What does Pope Francis think of conscience? Part 5 of a response to The Correctors.

iven its unbro­ken record, thus far, for inac­cu­ra­cy, I sug­gest we refer to it, hence­forth, as the Not Cor­rec­tio. Or per­haps we can punch a hole in the top cor­ner and call it the Farmer’s Almanac. If you are new to this refu­ta­tio of the not cor­rec­tio, you may start with Part 1 here. But let us, by all means, con­tin­ue. Here is the fifth heresy The Cor­rec­tors claim to find in Amor­is Laeti­tia:

Con­science can tru­ly and right­ly judge that sex­u­al acts between per­sons who have con­tract­ed a civ­il mar­riage with each oth­er, although one or both of them is sacra­men­tal­ly mar­ried to anoth­er per­son, can some­times be moral­ly right or request­ed or even com­mand­ed by God.

So, accord­ing to The Cor­rec­tors, the text says that God some­times can ask peo­ple in an irreg­u­lar union to keep engag­ing in the sex­u­al act. Is that real­ly so?

The Cor­rec­tors are refer­ring to §303:

[C]onscience can do more than rec­og­nize that a giv­en sit­u­a­tion does not cor­re­spond objec­tive­ly to the over­all demands of the Gospel. It can also rec­og­nize with sin­cer­i­ty and hon­esty what for now is the most gen­er­ous response which can be giv­en to God, and come to see with a cer­tain moral secu­ri­ty that it is what God him­self is ask­ing amid the con­crete com­plex­i­ty of one’s lim­its, while yet not ful­ly the objec­tive ide­al.

So The Cor­rec­tors read “not yet ful­ly the objec­tive ide­al,” and say: Aha! So! The pope is say­ing that con­tin­ued sex­u­al activ­i­ty is the will of God in some cas­es!

Real­ly?

Dr. Robert Fastig­gi and Dr. Dawn Eden Gold­stein, writ­ing at Vat­i­can Insid­er, sug­gest a dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion. (Dr. Fastig­gi teach­es sys­tem­at­ic the­ol­o­gy at Sacred Heart Major Sem­i­nary. Dr. Gold­stein teach­es dog­mat­ic the­ol­o­gy at Holy Apos­tles Col­lege and Sem­i­nary.) Their arti­cle argues that the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of §303 is flawed. They pro­pose an alter­nate trans­la­tion from the Latin. (It is worth not­ing that even Dr. E. Chris­t­ian Brug­ger, a crit­ic of Amor­is Laeti­tia, con­cedes that their trans­la­tion is “much more pre­cise.”)

This con­science, how­ev­er, can not only rec­og­nize a giv­en sit­u­a­tion to be objec­tive­ly at vari­ance with the gen­er­al man­date of the Gospel; it can also rec­og­nize sin­cere­ly and hon­est­ly what may be the gen­er­ous response owed to God in the present cir­cum­stances; and this same firm con­science can come to under­stand with a cer­tain moral cer­ti­tude that this is the offer­ing that God him­self is ask­ing amid the mass of imped­i­ments, although it may not yet be the per­fect objec­tive mod­el.

The word Drs. Fastig­gi & Gold­stein trans­late “offer­ing” is “obla­tionem,” lit­er­al­ly obla­tion. They explain:

We believe the key to under­stand­ing what Pope Fran­cis is say­ing in Amor­is Laeti­tia 303 [two para­graphs lat­er in] 305, where he quotes sec­tion 44 of his 2013 apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion, Evan­gelii Gaudi­um: “Let us re­member that ‘a small step, in the midst of great human lim­i­ta­tions, can be more pleas­ing to God than a life which appears out­ward­ly in order, but moves through the day with­out con­fronting great dif­fi­cul­ties.’

 

[The Cor­rec­tors, to my lack of sur­prise, do not men­tion §305 apart from its appear­ance in a long quo­ta­tion from Car­di­nal Schön­born.]

 

It is very clear from the Latin text of Amor­is Laeti­tia 303 that Pope Fran­cis is describ­ing how con­science can dis­cern that God him­self is ask­ing for a small step in the right direc­tion in the midst of a mass of imped­i­ments and lim­i­ta­tions. The Holy Father is not say­ing that God him­self is ask­ing cer­tain peo­ple “to con­tin­ue to com­mit intrin­si­cal­ly wrong acts such as adul­tery or active homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.” This is a most unfor­tu­nate read­ing of the text by [Dr. Josef] Seifert. Instead Pope Fran­cis is say­ing that in cer­tain dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions God is ask­ing for a “gen­er­ous response” (lib­erale respon­sum), an offer­ing (oblationem)—that is, a step in the right direc­tion.

This seems right to me. If I am an alco­holic, it is not like­ly that I am going to be able to renounce alco­hol, alto­geth­er, overnight. I may require a lot of vis­its to the Con­fes­sion­al. But sure­ly it is not wrong to say that God wants me to make a step in the direc­tion of an alco­hol-free life, even if it may be a while before I can achieve that. It is not that God is ask­ing me to keep drink­ing alco­hol; he is ask­ing me to begin the process of giv­ing it up.

The same is true of any addic­tive behav­ior, and it is true in many cas­es for a cou­ple in an irreg­u­lar mar­riage, who can’t sep­a­rate for the sake of the chil­dren, who are com­mit­ted to con­ti­nence but find it a tri­al and, for one rea­son or anoth­er, an impos­si­bil­i­ty to be com­plete­ly con­ti­nent imme­di­ate­ly.

God is not ask­ing them to con­tin­ue engag­ing in sex­u­al rela­tions. He is ask­ing them to move in the direc­tion of con­ti­nence, even if they have to do so in small steps and stum­ble from time to time.

That’s the sense of §303.