Concerning the Catholic Church's advocacy for an exemption from covering contraception:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/unconscionable-consequences-conscience-exemptions

To which the editorial staff of the National Catholic Reporter responds.

What if the clashes over conscience between the American Catholic bishops and the Obama Administration are driven in great measure not by anti-Catholicism nor by creeping totalitarianism but by the very model of conscience used by the bishops themselves?
 

The next year may provide a decisive answer to this question.

On Friday, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services announced that religious institutions would have a year before they would be required to make contraception available at no cost to all female employees. In response, the Catholic Health Association both criticized the HHS statement and called for an “effective national conversation on the appropriate conscience protections in our pluralistic country.” Will the Church in the next year enter into such a conversation and possibly find solutions that balance the concerns of religious freedom with the respect for democratic equality? How this question is finally answered may well depend on what conceptual model of the Catholic conscience the Church brings to the table.

At present, the model of conscience used by most bishops is problematic in two ways. First, it emphasizes obedience, law, and hierarchical authority and thus departs from the Catholic tradition’s close linkage of conscience, practical reason, and freedom. Second, on account of this departure, these bishops needlessly lapse into using a sectarian model of the Catholic conscience ill-suited to the Church’s mission in a democratic pluralist society like the United States.

When the Catholic bishops today defend conscience, they are defending the idea that within human beings is an uncompromising witness to the universal, objective, exceptionless moral law. “Law” -- moral, natural, and divine law are all different aspects of the same thing -- is a crucial category here. The given, ineradicable quality of the moral law derived from reflection on the purposes of human nature is a sign of God’s providential ordering of the world. The bishops’ close link of moral and divine law informs their conviction -- and the conviction of the broader Catholic right in the United States -- that these current battles over conscience are part of the larger war that secularism has launched against religion. “Law” is also crucial as a specific ethical category corresponding to what is obligatory in a universal, objective way.

With this emphasis on law, the distinctiveness of the bishops' model of conscience comes into view. Where a theologian like Thomas Aquinas speaks of conscience combining obedience to moral law and the exercise of practical reason, the bishops heavily favor the former over the latter. On the one hand, this means that conscience is best understood as the way by which we adhere to the moral laws requiring respect always and everywhere -- in the bishops’ eyes especially meaning turning from what they call the “intrinsic evils” at stake in the use of the artificial means of birth control; in gay marriage; and in taking innocent human life from conception onward. On the other hand, the bishops’ emphasis on law as the pre-eminent category of conscience means that they leave little room for practical reasoning to help the conscience figure out what to do in the face of complexity. Practical reasoning, in this view, is wishy-washy, feckless, diluting the clear demands of the moral law. Or, as Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., said when explaining why Illinois bishops did not seek an exemption from a state law legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples that could have required Catholic Charities to place foster children with such couples: “It would have been seen as, ‘We’re going to compromise on the principle as long as we get our exception.’ We didn’t want it to be seen as buying our support.”

What has led to the diminished role for practical reason in the way the bishops understand conscience? Two key conceptual matters come to mind, both taken from concerns laid down by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. One is the sharp opposition to the “creative conscience” outlined by John Paul II in the 1993 papal encyclical called “Veritatis Splendor.” In that document, John Paul criticized any number of developments in Catholic moral theology including one that argued that conscience’s use of practical reason in the face of a host of particulars could lay the basis for claiming occasional exceptions to the otherwise universal mandate of the moral law. But the pope said that this view of the “creative” possibilities of conscience had things precisely backwards. It’s not the creative use of practical reason that should determine what is morally required in a particular situation. Rather, it’s the moral law -- “requiring meticulous observance,” as John Paul put it -- that determines what reason should conclude that a particular situation demands. In “Veritatis Splendor,” John Paul was taking aim at theologians working in the area of interpersonal and, especially, sexual morality. But, I believe, his powerful views have shaped the position of the bishops on the current matters of conscience, which pertain primarily to issues of sexual morality in a political, not interpersonal, context.

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And Fox news predictably attempts to exploit. Not sure of the source of this item.

Fox Breathlessly Attempts To Smear Obama As Anti-Catholic

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Philip Pullela (Rueters) reports on the Pope's call to listen to the silence in our lives.

Pope Benedict is asking people to stop amid the noise and haste and listen to the sounds of silence in life.

Benedict dedicated the theme of his message for the Catholic Church's World Day of Communication to the relationship between silence and words.

"Silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist," he said in the message.

"In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express ourselves," he said.

Benedict, who is a shy and quiet man himself, said that today "silence is a precious commodity" in a world with a "surcharge of stimuli and data."

"It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other," he said.

Joy, anxiety, and suffering can all be communicated in silence, sometimes more powerfully than with words and silence often gives people a chance to listen -- to God, to themselves and to others.

In short, the pope is asking everyone to turn down the noise, reflect, evaluate and analyze.

"For this to happen, it is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of 'eco-system' that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds," he said.

But he said the world of social communications was not always the problem and could also be part of the solution.

Benedict said there were "various types of websites, applications and social networks" which can help people find time for reflection and authentic questioning.

The Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Communications is marked on May 20. The message is intended for parishes around the world to prepare for the best way to celebrate it locally.

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