Discussion: CONSCIENCE, CHURCH AUTHORITY, AND THE BIBLE

Over the years I have published books and articles using the vocabulary and thought-patterns of process-oriented philosophy and theology but thus far have never been censured by Church authorities.  My only explanation is that I end up defending all the traditional doctrines even if from an unconventional perspective.  So the end-result is what ultimately counts, not the way one gets there.  One example from my past history: I published an article in Theological Studies a year or two after the publication of “Humanae Vitae” entitled "Toward a Grammar of Dissent." But, even though teaching at Mundelein Seminary, directly chartered by the Vatican,  I was never censured.  For, I ended up affirming the right of the Church to protect the faith even as theologians in turn are expected to do more than repeat traditional explanations of those same beliefs. in some cases  even to challenge presuppositions in the conventional way of understanding of a given belief.
                     Joseph Bracken, bracken@xavier.edu

                         2.Two sides of my key chain

            My key chain holder has two sides. On one side are the words “The Vatican, Rome” with the Vatican Coat of Arms. On the other side are the words, “Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ” attribute to Cardinal Newman and included in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Between these two sides there has been ample room from which to live and serve during this one, short life.
                     Michael Dallaire <michael@michaeldallaire.com>

                         3.  Baptist Perspectives on the Bible, Church Authority, and Conscience

            Southern Baptists have a unique approach to the nexus of Bible, church authority, and conscience, and how these impact our church governance. Each of these elements has a different place in the world of a Baptist. First of all, the Bible is the supreme authority for us. We believe the Bible is the Word of God, and therefore speaks with the authority of the God who authored it. Any church authority or personal conscience must be evaluated in light of the plumb line of Scripture. Our denomination fought a battle about 20 years ago over the authority of Scripture, which resulted in a stronger affirmation of a high view of biblical inspiration. Baptists are “people of the Book,” and it is the ultimate standard of measure for us. Admittedly, the Bible must be interpreted, and the interpretations of various scholars differ. But we seek to discover the primary sense of Scripture, and evaluate all moral and spiritual issues in the light of Scripture.

The Baptist view of church authority is virtually the inverse of the Roman Catholic view. Authority flows up from the local church, not down from a hierarchical organization. No individual, association, state Baptist convention, or even the national Baptist convention can override the decision of a local church. The local church chooses its own ministers, sets its own rules, and through its representatives (whom we call “messengers”), instructs regional, state, and national denominational entities what to do. We have a national convention once a year, and all its actions are determined by a vote of the messengers from local churches at that meeting.

This brings us to the question of personal conscience. Baptists are a people who accord great significance to individual conscience. We were a pioneer in England and, later, in America, of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. Baptist leaders in England suffered severe persecution at times for being nonconformists to the Church of England and in other European countries. These Baptists stood against a state church and for freedom of conscience – not only for Baptists, but also for Catholics, Quakers, Muslims, and unbelievers. Many Baptists migrated to the New World in hope of getting beyond the state religions of Europe, only to find that most of the colonies were also establishing a state religion. Roger Williams moved from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where the Congregational church was the established church, to Providence, Rhode Island, where he established the first Baptist Church in America. Williams fought for freedom of religion in Rhode Island for persons of all faiths, as well as nonbelievers. Baptists in Virginia were instrumental in lobbying James Monroe and others to include freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.

This strong focus on individual conscience has sometimes, unfortunately, had the temptation of becoming too individualistic – I can believe whatever I want to believe. It does seem to be impacted significantly by Enlightenment individualism. However, as highly as individual conscience is revered by Baptists, it is not without its limits. The purported individual conscience must align with Scripture and with fellow believers. So we describe our view of church authority as “the priesthood of all believers.” The pastoral role includes the role of priest, but not as the sole intercessor between the believer and God. Each believer has direct access to God through prayer. So, what a local church chooses to do is based on a vote of its church members. Each member is to vote as they feel prayerfully that the Holy Spirit is leading them to vote. The church decision, then, is not the choice of one individual, but of all the individuals as a group. Therefore, this church polity could be described as “congregationalism” – each congregation acts as the majority of members (hopefully a consensus) feel led by God to do. So, again, the Southern Baptist Convention is a collection of local churches who voluntarily align with each other to accomplish Kingdom projects more efficiently, but each church is autonomous in what it does.
                     Steve Lemke, slemke@nobts.edu    

                                     4. Discerning the content of obedience

              Many of you are aware of the times when blind obedience was considered the proper spirituality for Christians who also embrace the religious and/or priestly life. Stories abound where and when a superior instructs a religious or a priest to go against the very logic of human reason all in the name of holy obedience. For you, it may have been in the distant past. For some it is a reality they live out even today. Twenty-five years ago, I entered religious life and was educated on the spirituality of blind obedience. Our novitiate library had books on the desert fathers and mothers who practiced what one would consider strange. I read the lives of saints who exemplified the spirit of holy obedience. I wanted to be like them. I dreamed of holy obedience as some mystical experience that would take me to the heavens experienced by such mystics as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Yes, I was just eighteen years old then and had not read much, except the Baltimore Catechism (Penny Catechism). I had not done philosophy or theology. Such is the dream of one who has not experienced the content of obedience that sometimes would be absurd and outright evil. Other times, the content of obedience would be edifying.

As time went by, during my time as a professed religious, I became aware of the demands of obedience. Sometimes, decisions were made by superiors that were outright wrong. Through the vow of holy obedience, I became aware of who I am as a person. It also allowed me to continue to explore the meaning of obedience and how it is understood by many in the church.  I know this vow is understood in many ways. I am limited in my own view and would speak via my own limitations as a male who lived it, left it, and is once more living it.
Two months ago, I again went back to religious vows after leaving religious life for seventeen years. As I recited the vows, I noticed that my perception of the vow of holy obedience has changed. Over the years, I have read about and experienced the correct and incorrect use of the vow by those with ecclesial power over others. I professed the vows and chose to write the following; I hope you find it insightful.

Obedience is not about saying yes or no to decisions made on our behalf by others. If this were the case then the entire theological understanding of the human person as a willing person falls apart. Obedience is all about relationships that lead to freedom and liberation from an insular self. It is about entering into complex and multiple relationships that go beyond the self and entering the space of otherness. Obedience is dialogical. Here, I think of the story of the fall of Adam and Eve. God entered into dialogue with them by asking of them not to eat of certain fruits. They said nothing. It was a monologue. One hears them speaking for the first time with that which is the epitome of disobedience – the serpent (Kindly know that I am not here saying snakes have no ecological usefulness). Obedience calls for dialogue of being that puts the wellbeing of the human person at the center of the relationship fostered by obedience.

In our church today, many are quick to demand from others obedience to the magisterium. Take for example how the relationship between the Christians of Ahiara Diocese in Nigeria and the demands of obedience by the Nigerian Roman Catholic episcopacy and the Bishop of Rome is playing out. It is easy to say “yes, I obey you,” but most difficult to live out a life of obedience that is existential. One hardly addresses the question, why must one obey? Many in our church still operate from the perspective that one ought not to scandalize the faithful as though the faithful were a bunch of first graders. Obedience demands maturity from the one demanding it and the one giving it. If obedience is reciprocal then one ought to ask, how does our hierarchy reciprocate the obedience it expects from the faithful? A church that speaks in absolutes may find it difficult to listen to and learn from those it wants to be obedient. Could it be that the simplistic understanding of obedience in our church today is as a result of the socio-political influence of the phenomenon called Christendom on our theological vision as a church? Could our understanding of obedience have been enriched by the negotiating space of diversity?
                     Simon Aihiokhai, aihiokhais@yahoo.co.uk

                                       5.  A problem of conscience

My reflection on conscience, Church authority, and the bible comes, in part, from my own experience growing up. I am the youngest of six boys. My mom was pregnant seven times in nine years (she had twins and two miscarriages). As a devout Catholic, she refused even to consider using birth control. My dad, a convert to Catholicism, could not understand her rigidity and adherence to Church teaching in the face of intense economic, psychological, emotional, and relational pressure on the marriage and the family and the failure of the rhythm method to prevent conception. This, in part, lead to the breakdown of their marriage and eventual divorce when I was 4 years old.

One of my reasons for pursuing Catholic moral theology in general, and sexual ethics in particular, was to understand my mom’s perspective, Church teaching, and to critically reflect on these in light of my own experience and the experiences of many in the Church (sensus fidelium). In that process, a few things have become very clear, which directly relate to today’s topic.

First, there is often a fundamental disconnect between Church teaching and its interpretation and application of scripture to contemporary ethical issues. Throughout its history, Church teaching relied heavily on proof-texting or fundamentalism in its use of scripture to defend authoritative teaching. One of the clearest examples of this is the use of Gen. 38:8-10, the story of Onan, in Pius XI’s Casti Connubii to condemn the use of birth control to regulate fertility (n. 55). This is a clear example of proof-texting and its citation in magisterial documents to justify the condemnation of birth control is no longer used, though the teaching remains. This example illustrates a clear disconnect between magisterial teaching that relied upon proof-texting or fundamentalism to justify many of its absolute sexual normative claims (e.g., norms prohibiting contraception and same-sex relationships) and the Church’s official recognition of the validity of the historical critical method in Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) and Dei Verbum (1965) for reading and interpreting scripture. In other words, the absolute normative proscriptions on sexual ethics that the Church has claimed throughout history were justified, in part, by a misuse of scripture. This should give us great pause in how we approach magisterial teaching, especially on sexual ethical issues, its use of scripture, and the magisterial authority that defends those teachings.

The first point to note is that whereas magisterial norms on sexuality are absolute they are not infallible. The term “non-infallible” literally means fallible, though as McCormick said, there is a presumption of truth of such teaching but such normative claims must be justified coherently and comprehensively. This justification is often lacking in the magisterium’s absolute proscriptive sexual norms and the theological ethicists who defend such norms.

The second point to note is that this rather unstable foundation for Catholic sexual teachings highlights the importance of the formation of conscience, through prayer, discernment, and study, to internalize the values behind a specific magisterial teaching and to see how those values apply in the particularities of one’s relational, historical, social, and cultural context. In the words of Pope Francis, the church should help to form consciences, not replace them.
Third, this calls for “obsequium” of conscience, translated as respect for rather than obedience to, noninfallible magisterial teaching.            

My mom, God love her, came from a generation of pre-Vatican II Catholics who were ecclesiological fundamentalists; she followed very closely the “pray, pay, and obey” ecclesiological model. This allegiance to magisterial authority often did not translate well, for my mom and dad or for many others, into the lived reality and complexity of human relationships. Unfortunately, Church teaching on sexual ethical issues has often done great harm to human beings and their relationships. The overwhelming unnecessary sense of guilt and alienation, whether it be for married couples who use artificial contraception or homosexual couples who attempt to live out their sexuality in just and loving relationships, does not facilitate human dignity. Absolute magisterial norms on sexuality continue, all too-often, to damage human self-esteem and human relationships. Pope Francis has gone a long way to emphasize the role, function, and authority of conscience and to return it to its (traditional) preeminent place in the moral life. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of resistance to this truth of the Catholic faith among ecclesial leaders who continue to use Church doctrine as “dead stones to be hurled at others.” (Amoris Laetitia, 49). This attitude continues to alienate people, especially young people, and is not conducive to spreading the gospel, building up the body of Christ, or facilitating human dignity personally and relationally.
                        Todd Salzman, toddsalzman@creighton.edu

                         6.  The Bible, Church Authority, and Conscience in a Baptist Key

In 1913, Southern Baptist theologian Edgar Young Mullins wrote, “It is scarcely open to question that there is a need for a clear exposition of the problem of authority in religion.” The question is as elusive as it is critical; and not simply for Baptists. Protestants generally might inquire with W.H. Auden: “O what authority gives/ Existence its surprise?” 

Looking across Baptist history, we may discern at least some memory of authority joined with a continued grasping for an adequate articulation. In more recent years, while we see an occasional declaration of a sense that something is lacking, it is standard practice to attribute authority to – usually God or Scripture, though always interpreted by, and thus displaced by, the individual conscience. Thus Baptists have tended, by and large, for the last roughly two centuries, to think of authority principally in the sense of enforcing limits and so constricting freedom. In other words, authority has to do with coercion of the will in some degree, either by violence (real or threatened) or persuasion. This makes Baptists quite the typical modern Westerners who, as Arendt observed, commonly mistake authority for some form of power or violence.

When speaking of authority, Baptists do most often mean the power to bind or coerce the will, even if legitimately. Only conscience, they have tended to conclude, can rightly do this. Yet as Robert Wilken has noted, authority is a matter not primarily of will, but of understanding. Thus the question of authority is first and foremost not, “Who/what can bring me to obey?” but “Whom may I trust?” The answer, as Baptists have affirmed, is God, who gives life and breath to all things. Again, conscience has been the “default” answer of most Baptists since revolutionary and early Republic times in the US. This has been grounded in the presumption of conscience as having not merely a negative function, drawing a line beyond which one will not go (and thus requiring formation in ways trusted to do so), but a positive one of recognizing truth where one sees it (thus requiring freedom).

Yet Baptists have shown other positions as well through their history, even as they have often become muted. F.W. Meyer wrote in 1908, “Religion ever seeks its ultimate source of authority in God.  The vehicle containing the treasure of divine revelation, however, is not of secondary importance.” Early Baptists understood this, at least implicitly, in their confessions and occasional writings. To sum up many voices, since the true church could be trusted to preserve the foundation established by Christ and the apostles, here “and not elsewhere, all persons that seek for eternal life, should gladly join themselves.”  This true church was not merely a spiritual fellowship, though it certainly was this; but an ordered community with offices and rites for the embodiment of the gospel. Yet, with time Baptists came to pose not a faithful institutional authority against the institutional abuse of authority, but an alternative vision in which authority was relocated.  By and large, institutions were viewed by Baptists as irremediably abusive; and this because they could only impinge upon the freedom of the individual conscience, the true authority in human life.

The result has been, as the prompt for this discussion implies, what sociologist Danielle Hervieu-Léger has called “collective individualism,” a kind of conformity brought about by pressures not generally acknowledged.

I see two, related, signs of hope. First, across the spectrum of Baptist life, there are persons calling for Baptists once again to orient themselves to the orthodox consensus of the historic church. (I acknowledge that is a highly problematic term, but use it as a broad gesture away from what has been characterized as a “Jesus, Me, and Now” approach to faith.) Second, there is renewed attention to Baptist churches as communities of dissent, organized as “reading communities” seeking to hear in particular times and places the Word of God in Scripture. We find this in forms from Steve Harmon’s call for a “magisteriumhood of believers” to the remarkably rich ways in which “communion,” “covenant,” and “koinonia” were weaved together in the report from the recent dialogue of the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
                        Philip E. Thompson, pthompson@sfseminary.edu

                         7.  Answers to the tension between conscience and church authority

            Todd has remarkably well described the issue of conscience versus authority. He does not offer many solutions. Here are some suggestions.

            I consider it an general principle that one is not morally bound by teachings that one does not understand and cannot justify rationally because one feels they do not make nsense, even after mature inquiry and reflection. The teaching of artificial birth control may fall in this category.

            So does the use of papal infallibility. The church and its head participate in a certain sense in the infallibility of God and Jesus Christ, but to make infallibility a tool of government for specific issues is abuse of power. A teaching must stand by the cogency of its reasoning, not the power to impose it. Thus, to say, “If the non-ordination of women does not makes sense to you, too bad! It’s infallible!” is not acceptable. A five- or six-year old said it well: when told about papal infallibility she exclaimed, “That’s terrible! How can the pope learn if he cannot make mistakes?”

            Since Hobbes and Locke, and especially since the 1960s, authority has been de-sacralized. We do not believe any more that “all authority comes from God” – at least not directly. In a democracy the authority of government comes from the consent of the governed. Moreover, the power of the law is defined by the penalty attached to it. A law without penalty (or without being enforced) is only an exhortation. Thus “slow down in case of rain or ice” is only an exhortation. If the laws – e.g. on speed limits – are not enforced, they are no more than exhortations. Canon law is like all laws: it does not bind under penalty of sin but under the penalty of the law. Canon law has practically no penalty for laypeople. Hence canon law is not much more than a set of organizational regulations.

On the positive side, church authority fulfills the much needed role of spiritual guide. Most popes have been remarkable guides for their times. John Paul II was a remarkable guide at the time of the cold war, but the times have changed. Pope Francis is a remakable model to follow, and he does not use power. On the other hand, the Bible is the prime guide of Christian life. While church authorities may fall into the trappings of power, bible interpretations may be perverted by denominations biases. Yet in spite of all this, conscience, authority, and the bible are the three pillars of Christian life.
                        Pierre Hegy, pierre.hegy@gmail.com

                         8. Conscience, Church, and Preaching

            I write from the perspective of preaching most every Sunday.  A time "limit" of 7 - 12 minutes does not lend itself to nuanced theological proclamation.  Nor should it lend itself to dogmatic moral judgements and closed-case diatribes - though I have heard more than enough of both.

            Preaching, however, ought to presume the dignity of conscience.  While the preacher can identify specific challenges to a gospel life in the contemporary world, the preacher needs to avoid identifying a singular response.  One can proclaim a gospel value that justice demands people's right to health care, meaningful employment, a just wage, fair housing, etc.  The preacher then ought to presume the dignity of conscience, as well as the appropriate expertise of people who are better skilled at identifying various approaches to these issues.

            The Sunday homily - for a variety of reasons both liturgical and practical - does not lend itself to dialogue.  Without dialogue no one can do the work of conscience.  This is quite different than an adult faith formation setting, or the academic classroom.  In these latter settings one can explore the nuances of pastoral application, respectful dissent, and the "sense of the faithful."  And these the preacher should keep in mind when charged with gospel proclamation.
                      Francis Berna, berna@lasalle.edu