarchical church' … the church as the people of God, pastors and people together."

Moreover, Newman's most famous statement on conscience — "Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts … I shall drink — to the Pope, if you please — still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards" — has found disfavor among Catholics favoring a strong role for the infallibility of the church and the pope. Continue reading

Not only did he live in a very different time, but his day-to-day existence was quite different from what most of us experience.

We should be careful, though, about being too quick to dismiss his example.

Newman, like all of the saints, is perennially relevant because holiness never goes out of style.

In light of his feast and in celebration of his canonization, here are five ways Newman remains relevant to the world today:

1. He prioritized the education of the lay faithful

   Throughout his life, Newman had a real concern for education.

   He thought it was particularly important that the lay faithful—not just clergy—have a strong understanding of the reasons the church taught what it did. Newman promoted various educational efforts, and this legacy has been preserved through his being named the patron saint of Catholic campus ministries at public universities.

   Thus, thousands, perhaps even millions of U.S. Catholics have experienced the formative years of their intellectual and spiritual development at Newman Centers on college campuses. When adult Catholics think about when they made a personal commitment to their faith—something beyond simply making their parents happy—their mind very likely turns to Newman.

2. He fostered community

   The generation of Americans who are coming of age now highly value community.

   Newman recognized that in the Christian faith, we need the support of others—not only to steer us away from erroneous ideas about God but also to sustain us through the difficult moments that inevitably come our way.

   He was celibate, but this does not mean that he was devoid of love. He developed several close friendships, and in his voluminous collection of letters (now digitally archived in the NINS Digital Collections), we can see just how significant these relationships were in his spiritual journey.

   For young Catholics, the communal life that Newman fostered is a shining example of the kind of shared witness that is sorely needed in our world today.

3. He stood up for the truth

   Newman wrote extensively about conscience—its role in our coming to know God as well as the moral imperative of listening to the promptings of conscience.

   As applied to his life, he firmly believed that he was bound in conscience to adhere to the truth regardless of the personal costs.

   For instance, when Newman, ordained an Anglican priest in 1825, became convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Christ as the ark of salvation, he felt compelled to enter that communion, even though this decision cost him close friendships and meant giving up his fellowship at Oxford. Continue reading

• Image: America

I'm sure there were homosexual people in my classroom or community.

Possibly even in my extended family.

But they were not 'out'.

Even the prevailing culture did not engage with homosexuality: growing up in middle America in the '70s and '80s was still far more Happy Days than Glee.

To say I grew up in a Catholic enclave wouldn't be far wrong.

• I went to Catholic primary school, where my mother also taught.
• My dad was a Eucharistic minister in our parish.
• After attending an all-girls Catholic high school, I earned a BA in political science at a Catholic university, then spent a gap year teaching at a Catholic primary school.
• I met my husband at World Youth Day '91.
• Before we married, I headed back to university for a masters degree in theology and got my first proper job working as the NSW state youth coordinator for the Society of St Vincent de Paul.

As a legislator, I have voted for and promoted legislation that accords rights, such as adoption, to homosexual people.

I have publicly stated that I don't agree with the Church's teaching on homosexuality.

How did such a good Catholic girl arrive at what appears to be a non-Catholic position on this issue?

The first people I knew who acknowledged their homosexuality were fellow Catholics at university, living away from home for the first time, struggling with a very real question of who they were and how they should live.

My lack of knowledge about homosexuality meant I had very few presuppositions to confront.

I came to the questions of how to respond to homosexual people armed not with Vatican teachings and cultural assumptions, but simply with the Gospel message of 'love one another as I have loved you'.

What I witnessed were people who suffered greatly because of the judgement of their family and community; friends who were more acquainted with loneliness than with romantic relationships; devout Catholics, some with a true call to vocation, grieving because their own church had no place for them.

I realised no one would choose an orientation that brought such misery.

In time I came to ask what the Church taught on homosexuality, and why. Richard P. McBrien's seminal tome, Catholicism, explained the Vatican teachings acknowledging the validity of homosexual orientation while condemning homosexual activity.

McBrien also outlined other theological points of view, including the argument that homosexual acts are morally neutral, because the morality of a sexual act depends on the quality of the relationship of the people involved; or that homosexual acts are preferable to living a life where one can never give expression to one's sexuality.

Another significant influence on my thinking also came from my studies of Catholic doctrine: the inviolability of conscience.

Conscience is a tricky area when one wants to claim it as a basis for disagreeing with the Church's official teaching. It often leads to accusations of being a 'cafeteria Catholic', choosing only the parts of Church teaching you want to agree with. Continue reading

• Kristina Keneally is a member of the NSW Labor Party. She was the 42nd Premier of New South Wales.
• Image: West Australian

Ireland's National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP) and their health minister Simon Harris have appeared at loggerheads after the doctors' group said that onward referral of a patient should not be compulsory.

A motion insisting on a conscientious objection provision was passed at a recent meeting of the NAGP.

The legal situation around conscientious objection and referral in New Zealand states that doctors, without necessarily giving a specific name, must inform the patient that the service can be provided from another healthcare provider.

A High Court case in 2010 upheld the right of New Zealand doctors to opt out of giving advice to patients seeking an abortion.

It found guidelines went too far in requiring doctors to provide information about abortions themselves and refer women to another doctor.

Dr Maitiu O Tuathail, President of the NAGP, had argued in an op-ed for TheJournal.ie last week that "being pro-choice is one thing, but providing an abortion service is another".

The New Zealand approach, he said, provided a workable solution which respects the views of all.

Life Site has reported that The Pro-Life Campaign has described as "very revealing and significant" the results of a post-referendum survey published on GPBuddy.ie which shows that a majority of GPs in Ireland have a conscientious objection to providing abortion and do not intend to provide medical abortion services in their practice.

The survey also found that over 75% of responding GPs (936 GPs took part in the survey) do not think abortion up to 12 weeks should be GP-led. 68% said they would not 'opt in' to such a service.

Source

• thejournal.ie
• lifesitenews.com
• Image: americamagazine.org

This includes hospitals with a Catholic character, the Irish prime minister says.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar says doctors, nurses and midwives could opt out of performing procedures on conscience grounds.

If they want to keep government funding, entire institutions will not have that option, however.

Irish citizens voted by a landslide in May to liberalise the country's abortion laws.

The new law currently being drafted will allow abortions in and up to the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.

Varadkar says the new law will keep certain aspects of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act of 2013.

This permitted individual medical professionals to refuse to perform an abortion if it clashed with their conscience.

It also allowed abortions up to 24 weeks in extreme medical cases. This is at least two weeks past the point newborns have survived a premature birth.

Last month nearly two in three Irish voters opted to repeal the eighth amendment to the constitution, which recognised the equal right to life of both the pregnant woman and the unborn.

At the time, Varadkar, who had campaigned for a repeal, welcomed the result. "What we have seen today is the culmination of a quiet revolution [that has been taking place] for the past 10 or 20 years."

Source

• BBC
• Irish National Review
• The Guardian
• Image: CNN.com

"Conscience," he said, "always has God's desire for the human person as its ultimate reference point.

"The contemporary world risks confusing the primacy of conscience, which is always to be respected, with the exclusive autonomy of the individual" even when the individual's decisions impact his or her marriage and family life, the pope said.

Repeating a remark he had made to the Pontifical Academy for Life, Pope Francis said, "There are those who even speak of 'egolatry,' that is, the true worship of the ego on whose altar everything, including the dearest affections, are sacrificed."

Confusing conscience with selfishness "is not harmless," the pope said. "This is a 'pollution' that corrodes souls and confounds minds and hearts, producing false illusions."

He said the Catholic Church must strengthen its programmes "to respond to the desire for family that emerges in the soul of the young generations" and to help couples once they are married.

"It is important that spouses, parents, not be left alone, but accompanied in their commitment to applying the Gospel to the concreteness of life.

"In the domestic reality, sometimes there are concrete knots to be addressed with prudent conscience on the part of each," he said.

Diagnosing problems in the church's outreach to married couples and families, Pope Francis had written, "We have long thought that simply by stressing doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace, we were providing sufficient support to families, strengthening the marriage bond and giving meaning to marital life."

"We also find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations," he wrote in 'Amoris Laetitia.' "We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them."

The meeting, sponsored by the Italian bishops' conference, was focused on 'conscience and norm'.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: mltestblog

His comments aimed to help the bishops explore their conference theme: "The Gospel of Love between Conscience".

Drawing on Amoris Laetitia (AL), his 2015 post-synodial document, Francis defended AL's stance on conscience-based decisions.

This is the first time Francis publicly defended AL, which has been called "heretical" by some of the church heirarchy and faithful.

"The family born of marriage creates fruitful bonds which reveal themselves to be the most effective antidote against the individualism that currently runs rampant; however, along the journey ... there are situations that require arduous choices, which must be made with rectitude," he said.

Citing AL37, Francis stressed the distinction between conscience, where God reveals himself, and ego, that thinks it can do as it pleases.

"The contemporary world risks confusing the primacy of conscience, which is always to be respected, with the exclusive autonomy of the individual with respect to the relations that he entertains in life," Francis explained.

"In the very depths of each one of us, there is a place wherein the Mystery reveals itself and illuminates the person, making the person the protagonist of his story.

"Conscience, as the II Vatican Council recalls, is this ‘most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths.'

"To the Christian falls the task of being vigilant, so that in this sort of tabernacle is no want of divine grace which illuminates and strengthens married love and parental mission.

"Grace fills the amphorae of human hearts with an extraordinary capacity for gift, renewing for the families of today the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana."

Francis told the bishops that priests must inform Catholic consciences "but not replace them, so Christian faithful are capable of 'full moral agency'".

In making these statements, Francis aimed to help the bishops decide how to respond to the desire for family that emerges in the soul of the young generations.

He also sought to help the Conference find ways to help the faithful assimilate and develop AL's content and style, as well as the means to contribute to pastoral outreach to families and support them on their journey through life.

This includes helping all families to live the joy of the Gospel and be active in the community.

Source

• America
• Vatican Radio
• the star.com
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

The sixteenth century Catholic martyr and the nineteenth century convert and confessor; the witty teller of merry tales and the seemingly sensitive controversialist.

With a second glance, the viewer sees what they share: Both of them were born in London (actually in the City of London); both attended the University of Oxford; if More was "made for friendship" in Erasmus's famous line, Newman selected "Cor ad cor loquitor" (Heart speaks to heart) for his motto as Cardinal, emphasizing the bonds of friendship and personal influence.

They shared a desire for holiness and seeking out truth; they are both Catholic (More by birth and nurture in a Catholic family; Newman by adult conversion); More and Newman defended the truth with their pens, taking on the subjects of their day (heresy's attack on Catholic teaching in More's era; liberalism's attack on religious truth in Newman's).

Most importantly, for both of them, the true Catholic understanding of conscience was crucial in their lives.

For More, following his conscience led him to martyrdom; for Newman, following his conscience led him to become a Catholic.

More and Newman revealed their understanding of conscience's purpose, authority, and source in defense of the authority of the Church's magisterium and the role of the papacy in the Catholic Church.

While they are often cited as defenders of individual conscience, they also stressed the source of conscience's authority in each individual: God's law, natural and revealed—and the Church's role in teaching and defending that law.

By what authority?

Rather than consulting Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons or Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Catholics would do well to read St. Thomas More's own words about conscience and authority in his letters and other works.

In For All Seasons: Selected Letters of Thomas More (Scepter Publishers), edited by Stephen Smith or The Last Letters of Thomas More, edited by Alvaro de Silva (Eerdmans), readers may grow to appreciate how convinced More was that his conscience, responding to Catholic teaching, was leading him in the right direction. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• The Catholic World Report, article by Stephanie A. Mann, the author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.

But you're a loyal Democrat. Or perhaps instead, you're a loyal Republican. Never mind that. Your political affiliation is not that important.

What's crucially important is your affiliation with Jesus, and your commitment to his campaign - to his divine plan.

Are you voting for Jesus Christ?

Oh, but Jesus is not running for election. Oh, but yes he is!

He is running as an unborn baby threatened by abortion, a starving child, a poor mother whose resources have run out, a war-weary desperate father with five children, a hard-working undocumented immigrant, a Christian refugee fleeing ISIS, a Central American teenager seeking asylum from gang violence, a heroin addicted young man, a little child drinking polluted water, a lonely old woman with meager resources, a young sweatshop worker, a homeless man, a trafficked girl trapped in prostitution, and a seriously ill elderly lady informed that a physician is available to assist her in committing suicide.

Oh yes, Jesus is surely campaigning - for the vulnerable and poor, for the care of creation and for peace on earth.

However, sad to say, his party - the human race - is not leading in the polls. Most wealthy individuals, corporations and government office holders are far more interested in holding unto their riches and power than in voting for, and working for, the human race.

Consequently, countless members of the human race continue to suffer from war, war preparation, poverty, hunger, starvation, homelessness, unemployment, underemployment, environmental degradation, slave labor, trafficking, capital punishment, physician-assisted suicide and abortion.

The 2016 U.S. elections are of crucial importance not only for America, but for the human race. Because the U.S. is the world's strongest military and economic power, the November elections are of great importance to the inhabitants of planet earth. That is exactly why it is crucial for Christians to enter the voting booth with a well-formed conscience based on Gospel values.

The compassionate integrity - or lack thereof - of the next president and members of Congress, will significantly determine how well, or how poorly, the human race does in the next several years.

"Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" (go to http://bit.ly/1kHJsse), produced by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is a very good election guide to help Catholics, all other Christians, and people of good will to make the best moral choices. The bishops are urging us to read the entire document.

In this document the bishops teach that as each person strives to form her/his conscience, it is essential "to embrace goodness and truth. For Catholics, this begins with a willingness and openness to seek the truth and what is right by studying Sacred Scripture and the teaching of the Church as contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."

The bishops clarify that while we may choose different ways to respond to compelling social problems, "We cannot differ on our moral obligation to help build a more just and peaceful world through morally acceptable means, so that the weak and vulnerable are protected and human rights and dignity are defended."

May voters everywhere commit to voting for candidates who are most likely to work for the common good of the entire human race - especially for the poor, vulnerable, war-torn, and planet earth - our common home.

As faithful disciples of Jesus, let us never forget that when it comes to political elections, as well as in all matters, the Gospel trumps everything!

• Tony Magliano is an internationally syndicated social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings about Catholic social teaching. His keynote address, "Advancing the Kingdom of God in the 21st Century," has been well received by diocesan and parish gatherings from Santa Clara, Calif. to Baltimore, Md. Tony can be reached at tmag@zoominternet.net.

To be eligible to sell the emergency contraceptive pill, commonly referred to as the morning-after pill, pharmacists have to complete a course.

Owner Elsa Norvil says she will not do this, for personal reasons.

"I am not prepared to supply the pill over the counter, as I see conception as a potential life, with a soul, so I will not sell it as I consider this as ending another's life."

"I am prepared to dispense it on doctors' instructions and believe this acknowledges other's rights to access this service."

"There are alternatives in place and it is an ethical right whether or not one chooses to stock or dispense the emergency contraceptive pill," Norvil said.

Wairoa people say they respect Norvil's views but because hers is the only pharmacy in town, other options need to be offered.

Some residents are concerned that limited local access could be contributing to Wairoa's high teenage pregnancy rate.

Wairoa has no family planning facilities so the morning-after pill can be obtained only by doctor's prescription or from school-based health services.

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: www.cfah.org

Leslie Gauthier posted the letter she received from her "ob-gyn" from Jackson, Mississippi, on Facebook.

The Catholic doctor stated:" I am sending you this letter to notify you that as a Catholic physician, I can no longer prescribe any form of contraception (birth control) since continuing to do so puts me in a position of co-operating and promoting."

The doctor also stated she would "work to use alternative medications" rather than prescribing birth control pills to treat conditions like acne and period pain.

The letter stated the Catholic doctor would be happy to help Ms Gauthier learn to use "natural family planning" as opposed to "artificial birth control".

However, if Ms Gauthier wants any form of contraception, she'll have to see a different provider.

"I've seen [this doctor] on and off for at least five years and this has never been a problem," Ms Gauthier told Cosmopolitan.com.

"I've been taking birth control for non-contraceptive reasons in some form or another since I was 13 years old. So [the doctor] knows it's not fully for contraceptive reasons."

She says that even her mother, who is a "devout Catholic", considers the new policy to be "ridiculous"​.

Ms Gauthier was able to reschedule her appointment with a nurse practitioner at the same facility.

But she said she still feels judged and betrayed by a professional whom she had come to trust with her medical care.

The Jackson, Mississippi-based clinic is not affiliated with a Catholic institution.

It is legal in the United States for doctors to refuse to perform any service if they feel it conflicts with their moral beliefs.

Sources

• Cosmopolitan.com
• Image: Paleoforwomen

While the document does not mention Communion for such people who are baptised, it calls for their integration into the Church community, while "avoiding every occasion of scandal".

The synod fathers noted that the parties in a divorce may not be equally to blame and the Church must consider this.

The final document reiterates the recommendations of St John Paul II in Familaris Consortio in looking at the reasons why people might have left a first marriage.

"Therefore, while upholding the general norm, it's necessary to recognise that the responsibility for certain actions or decisions is not the same in all cases," the document continued.

"Pastoral discernment, taking account of the correctly formed consciences of people, must take up these situations.

"The consequences of the acts committed are also not the same in all cases."

Suggesting use of what is called the "internal forum", the document states that priests can help remarried Catholics "in becoming conscious of their situation before God" and then deciding how to move forward.

" . . . The necessary conditions should be guaranteed of humility, discretion, and love of the Church and its teachings in the sincere seeking of the will of God and in the wish to give a more perfect response to it," it added.

The way the synod fathers treated the overall issue is seen as leaving the door open for further development of Church teaching on the subject.

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, a leading progressive voice at the synod, called the document an "historic step".

Several synod prelates have said they expect Pope Francis to develop themes of the gathering in his own document sometime in the future.

All the paragraphs in the synod final document received the necessary two-thirds majority vote to be accepted.

But the most contentious paragraph - number 85 dealing with response to divorced and remarried people - only did this by one vote (178-80).

Among other issues discussed in the document were respect for homosexual people, welcome for co-habiting couples, contraception, supporting families in difficulty and the welfare of children.

Sources

• Crux Now
• National Catholic Reporter
• Associated Press
• The Tablet
• The Tablet
• Image: Fox News

Speaking to media at the synod on the family in Rome, Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich said he had always respected the inviolability of people's consciences.

"I try to help people along the way," Archbishop Cupich said.

"And people come to a decision in good conscience."

"Then our job with the Church is to help them move forward and respect that," he said.

The archbishop added that homosexuals are human beings and they too have consciences.

"My role as a pastor is to help them discern what the role of God is by looking at the objective moral teaching of the Church and yet at the same time helping them through a period of discernment to understand what God is calling them to at that point," said the archbishop.

"I think that it's for everybody," he said.

Archbishop Cupich also stressed that God's mercy and grace trigger conversion, "rather than having it the other way around as though you're only going to get mercy if you have the conversion".

The archbishop told a story he said a priest had told him of celebrating a funeral for a young man who had committed suicide.

The man's mother, he said, was divorced and remarried and also "very angry" at God and the Church over what had happened.

When she came forward for Communion at the funeral Mass, she folded her arms to indicate she wanted to receive a blessing.

The priest said to her: "No, today you have to receive."

"She went back to her pew and wept uncontrollably," said the archbishop.

"She then came back to visit with the priest and began reconciliation."

"Her heart was changed," Archbishop Cupich said.

"She did have her [first] marriage annulled; her [second] marriage is now in the Church."

"But it was because that priest looked for mercy and grace to touch her heart," he said.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Catholic Weekly

Theologians, philosophers and scholars issued the appeal in the American journal "First Things".

Among the signatories are academics from the Pontificial John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, as well as German philosopher Robert Spaemann and Swiss ethicist Martin Rhonheimer.

The appeal claims the paragraph is contrary to the Church's magisterium and could lead to confusion among the faithful.

At issue is paragraph 137 of the Instrumentum Laboris, issued earlier this year.

The paragraph states that two principal points pertaining to Humanae Vitae need to be brought together.

These are the role of the informed conscience and the objective moral norm.

"Combining the two, under the regular guidance of a competent spiritual guide, will help married people make choices which are humanly fulfilling and ones which conform to God's will," the document states.

Signatories to the First Things appeal believe the paragraph assigns absolute primacy to the individual conscience in the selection of the means of birth control, even against the teaching of the Church's magisterium.

They add that there is a risk that such primacy could be extended to other areas like abortion and euthanasia.

Writing in L'Espresso, Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister stated that "the split between the individual conscience and the magisterium of the Church is analogous to that which separates pastoral practice from doctrine".

Magister pointed to comments by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, last month.

"We may not deceive the people when it comes to the sacramentality of marriage, its indissolubility, its openness toward the child, and the fundamental complementarity of the two sexes," Cardinal Muller said in Regensburg.

"Pastoral care must keep in view the eternal salvation and it should not try to be superficially pleasing according to the wishes of the people."

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Synod Instrumentum Laboris
• Image: CTS Books

Even by that standard, the fracas surrounding Pope Francis' meeting with Kim Davis last week, which broke out immediately after his massively successful US trip, sets a new standard.

Without necessarily blaming the pope's own media team, which seemingly was caught as off-guard as everyone else, there have been three separate breakdowns in communications strategy:

• Apparently believing (or perhaps just hoping) that the pope's brief encounter with the Kentucky clerk wouldn't leak out.
• Not being prepared to respond immediately when the news did break, thereby creating an interpretive vacuum.
• Issuing a belated statement saying the pope did not intend to endorse Davis' position "in all its particular and complex aspects," but leaving unresolved precisely what he did mean by it.

One predictable consequence is that just as the past 48 hours were consumed by speculation over who put the pope up to the meeting, the next 48 will probably be marked by conspiracy theories as to who put him up to issuing the statement.

Another is that liberals will take a maximal reading of the statement, suggesting the pope has disavowed Davis, while conservatives will argue it simply means Francis hasn't written her a blank check. Perhaps intentionally, the brief text could lend itself to either interpretation.

For a pope who by rights should be basking in the after-glow of a bravura outing to Cuba and the United States, it's a fairly depressing scenario.

Aside from Machiavellian subplots and political spin, there is one serious conclusion to be drawn from the mess: There is now an urgent need for the Catholic Church to elaborate on precisely how it understands the right, and the limits, of conscientious objection. Continue reading

Sources

• Image: YouTube
• John L. Allen Jr., associate editor of Crux and specializes in coverage of the Vatican.