He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them; he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father. And we have seen Christ's commandments through both Scripture and Tradition, the two sources of Revelation.
Furthermore, try to truly understand the nature of fatherhood, try to understand that both male and female, both man and woman, were designed by God for different vocations, different callings. But they are to work together. In the mayhem of the modern world, with the indoctrination of Darwinism and Socialism, people begin to care little about society and their place in society, and a lot about themselves and how to better themselves alone.
But that is not the way God intended man to work. It is clear from Scripture, from Tradition, and from history how the nature of males and females incline them towards specific and even sex-oriented tasks for the common good of people, and not merely people of their own ilk or sex. Look at the Congress. Does a male representative only represent the males among his constituents? If he does, I pray that both men and women vote him out of office. Does a wealth congressman only represent wealthy constituents?
If he does, I pray that both rich and poor vote him out of office? A good representative represents that good of his constituents. So also, the man works within his vocation and the woman works within hers, both for the sanctity of souls, both together within the nature of their individual sexes and within their own individual talents. It is this modern mess that muddles everything, and makes people think that everyone can be and should be everything for themselves--the popular blunder of ol' Mr.
As I have said time and again, when certain responses here have become so tunnel-visioned with anti-patriarchy and anti-fatherhood comments, which come under a shallow and foolish guise of being "pro-woman" which is really being anti-woman and anti-feminine.
Even Our Lord wants us to understand the distinctions between men and women, as He responds to the Pharisees, "Have you not read, that he who made man from the beginning, made them male and female?
The author's conclusion that "conscience" and "heart" in modern terms are equivalents is not correct in my opinion. Such a conclusion would be correct only if one were to remove the dogma of Original Sin from Traditional Christianity , jettisoning concupiscence and the effects of the Fall.
Without boring the readers as to why the conclusion using plain simple language, is that people often act out, rationalizing or ignoring their conscience. To say that God judges the conscience makes as much sense as God judging gravity. Folks have a tendency of tripping and falling down, or sometimes jumping without regard to the gravity I am really simplifying here. Point is, its the Heart-where all of this actually goes on within the Person is very distinctly different from Conscience.
For conscience is one of many "inputs" in the realm of the Heart. The Lord judges the Heart. If I may digress, its likely that this misunderstanding is a contributing factor to the denial of sin by many of our coreligionists, because they equate conscience with the heart. Totally, ignoring the Tradition which states that it is everyone's responsibility to seek Truth and better form their own conscience our life is a journey in Christ.
In my humble opinion one is living a lie if they seek to ignore the Teachings of the Church, preferring to opt for their homemade version Tradition describes this as a poorly formed conscience of invincible ignorance. I suspect, that with this statement, some will be lifted off their chairs. Scripture tell us unequivocally that God is Love. In my opinion, the reason for the difference with Protestantism generally, is that they tend to reject Tradition.
Episcopalians and Anglicans excepted here. Additionally, there are seven important Deuterocanonical books that are missing from all their Authorized Scriptures, that in my opinion would clarify their misunderstanding.
But its not "Scripture" to the Protestant. Sad in my opinion Just my opinion, in The Risen Christ,. James Addison. Rydberg, I am confused by two points in your comments and would appreciate any clarification you might provide: 1. You claim that the author "concludes" that conscience and heart in modern terms are equivalents. In my reading of the article, I found just the opposite.
I believe the author actually offers a nuanced discussion of both heart and conscience, referencing Old and New Testaments and the Council to elucidate similarities and differences between the two. How do you come to your claim that the author concludes equivalency? Regarding the Lord's judgment, your comments seem to imply that it the heart, and only the heart that is judged.
Have I understood your position? Again, I believe that the author -- with reference to Scripture -- justifies a broader understanding of the Lord's judgment. While you generously describe your comments as "just my opinion", I believe the criticism you offer ought to be accompanied by a more careful explanation of the faults or gaps you identify. I look forward to your reply. William Rydberg. James-I respect your opinion, as I see it I have commented, Don't know if you are a coreligionist, but I have always found the CCC an excellent primary resource.
Take care Jn Happy Easter, I think ditching the doctrine of Original Sin as it relates to the story of Adam and Eve is a wonderful idea because it fosters misogyny in the church. Lisa-Take that up with the Trinity, not me Sandi Sinor. William, As you know, it is not God who defined the doctrine of original sin. It was a human being, a 4th century male human being, a brilliant, but very fallible human being who had not the benefit of the scientific body of knowledge upon which we fallible human beings can draw upon today.
I'm sure there is much we have wrong and that there will continue to be breakthroughs in knowledge, scientific and others, throughout human history. When those breakthroughs are made, the sensible thing to do is to re-examine "doctrine" secular and religious that was based on incomplete knowledge and refine and re-define where called for.
Tough to do for people who claim that they have never been wrong and cannot be wrong because all of their doctrines are essentially defined by God. Although some think that human beings can read God's mind, can channel God's thoughts into "infallible" teachings, I am not among them. Augustine can be excused, due to his lack of scientific knowledge - geological, of how the earth was formed, astronomical, of the universe, biological, of evolution - no knowledge of cosmology.
The men who run the Catholic church today do not have that excuse. The men today do teach that the creation story is not to be read literally. They don't, unlike some fundamentalist christian groups, claim that the universe was fully formed in six, 24 hour days. They know that Adam simply represents "man" and Eve represents "woman" and that there was no single first couple that disobeyed God at the urgings of a talking snake.
The story is rich in meaning, but it cannot be read literally. If it is read literally, much of the rich meaning is lost. However, the men who define church teachings have an interesting habit of picking and choosing scripture passages to interpret more literally, that serve to uphold their own "authority" and their own interpretations of selected bible passages, often somewhat self-serving interpretations. Proof-texting is alive and well in Rome. Throughout church history the men who run the church have held on tightly to Augustine's interpretation, his definition of "original sin" based on a literal interpretation of the ancient Hebrew scriptures of Genesis.
As you surely know, there are two versions of the creation story in Genesis. In one, the first humans are created at the same time in the same way by God. In the other, the man is made first, and the woman is made later, from the man's rib. This leads to an interpretation that women are of less importance than man.
Women were created so that the male would not be lonely, and she was not created individually by God, but created out of the man's body.. Unsurprisingly, the men who have run the church, including recent popes, prefer the version of Genesis that has woman made from Adam's rib.
The rest of the story, Eve convincing Adam to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, is an interpretation that casts Eve woman forever as temptress, who causes men to sin. The theologians of ancient times then essentially reduced the role of married sexual relations to a utilitarian function.
This ancient, but incomplete understanding, is perpetuated up to this very day through the teachings of Theology of the Body, and its insistence on the very unnatural way of limiting family size that they insist on calling Natural Family Planning.
Sex is licit only if open to procreation. According to Augustine and others, abstinence was required at all times unless more children were needed.
The church passed laws that prohibited priests from having sexual relations with their wives for a specified time period before presiding over the mass. Because sex to them, was, and is, a disturbing drive, too pleasurable to be "good", and men must learn to control this disturbing natural human drive..
The blame was, and too often still is, put on the woman. Women were to be subservient to male purposes. They should keep house, and bear and raise children. The men who run this church have barely taken baby steps beyond this ancient patriarchal thinking.
At this stage of history, deliberately clinging to patriarchy implies that misogny may also be present. Both are sinful. Just my opinion Miss Sandi, Who told you that, I would ask for my money back if I paid anything for the seminar.
Honestly, it's something so ridiculous that I will refrain from commenting, however you ought to ask yourself what constitutes Authority?.. Nuff said God bless you dear Who told me what? What seminar are you talking about? I have never paid anyone any money to read the bible, nor to read Vatican documents, nor to read books and articles by theologians.
I have not paid anyone so that I can read about history and culture and science. I believe this is necessary in order to inform, and form, my conscience. I am human, thus fallible. However, I know that God gave me a mind and expects me to use it. He does not ask us to be passive children, but mature adult believers.
So, while it is certainly possible that sometimes I reach incorrect conclusions, I feel reasonably confident about mine, because they are arrived at after a lot of study, reflection and prayer. Of course, if someone provided evidence that my reading of church history and church documents is wrong, I would certainly take it into consideration. The thing is, for much of my life, I accepted it all without question. The church could never be wrong, after all, it speaks for God.
It said so in the bible - God will always be with the "church", with those who follow Christ. Of course, God never appointed a pope, and Jesus himself never knew anything at all about an organization called the Roman Catholic church.
He never ordained a priesthood, much less a hierarchy. He was, after all, a Jew. But I had a proper s and s Catholic education, even memorizing the Baltimore Catechism as a young child so that I could feed it all back, word for word.
We weren't taught to think, and questions about teachings were not allowed. But I grew up, and as I got older, there was a great deal of cognitive dissonance between what I had been taught and what I knew and observed from life. So I began an extensive program of self-study, eventually realizing that the men in Rome don't actually know and more than I do.
Realizing that my conscience is up to me to inform and form, a moral responsibiity I cannot duck, not passively allow others to do for me. So, I am with Aquinas on this opposed to him on some matters - Every judgement of conscience, be it right or wrong, be it about things evil in themselves or morally indifferent, is obligatory, in such wise that he who acts against his conscience always sins.
What is so ridiculous that you can't even comment? Perhaps it's that you can't comment, beyond generalities? Your reference to "Authority" is a bit of a giveaway, I'm afraid.. There is nothing ridiculous about any of it. Unfortunately, it is all too real in the Catholic church of the 21st century, as it has been for rmost of the church's history. I can only assume that you have not studied very much, outside of the CCC.
Sometimes there seems a lack of breadth and depth of knowledge in your comments. Many people choose not to study, to educate themselves.
It's far easier to let others do it for them and to let those others tell them what interpretations to hold. Are you among them? Since reading from anyone who is not Catholic might at this point be too much of a leap for you, maybe start with a few Catholics. If you want a challenge, John of the Cross.
The mystics, both from earlier eras and our own, are wonderful at teaching us how to open our minds so that we can began to hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit.
I would also recommend looking for a Centering Prayer group. Centering Prayer also helps us to open our minds and souls to better hear God speaking to us. Peace and blessings. Thanks for the peace and blessings You do realize that telling Sandi her comments are ridiculous and that she should ask herself what constitutes Authority could be seen as yet another patriarchal dismissal, and refers her back to a set of stipulations made by the same group of men?
Not the most compelling engagement. You are arguing from inside the language-game, as Wittgenstein might say. Thank you for noticing, Greg. The patriarchal talking down to a mere woman tone is also at play in slightly more subtle, passive-aggressive ways in the use of "Miss" before my name, in the use of "dear" after "God bless you", and his 'kindly' concern for this unfortunately wayward child I am worried about you.
The only men who might get a pass on calling an adult women "Miss Firstname" are those raised in the old south, trained to address all women as "Miss" no matter their age or marital status. For example, the idea that through conscience we discover the true divine laws can also be found in Islam Geaves It is important to note that also in this case, as in the previous understanding of conscience as self-awareness and self-assessment, conscience can be conceived as fulfilling an introspective function, i.
Introspection allows one to gain self-knowledge Schwitzgebel , but since the self which is observed contains the moral law, it is possible to say that the law itself, as part of our self, becomes the object of introspection. Ratzinger On this account—since conscience is only a witness and does not have direct epistemic access to the source of knowledge, i.
In particular, conscience might fail to correctly interpret the divine laws when applying them to real cases. According to some 13 th Century Catholic theologians, such as Philip the Chancellor, Albert the Great and, most notably, Thomas Aquinas, conscience is the act of applying universal principles i.
In this case, the moral knowledge in question is typically understood in a relativistic sense: our conscience is the faculty through which the social norms of our culture or the norms of our upbringing are evoked and exert their influence on our moral psychology. These norms explain our moral feelings and our moral choices, but what conscience tells us in this case is the product of social and cultural dynamics over which we have little control. In this sense, conscience is a merely relativistic notion whose content changes according to social, cultural, and familial circumstances.
Contrary to what Montaigne and Hobbes had claimed, Rousseau argued in Emile, or Education that good education can free conscience from the corrupting influences of societies. Actually, one of the aims of education is to render the young autonomous moral thinkers and agents by teaching them how to critically examine and, if necessary, replace received norms Rousseau ; see Sorabji , for a discussion. As Rousseau presents it,. This understanding of conscience as a deeper form of moral knowledge brings us to the second sense in which conscience can be said to have an epistemic role.
As well as merely witnessing received opinions or divine laws, conscience can also be conceived as a moral sense giving us direct access to moral principles.
Understood in this way, conscience is typically seen as intuitive and influenced by emotions, rather than a reason-based faculty. In particular, 18 th Century sentimentalist philosophers often e. Also on more recent accounts of conscience and of private morality, the dictates of conscience can be understood as expressions of our moral intuitions.
Once again, there are reasons to doubt the epistemic and moral authority of conscience so understood. A lot of work in recent moral psychology aimed at understanding moral disagreement has suggested that there are seemingly irreconcilable differences in fundamental moral intuitions and emotions among people with different worldviews e.
Reasoning, on any plausible account, should be an important part of morality; however, what our conscience tells us may have little to do with reasons and evidence. Theoretical work in moral psychology e. Psychological research has focused particularly on the differences between liberal and conservative thinking. For example, it has been suggested that conservative moral and political views are often founded on certain specific emotions, e.
If conscience simply is the expression of moral intuition, and if individuals have significantly different and irreconcilable moral intuitions, then individuals also have significantly different and difficult-to-reconcile conscientious moral consciences. Conscience can also be conceived as our sense of duty.
According to this understanding, conscience motivates us to act according to moral principles or beliefs we already possess e. The subjective character of conscience implies that the motivational force must come entirely from within the individual, as opposed to sanctions from an external authority. A powerful motivational source is represented by the feelings that conscience generates in its self-assessment function. As we said at the beginning, the different understandings of conscience presented here are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Conscience as self-assessment and conscience as motivation to act morally constitute a good example of perspectives on conscience which are not only consistent with one another, but which actually complete one another. Conscience for Kant is therefore not only an inner court, but also the source of our sense of duty in that it takes the judgments of the inner court as motivation to act morally Kant []: Our desire or tendency to avoid this form of self-punishment can have motivational force towards acting morally.
However, at the same time, the negative self-directed feelings must themselves be generated by previous experience of tension between our action and a pre-existing sense of duty. Although it might seem that we are stuck in an infinite regress, where sense of duty and negative self-directed feelings presuppose one another, this need not be the case.
It is possible to conceive of an external or independent source of that most fundamental sense of duty that constitutes our conscience, such as for example our moral education and upbringing Mill ch. But the sense of duty that identifies a conscientious person can also be conceived as a primitive function, an innate disposition which is not explained by any other more fundamental mechanism.
Negative feelings and sense of duty are not always successful in prompting agents to do what their moral principles require. Of course, positive feelings associated with conscience might also have a motivational force. For example, as seen above, Kant associated conscience also with positive feelings about oneself when the agent recognizes he has acted according to his sense of duty. Rousseau, alongside the epistemic account of conscience presented above, also provides in Emile a motivational account of conscience based on positive feelings: while reason gives us knowledge of the good, it is conscience, through a sentiment of love for the good, which motivates us to behave morally Rousseau The subjective character of conscience delimits a sphere of personal morality that is an essential part of our sense of personal identity, understood as our sense of who we are and of what characterizes qualitatively our individuality for instance, our character, our psychological traits, our past experience, etc.
My conscience is what makes me this particular individual in a social and cultural context that I want to keep separate from me. This private space in which the individual finds her own sense of identity often grounds the political use of the notion of conscience. These political appeals to conscience are usually made on the basis of two principles. The first is the principle of respect for moral integrity, which finds its justification in the close relationship between the notions of conscience and of moral integrity on one side Childress , and the sense of personal identity on the other.
The former will be discussed in this section, and the latter in the next section. The concept of personal identity in the sense in which the notion is used here—i. According to Childress, for example,. Conscience as self-identifying can be understood in two ways. Conceived in either way, conscience is an essential part of our understanding of what kind of person we are, and this is taken to be a reason for warranting protection of conscience and conscientious objection in different contexts, particularly in the health care professions Wicclair 25—26; Bluestein We have seen above that there is a sense in which, according to some, psychopaths can be said to lack conscience Hare : psychopaths are not capable of connecting their moral knowledge to their conduct through the feelings of guilt and disapproval which conscience, on some accounts, produces.
Interestingly, according to some psychologists, psychopaths are also less likely to base their sense of personal identity on moral traits than normal functioning individuals Glenn et al. Some people have suggested that appeals to freedom of conscience tend to be more vigorously put forward and more effective in contexts where political or religious structures lose power or moral authority. Thus, for instance, according to C. The same can be said for 17 th Century England, with its crisis of religious authority and the frequent appeals to freedom of conscience in the philosophical and political literature of that time Childress There are three main arguments that can be used to defend a principle of freedom of conscience.
Let us examine them in order. According to this argument, it is not possible to compel someone to believe or to not believe something, i. All we can do is compel people to act as if they believed something, which would be a hypocritical behavior. This line of argument was often put forward by early Christians, most notably Christian apologist Tertullian, to defend their freedom to practice their cult in a time where they were persecuted by Roman governors: their claim was that forcing them to abandon the Christian cults would have no effect on their conscience.
However, Christians did not seem to believe in the force of this argument, and more generally in the principle of freedom of conscience, when, later on, they attempted to justify the violent persecution of heretics those who revise their religious dogmas and apostates those who abandon their religion and their forced conversion Clarke — Two main justifications have been given by Christian theologians for the forced conversion of heretics and apostates. By departing from the Christian doctrine, these people would be condemned to eternal damnation in the afterlife, and Christians have a duty to save as many people as possible from eternal damnation Clarke — A second type of argument in defense of violent persecution is the one offered by Augustine 5 th Century.
He argued that compelling people to follow the true religion—by which he meant persecuting heretics—could open their eyes to the truth Sorabji 49— This thesis implies that sometimes conscience, even if we confine it to matters of inward conviction and not to behavior, can be influenced by some external imposition.
For the Catholic Church, however, authentic freedom is inseparable from the notion of truth. On the basis of the idea that conscience is merely a matter of private beliefs, not of action, some authors have argued that compelling people to follow certain rules even against their conscience would not constitute a violation of their freedom of conscience, and is therefore justifiable. This was the line of argument pursued, for example, by Thomas Hobbes chapter 40 , Baruch Spinoza chapter 20 and John Locke , who argued that the State has the power to enforce certain practices even when citizens claim that it would violate their conscience, in order to protect social order.
The possibility exists that what we conscientiously believe is wrong and that those holding conscientious beliefs opposite to ours are right. Therefore, there is a reason for not forcing anyone to believe in something or to engage in behaviors that might turn out to be morally wrong.
The same argument from ignorance or from humility is also put forward by John Locke in his Second Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke had to rely on this argument as an alternative strategy to defend freedom of conscience after the Anglican priest Jonas Proast pointed out that compulsion can actually change personal beliefs as Augustine had argued , and that therefore the argument from ineffectiveness that Locke had used in his first Letter fails Sorabji A version of the argument from ignorance can also be found in contemporary defenses of conscientious objection in an age where pluralism of worldviews is acknowledged and actually supported.
As put by Mill,. Mill ch. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings. In Paragraph of the Catechism gives 4 ways our conscience needs to be formed :.
In our catechetical activity we must aim to constantly assist in forming the consciences of those we catechize according to these 4 ways. Your email address will not be published.
0コメント