bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2005-06-07 11:29 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2005-06-07 11:29 pm
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Catholics: What the Vatican doesn't want you to know
I just wrote this as a response to a question in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
poodler's journal and thought I'd also post it here for the sake of my friends who don't necessarily read his journal.
There is in fact a doctrine of the Catholic Church that in many respects counterbalances the authority of the Pope; it's called the "primacy of the individual conscience". In other words, when a person's "well-formed conscience" is in conflict with the pronouncements of Rome, conscience reigns supreme.
Of course, the folks in power will try to weasel their way around it by saying that a "well-formed" conscience would never be in disagreement with Rome, by definition -- but that is absurd on its face, for if that were the case there would be no need to even state this doctrine.
In all honesty, however much "traditional" Catholics and the busybodies at the Vatican howl and whine against it, the tendency of individual Catholics to pick and choose what they believe (within limits) is in my humble opinion (as a "cafeteria Catholic" myself) both necessary and desirable. The Church has come up with some confounding twists of doctrine that are not logically consistent, and the only way to restore sanity is to discard one or the other bit of incompatible teaching.
Oh, and by the way, for many years the Catholic Church regarded the separation of church and state as evil (and for all I know may still do so). Kind of makes Catholic faith and American citizenship incompatible. It caused a lot of problems for John Kennedy during his campaign for President (as the first and, if I recall correctly, only Roman Catholic ever to hold the office) and it was necessary for him to come down firmly on the side of separation of church and state to secure his election. Once more, the primacy of the individual conscience makes the position of American Catholics somewhat more tenable.
From what I've heard the Church in South America has led the way in discarding these irrelevancies while still maintaining a core faith. In North America and even more profoundly in Europe it is the faith itself that suffers from these things -- in Europe, once the cradle of Catholicism, the Church is all but dead. Africa is another story. Whether Catholic or Anglican, the Church in Africa tends to follow its leadership blindly even when doctrine is nonsensical or outright life-threatening (as with the prohibition on condom use in the face of AIDS).
poodler's journal and thought I'd also post it here for the sake of my friends who don't necessarily read his journal.There is in fact a doctrine of the Catholic Church that in many respects counterbalances the authority of the Pope; it's called the "primacy of the individual conscience". In other words, when a person's "well-formed conscience" is in conflict with the pronouncements of Rome, conscience reigns supreme.
Of course, the folks in power will try to weasel their way around it by saying that a "well-formed" conscience would never be in disagreement with Rome, by definition -- but that is absurd on its face, for if that were the case there would be no need to even state this doctrine.
In all honesty, however much "traditional" Catholics and the busybodies at the Vatican howl and whine against it, the tendency of individual Catholics to pick and choose what they believe (within limits) is in my humble opinion (as a "cafeteria Catholic" myself) both necessary and desirable. The Church has come up with some confounding twists of doctrine that are not logically consistent, and the only way to restore sanity is to discard one or the other bit of incompatible teaching.
Oh, and by the way, for many years the Catholic Church regarded the separation of church and state as evil (and for all I know may still do so). Kind of makes Catholic faith and American citizenship incompatible. It caused a lot of problems for John Kennedy during his campaign for President (as the first and, if I recall correctly, only Roman Catholic ever to hold the office) and it was necessary for him to come down firmly on the side of separation of church and state to secure his election. Once more, the primacy of the individual conscience makes the position of American Catholics somewhat more tenable.
From what I've heard the Church in South America has led the way in discarding these irrelevancies while still maintaining a core faith. In North America and even more profoundly in Europe it is the faith itself that suffers from these things -- in Europe, once the cradle of Catholicism, the Church is all but dead. Africa is another story. Whether Catholic or Anglican, the Church in Africa tends to follow its leadership blindly even when doctrine is nonsensical or outright life-threatening (as with the prohibition on condom use in the face of AIDS).