Archbishop Nienstedt Needs to Go. Now.

By Rubén Rosario


NOTE: This op-ed was first published July 20, 2014 by The Pioneer Press.


I picked up a summer must-read this past week. It has drama, conflict, intrigue and zips along at 107 pages.

No. It's not Invisible by James Patterson, though I really wish it were fiction. This read has a decidedly boring title: "Affidavit of Jennifer M. Haselberger."

It should be retitled "The Archdiocese That Forgot Christ," for this is really what it is: a scathing account of how top church officials from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis put kids and adults at risk.

It is the best argument yet, since the local clergy abuse and mismanagement scandal broke months ago, that Archbishop John Nienstedt should step down or if he refuses, be removed from his post.

I'm not saying this lightly.

He is, as Haselberger told me, "my archbishop." But he needs to go for the good of the church and the good people in it. Now.

A turning point for me, as it was for Haselberger, who served as chancellor for canonical affairs from 2008 to April 2013, were statements Nienstedt made after he celebrated Mass at a church in Edina last December. This was two months after Haselberger, reportedly rebuffed at every attempt to expose alleged cover-ups or mishandling of abusive and misbehaving priests, contacted Minnesota Public Radio and publicly bared the goings-on.

Nienstedt told reporters that he believed the issue of clergy abuse had been taken care of by the time he became archbishop in 2008 and that he was surprised when the news stories broke. Given that he had indeed reviewed recent clergy abuse files and that a priest was convicted the summer before of abusing two children, Haselberger almost fell out of her chair.

"To see an archbishop, who had recently celebrated Mass and was still vested and holding his crosier, lie to the faithful in such a boldfaced manner was heartbreaking to me," Haselberger wrote in the affidavit, which is part of a clergy abuse civil case filed by St. Paul attorney Jeffrey Anderson on behalf of a former child abuse victim.

"When he said those things, he knew he was lying," Haselberger told me last week. "And he knew that I knew that he was lying. And anybody who was associated with this work and knew him, knew he was lying. That to me is what is so hard about it."


Recent shenanigans

Haselberger's affidavit paints a disturbing picture of church officials acting more like a cabal of corporate schemers or a power-driven political administration run amok than like shepherds of the state's largest Roman Catholic diocese.

Haselberger details how archdiocese officials gave special payments to abusive priests, allowed others to continue in public ministry and failed to notify authorities of abuse allegations in violation of a 2002 churchwide policy.

In the case of the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, Haselberger warned Nienstedt and others of his sexual proclivities and habit of trying to pick up men. Not only were her concerns ignored, Wehmeyer was promoted to pastor of a church on St. Paul's East Side before his conviction for molesting two boys in his parish.

These were not allegations decades old. They were recent. There's the tale of former Vicar General Peter Laird's attempt to declare disabled Father Mike Tegeder of St. Frances Cabrini Church in Minneapolis because of his criticisms of Nienstedt in the debate over the proposed marriage amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage. Laird resigned soon after Haselberger's concerns were made public.

"You can quote me that I find him unabled," Tegeder said Friday of Nienstedt.

Haselberger also takes aim at Laird's longtime predecessor, the Rev. Kevin McDonough, who served as the archdiocese's point person for handling clergy abuse allegations. McDonough, according to Haselberger, took a softer approach on abusive priests and essentially gave lip service to abuse victims. She recalls in astonishment the day he asked to see a document of dismissal, which is essentially a letter formally kicking a cleric out of the priesthood, because he had never seen one.

Nienstedt apparently has an ornery side to him, warning folks not to bother him and sending critical emails to church subordinates that one described as "nastygrams," according to the affidavit.

Haselberger recounts how Laird basically ignored her concerns and refused to read documents about a priest, removed from ministry just this year, who had a sexual attraction to young boys.

"I literally followed Father Laird out of the building one evening with those highlighted documents in my hands, saying that if he didn't have time to read the whole documents, he could at least read the highlighted remarks. He refused," Haselberger wrote.

Laird's reaction, Haselberger noted, was just one example of a "cavalier attitude toward the safety of children."

Cavalier? More like shameful.


A difficult choice

It wasn't easy for Haselberger to turn whistleblower. She's nobody's fool and a woman of faith. She knows of many others within the church who knew what she knew but did not come forward for fear of reprisals.

"I hated that," she said.

She desired and trusted the church hierarchy to do right by children and vulnerable adults. She tried all internal channels to set things right. When those were rebuffed, her conscience ordered her to go outside the wire.

It's interesting how she was characterized by church officials as a "disgruntled employee" after the first stories were published. I would have been disgruntled as well, given what she put up with. That was before thousands of internal church documents, including many ordered released by a judge in a civil suit, corroborated her account of events. This week, this is what church officials said about the affidavit: "Her experience highlights the importance of ongoing constructive dialogue and reform aimed at insuring the safety of children."


Wanted: "No-nonsense kind of guy"

Nienstedt, now the subject of an internal church probe into allegations he may have had inappropriate relationships with seminarians and others, did put in place a task force on church policies and hired a law firm to review all clergy abuse files. Frankly, he should have done that before Haselberger was forced to go public. That's what leaders do.

If he were the CEO of a corporation, he would have been canned already, sent off with a golden parachute. But he is an archbishop in a top-down, male-dominated religious hierarchy that rarely polices itself on anything and is acutely hostile to a probing secular world and any attempts at outside scrutiny. We'll see what he does, though the church problems are endemic and entrenched.

"There are plenty of good priests out there, but they have been drinking the Kool-Aid for so long that they do not even know it," Haselberger said.

I asked Haselberger who or what kind of archbishop she would like to see take over. She would not speculate on names. ""I would say a no-nonsense kind of guy with more or less a pastor's heart."

That sounds good to me.

Rubén Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@pioneerpress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/nycrican.


Related Off-site Links:
Jennifer Haselberger Was Ignored, Bullied Before Blowing Whistle on Archdiocese, Records Show – Jesse Marx (City Pages, July 15, 2014).
MN Archdiocese Wanted to Label Marriage Equality-Supporting Priest ‘Disabled’ – Andy Birkey (TheColu.mn, July 22, 2014).
Betrayed by Silence: How Three Archbishops Hid the Truth – Madeleine Baran (Minnesota Public Radio, July 14, 2014).
Has Archbishop Nienstedt's "Shadow" Finally Caught Up With Him? – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, July 1, 2014).

See also the previous PCV post:
In the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, "Regime Change is Not Enough"

Quote of the Day

. . . [T]here’s something in Benedict’s resignation statement that bears noting: “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.”

Conscience, Benedict reminds us today, is still primary for Catholics. Examination of conscience: that is just the formula millions of us use to explain why we use birth control, enjoy our sexuality in a variety of ways, and see enormous good in other religious traditions. Conscience is the ultimate arbiter, and the Pope relied on his. Good on him, and good on the rest of us.

There has been a lot of fudging on the matter of conscience in recent decades. The post-Vatican II hierarchy has claimed that conscience is primary if, and only if, it is informed as they see fit. But Pope Benedict XVI is giving conscience a new lease on life. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander — the appeal to conscience cannot be denied now that the Pope himself has had recourse to it.

. . . Rank and file Catholics want a new Church, not just a new pope.

We know that change is in the air because we put it there. Progressive Catholics all over the world are creating new forms of church since the old is so thoroughly discredited. No institution can withstand the onslaught of negative publicity that the Vatican earned over clergy sexual abuse and episcopal cover-ups without major changes. No hierarchy however fortified can hold out forever against spirit-filled steps toward equality and justice. This time, just electing a new pope will not do. Nor will closeting away a group of elite electors responsible to no one but themselves cut it for an election process.

Catholic people have consciences too. We expect to have a say in how we organize and govern ourselves. We cannot in conscience abdicate our authority to 118 mostly elderly men. Those days are over. If a pope can abdicate before he goes out feet first without the sky falling in then new egalitarian models of church can and will emerge too. . . .

– Mary E. Hunt
"Papal Retirement: A Matter of Conscience"
Religion Dispatches
February 11, 2013

Open Letter to Archbishop Nienstedt – #5

The Progressive Catholic Voice's sharing of your open letters to Archbishop Nienstedt continues with the following letter by Patty Thorsen, who describes herself as "a Universalist by birth, a Christian through baptism, and a practicing Catholic by way of living." To learn more about this series and how to participate in it, click here.


Archbishop Nienstedt:

I am deeply disturbed by your appeal – your campaign – directed at me, fellow Catholics, and all Minnesota citizens to vote “Yes” on the Marriage Amendment. Same-sex marriage is not an affront to the institution of marriage between a man and a woman, as your appeal implies.

Quite to the contrary. Same-sex marriage is an affirmation of the committed, loving relationships to which all individuals engaged in the institution of marriage – homosexual and heterosexual – are called.

Being Christian, I am – we are – called to live guided by three principles Christ articulated, “faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.” Being Catholic, I am – we are – called to respect life. Respect for – respect of – life does not begin at conception, nor does it end at death. Being Catholic, I am – we are – called to respect all of life – all committed, loving relationships between conception and death.

The Catholic Church I know and love blesses – sanctifies – committed, loving relationships. Be it through baptism, single life, vowed life, or married life, we are called to bless the living of all vocations – not exclusive to sexual orientation. To proclaim otherwise compromises the very integrity of all vocations.

The Catholic Church I know and love is called to live the meaning of its name, “catholic.” The Catholic Church I know and love is called to capitalize on the meaning of its name, “catholic” – universal.

We are called to be a universal church – a catholic Catholic Church – open to every individual without regard to sexual orientation.

Through Christ, we are called to be guided by faith, hope, and love. Through Christ, we are not called to exclude any individual from fully living their vocation – from fully expressing their love.

It is beyond my conception to understand a basic question raised by your opposition to same-sex marriage. You say that same-sex marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage between a man and a woman. It is not. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. I think we can both agree, marriage between a man and a woman is an expression of committed, loving relationship.

Same-sex couples called to marriage are called by the depth of their commitment – the depth of their love.

Archbishop Nienstedt, enlighten me.

How is it that one couple united by their love of and commitment to one another can threaten another couple who is united by their love of and commitment to each other? How?

If same-sex marriage were to be a threat to the institution of marriage between a man and a woman, what does that say regarding the integrity of heterosexual marriage that you declare sacred through the sacrament of marriage?

Archbishop Nienstedt, that troubles me.

I am called to vote “No” on the Marriage Amendment. I am called to celebrate the gifts brought forth when same-sex marriages – expressions of committed, loving relationships – are affirmed and treasured.

I invite you to join me in celebrating the gifts of individuals who are called to same-sex marriage. We need your leadership. Join me. Join others. It is not too late to vote “No” on the Marriage Amendment.

May the peace of Christ be with you,

– Patty Thorsen
St. Paul, Minnesota

Open Letter to Archbishop Nienstedt – #4

The Progressive Catholic Voice's sharing of your open letters to Archbishop Nienstedt continues with the following letter by Donald R. Conroy. To learn more about this series and how to participate in it, click here.


Dear Archbishop Nienstedt,

I am writing to you as a concerned Catholic. I was ordained a priest in 1955 and am a retired psychologist licensed in the state of Minnesota. I married in the Catholic Church in 1969 and my ordination was not revoked.

I would like to add my voice to the open letter Bishop Chilstrom recently wrote to you. I will restrict my comments only to your classification of homosexuality as an "intrinsic disorder." I realize that this description of same sex preference is not yours alone. The same description is found in Vatican documents and in documents of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. Your use of this language speaks to both your reason for describing this human condition as you do, as well as to your commitment to promote the passage of the marriage amendment. If homosexuality were as you say, an intrinsically disordered human condition, then it would follow that society at large should protect its institutions of marriage and family by proclaiming homosexuality an impediment to legal marriage. But, neither the social nor the natural sciences support your "intrinsic disorder" claim about homosexuality. Homosexuality was included in The Statistical and Diagnostic Manual of Mental Health Disorders in its first edition in 1952 because of the symptoms experienced by homosexual persons resulting from social stress. However, homosexuality has since been removed from that manual and is no longer considered a diagnosis for treatment. A human characteristic that is not the norm is not necessarily abnormal, but rather can simply be what is not expected. Today we have sufficient empirical evidence to more precisely understand this human characteristic of same sex attraction, but we do not yet have a complete scientific explanation, even though science is pointing us in that direction.

As I see it, the basis for your description of this human trait is Revelation, what God has revealed through the Church and the Christian tradition, not science. I suggest we should be wary of making pronouncements that are not substantiated by the sciences of our time. One of our outstanding biologists, E. O. Wilson, writes in The Social Conquest Of Earth:

The conflict between scientific knowledge and the teaching of organized religions is irreconcilable. The chasm will continue to widen and cause no end of trouble as long as religious leaders go on making unsupportable claims about supernatural causes of reality. [p.295]

I am a Catholic who regularly attends worship, and I continue to study in the areas of theology, religion, and the sciences on a regular basis. There are many of us committed and informed Catholics who are concerned with the direction you have taken. Archbishop Nienstedt, I urge you to have open conversations with your people, all of them.

Peace,

Donald R. Conroy, PhD

NEXT LETTER

Open Letter to Archbishop Nienstedt – #3

The Progressive Catholic Voice's sharing of your open letters to Archbishop Nienstedt continues with the following letter by John Buckley. To learn more about this series and how to participate in it, click here.


Dear Archbishop,

After censoring several comments opposing your public advocacy for the passage of the amendment limiting marriage on November 6, 2012, I have been banned from posting to your public forum on TheCatholicSpirit.com for my response to the story entitled “Marching for Mary and Marriage.”

It is inconceivable to me that you would dedicate a Rosary procession petitioning the Blessed Mother for such a destructive purpose. The Holy Mother must be appalled.

My comments were as follows:

• Why do you feel the need to censor my comments? Unlike you, I am trying to reach out and start a dialogue. This is an issue that affects millions of gay children. Gay children who are killing themselves because people like you are taking away their hope for fulfilling their dreams of happiness. You make no mention of the gay families who are directly involved, no reference to how and why they exist with a complete disregard to their individual rights and no reference to the overwhelming amount of biological, psychological and scientific evidence that runs counter to your baseless contention that gay marriage is harmful to society and children.

• Do you really know what is harmful to children? Tell them that they are not members of a legitimate family. That harms them. Do you know what else? Tell them their parents are setting a poor example, not just for them, but for all of society. Do you know what else harms children? How about telling them that they are better off being raised by someone other than the only two people they have ever trusted in their short lives? Oh yeah, and don’t forget to make sure you tell all of their friends, too.

• Do you have any idea what homosexuality is, beyond what you may have heard from the pulpit of your church? Do you even know what gay men and women want from marriage beyond your contempt and or disgust for a group of people who are different from you? Do you know that the homosexual orientation reveals itself at puberty in as many as one in ten children? Do you realize that any of children conceived in the heterosexual union have those very same odds? Are you familiar with any of the numerous biological and scientific studies that identify homosexuality as a naturally occurring, immutable human characteristic and link it to the beginnings of human development in the mother’s womb? Have you ever asked a gay man or woman how they felt about their partner? Do you realize that long-term homosexual relationships have little to do with the physical relationship and just like heterosexual relationships, are everything about the deeply held emotional and psychological bonds that occur between loving couples? These are biological facts supported by countless scientific studies.

• Do you have any idea about the devastating physical and psychological harm your lack of understanding and willingness to ignore the facts about gay marriage has on millions of gay men and women, their parents, children, family and loved ones? If you have any idea, and have even an ounce of compassion, you would rethink your position and let this post stand.

Let me finish with this:

Do you know what absolutely will not harm your children? Telling them that the world is a diverse and wonderful place where everyone should care deeply about their friends and neighbors. Telling them everyone deserves to be loved and respected and that all of us have a right to live our lives in peace, free from fear, and free from the tyranny of a few uneducated and ignorant people who think they know what’s best for everyone. Do you know what else will never harm them? Giving them a solid education in science and biology. Letting them understand the things that are true in the world. Letting them learn the difference between that and what we know is no longer true. Teaching them not to fear knowledge. If you want to teach them to pray the Rosary, teach them to pray for peace and understanding.

– John Buckley

NEXT LETTER

Open Letter to Archbishop Nienstedt – #2

The Progressive Catholic Voice's sharing of your open letters to Archbishop Nienstedt continues with the following letter from Dr. Malcolm Nazareth, co-founding director of the Center for Interfaith Encounter in St. Cloud, MN. To learn more about this series and how to participate in it, click here.


Dear Archbishop,

A member of Christ Church Newman Center, St. Cloud, MN, for well over 12 years, I’m writing to you as a Catholic who is a long-time ally of those who are well known and proud to be Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ). I believe I’m fully in accord with the mind of Jesus when I take my stand on their side against those who overtly as well as covertly reject LGBTQ sexual orientation and gender identities. My Roman Catholic roots go back to South Asia. There, in the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay, I was born and raised, and it was in the Catholic Dioceses of Pune and Nashik (India) that I first learned and taught theology in reputable theological institutions affiliated with the Gregorian University, Rome.

It grieves me that, on the issue of LGBTQs, you, as official leader of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, are publicly taking a retrogressive stance. Your unabashed political involvement on the side of uncompassionate conservatives of diverse Christian denominations embarrasses me both as a world citizen and as a Catholic Christian. You have been availing yourself of church resources and platforms to advocate a position pertaining to LGBTQs that is certainly not one of faith and morals. What you are at pains to propagate is a political issue, and my ecclesiastical leader in the Twin Cities is undoubtedly on the wrong side of history on this one. I have been teaching Diversity and Racial Issues courses at St. Cloud State University for a decade, and I cannot tell you how much at variance your anti-LGBTQ stance is, and how out of step with the United Nations declaration on Gay Rights (2011), on one hand, and, on the other, the US government’s repealing of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” also in 2011. I am one of many who believe that you vainly seek to put the clock back in 2012.

I’m aghast at your insistence on being on the wrong side of science, too, thus bringing further disrepute and ignominy today on the religion that carries the name of Jesus of Nazareth who was open minded, large hearted, inclusive, and respectful of human nature, and whose words and deeds manifested his preferential option for the marginalized and powerless. This time my church and its designated leader in Minnesota, contrary to my understanding of Jesus Christ, is naively doing the wrong thing, yet pretending before the wider US society that his position on LGBTQs is not homophobic. In the past, the world leaders of the Catholic Church vehemently supported slavery, and also cocksuredly went against the teachings of reputed astronomers, for example, only to have some more enlightened Catholic leaders who succeeded them centuries later retract their grossly misguided statements and steps. More recently, the same Catholic Church has been stubbornly refusing to open ordination to women on equal footing with men. The Vatican’s persecution of courageous Catholic religious women in the USA is one more indication of how, under Pope Benedict XVI’s leadership, the Church has all but lost its moral compass. Today, in your person, I’m dismayed to see the Catholic Church in Minnesota making another faux pas, this time in the context of what is inappropriately termed “Gay Marriage.” Racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and obscurantism have no place in our world, and much less in any church today. Exactly fifty years ago, the Second Vatican Council pointed Catholics in the direction of aggiornamento. Today, I urge you not to fall backward and retreat from that exhilarating vision of love, liberty, inclusivity, justice, and progress.

May I state immediately that we’re at a historic moment in the history of the State of Minnesota where the civil rights of LGBTQ communities are being radically challenged by heartless people who dare to call themselves Christian. You, too, Sir, are using your privileged capacity as official leader of all Catholic Minnesotans to weigh in on the side of siege-mentality Catholics and others who would prevent LGBTQs from enjoying civil rights equal to those enjoyed by legally married heterosexual couples. In so doing, you are demonstrating that the R. C. Church insensitively acquiesces in the denial of ordinary civil rights to LGBTQs that all married heterosexuals have enjoyed in the eyes of this state since its founding. For all your futile efforts to inscribe heterosexism into the constitution of Minnesota through an amendment that will limit civil marriage, you will go down in the history of the upper Midwest as a Catholic archbishop who used his privilege as a propertied, White, heterosexual Christian male to disempower and oppress a significant minority segment of his fellow citizens. There is still time for you to save face.

Archbishop Nienstedt, you may well be personally convinced of the moral correctness of this discriminatory stance. At the same time, you may well be following the lead of the rich, White, heterosexual male-dominated Vatican which has too often failed to get obvious matters right. Whatever it may be, I feel impelled by my calling as a baptized Catholic to request you to try and sensitize yourself to the real needs of real human beings who are different than those of us naturally endowed with the majoritarian heterosexual orientation. When you advocate that marriage be constitutionally limited to that which is contracted between a man and a woman, you are ipso facto depriving LGBTQs, who are well known to comprise approximately a tenth of the population of any society, of rights that the majority 90% potentially or actually enjoy before the law when they contract marriage. It is discriminatory and oppressive, merely from a civil viewpoint, that a certain group of people, naturally endowed with LGBTQ orientations, should be forbidden to publicly declare their vows to each other and, after that, to be recognized as legitimate partners of a civil union who enjoy legal rights no less and no more than those enjoyed by legally married heterosexual couples.

May I urge you to consider, for example, the wise approach of some Native American societies which view LGBTQs as being blessed with “two spirits” as compared with heterosexuals who are possessed of only “one spirit,” either male or female. From the numberless gay members of the R. C. clergy at all levels of the hierarchy, you well know that LGBTQs are “different.” Indeed, to return to a felicitous phrase used by our Native American heritage in the USA, LGBTQs are “good medicine.” Catholics with an LGBTQ orientation are a blessed gift to the local, regional, as well as international Christifideles. It may well be the backward understanding of Christians of different stripes, especially those who are prone to literalist interpretations of the Bible, that has effectively repressed LGBTQs for close to two millennia. It seems high time that White-dominant Christianity in the USA jettison what remains of its homophobic European heritage and assimilate to the millennia-old wisdom of our Native American sisters and brothers. Their openness to “difference” is far more akin to the spirit of Jesus Christ Our Lord than that of the “Christians” who have vainly tried for 520 years to “save” the now decimated first peoples of North America. I cannot help recalling here the White-originated slogan “Kill the Indian, save the man” which energized many a “Christian” missionary in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is equally unethical for you, Sir, to lead Catholics today to similarly hold, “Kill the LGBTQ, save the man.”

Archbishop Nienstedt, if you happen to be one who is afraid of those who are different, I encourage you, as my official leader, to update your knowledge and expertise with insights about human nature that social scientists have been expounding for decades now, yes, even in the western “civilized” world. Please desist from any backwardness that may be leading you and those whom you guide to take positions riddled with age-old prejudice. I urge you to beware that, by pushing the so-called “marriage amendment,” you may be currently abusing your ecclesiastical power over your constituents in Minnesota much in the manner of a bully. A sensitive, conscientious, and Jesus-motivated stance would bring you down on your knees to wash the feet of LGBTQs and serve their needs as a true pastor worthy of his office. You have been appointed Archbishop to serve the cause of humanity, equality, justice, and human rights in keeping with the Gospel. If you are hesitant to fulfil the church’s mission, it would be better for you to step aside and let the Catholic Church move forward in keeping with the times and recognize the humanity and dignity of all, including especially LGBTQs.

My bottom line: I urge you and those who follow you to consider voting NO to the proposed marriage amendment. Do the right thing. Desist from siding with those who, lacking civic sense, use their religious beliefs to mask their homophobic proclivities. Be another Jesus today. Shed your clerical trappings and conditioning. Be human first. Widen the circle to truly welcome and include LGBTQs into Christian belief and practice without fussing over their sexual orientation any more than they fuss over yours. You have no more say in their option to enter into civil unions than they have to interfere with your decision to take a vow of priestly celibacy. Support them in their life options as you have been supported in yours. Thank you.

I have spoken. I am not alone.

Malcolm Nazareth
Co-founding Director, Center for Interfaith Encounter
St. Cloud, MN

NEXT LETTER

Share Your Open Letter to the Archbishop

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Dear Readers:

We invite you to send us your open letters to the Archbishop. We will post them here on the Progressive Catholic Voice.

Did you know that canon law says we are free to make our spiritual needs known to our church leadership? Of course, as free people of God, we don’t need permission, but it is good to have this freedom acknowledged in canon law. Sometimes, canon law says, the faithful have the duty to make their needs known. If your letter does not move the Archbishop, it may move someone else in ways we can’t foretell.

Send your letter to progressivecatholicvoice@gmail.com. Please also consider writing about your concern to the papal nuncio or sending him a copy of your letter. He has said he is willing to hear from us. His name and address: Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 3339 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC, 20008-3610.

Following is the first of hopefully many open letters to the Archbishop that we'll be sharing at the Progressive Catholic Voice.

– The Editorial Board

_______________________________________

October 11, 2012
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt
226 Summit Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55102


Archbishop Nienstedt:

I am in receipt of your letter of October 1, 2012, requesting me to vote Yes to a constitutional amendment limiting civil marriage. It makes me sad that the leader of my beloved church is asking me to betray both my citizenship and my commitment to the Gospel.

I find your stated purpose to keep a definition of civil marriage “safe from politicians, activists, and state court judges” to be a cynically-stated betrayal of U.S. citizenship. Our government is based on principles of freedom and equality constitutive of our nation, i.e. our constitution. Citizens in dialogue (activists) work for laws to be made through their representatives (politicians), whose work is reviewed for fidelity to the principles of freedom and equality by the judiciary (state court judges). A moral people thus evolves through this process toward freedom and justice for all. You are undermining this process on which Catholics have depended for their own freedom and equality in the past and may again in the future.

I call on you, as leader of the Catholic Archdiocese in St. Paul and Minneapolis, to make arguments that appeal to the reason of all our fellow citizens, no matter their religious beliefs or lack of them, in favor of your position on this amendment you have championed if any such arguments are available. You must also openly submit those arguments to the reasoning of opponents. This is the only way to gain respect as a citizen in political discourse. Otherwise you are a religious demagogue, leading your followers to unreasoning conclusions. As a telephone campaigner, I have heard many Catholics following your lead.

Your argument based on the “nature” of marriage does not hold up. We are talking here about civil marriage laws and those laws have defined marriage over the centuries in many nations in any number of ways. What is the necessity for civil marriage laws to limit the status to heterosexual couples who are biologically capable of procreation as a couple? There are numerous unions of same-sex couples with children who desire the status of civil marriage and for whom it would be a benefit. On what argument do you depend to justify denying them equal protection of the law as our constitution already provides?

I’m sure you are aware of Jesus’ teachings and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the dignity of the human person. I look upon the principles of freedom and equality undergirding our form of government as an outgrowth of that Western tradition. When I see people suffering from unjustified, unequal treatment based on their sexual orientation, which is their “nature,” I am moved by my conscience to try to alleviate the unjust situation. I look upon this as the Gospel commitment you are asking me to betray.

I ask you to reconsider your position and to enter into dialogue with the people whose lives will be affected by your political activism.

– Paula Ruddy
Minneapolis

NEXT LETTER

"Who is the Church? And How Does the Church Discern Morality?"

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Theologians see need for broader discussion on conscience

By Joshua J. McElwee


Note: This article was first published February 10, 2012, by the National Catholic Reporter.


As the conversation surrounding the controversial birth control mandate continues, prominent theologians are saying President Barack Obama's decision on that subject just underlines the need for a much broader discussion among Catholics regarding the complex moral issues of our day.

On the birth control issue, Catholic bishops have made their position clear. In more than 160 letters to dioceses across the country, they have variably called the administration's decision an "affront to religious liberty" that would cause Catholics to "violate our consciences" regarding the morality of contraception.

Yet, in conversations with NCR and in their own postings online, several theologians are wondering if a more nuanced and lengthier discussion is in order. Each expressed regret that the bishops' recent outcry seems to narrow down the fullness of Catholic moral teaching to issues of sexuality.

"Conscience is such a hugely important topic," said Lisa Fullam, an associate professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif. "The fact that it tends to only be discussed in the light of sexuality is unfortunate."

At the heart of a broader discussion of moral issues, theologians say, would be how Catholics understand the notions of evil and conscience, and how this particular question raises many others about Catholic participation in a much wider range of morally questionable activities — from war to sweatshops, and even including the production of food.

As Julie Hanlon Rubio, an associate professor of Christian ethics at St. Louis University, put it, this decision may reflect that Catholics "need to think about the ways in which our partnerships with government, corporations and even culture may lead us to compromise our most deeply held values."

The focus of Catholic moral teaching in the past has been on "individual issues," not involvement in governmental structures or societal institutions, Rubio said. In fact, the practice of moral theology first came about to help confessors know how to identify individual sins in the confessional.

"More recently, we've come to think more in ways that individuals cooperate with social evils, or participate in social sin, or hold up sinful social structures," she said.

The theologians also said that the focus on sexual issues is due to our understanding of the notion of "intrinsic evil." Long a staple of Catholic discussions of morality, the notion is somewhat hard to define. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not use the phrase, but it does say: "There are concrete acts that it is always wrong to choose because their choice entails a disorder of the will, i.e., a moral evil."

In other words, Fullam said, an intrinsic evil is one in which "there is never any justification" for an action that aims at an evil "as a sole intended end."

Thus, she said, any judgment of sin must include consideration of a person's intention. Most moralists, she said, would agree that in order to describe something as an intrinsic evil, you would first have to know something about the intention and circumstances of the person who has undertaken that act.

It's clarifications like that, Fullam said, that show there is a lot more nuance to moral issues than may seem apparent at first glance.

The birth control pill cannot be considered evil by itself, she said — after all it is "just a substance."

That's why hospitals can prescribe the pill to women who use it for some medical reason. The intention, she said, is preventing disease: "Contraception in that case is a side effect."

The importance of judging intention to understand the effect of any sin seems to underline the level of nuance necessary to judge complex moral questions.

Ultimately, Fullam said, each and every act requires discernment along the lines of some basic questions proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas: "What is the point of what you're doing and what are the circumstances?"


Societal considerations

If all the actions we undertake, both individually and as a society, require a careful discernment of our moral ends, the question remains: Why does it seem that the bishops — and even Catholics in general — more seriously engage questions of sexual morality, while leaving many questions of social sin unanswered?

Look at the lack of outcry over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said David Cloutier, associate professor of theology at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Md. While Pope John Paul II clearly opposed that war, U.S. bishops did not instruct their faithful to refrain from paying their taxes, which might fund the military, or to express disagreement in other ways.

Examination of social issues like war is typically the subject of "lengthy inquiry," focused on "different circumstances," Cloutier said, in contrast to the seemingly straightforward nature of Catholic teaching on sexuality.

Rubio said she tried to explore the subject of cooperation with evil in a paper about the morality of buying clothes that may have been made in sweatshops.

But, she said, "it was really difficult to draw out the lines of connection" on that subject, considering the "limits of knowledge" and other ethical questions about whether it is better for people in impoverished countries to have low-paying jobs than no jobs at all.

"It gets really complicated," she said. "It seems much more complicated than 'Am I cooperating with the evil of contraception?' "

In the same vein, Rubio said one of her colleagues wanted to evaluate the morality of meat-eating in light of the conditions of those working in meat factories and had the same difficulty.

Despite that difficulty to discern clear-cut answers to morality in some areas, Rubio said the attempt to do so emphasizes that in the Catholic tradition "there is definitely an affirmation that there is such a thing as structural sin, and we participate as individuals and we can be guilty of that."

That's why, although the bishops' statements on moral issues — particularly sexual ones — can sometimes seem blunt, Rubio said she appreciated their attempt to "talk about cooperation with evil," particularly when they bring up the issue in regard to voting.

"Although it tends to be focused on just a few issues," she said, "the idea I think is very useful: What do I do when I vote? What am I cooperating with?"

Theologian Daniel Maguire of Marquette University in Milwaukee comes to the topic with more fundamental questions: Who is the church? And how does the church discern morality?

The bishops' positions on the health insurance mandate cannot be separated from U.S. Catholics' widespread negligence in following the church's teaching on contraception, Maguire said.

It's no secret that since the 1968 promulgation of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the Catholic ban on contraception, many faithful haven't followed the teaching. In fact, a study by the Guttmacher Institute last April estimated that some 98 percent of Catholic women in the U.S. who have had sex use contraception.

When considering the position of the church on any issue, Maguire said, it's important to remember that the bishops are not "the entire picture."

A fuller picture of how Catholics have discerned moral truths in the past, he said, would include a "tripod" of views: those of the hierarchy, the "magisterium of the theologians," and the "grace-filled, experience-filled wisdom of the faithful."

History, Maguire said, shows the importance of all three viewpoints. When a pope in the early Middle Ages said torture was morally wrong, many theologians rebuked him. And while official church teaching outlawed usury for many years, many members of the laity continued to collect interest on loans.

Cloutier said the level of dissent on birth control might indicate why the bishops are taking such a vocal stand against the administration's decision on the subject. He said the bishops might see it as an issue of "symbolic power."

"The whole tradition has been arguing about contraception as a stand-in for a lot of other issues about authority and dissent for a long time," he said.

That dynamic becomes especially clear, Cloutier said, when you consider that the mandate may exclusively impact the structures — schools or universities, for example — over which bishops have traditionally been able to show their dedication to the teaching by banning coverage in health care plans.

For Fullam, the number of those who have decided to neglect the official church teaching might also say something about how Catholics have decided to give weight to their own consciences when evaluating a question of morality.

A recent survey of some 1,400 representative U.S. Catholics seems to give credibility to that opinion. When asked who should have the final say in determining right and wrong, some 50 percent responded that individuals, not church leaders, should be the final arbiters of morality on several issues, including those of divorce, abortion, homosexuality and contraception (NCR, Oct. 28-Nov. 10, 2011).

While "it is logically possible that the vast majority of Catholics stumble into mortal sin" by neglecting the teaching on birth control, Fullam said, it is also possible that many "gave the matter serious thought," used "all of the resources at our disposal for formation of conscience," and came to a decision that "this teaching is not binding on my conscience."

If that is the case, she said, then the church "needs to look hard at why, and what this means."

It also reflects the fact, she said, that there is a notion of the "reciprocity of consciences" in Catholic teaching.

"While the faithful learn from the magisterium, the faithful have consciences, too," Fullam said. "And maybe, in some circumstances, the magisterium can learn from the faithful.

"The sheer magnitude of practical sense on the matter of birth control means it's a question that maybe hasn't been settled as completely as some people think," she said.

Yet, no matter how the morality of birth control is considered, Maguire said the focus of Catholics on sexual ethics tends to neglect a whole range of other teachings that are just as important.

Recalling conversations he has had with politicians seeking advice on how to win over Catholic voters, Maguire said that abortion is the "only issue" the politicians are normally concerned about.

"And yet Catholicism has a rich social justice theory," he said. "And they don't know anything about it. That's a real shame."

Joshua J. McElwee is an NCR staff writer. His email address is jmcelwee@ncronline.org.


Recommended Off-site Links:
Daniel Maguire on the Progressive Core of Catholicism – The Wild Reed (October 18, 2010).
Daniel Maguire on Catholicism's "Long History of Demeaning Sexuality" – The Wild Reed (October 19, 2010).
98% of Catholic Women Have Used Contraception the Bishops Oppose — Dino Grandoni (The Atlantic Wire, February 10, 2012).
Why I'm a Catholic for Contraception — Karalen L. Morthole (CNN, February 10, 2012).
U.S. Bishops Oppose Obama's Compromise Birth Control Plan — James Vicini (Reuters, February 11, 2012).
Men Dealing Badly with Women: The USCCB and Women's Reproductive Health — Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, February 12, 2012).
Liberals Enabled Bishops in Contraception Battle — Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches, February 11, 2012).

The Unconscionable Consequences of Conscience Exemptions

By Jamie L. Manson


Edito's Note: This article was first published January 25 by the National Catholic Reporter.


Of all of the reactions that I've read to the Department of Health and Human Service's refusal to change the rules on contraception coverage, I've noticed that few commentators have referred to the formal name of the government mandate the bishops are fighting.

The provision is called the Affordable Care Act. This new law is intended to ensure the just treatment of women and couples who cannot afford adequate medical treatment when it comes to contraceptives and who want to raise families in a safe, responsible manner.

This act is a promising attempt to prevent unwanted pregnancies and offers perhaps the most ethical and realistic approach to reducing the abortion rate.

The bishops' reaction was characterized by increasingly typical cries of victimization and hysteria. This self-pity only further diminishes the seriousness with which U.S. Catholics take the hierarchy. The sad truth is, if the numbers of Catholics leaving the church are any indication, most Catholics in the United States probably see the hierarchy more as victimizers than victimized.

Some have labeled this decision as President Barack Obama's attack on Catholics, echoing the inflammatory, paranoid spin bishops are putting on any government decision that doesn't go their way lately. This decision is not an attack on Catholics, but rather a groundbreaking move to protect women and to guarantee them greater access to adequate, affordable health care.

The decision demonstrates that protecting women's health, safety and freedom is part of the common good. In this way, it reflects a key element of Catholic social justice teaching: promotion of the common good and protection of individual freedom.

Although the hierarchy has historically argued otherwise, the conscience of an individual Catholic laywoman or layman is not ipso facto inferior to the conscience of any bishop. As David DeCosse argued so articulately in NCR earlier this week, the model of conscience used by most bishops "emphasizes obedience, law, and hierarchical authority and thus departs from the Catholic tradition's close linkage of conscience, practical reason, and freedom."

The decision affirms the Catholic principle of the "primacy of conscience." According to the Catechism, "A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his [sic] conscience" (No. 1790). Informing the conscience is a "life long task" (No. 1784) and "To this purpose, man [sic] strives to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times assisted by the virtue of prudence, by the advice of competent people, and by the help of the Holy Spirit and his [sic] gifts" (No. 1788).

Lay Catholics will be permitted to exert their practical reason and freedom of conscience to choose, in an informed way, the medical practices and treatments that are healthiest for them and their families.

The hierarchy claims that this decision will force Catholics to either obey the law or violate their consciences. But whose consciences will be violated? According to the Guttmacher Institute, 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women (and, by association, their male partners) have used some form of contraception.

Perhaps Obama has learned, as many Catholic laypeople have, that the definition of the Catholic church encompasses far more people than the hierarchy. The church includes laypeople, theologians and ethicists who have, with good reason, rejected this doctrine. The majority of the church has refused to receive this teaching. Perhaps Obama saw, as many of us do, the bishops' actions as an attempt to legislate beliefs that they cannot get their own people to obey.

In making this decision, the president represented the needs of the people and protected the civil rights of women and workers. This includes not only Catholic women and men, but also the many non-Catholics who are employed by organizations affiliated with the Catholic church. These workers will no longer be subjugated to a church teaching that, compared with other religious tradition, is rather extreme. Even conservative evangelicals do not object to the use of contraception within marriage.

Once women are allowed access to oral contraceptives, the hierarchy will be able to honor an overlooked provision in the church's teaching. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 14 percent of women use oral contraceptives for purposes other than birth control. That is more than one in 10 prescriptions. According to Humanae Vitae, women can take the pill for medical purposes. For decades, the church has prevented these women from receiving essential medical treatment and has therefore acted contrary to its own doctrine.

When an employee obtains a prescription for the pill, the hierarchy does not know whether the purpose is medical or contraceptive. They assume, of course, that the pill is used for contraception. By allowing the hierarchy this exemption, the government would have allowed the church to continue to make decisions about their employees' private, sexual lives.

If the bishops had been allowed that power, then they should have had exerted equal power in refusing to pay for prescriptions for Viagara, Cialis and other sexual performance drugs for men. They should have demanded the right to know how men would use these drugs. Are they using the drugs with their wives? Girlfriends? Mistresses? Would the church ever intrude on heterosexual men and their personal sexual lives in this way?

Perhaps the most important accomplishment achieved through this decision is the government's refusal to create a precedent for religious organizations to get a pass from obeying civil rights laws. A few decades ago, individuals and organizations whose religious beliefs opposed desegregation wanted to be exempt from the Civil Rights Act. We can all look back in gratitude that the government refused their request.

If the bishops had gotten their way, it would have opened up a Pandora's box in which any religious group could claim exemptions from obeying a multitude of laws on religious grounds. I have little doubt that part of what propelled this fight was the bishops' desire to set a precedent on which they could base their refusal to provide benefits to employees in same-sex marriages and civil unions.

The fact is, Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies take in millions of dollars in federal and state grants every year. They should be accountable to the same civil rights laws given to other agencies that receive the same funding.

Some Catholic leaders have argued that, in order to meet the "narrow" exemption requirement, hospitals, schools, universities and social service agencies that do not want to comply with this new law will be forced to seriously reduce the number of people they employ and serve.

If this should happen, it might be one of the worst cases of the church's honoring one teaching at the expense of dozens of others.

For more than a century, Catholic social justice teaching has argued for the rights of workers, especially the right to adequate medical benefits. More than a dozen church documents teach the preferential option for the poor, workplace justice, the protection of women's rights, the primacy of the person and the common good.

There is only one teaching on contraception. It is a teaching that disregards the findings of the Majority Report of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control. It is a teaching that has also been rejected by the sensus fidelium.

Nevertheless, as leaders of Catholic institutions spend the next year adjusting to this new law, Catholic organizations will still contemplate turning away the sick, the poor, the orphan and others in need because they do not want to obey the civil rights laws set by the government that funds them. They are entertaining the possibility of violating dozens of social justice teachings in order to keep a hard line on a rule that almost no one accepts or follows.


Jamie L. Manson received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her columns for NCR earned her a first prize Catholic Press Association award for Best Column/Regular Commentary in 2010.

When Is Dissent Not Just Dissent?

.
By Robert McClory


Editor's Note: The following article was first published November 17, 2011 by the National Catholic Reporter.


The recent, very thorough survey of American Catholics, whose results were featured in the Oct. 28-Nov. 10 NCR, revealed no overwhelming shifts in belief and practice since the first such survey in 1987. The latest figures reinforce the fact that a substantial number of Catholics are convinced they can be in good standing with the church without adhering to church teachings on various issues, including weekly Mass attendance and remarriage after divorce. More than half the respondents in the survey consider "not very important" Catholic positions opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and requiring a celibate male clergy.

Bishops, priests and other church leaders have been viewing similar results for years now without throwing up their arms and declaring panic. Their easy and obvious response is that the surveys are polluted by the number of lax Catholics, half-Catholics, and pseudo-Catholics affected by the winds of secularism, relativism and individualism howling through American culture. Obviously, they say, this is dissent, this is disobedience.

There can be some truth there, but I would like to suggest that we may be dealing with something else -- something you are not likely to hear mentioned by your bishop or your parish priest. It is the "non-reception" of certain church teachings. And that is not just a less blunt term for dissent. Non-reception holds a respectable place in Catholic teaching among theologians (and very likely among many bishops if they were not so fearful of saying what they think).

According to Jesuit Fr. Ladislas Orsy, writing in the Encyclopedia of Catholicism, church law, like ordinary human law, has two stages. First, it is formulated by the lawgiver and promulgated or brought to the attention of the subjects. In the second stage, those who become aware of the law must try to understand it as they "encounter it in their concrete, particular and personal situations." They must then "form a critical judgment about the law either by affirming it through steady obedience or by bringing to the legislator's notice the difficulties the law may generate."

But what if the subjects, having presented their difficulties, are rebuffed by the legislator or are simply ignored? In that case, the second stage is incomplete and the law has no real effect. It's a little like the tree falling in the forest when there is no one around to see it or hear it fall.

Discussing Vatican II, Benedictine Bishop B.C. Butler acknowledged that if a teaching "failed in the end to enjoy reception on the part of the church, this would prove it had not met the requirements" for enforcement. And in 1969, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger (currently Pope Benedict VI) spoke about even infallibly proposed teachings: "Where there is neither consensus on the part of the universal church nor clear testimony in the sources, no binding decision is possible. If such a decision were formally made, it would lack the necessary conditions and the question of the decision's legitimacy would have to be examined." What Butler and Benedict are getting at is the very real possibility of legitimate non-reception.

Is that what these surveys are telling us over and over again? It would be out of the question, I think, to attribute all non-reception to the presence of irresponsible pseudo-Catholics in the survey responses. The latest American Catholic survey is helpful here, since it carefully distinguishes in some areas the responses of highly committed, moderately committed and low-committed Catholics. The highly committed are described as far more likely than other groups to affirm the importance of the sacraments, the core beliefs of the church, the church's apostolic tradition and its social justice teachings. They also tend to rely heavily on Vatican teaching authority and to emphasize church teaching regarding sexual behavior. Simply put, these are "cream-of-the crop" Catholics.

Yet according to the survey results this year, almost half of these loyal believers say you can be a good Catholic without adhering to church law on divorce and remarriage, on living together without a valid marriage, on attending Mass weekly. And 60 percent of this highly committed flock says you can be a good Catholic without following church teaching on contraception. It would seem then that many dedicated Catholics are trying to develop an informed conscience and have concluded they may disagree with official teaching in good faith in some cases. At least implicitly, they recognize that the two-stage characteristic of authentic teaching means a law not received by the greater church lacks the force of obligation. Call it dissent, if you will, or call it non-reception. It is what's quietly happening in today's American church.


See also the previous PCV posts:
Gerald Arbuckle on the "Critical Role of Dissent"
Dissent: Lessons from Slavery
Nicholas Lash on Dissent and Disagreement
Richard Gaillardetz on the Need to "Wrestle with the Tradition"
Civil Discourse. In Church?

Recommended Off-site Links:
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 1) – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, June 10, 2008).
Robert McClory on a Catholic Understanding of Faithful Dissent (Part 2) – Michael Bayly (The Wild Reed, July 8, 2008).

Image: Michael Bayly.

When is a Law Not a Law?

By Bernie Rodel, Eileen Rodel and Paula Ruddy


There are lots of differences between church law and civil law, but they have a couple of things in common. One is that the purpose of law is to give order and stability to the community and to help it thrive. Another is that the people governed have to see the value of the laws and accept them. Justice, peace, and a thriving community all go together when laws are good.

We, Bernie and Eileen, found a book by Ladislas Orsy, SJ, with a wonderful chapter about how norms pronounced by the Roman Catholic Church authorities become law when the people test them against their life experiences and their relation to God. His book is Receiving the Council: Theological and Canonical Insights and Debates (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2009) and Chapter 5 is entitled “Reception of the Laws: An Exercise in Communio.” We gave a copy to Paula and she “received” it. All three of us are recommending it.

Orsy is a professor of canon law at Georgetown University in Washington DC. A google search tells that he has nine books and hundreds of articles over his 89 years. This little book, particularly Chapter 5, is one of those crystal clear, accessible-to-a-layperson, distillations that only a lifetime of reflecting on a subject can achieve. We’ve used lots of quotations to show you what we mean.


Receiving the Law

The doctrine of “reception,” people’s assimilation of the values underlying law, is solidly orthodox in the Catholic tradition. As all doctrine, it is founded on faith, i.e., the individual Christian’s experience of union with God.

In the church (that is the beginning of the kingdom) the source of all obligations is in a personal covenant with God. The people are bound to God. Consequently, they are committed to uphold the integrity of God’s house. (p. 63)

The lawgivers, the pope and bishops in the modern Roman Catholic Church, and the law receivers are all one in the same People of God. Their task is to co-create the reign of God with the Spirit who is within them. That is the mission of the institutional framework that gives them stability and support.

Orsy distinguishes between doctrinal teaching, which requires the faithful to seek expanded understanding, and legislation, which requires the faithful to perform some action in obedience. The doctrine of infallibility relates to doctrinal teaching, but there is no claim to infallibility in making laws.

It cannot be stressed enough that there is a great difference between proclaiming doctrine and promulgating a command. When doctrine is handed over, the intent of the giver is an increase in knowledge; when a command is conveyed, his intent is the performance of an action.

It follows, therefore, that there must be a great difference between the reception of doctrine and that of law. In the former case reception consists in assimilating the knowledge in an ever-expanding manner; in the latter case reception consists in narrowing the attention to one precise action and performing it. (p. 64)

The church, therefore, does not hold (and never did) that there is a divine guarantee that an ecclesiastical superior (including the pope and the bishops) will never fall short of the highest degree of prudence in practical matters. Historical facts prove abundantly the truth of this affirmation. p. 62

So how does the people’s reception of law happen?

Above all, reception is a dynamic process brought forward by those immense energies that circulate in the community of the faithful. They are moved by a desire implanted by the Creator into the human heart to seek the good, and they are moved by the Spirit of God who has gathered them into one assembly, ecclesia, and is breathing life into their activities. (p.65)

Orsy gives five steps in the process:


1) The first movement in receiving the law is to take cognizance of the norm that has been promulgated. (p.65)


2) The second movement is the quest for understanding, a search for the why? of the law. The object of this search is the value that has prompted the lawgiver to enact the norm—the value that the law intends to promote and support. To find it may require some detective work, but when it is found, the inner meaning of the law is revealed.

Not all the subjects are likely to engage in such an inquiry. Many prefer to trust the judgment of the legislator and feel no need to raise questions about the values behind the norms. This is a generally accepted attitude, even praised as virtuous. It is marked, however, by a built in imperfection, a lack of understanding of the reason for law that can eventually lead to discontent and frustration. (p.65)


3) The third movement in the process is its climax: the law meets the conscience of the receiver. It reaches that luminous part of the person where he or she is bound to God. There a sovereign judgment will have to be made over the law, a judgment for which the person is responsible to his or her Maker and to no one else. [Note: This is the moment when the abstract, general and impersonal norm encounters a judge (life that is) who takes into account what is concrete, particular, and personal in the circumstances.]

This could be a routine event: as the law presents itself to the conscience, it is accepted in peace. Its harmony with the fundamental obligation to serve God is immediately detected.

In some cases, however, the conscience may sound an alarm; it finds a disharmony between the external rule and the internal drive to serve God. A conflict develops.

. . . In exceptional cases, there may not even be a doubt: the conscience responds to the law with a blunt no; then the process of reception stalls….

The gist of this doctrine is the affirmation of the primacy of the conscience over the law: no Christian must hold otherwise. (p. 66)

4) The fourth movement follows after the conscience has accepted the law and has integrated its demands with the obligation that binds the person to God. The lawgiver’s intention becomes the receiver’s decision. He or she is willing to act, that is, to reach out for the value that the law wants. This is, before and above all, an obsequium to God, “honoring God,” and only secondarily an act of obedience to the law. (p. 67)


5) The fifth movement on the part of the receiver is then the action itself, the implementation of the law in the world of concrete, particular, and personal events. (p. 67)


Signs of successful reception are peace and joy in the community. The fruits of the Holy Spirit we memorized in catechism class are the way we know that a community is thriving. If, on the contrary, the community is crippled with fear of a vindictive lawmaker, individuals going “under the radar,” turning to other Christian communities for nurture, and speaking of the lawmaker with disrespect, it is time to look at the laws that might be causing the problem.

Of course, as Orsy points out, it is possible that the laws may not be the problem. If the community is not functioning in peace and joy, focusing on its mission, law is not by itself going to make that happen. Then the relationship between the lawgivers and the receivers has to be rehabilitated with methods other than law.

It would be interesting to talk about some specific laws that have been given recently. What is the value underlying the insistence on precious metal chalices and patens at Mass? What is the value of limiting the role of homilist to the ordained sacramental minister? Have the people discovered the values underlying these directives, and received them in peace and joy or have they acquiesced out of fear or even rejected the directives, failing to see the values and the reasoning for the restrictions?

People, within and without the church, want to know the reason for a law; they want to understand the good that it intends to achieve; they want to implement it intelligently and freely. Such an attitude is no more than an assertion of human dignity, a stance that the church, no doubt, wishes to honor. (p. 57)

If we, as the People of God in union with our leaders, the pope and bishops, are obligated to test the norms given in the “crucible of life,” we can’t be sheep-like about it. That task takes a lot of reflection and conversation.

A directive to obey without question is contrary to this traditional doctrine of reception. Such a directive cuts off the possibility of people’s formation of conscience. It dulls moral sensitivity and it stops up the process by which bad laws can be detected and revised.

We need forums where people of all life experiences in our local church can be heard with respect. The well-being of the local church and, consequently, its modeling of a church dedicated to Jesus’ vision are at stake

We see The Progressive Catholic Voice and the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform, of which we are Board members, as means to promote discussion of church teachings and laws in order to facilitate their reception. Could The Catholic Spirit be such a forum?

Please tell us if you too feel a need for a place to discuss Church doctrine and laws in order to form your conscience.


For reviews of Orsy's Receiving the Council, see:
Orsy Declares His Insights - Arthur Jones (National Catholic Reporter, April 2010).
Unity Wins Out Over Diversity - John Wilkins (National Catholic Reporter, March 31, 2010).
A Faithful Critic - Paul Lakeland (America, November 2, 2009)
Receiving the Council - Randall Woodard (Catholic Books Review, December 2009).
Creeping Infallibility: Popes Have Gone Way Beyond What Vatican Councils Authorized - Gerald Floyd (Creative Advance, April 7, 2010).

Two Catholic Bishops, Conscience, and the Common Good

By Paula Ruddy

Two U.S. Catholic bishops have recently expressed urgent concern for freedom of conscience in the public sphere. They are arguing for legal protection for people whose jobs require them to provide service to people whose ethics they disagree with. The services in question are medical services for those who choose to have abortions or sterilizations and the services connected with civil marriage to same-gender couples.

Are the bishops right? Should people employed to serve the public be protected by law in refusing to provide services to those they disagree with?

Examples from outside the emotionally charged areas of abortion and same-sex civil marriage may make the question clearer. Recently in local news, Muslim cab drivers were refusing to transport airport fares carrying duty-free alcohol or any passenger accompanied by a dog. The cab drivers’ refusal was based on religious beliefs and ethics. As it turned out, they were not given legal protection; they were threatened with suspension of their licenses. When another religious tradition’s ethics were the subject of conflict, did the Catholic bishops argue that the law should protect the cab drivers’ right to refuse service?


Archbishop Nienstedt on Abortion Services

Archbishop, John C. Nienstedt, in his April 2 column in the Catholic Spirit says he intended to reflect on the Easter triduum, but because of “a grave threat to our country’s well-being through the infringement of our right to exercise a freedom of conscience,” he was compelled to talk about a Health and Human Services (HHS) rule instead. In doing so, he uses phrases such as: government coming “between an individual citizen and God;” “first step in moving our nation from democracy to despotism,” “slippery slope to moral chaos.”

The intemperate language is aimed at the Obama administration and a move it made to hold hearings on a Health and Human Services agency rule dealing with the right to refuse abortion and sterilization procedures. What the Archbishop did not explain is that the HHS rule he is defending as crucial to our freedoms has been in effect only since January 20, 2009, and has nothing to do with forcing Catholics to assist in abortion or sterilization procedures.

The HHS rule in question was promulgated in the last days of the Bush administration and took effect in January 2009. It was intended to implement a law that has been in effect since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. That law, 42 USC Section 300 a-7, provides that health care entities receiving federal funds may not discriminate against either providers of abortion services or those who refuse to provide abortion services on the basis of “religious belief or moral conviction.” Catholic health care facilities are not forced to provide abortions or sterilizations. Catholic physicians are not forced to provide those services. Revising or rescinding the 2009 HHS rule would not repeal the 1973 law, so it is hard to see this as “a grave threat to our country’s well-being” or a move from “democracy to despotism.”

I do not know the results of the hearings or how his administration intends to re-write the rule, but President Obama, in his address at Notre Dame on May 17, 2009, made this conciliatory appeal:

Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.

This does not look like a step down “the slippery slope to moral chaos.” Is the Archbishop’s vehement language an effort to protect individual conscience or is it an effort to frighten people in order to criminalize abortion?

There may be political reasons to do so, but what is the logic of providing ”conscience clauses” for health care providers? Aren’t health care workers employed in a public facility providing abortion and sterilization procedures in the same position as the Muslim cab drivers? There are eleven abortion providers in the state of Minnesota, according to the Guttmacher Institute’s website. Why work for one if you are conscientiously opposed to providing abortion services? We would like to hear from anyone who has experienced problems of conscience in providing health care.


Bishop McCormack on Same-Sex Marriage

Another U.S. bishop’s concern is service providers’ freedom of conscience in same-sex civil marriages. Bishop John B. McCormack of Manchester urged the New Hampshire Governor to veto a same-sex marriage bill then making its way through the legislative process. He is quoted in the Manchester Union Leader of June 6, giving these reasons for his position:

When a change of this momentous scope is proposed and there is not adequate time to not only look at all the implications of it, but also not to hear in depth from the people whom it will affect, then there are going to be serious problems. Short of preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman, there must be adequate protections for churches, but also for individuals who have a genuine conscientious objection to participating in or assisting ceremonies of same sex couples.

We urge Governor Lynch to veto this legislation, if for no other reason than it leaves too many unanswered questions regarding protections for religious organizations and persons of conscience.

The bill has since been signed by Governor Lynch making same-sex marriage legal in New Hampshire.

Imagining a situation Bishop McCormack may be talking about, let’s say a county clerk has a religious conviction that same-gender sex is sinful. In handling the marriage application of two men or working for the marrying judge, he is “assisting ceremonies of same sex couples.” If he can’t rationalize his duty as a public employee in serving people who are legally requesting a service of him, then he will have a problem of conscience. I’d say he is in the same position as the Muslim cab driver. He must either reason his way to providing the service or find a job in which he can avoid contact with people he considers sinners. He is in the same position as a person who in the past was conscientiously opposed to serving blacks, Irish, Jews, foreigners, women, or any other marginalized group. There is no reason to legally protect him in refusing to fulfill the duties of his employment.


A Mix-Up of Moral Questions

These two Catholic leaders appealing for “the right to freedom of conscience” in relation to public law set me to thinking about what that right is and how it affects the common good. I think the bishops have mixed up two very different moral situations.

One situation is about being coerced by law against one’s conscience. But neither the federal law restricting the states from criminalizing abortion nor the state laws allowing same-sex marriage force anyone to have an abortion or to marry a same-gender person. Both laws allow a freedom; neither coerces a person to some act in violation of conscience. Each woman is free, with restrictions in the second and third trimesters, to terminate a pregnancy according to her own conscience; and each man or woman is free, with some restrictions, to marry whomever he or she chooses in conscience to marry. If a law required a woman to have amniocentesis and abort a fetus with health problems, for example, civil disobedience would be in order and the bishops would be right to campaign against it.

In the other situation a person must choose what employment conditions are consistent with his or her ethical code. No one is forced by law to work in a job that violates his or her conscience. Though some people have the luxury of avoiding repugnant conditions, the necessity of making a living can make a person quite tolerant of sinners around him. If a person believes his own moral rectitude is threatened by the choices of the people it is his duty to serve, he has the freedom to quit the job. This is the moral situation both bishops describe. In a pluralistic society with multiple ethical codes, is it reasonable to expect the law to protect each person’s right to refuse to serve people whose ethics they disagree with? I don’t think so.

The bishops erroneously speak as if the moral obligation in the second situation were the same as in the first. This might be a good question to test the bishops’ position: if the state criminalized abortion or homosexual sex, would prosecutors who did not believe in the justice of criminal penalties for either of those acts have the right to refuse to prosecute under a “conscience clause” provided for them? Would the bishops advocate for that conscience clause? Probably not. What they advocate is not about freedom of conscience at all. It is about coercing others to live by a Catholic ethical code

I do not doubt that both bishops sincerely think that their ethical view is the objectively “right” one and that the nation’s adopting their view would be for the common good.


The Common Good

This is the crucial question: who is to say what is for the common good? There are myriads of goods (values) and individuals have different priorities of goods. Since the conception of a good life and how people should relate to one another is deeply ingrained in a culture, each cultural group knows what is good for them. In pooling our views, we the people, all voices heard, decide what is for the common good in creating laws for ourselves. It’s a very messy process, one that often fails to include all voices. Nonetheless it is the ideal. No one group can decide what is good for the whole nation. Cooperation within the system of laws that we ourselves have made is the closest we can come to delivering the common good.

Whether the laws are just is always open to question. Time, public debate among citizens, and evolution in ethical thinking will tell how durable they are.

And what of the ethics of citizenship in a pluralistic nation? I think good citizenship calls for recognizing ourselves and our own ethical community as one of many individuals and communities, all with a stake in determining the common good. It calls for respect for the others’ freedom of conscience, a reluctance to force laws on people. It calls for recognition of ethical ambiguity and compassion for the way others view their choices. It calls for reasonableness and the careful use of language in public discourse All in all, a serious task for all of us.