What is a Proportionate Reason? A Reflection

Introduction.

A reader on my blog page asked me for a clarification on what a Proportionate Reason was when it comes to moral theology and the abortion issue. It reminded me that sometimes what think is clear, the average reader might see as technical jargon. So, I apologize for not being clear and will try to explain it without sounding too technical or patronizing. (I suspect I may have to apologize in advance for not succeeding there).

Some Basic Things to Remember.

When dealing with evil and what enables it, we need to make a few basic statements. 

First. We are absolutely forbidden to do an evil act so good may come of it.

Second. To have a morally good act, the action itself must be morally good or neutral (no intrinsically evil acts [that is, the act itself is bad regardless of conditions] can ever be made good), the intention is good (doing something good or neutral for an evil reason makes the act evil), and the circumstances must be good (giving a Snickers bar to a starving child who turns out to have a peanut allergy is bad, even if no harm was intended).

Third. The conditions that make up a mortal sin require committing a serious (grave) evil, knowing it was evil and freely choosing to do it anyway.

Fourth. If it’s impossible to know something (for example, Native Americans in pre-Colombian times absolutely could not have known of the need to accept Christ) and the person acted wrongly, thinking what they did was good, God will not hold a person responsible for that ignorance, even though wrong is done. We call this invincible ignorance. But, if the ignorance was something that could have been learned if the person bothered to look but was negligent, that isn’t excusable. We call this vincible ignorance.

Fifth. The person who knows they have committed a grave sin need to go to Confession before receiving communion (Canon 916). Notorious and unrepentant sinners who choose to go receive Communion anyway can be barred (Canon 915).

So, we could sum this up and say, since we may not do an evil act so good may come of it, we have an obligation to learn what the Church teaches and live it. We are without excuse if we reject the Church teaching and do evil, and we are without excuse if we do evil through ignorance that we could have cleared up if we bothered to look. We could wind up in a state of mortal sin if all conditions are present.

We can never deliberately choose to do evil or to freely and knowingly assist in that evil. (For example, you can never have a morally good rape or a morally good lynching). Even if a Catholic should dissent from Church teaching, they are not excused from obeying it. Otherwise “I disagree” could be an iron clad defense for geocide or murder. If anybody does take part in assisting evil knowingly and willingly, they are responsible for having done evil. So, in the Ratzinger Memorandum, he mentions voting for someone because they are pro-abortion as an example of being obligated to stay away from receiving the Eucharist.

But What About Acts that Aren’t Intrinsically Evil

So, let’s move on. Keeping the above things in mind, let’s move on to Proportionate Reasons that justify an act that is not intrinsically evil in itself, but still makes the evil act possible. 

The immediately relevant part of the Ratzinger Memorandum, the part that gets dragged out every four years, is the section on voting. Voting in itself a civic duty, not an intrinsic evil. Therefore, any sin involved comes from the intention or the consequences.

While deliberate evil in a vote exists if one deliberately chose to vote to support something the Church condemned as evil, we still need to consider the consequences of voting for something that will have an evil consequence, even if unintended. This isn’t a “moral calculus” where we decide X amount of evil is tolerable, while X+1 is not. Instead we have to consider whether the person who enabled the evil had a reason that took away culpability.

If the person knows that voting for a candidate who publicly states his support for something the Church labels evil would enable this bad result (and not being aware indicates a defect in knowledge of Church teaching or the politician’s position), the greater the evil enabled means the greater the reason is needed proportionate to the harm done (there’s where we get the term proportionate reason) is needed to justify the participation in the act.

I’ve pointed out elsewhere that the Catholic Church has (in Gaudium et Spes #27) listed abortion next to murder and genocide in talking about evils. So, we cannot simply treat abortion as one issue among many any more than we can treat murder or genocide as one issue among many. 

This is where the Catholic risks stepping into a trap. It is easy for any concerned Catholic—who has sympathies for one party at odds with the Church in some way—to confuse the reasons they dislike the other party for proportionate reasons. Since the Church does speak so strongly against abortion, unless they can offer a proportionate reason for voting for a pro-abortion candidate that they would accept if used by a Catholic trying to justify voting for murder, genocide, or torture, I honestly don’t think they can defend their vote. This is why I think the insight from Archbishop Chaput is so important: 

We sin if we support “pro-choice” candidates without a truly proportionate reason for doing so—that is, a reason grave enough to outweigh our obligation to end the killing of the unborn. And what would such a “proportionate” reason look like? It would be a reason we could, with an honest heart, expect the unborn victims of abortion to accept when we meet them and need to explain our actions—as we someday will.

Chaput, Charles J. Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (p. 230). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So, the Catholic who says “I am justified in supporting a pro-abortion candidate because of the evils in the other candidate,” must be able to face God and the victims of the policy that this evil invoked at the final judgment and say, “Yes this was more urgent.”

I would like to conclude by bringing up another issue frequently forgotten when people debate proportionate reasons. That is, the same moral obligations that bind the Catholic considering voting for a pro-abortion candidate also apply for the Catholic considering a vote for his opponent. If that Catholic votes for the other candidate because of his support of the evil position, that voter is also culpable for that evilly intended vote. And, yes, the requirement for a proportionate reason applies to his vote for the opponent with a morally wrong platform too.

None of us are exempted from the obligation of looking to the Church to understand our moral obligations in being a Christian and following them to the best of our understanding and ability to form our consciences. None of this can be set aside because “the stakes are too high” in this election. While we must not be scrupulous in seeking to do right, we must not be lax either. So, when a candidate proudly states they will support something we know is evil, we do have an obligation to oppose it in a moral way.

And, if we should ever become convinced that we have failed to do this, let us remember that we have a Sacrament that reconciles us with God and His Church. Let us avail ourselves of that Sacrament, making a firm purpose of amendment to strive to live according to God’s commandments.

Apostolate of the Wrathful? A Reflection on Going Past Anger to Find Just Solutions

Preliminary Notes: In these times, it is easy to accuse those don’t jump on a bandwagon over what should be done of indifference, complacency, or even support of the evil done. I want to make clear that anyone who thinks this article advocates any of these things or is making excuses for wrongdoers has rashly judged me. I certainly don’t support a status quo. The point of this article is to sort out the difference between rightly directed anger and misdirected wrath that some pundits seem to be promoting.

Introduction

The fallout from the recent McCarrick revelations and Latin America continues. There’s no doubt that wrongdoing exists. The problem that I see is that, among the legitimate shock and anger against wrongdoing, there are some Catholics who are publicly presuming that all of the bishops are guilty through negligence or deliberate coverup. That’s what needs to be investigated, not assumed to be true.

(This news broke during the writing of this article. It’s a reminder that

just because we don’t hear about something doesn’t mean nothing is being done)

While the case of McCarrick himself was handled until the canonical process is finished and more serious censures are handed down, we still have to deal with the arguments over who actually knew and were silent (as opposed to guilt by association).

In terms of logic, the contradiction of “all are guilty” is not “none are guilty.” The contradiction is “some are not guilty.” [§] Recognizing that, the task is to identify the ones who are actually guilty and the failures that allowed them to get away with it. This should be done with the intention of seeking justice for past and current wrongdoing while trying to prevent future wrongdoing. Doing this requires meticulous investigation to avoid punishing the innocent and preventing rushed policies that are either ineffective or do more harm than good.

The danger of that approach is that it can be stonewalled or can have the appearance of stonewalling if we don’t get immediate results. Of course working on stopping this evil cannot be done at a leisurely pace. The fact that these problems were revealed after we were assured that the problem was solved rightly inspires shock and anger.

Anger and Response 

The problem with anger, however, is that it can lead people to unreasonable and unjust responses. Think about the concept of “frontier justice” where an angry lynch mob would take the law into their own hands, assuming guilt and demanding their own standard of punishment. These mobs were often wrong about the guilt of the accused and always wrong in exacting their own punishment apart from the law.

While nobody is advocating literal “frontier justice” (though a few Catholics on social media are using reckless rhetoric that might eventually spark it) against the bishops, some are getting out of hand in their anger, assuming guilt where an investigation must happen first. Badly written articles and blog posts make accusations of widespread or even universal guilt without proof and people believe them without discernment, believing “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

The Church cannot rush to judgment, even when she must act swiftly. Letting the guilty go free is an injustice. But so is punishing the innocent. Being so lax that predators operate freely must be stopped. But being so strict that it hinders the mission of the Church is wrong too. In other words, the Church cannot be unjust in seeking justice.

Dealing with Delays 

And this frustrates people. Deliberations can be seen as stonewalling, and no doubt some would like to turn deliberations into stonewalling. Real harm was done and must be stopped. But while identifying the evil that must be stopped is relatively straightforward, finding the cause and solution is not necessarily so. After the rise of Protestantism, the Catholic Church began the Council of Trent to root out the abuses that led to it. But the Council of Trent ran from 1545 to 1563 (around 18 years!). Some of that length was due to slow moving (reading the early sessions, we see a lot of “let’s reconvene later” decrees). But some of the length was due to the need to identify the best possible response and decree how it must be done.

(There’s a lot of this in the earliest sessions)

Likewise, in dealing with the current crisis, we can get angry with unnecessary delays. There were problems with the 2002 policy that never thought to investigate allegations about those who rose high in the Church—problems that should not have happened. But in solving them, we must discern between unnecessary delays and unavoidable delays that come with seeking truth and just solutions.

The Apostolate of the Wrathful 

Adding to the confusion is the fact that among the rightly offended are what I call “the apostolate of the wrathful.”  I see this collection of factions as already being angry at the Church for one reason or another and seeing this scandal as justifying their previous anger. These factions (and I have no intention of pointing fingers at specific individuals) have carried out private wars against the Church and see their perceived enemy as the cause to this current crisis. Some allege celibacy, a male priesthood, or the Church teaching on homosexuality as the problem. Others see Vatican II, liberal clergy, or Pope Francis as a cause. There certainly seems to be a strong anti-clericalism present, assuming Church-wide corruption of the bishops and cardinals, fueling the claim that it’s impossible that they could be ignorant of the problem.

Distinguishing Mistakes From Malfeasance

While the Church receives her authority from God, she remains governed by finite human beings. All of them, like us, are in need of salvation and all of them can be mistaken (barring the areas where the Pope is protected from error). This means that even a good bishop can be deceived by a lie from someone they thought was trustworthy. It means that even a saintly bishop can make a decision that seems right to them but is actually flawed. Other bishops might do wrong out of cowardice or a desire not to “rock the boat.” Some, sadly, do participate knowingly in evil. That’s inevitable.

However, the fact that this happens in general is inevitable does not mean we can be apathetic about the specific wrongdoing in our time. For example, heresy will inevitably arise, but that doesn’t permit apathy or complacency to the rise of a specific heresy. Rather this means we will never achieve a state where no evil, cowardice, or mistakes occur within the Church, but we will have to deal with each case when it comes along to prevent loopholes or vicious customs from thriving.

Distinguishing the Authority of the Church from her Shameful Members

With that in mind, we have to remember that the Church herself, led by the magisterium continues to have the authority to bind and loose and we have the obligation to give religious submission of intellect and will when they teach (see canons 752-753). We cannot withdraw obedience from that authority when we are offended by the members of the magisterium. We still have the obligation to follow the precepts of the Church. So, when someone invokes a scandal as an excuse to ignore obedience, that remains wrong. Jesus binds in Heaven what is bound on earth (Matthew 16:19, 18:18).

So, when determining the proper response to scandal and corruption, disobedience is not an option. Dissent remains a sin. Catholics who advocate disobedience on account of the scandal are doing wrong, and we cannot do evil so good may come of it (CCC #1789). That can be hard to bear, but we must trust that God protects His Church in this case.

The Obligation of Mercy

Another thing we must remember. The Church is not a business that can simply fire an incompetent or wrongdoing employee. The Church exists to carry out the mission of bringing Our Lord’s salvation to the world, calling the wrongdoing sinners to be reconciled to God. No matter how heinous the sin, there is not one person whom we can “write off” as irredeemable. Wrath tends to sacrifice the mercy for notorious sinner in the name of punishment. It tends to presume guilt must be present and insists we move onto the punishment phase

Consider Genesis 18:22ff.

22 As the men turned and walked on toward Sodom, Abraham remained standing before the Lord. 23 Then Abraham drew near and said: “Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?” 26 The Lord replied: If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

Abraham kept pleading down to ten just men, with God promising to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if they existed. As it turned out, they didn’t, so God spared Lot and his family. The problem is, unlike God, the Apostolate of the Wrathful seems willing to sacrifice the innocent so long as they get the guilty. They are willing to presume guilt and if a few innocent get swept away, they were probably guilty of something. If a bishop was an associate of a wrongdoer, that bishop is presumed to be complicit in the evil through association. But the Catholic Church cannot act that way. She cannot punish without proof of wrongdoing and she cannot arbitrarily change her rules to behave mercilessly. The Church must work to bring salvation even the most heinous sinner. The punishments issued must not drive the person into despair or defiance. Yes, a wrongdoer might be defiant anyway, but the Church herself must not drive them to that point or erect roadbloacks in the road to salvation while imposing penalties.

“But Everybody Knew That...”

Hearsay is not proof.

If a victim comes forward and provided credible and usable evidence, and a bishop refused to pass it on or attacked the victim for coming forward, that is wrongdoing that must be investigated. No excuses can be made for that. It is also true that the victims can be too ashamed or otherwise traumatized to come forward. That’s understandable. I would not blame the victim for being unable to come forward.

The problem is, some Catholic pundits are saying that these bishops and cardinals must have heard rumors and should have acted on them. The problem is, rumors themselves (what “everybody knows”) are not always true, and sometimes even false [†].  

Of course if a lot of rumors come from different sources in the same region, all saying the same thing, there should be an investigation to see if they are more than mere rumors and a failure to do so is a problem that must be corrected. But we need to remember that the existence of rumors in themselves are not proof. Bishops cannot build a case on hearsay. So hearing these things does not automatically mean that they have enough to act on. 

An investigation into what individual bishops knew and were silent on must determine who had the responsibility to act and whether they had the information necessary to act. It’s not enough to say, “everybody heard of this, so bishop X must be guilty.”

The Search for Truth, Justice, and Mercy

I don’t want anyone to think this is easy. But I also don’t want anyone to think this is impossible. The closer someone is to a victim, the harder it will be for them to deal with a wrongdoer getting away. I can’t even imagine what an actual victim must have gone through seeing Cardinal McCarick, Bishop Barrios or others being elevated despite wrongdoing. I can’t imagine their frustration if the case turns up unable to establish guilt. One can understand this anger is justified. But if we are going to truly find a solution to this problem, the Church needs to be clear on why this is happening, investigate how it can keep happening, and where the system we have is ineffective or unjust, we must make reforms. In other words: People understandably and justly want reform. But there’s a vast difference between calling for an undefined reform and making actual reforms.

We cannot make unjust reforms. We cannot have the Spanish Inquisition kind of injustice (I actually saw someone advocate this!) to be more efficient in punishing the accused. We must make sure that the accused is guilty before punishing and make sure the procedure does not let the guilty get away. We must make sure that the penalties are aimed at protecting the innocent from harm and inspire seeking repentance.

Conclusion

I think it should be clear that going from “something must be done!” to actually fixing the problem is going to take a lot of difficult work and difficult soul searching. For example, I get the impression that the reason there is a bishop sized hole in the protection of minors is because the bishops found it hard to believe someone reaching that level in the Church was capable of this evil without being caught before that point. Clearly that thinking was wrong, and it must be corrected as quickly as possible. 

But it also must be corrected justly. And that’s the difficulty. It’s easy to pass a law. But it’s harder to pass a just law. No doubt the bishops believed they established a just solution in 2002. We now know that belief was false. But we should keep that failure in mind. We do not want to rush through a solution that turns out to have numerous flaws in another 15 years or so. But neither do we want to be paralyzed into inaction.

That’s why it’s the wrong approach for pundits to just say “We must do X.” We must consider all the consequences of X and make sure we don’t do a rush job we will later regret. That means we need to pray for the Church to guide the magisterium to find the right solution. We must make known our concerns (a la canon 212 §3) respectfully. But we must not reduce the process to mob rule, committing injustice in our attempts to reform. Nor can we behave like rebels against the legitimate authority which the Church exercises.

On social media, I see a lot of anger and a lot of desire to accuse people of complicity. But unless we go beyond slogans and determine real culpability we’re not helping find a solution. We’re merely behaving like a mob and that will not solve the problem.

_______________________

[§] This also applies to anger in the Catholic media towards this scandal. Only a fraction of them are doing what I am writing against and I have no intention of saying ALL are guilty.

[†] I suspect one of the reasons the original response was so slow was people believed the perpetrators could never do this because the reported perversion was so evil. Sadly, it turned out that some clergy could be that vile.

Thoughts on Difficulties and Doubt

Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of religion; I am as sensitive as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines, or to their compatibility with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and borne in upon our minds with most power.

 

John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1865), 264–265.

Introduction

Let’s begin with a personal anecdote: Sometimes I come across difficulties with parts of Scripture and theology. I ask myself How does THAT work? Whether it’s some harsh passages of the Old Testament, or when a Pope or a Saint says something that seems different from my understanding of how things fit together, it can be jarring. Then there’s always the example of Catholics behaving badly throughout history, I have an ideal on what the Church should be, and I compare that to the real life example if actual Catholics, and find that even heroic Catholics have done troubling things.

But while I have difficulties at times, I have never had any doubt about the authority of Church teaching or Our Lord’s protecting the Church from error. So I submit to the teaching of the Church, trusting  that however God might judge an issue, it will be done in a way that reflects His justice and mercy both. I would certainly resent any accusations that I denied or doubted the teaching of the Church because of my difficulties on comprehending how a teaching works. Why? Because I do not reject the teaching as I try to understand it better.

I believe that if I were to doubt the mercy of God or the teaching of the Church on a matter, I would soon find myself at odds with both God and His Church. I would be making myself the arbiter of what should be where I presume to pass judgment on things I have no right to do so. I think those paying attention to what goes on in our faith are aware of the factionalism arising in the Church. We’ve been seeing the anti-Francis attacks since the day he became Pope which assumes what he does differently is “heretical.” Sadly, we’re seeing an emerging position that declares all persons who oppose the Pope must be “schismatic.” I think both of these movements confuse difficulty and doubt, either in their own minds or in the behavior of others, and we need to discern the real difference to avoid the twin dangers of losing faith by harboring doubts, and the rash judgment of assuming another’s difficulty is a doubt.

Doubt from Ourself

I think we harbor doubt when what we see something we do not understand and assume something must be wrong with it because we’re not comfortable with how it sounds. If we’ve invested in a certain opinion or school of thought, then a shift of emphasis sounds like “error” instead of a legitimate change of how we approach something. If we take this difficulty and assume the Church must have gone wrong, we are harboring a doubt in the belief that God protects His Church from teaching error. In a similar way, when we try to find reasons to deny that a teaching we dislike is actually a teaching, we are harboring doubts about the authority of the Church to bind and loose.

These and similar attitudes to these lead to doubting that what the Church teaches is done with God’s authority and with His assurance that He will not permit the Church to teach us error. Once we embrace this doubt, we will replace trust in God with trust in ourselves, thinking that if the Church does not act as we see fit, she must be in error.

Assuming Doubt in Others

On the other hand, some assume that a difficulty with a teaching automatically equals a rejection of that teaching. A person who voices their concern with how people might misinterpret a Church teaching (while accept the validity of that teaching) is not doubting. Yes, we want to avoid legalism in following Church teaching, but one can wrestle with understanding what the teaching means and one’s limited capacity to understand (and by being human, we do have a limited capacity).

One example I see with this, is in the recent attacks on Cardinal Burke in Social media comments. I have seen some Catholics treat him with the same abusiveness that anti-Francis Catholics direct at the Pope. But, regardless of what thinks about how he’s handled things or how his supporters have used/misused his words, much of what he says and does seems based on difficulties in reconciling the teaching authority of the Pope with his understanding on the Church teaching on marriage—but he does not doubt either one. While I don’t approve of how he handled the issue of the dubia, he denies the Pope is in heresy, and should not be treated as a schismatic that rejects the authority of the Pope along the lines of Canon 751.

Conclusion

I think we need to remember our limitations. The fact that we have difficulties reconciling two teachings of the Church does not mean one must be false. But, if we try to downplay one in the name of defending our conception of the Church, that is a warning that we are harboring a doubt. At the same time, when we see people expressing a misgiving, we should be certain they are actually harboring a doubt before accusing them of doing so. They just might be trying to accept the truth but are having trouble in understanding how to do so. We must be careful in not being the stumbling block that turns their difficulty to doubt.

So let us avoid turning difficulty to doubt by remembering that while our own knowledge and power are finite, God’s knowledge and power are not—and He can and will protect His Church. And let us avoid accusing a fellow Christian of doubting if all he is doing is working his way through a difficulty. If such a one submits to the authority of the Church while struggling to understand, we should help them, not attack them.

On Placing Church Teaching Above Partisan Interest

While some Catholics forget that Matthew 7:1-5 does not forbid speaking against evil, others forget that it does forbid—it forbids rash judgment in judging motives and writing people off as a lost cause. Some even go so far as forgetting both, judging people as judgmental because they speak about evil. Our Lord forbids us to make ourselves the standard for judging others. He warns us that God who judges will judge us with the same standard we use to judge others. Pharisees and hypocrites do not fare well in this system because they judge people harshly for things they do themselves. But He will deal with wrongdoing in His time, and we will answer for those people who we did not warn:

⁸ When I say to the wicked, “You wicked, you must die,” and you do not speak up to warn the wicked about their ways, they shall die in their sins, but I will hold you responsible for their blood. ⁹ If, however, you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, but they do not, then they shall die in their sins, but you shall save your life. (Ezekiel 33:8–9).

That brings us to our problem. In this election year, Catholics are becoming pretty partisan in how they carry out this task. We’re focussing much more on the wrongdoing of those we disagree with, and not those we agree with. In some cases this involves Catholics who are equally faithful in keeping Church teaching but find different ways of being faithful—yet one group condemns the second group of being faithless. In other cases, Catholics only rebuke one side when there is wrongdoing by both—for example I have seen some Catholics rebuke one political faction of ignoring Church teaching, while ignoring the other side’s guilt in the same evil. They may believe both sides are wrong, but they only focus on the wrongdoing of one side and make excuses for the other.

After stating the problem, I see two common negative reactions. The first assumes I’m talking about “the other side.” The other assumes I’m talking about them and ignoring "the other side.” The results are self-righteousness and resentment respectively. But we have to look at this dispute openly. We have to ask whether we are discerning our behavior rightly and we have to ask if we are judging the behavior of others wrongly. That means we need to see if we are guilty of partisanship in how we see things.

Being partisan means prejudice in favor or opposition to a particular cause. So a partisan Catholic might point out the wrongdoing in something he opposes while ignoring it in something he approves of or in an ally of convenience. For example, condemning Candidate A for holding positions against Church teaching while not mentioning that Candidate B also holds positions against Church teaching could be partisan if the person was aware of this fact and deliberately hid it.

I want to make clear I’m not using the “he did it too” argument (tu quoque). A candidate or party that acts against God’s law does wrong. We have to make certain we’re not whitewashing one faction while smearing another. If X is wrong, we can’t condemn it when it benefits us and stay silent when it does’t. We’re supposed to promote good and oppose evil at all times, not just when it is convenient to a cause. I’ll admit it’s hard. When we recognize a candidate or party promoting evil, we want them stopped permanently if possible. If we see a tool to bring that about or if we fear a moral objection will harm their opponent, we may tolerate an unjust means to achieve it.

But that’s what we have to watch out for and avoid. Justice obliges us to give a person their due—which includes speaking truthfully. Sins against truth include rash judgment (assuming the worst in a person) and calumny (speaking falsely). So, if someone accuses a candidate about lying about his position on an issue, justice demands we prove our claim. If we assume the candidate must be lying that’s rash judgment. If we know the candidate’s not lying but we say he is, that’s calumny. So when we hear a charge like this, we have an obligation to verify it before repeating it.

I believe we have to be Catholics first and vote from our Catholic formation. We need to know what the Church teaches and why. If we don’t know, we need to find out. We can’t just decide for ourselves that “well it doesn’t bother me, so it must be OK.” But Scripture warns us “Sometimes a way seems right, but the end of it leads to death!” (Proverbs 14:12). We believe the Church is mother and teacher, and Our Lord commands us to obey her (Matthew 18:17-18, Luke 10:16). So we learn His will from her (Matthew 28:20). That means we not only keep the rules, but we follow out of the love for God and don't look for loopholes. As Vatican II taught:

[14] He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a “bodily” manner and not “in his heart.” All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

 

Catholic Church, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium,” in Vatican II Documents (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011).

So we accept the special grace of God to live as He calls us, accepting His Church as a gift to guide us and form our conscience. This grace calls us away from legalism and indifferentism. It should guide us to live as He wants, not as we want. If we feel “called” to live as we want, that’s not grace.

Applying Church teaching to voting—where we make Church teaching the reality we live by—means we have to look at how our vote reflects what we believe. Our vote needs to promote good and oppose evil as best as we can manage. Since this election involves the worst choices, and one of those bad choices will be president in January 2017, we need to discern what each choice says about the importance we give Church teaching. If we vote in a way that treats a serious issue as a minor one, our witness will mislead people to think we don’t care. Unfortunately, many partisan Catholics do give that impression. We need to change our attitude in how we approach voting.

For example, let’s look at abortion. The Church teaches abortion is an unspeakable crime (Gaudium et Spes #51), and the right to life from conception is a fundamental right (see Christifideles Laici #38 and Evangelium Vitae #58). Since we’re called to make known how to follow Our Lord, our actions must show our opposition to abortion both in our private lives and in our response to laws and politicians who promote them. So, we can’t treat abortion as one issue among many. Nor can we argue this point away by saying X+Y+Z outweighs abortion.

I’m not saying that we can ignore other issues so long as we check the box on opposing abortion. That’s the first step among many moral decisions. But it is the first step, and without it, a person is not voting as a Catholic. There are other moral teachings we have to follow.

So if we have a candidate opposed to abortion but the candidate is wrong on other issues, then we have to make clear from the beginning we will oppose him on those issues, should he be elected, even if we do vote for him to limit evil.

But if we cast a vote for a pro-abortion candidate, we have a problem. We’re saying that we think some other issue is more important than abortion. So the person who witnesses our act can ask just how seriously we take Church teaching when the Church says the right to life from conception onwards is the fundamental human right. A Catholic might say “We intend to oppose him on this issue too, even if we vote for him to limit evil.” But people will ask:  Why does the Church believe differently than you on what is the fundamental human right? After all, If we believed as the Church did, we wouldn’t be voting for that person. We’d find another option like a third party vote or write in (if none of the major candidates were truly opposing abortion) to show our opposition. We would have to explain what possibly could be so evil that we would sacrifice opposing abortion to stop it? That has to be answered by the Church, not by our personal preferences—and it has to be an answer that will satisfy God.

That’s why we need to be clear on what the Church teaches and the reason for her teaching. We need to vote in a way that witnesses to our faithfulness, even if that means we vote differently than our personal and political preferences. In my opinion, the choices are so poor this time that we shouldn’t lightly jump to a choice. One candidate supports torture and unjust immigration policies and says he opposes abortion. One openly champions abortion and other intrinsic evils as a right. And if we vote for a third party (the two largest support abortion), we abdicate choosing one of the first two candidates to limit evil.

These are all negative effects associated with each choice. There is no choice free from these dilemmas. So keep that in mind, and vote as a Catholic, and not as a partisan supporting a party. If we lose sight of this principle, we’re voting to satisfy ourselves, not to serve God.

Catholic America: Civil War

²⁰ You sit and speak against your brother, 

slandering your mother’s son. 

²¹ When you do these things should I be silent? 

Do you think that I am like you? 

I accuse you, I lay out the matter before your eyes.  (Ps 50:20–21).

My policy on this blog and the attached Facebook page is I won’t write articles promoting my personal political preferences. I have this policy because I don’t want people to think I am portraying my personal preferences as official Church Teaching. Sure, maybe I’ll get careless and someone will deduce my political positions from the evidence I let slip by. But the point is, I believe that a blog aimed at promoting the Catholic perspective should not pervert that perspective with personal political preferences.  Other Catholics who blog may have a different focus, and will advocate their political positions. That’s their call, and I won’t say they do wrong, so long as they make clear that these are opinions, not Church teaching.

But there is a civil war going on between two factions of Catholics I find on the internet. One favors voting for Donald Trump as the least evil choice for 2016. The other believes one can only justify a third party vote. (See HERE for my pre-primary evaluation of the pitfalls of major party vs. third party). Both groups agree that the Democrats running for office openly embrace intrinsic evil and they cannot support such a candidate. But where they disagree is over whether Trump is equally as bad.

These two groups are battling on Facebook, forums and blogs, accusing each other of bad will, even to the point of denying the other is “really” Catholic. That is harmful and usurps the teaching authority of the Church. I say harmful because both groups are seeking the best way to be Catholic. I say “usurps” because such people make a declaration which the Church has not made. The end result is turning Catholics against each other when they should instead be uncovering the truths we must consider to make a good Catholic decision. When you see one faction accusing pro-life organizations “selling their souls to Trump” on one hand and another faction accuse people who can’t support Trump in good conscience as “really being pro-Hillary,” you know Catholic factions have replaced being "co-workers in the truth” (3 John 1:8) with savaging each other.  

I believe before these factions continue to bash each other, we should consider something Archbishop Chaput wrote in 2008 when Catholics were making their decisions on that election:

Finally, here’s the third question. What if Catholics face an election where both major candidates are “pro-choice”? What should they do then? Here’s the answer: They should remember that the “perfect” can easily become the enemy of the “good.”

The fact that no ideal or even normally acceptable candidate exists in an election does not absolve us from taking part in it. As Catholic citizens, we need to work for the greatest good. The purpose of cultivating a life of prayer, a relationship with Jesus Christ, and a love for the church is to grow as a Christian disciple— to become the kind of Catholic adult who can properly exercise conscience and good sense in exactly such circumstances. There isn’t one “right” answer here. Committed Catholics can make very different but equally valid choices: to vote for the major candidate who most closely fits the moral ideal, to vote for an acceptable third-party candidate who is unlikely to win, or to not vote at all. All of these choices can be legitimate. This is a matter for personal decision, not church policy.

Chaput, Charles J. (2008-08-12). Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (pp. 230-231). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Between now and November, Catholics will be trying to decide what is the best choice they can make. In doing so, we need to remember that the Church clearly teaches that we cannot sacrifice a graver issue for a lesser one. As St. John Paul II wrote:

38. In effect the acknowledgment of the personal dignity of every human being demands the respect, the defence and the promotion of the rights of the human person. It is a question of inherent, universal and inviolable rights. No one, no individual, no group, no authority, no State, can change—let alone eliminate—them because such rights find their source in God himself.

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, fínds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

 John Paul II, Christifideles Laici (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988).

If two Catholics with this proper understanding of Catholic teaching, in good faith discern two different decisions on the best way to apply Catholic teaching on voting, one cannot say the other is doing evil in such a case. Each Catholic might be sincere in thinking their way is the best way, but there is a point where we have no perfect choice and we have to make a decision which is one of several possible in being faithful to Church teaching. When that happens, we have no right to question the other’s fidelity.

Let us keep this in mind for the coming months that our actions and our reasoning may be just and charitable, avoiding treating each others as heretics over political opinions.

Faithful Catholics Divided on the Election. Reflections on a Passage by Archbishop Charles Chaput

There is no doubt that this election is going to be a difficult one for people who are appalled by the statements made by our major candidates. They are asking questions along the lines of “who can I vote for in a good conscience?” Unfortunately, these people are often being accused of bad faith to the point of not caring about the issues the accuser finds important. Confusing the issue is the fact that some people are supporting candidates for reasons contrary to Catholic teaching or are supporting a candidate for reasons which seem superficial and flippant. It is easy to confuse people in the first category with people in the second. Another problem is that some confuse questioning one candidate with supporting another. This results in many people feeling on the defensive over having their orthodoxy challenged while also believing that people with different views are not orthodox Catholics. It’s a vicious circle.

I think that a passage from a book written by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput in 2008 is especially relevant here. 

One of the pillars of Catholic thought is this: Don’t deliberately kill the innocent, and don’t collude in allowing it. We sin if we support candidates because they support a false “right” to abortion. We sin if we support “pro-choice” candidates without a truly proportionate reason for doing so— that is, a reason grave enough to outweigh our obligation to end the killing of the unborn. And what would such a “proportionate” reason look like? It would be a reason we could, with an honest heart, expect the unborn victims of abortion to accept when we meet them and need to explain our actions— as we someday will.

Finally, here’s the third question. What if Catholics face an election where both major candidates are “pro-choice”? What should they do then? Here’s the answer: They should remember that the “perfect” can easily become the enemy of the “good.”

The fact that no ideal or even normally acceptable candidate exists in an election does not absolve us from taking part in it. As Catholic citizens, we need to work for the greatest good. The purpose of cultivating a life of prayer, a relationship with Jesus Christ, and a love for the church is to grow as a Christian disciple— to become the kind of Catholic adult who can properly exercise conscience and good sense in exactly such circumstances. There isn’t one “right” answer here. Committed Catholics can make very different but equally valid choices: to vote for the major candidate who most closely fits the moral ideal, to vote for an acceptable third-party candidate who is unlikely to win, or to not vote at all. All of these choices can be legitimate. This is a matter for personal decision, not church policy.

Chaput, Charles J. (2008-08-12). Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (pp. 229-231). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

I think his insight here is wise and worth heeding even though he makes clear he is not exercising his episcopal authority in this book. He makes clear that to support, without a reason that outweighs the evil, a candidate who supports an intrinsic evil is to sin. But, if the Catholic finds both candidates support the intrinsic evil, he must still make a choice. That decision might be different for each person, but if it is reached by being faithful to the Church teaching, another Catholic cannot condemn him just because they reached a different conclusion than the first.

What has to be avoided is legalism, paying lip service to Church teaching as an excuse to justify a vote one was going to make regardless of what the Church said. One has to seriously consider the evils of both sides and what consequences follow from one’s vote. Are we sure that the reason we vote for one candidate over the other really outweigh the evil that candidate will do?

It’s understandable to be skeptical. In previous elections, we have had people argue that voting for a pro-abortion candidate was actually the more “pro-life” activity because of their stands on other social justice issues. But, in refutation, St. John Paul II made clear that support for those “other issues” was meaningless if the candidate was pro-abortion:

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, fínds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights—for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

 

 John Paul II, Christifideles Laici #38 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1988).

So, we see that a Catholic can’t say “well, he’s sorta pro-life even though he supports the right to kill unborn children."

The problem we have in 2016 is that on one side we have candidates who actively call good what the Church calls intrinsically evil while, on the other side; we have candidates who support other issues the Church calls evil due to the motives and circumstances. There are also reasons to question the sincerity of some candidates. If a candidate has a reputation of oscillating back and forth on the issues, how do we know that the commitment will remain? It’s like the play A Man For All Seasons where Sir Thomas More says:

Listen, Roper. Two years ago you were a passionate Churchman; now you’re a passionate— Lutheran. We must just pray, that when your head’s finished turning your face is to the front again.

Bolt, Robert. A Man For All Seasons (Modern Classics) (Kindle Locations 580-582). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

It’s not wrong to ask which way a candidate is going to wind up if they should get elected. But we do need to remember that there are faithful Catholics who have different views on which way things will wind up and, provided they follow the Church teaching sincerely in doing so, they are not choosing to endorse evil if their discernment turns out to be wrong.

But that is the key people are forgetting. Yes, there are Catholics who support a candidate for unworthy reasons. Yes, there are times when we do have a clear choice as to who is better. But if it turns out that neither situation applies, then we have to recognize that one faithful Catholic may feel that only choice A is acceptable while another may feel that only choice B is acceptable. In this case, I believe our task as Catholics is to reach out to those voting because they support an evil position or have a insufficient reason for voting for the one who supports evil. We do have the Church teaching to point to.

But, when the decision is not clear, Catholics can try to explain why they think their own position is better, but they cannot elevate that opinion to Church position to give that opinion authority it does not have (the reason why I do not offer my political opinions on my blog is to make sure nobody thinks I am usurping the authority of the Church to justify my own position).

So there’s our task. We seek to correct people (charitably) who hold views contrary to the Catholic teaching. We can seek to persuade people to do what we think is a better position when there is room for different opinions and we must pray that we are open to the truth and do not deceive ourselves or misjudge others.

On Considering the Good and Evil Consequences

The thing that troubles me during this election season is seeing how many of us seem to be willing to set aside aside the obligation to discern the right and wrong of an issue. Instead our discernment involves stopping at the point where we find a justification for something we planned to do anyway or else we give only a superficial analysis and ends up overlooking things of importance that might have led us to a different conclusion. In writing this, I don’t intend to make myself the judge of how a specific individual formed their conscience. I only ask that people avoid being careless or otherwise flippant about their moral responsibilities when it comes to voting.

St. Thomas Aquinas once described the purpose of law this way:

Hence this is the first precept of law, that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man’s good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.

 
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II q.94 a.2 resp).

The determination of good and evil is not a moral calculus where you decide to give a certain weight to some issues and a lesser weight to other issues. That kind of thinking usually ends up going in the direction the individual tends wants it to go in the first place. That’s rationalization used as a smoke screen because we tend to weigh issues according to our preferences, and not as they stand in God’s eyes.

The real question is whether this issue is good or evil in the eyes of God. Some things are evil by their nature and can never be justified regardless of circumstances. Other actions depend on circumstances and intention to determine whether an action is good or bad. What we need to do is to consider our actions in light of the way we are called to live and is made known to us by the Church. We should always keep in mind what Lumen Gentium said in ¶14:

All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

 

Catholic Church, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: Lumen Gentium,” in Vatican II Documents (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011).

In other words, because we have a Church established and graced by God, we have no excuse if we live in opposition to what she teaches and claim to be obeying God in doing so. Because of this, we have an obligation to keep the love of God and the teaching of His Church in mind when assessing how to act.

Unfortunately, I think that we, as Catholics, forget this. We tend to approach the selection of our political leaders in terms of partisan preference. Something is considered wrong when it inconveniences us and right when it benefits us. The Church teaching is considered unrealistic or it is cherry picked to select the portions that justify what we were going to do anyway, or it is used to bash the person with a different opinion. That’s not listening and learning. That’s just quote mining.

What we have to do is look at the choices which are available—ALL of them, not just the palatable ones—and consider what we must need to do to remain faithful to Christ. Sometimes that means we have to choose an action that is good even if it costs us. Sometimes it means we have to accept suffering to avoid doing evil. But we must always remember that we may never choose evil so good may come of it. That’s why we should never be reckless or impulsive in choosing what to do.

That’s why the Catholic has to consider the realistic consequences of an action while avoiding putting God to the test. Sure, I could blow a thousand dollars on lottery tickets in the hopes of winning, but that’s not a realistic result and would likely leave me worse off than if I had not spent any money on the lottery in the first place. Trying to invoke God on a gamble is to try to place the responsibility on God where it is not His responsibility to act. If we have faith in God to deliver us from evil, part of the responsibility is to practice prudence so we don’t choose to get into situations that harm us.

If we seek to do good and avoid evil, we will consider the consequences of our actions to the best of our ability and determine whether the consequences of our action help build the Kingdom of God or whether it hinders this building. That means in terms of voting in the elections, we don’t vote our instincts or our politics. We vote with our faith to guide us. This means asking “Why?” Why do we hold to certain preferences? Do we always hold to our moral obligations? Or do we set them aside when it suits us?

I don’t ask this in the gotcha sense of “if you don’t agree with me personally, you’re a bad Christian.” I ask it in the sense of “how sure are you that you are following Christ instead of your own self will?” Self deception is easy. We need to pray that we be delivered from evil.

Outrage and Burnout

If running against men has wearied you, 

how will you race against horses? 

And if you are safe only on a level stretch, 

what will you do in the jungle of the Jordan? [Jeremiah 12:5]

I sometimes think that an election year means that everybody’s IQ suddenly drops 10-20%. People start tolerating behavior in their favored candidates that they would scream in outrage if their opponents used the same tactic. Insults replace reasoned discourse and discerning the truth takes a back seat to making sure “your guy” wins. I find that I really start to feel burned out with all this going on. I feel disgusted when the candidates who stand in opposition to what I stand for attempt to attack all I hold important by grossly distorting it. I feel dismay when I see my co-religionists use the same tactics, making the faith look like a partisan affair. And I grow extremely discouraged when I see people who share my faith say that a candidate who explicitly calls good what the Church condemns being touted as the “most Catholic” candidate. Sometimes I just find myself thinking...

I imagine it might be similar to what Elijah must have felt (though his situation was much worse of course) when he saw the moral ruin his homeland had fallen into:

³ Elijah was afraid and fled for his life, going to Beer-sheba of Judah. He left his servant there ⁴ and went a day’s journey into the wilderness, until he came to a solitary broom tree and sat beneath it. He prayed for death: “Enough, Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ He lay down and fell asleep under the solitary broom tree, but suddenly a messenger* touched him and said, “Get up and eat!” ⁶ He looked and there at his head was a hearth cake and a jug of water. After he ate and drank, he lay down again, ⁷ but the angel of the Lord came back a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you!” ⁸ He got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.  [1 Kings 19:3–8]

As Catholics, we can’t retreat from the election year idiocy. We need the nourishment God provides to continue our task and not give into despair or the moral corruption that sweeps our nation. We need the grace that comes from God through prayer and reflection on His Word and the words of His saints. Of course, in doing so, we need to remember that if we bring a bad attitude to prayer, with the mindset of “Let those people know my preferences are right!” then we won’t receive this nourishment of grace.

I think we ultimately need to start with the attitude of Our Lord on the Mount of Olives, where He said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42). That’s not an invitation to passivity or indifference of course. It’s a call to submit to God’s will. In other words, we need to discern what God wants us to do in the face of adversity.

Personally, I find the Liturgy of the Hours to be a great help. The Psalms show the full extent of our concerns before God, everything from “Thank You for being You” to “Why is this happening to us?” I especially am struck by the latter category. We think we have it rough, but so did the early Christians and Jews. In every generation there is harshness and discouraging news, where the faithful individual looks at the physical or moral ruins of his culture and asks “Why did this have to happen?” No, we can’t always understand why God permits things that seem so catastrophic to us. But we need to remember that God is the Lord of the universe and that, while He may permit evil for a time, He will not permit it to ultimately triumph. 

So, it is not wrong to ask God for deliverance from a specific evil. But let’s not blame Him for the evil being there. Let our first step be to pray for and discern what God wants us to do in this situation, accepting His will over our own. We love Him, we keep His commandments (see John 14:15) and we see what His commandments obligate us to do in bringing His kingdom to the world. In doing so, let us remember that our witness to the world by keeping His commandments (without a double standard) is a better witness than all the political arguments we can make for a favored candidate or against one we dislike.

Back to Basics: Learning the What and Why of Church Teaching

When it comes to moral obligation members of the Church can suddenly become very pharisaical in the sense of setting aside God’s commandment and the teaching of His Church in favor of their own thoughts on how things should be done. We see people trotting out fragments of what Popes, Councils and Saints have said on a subject and using those fragments to justify their behavior against what the Church actually teaches. The result is that we see some people arguing that a Church teaching concerning rare circumstances like the Pauline Privilege justifies divorce and remarriage in the case of a Sacramental marriage, or that the Church teaching on Double Effect and hysterectomies and ectopic pregnancies justifies sterilization and abortion. When the Church responds to that argument with an emphatic “No,” people accuse the Church of hypocrisy, contradiction, and double standards.

Or (so people won’t think this error is only committed by people on the political “Left”), we can see people scandalized when it appears that the Church has said for the longest time that people must abstain from meat on Fridays and now they don’t, or that the Mass must be celebrated in Latin, but now it doesn’t. They accuse the Church of “changing” her teachings and falling into error.

Basically, people see the Church as “changing her teachings” in one area and either demand (or fear) that this means the Church can change her teaching in any other area.

But nowhere do we see people actually seek to understand why the Church offers X as a general teaching and then appears to say “not-X” when it comes to certain cases. That’s the problem and why people go afoul of Church teaching. They think that their perceptions of Church teaching is correct and that their personal preference in relation to the Church teaching is correct and when the Church tells them they are in error, the response is to accuse the Church of being in opposition to Our Lord or in contradiction to the Popes, Councils, and Saints of past centuries.

That’s the problem. When it comes to two teachings alleged to be in contradiction, nobody actually bothers to see what the actual Church teaching is and why she considers certain cases to be in keeping with the basic teaching. But this mindset is not practiced in other fields. Nobody thinks it is a contradiction when the law looks at cutting a person open to be attempted or actual murder, but makes an exception for the surgeon performing open heart surgery. That’s because the law understands there is a difference between a qualified surgeon performing a legitimate and authorized operation and a crazed man in an alley wielding a knife.

People need to remember two things:

1. What God binds, the Church cannot loose and what God looses, the Church cannot bind.
2. What the Church binds, the Church can loose and what the Church looses, the Church can bind.

These two statements are not contradictory. Rather they make the distinction between God’s ultimate authority over creation and the Church’s authority to decide how to best teach what God has commanded. They also recognize that while the essence of God's teaching can never be denied, certain ways of calling the faithful to practice the teaching can be changed if the magisterium sees fit.

Take the case of compulsory abstinence from meat on Fridays before Vatican II. The basis of the discipline ordered by the Church seems to be based on the commandment to honor God. Meat is not evil in itself. We’re not gnostics here that think matter is corrupt. But before Vatican II, the Church decided that all Catholics should abstain from meat on Friday because it is a sacrifice to remember the Passion of Our Lord on Good Friday. For a Catholic to knowingly disobey this command would be to refuse to honor God in the manner prescribed by the Church as binding.

But, as a theology professor I once had put it, “What if you love fish? Is that really a sacrifice then?” What we ultimately had was that some people were missing the point, thinking that “Fish on Friday” was the real moral command as opposed to “offer a meaningful sacrifice on Friday.” So, if "Lobster on Friday because we can’t have hamburger” begins to be the way people start to approach this discipline, then the Church can decide to change the discipline to make the intended meaning more clear. In each case where this happens, the Church can say “OK, to combat the abuses that have slipped in, we will change discipline X in these ways.” Because the Church has bound, the Church may loose and the person who preferred the old way has no authority to condemn the Church for implementing a new way.

However, the person who sees these changes and says, “Eating meat on Friday was once a sin but now is not, therefore the Church can change her teaching on contraception, divorce, homosexuality and women priests” (whether they say it out of hope or fear) has confused what God binds with what the Church binds. The Church believes she has no such authority to change what God has commanded. We might develop a deeper understanding of what fits in with God’s command and modify disciplines to more fully reflect God’s commands in relation to justice and mercy, but the Church can never say “X is permitted” when God says “X is not permitted."

What we must always keep in mind is that when we feel troubled by a Church teaching—especially when we find ourselves at odds with it—is that our troubled feeling is not a license to disobey or dismiss the teaching of the Church. Our obligation is to seek to understand the reason for the teaching and how the Church understands the exception to the rule and why she does not see herself as contradicting herself or God. As Catholics we believe that Our Lord Himself gave the authority to bind and loose to St. Peter, the Apostles and their successors (whom we hold to be the Pope and bishops), and as such we do not have the right to disobey what the Church teaches.

Ultimately, it means we must seek to learn the what and why of the Church teaching when we feel confused or even trapped, and not rely on our personal desires and feelings. As moral theologian Germain Grisez put it:

6. Existing desires and accepted projects must also be called into question. Indeed, a fully mature Christian conscience comes into being only when all merely assumed goals and standards have been examined in the light of faith, and faith itself has been accepted by a commitment which one confidently holds to be reasonable and right. So St. Paul urges: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2).
 

Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Volume One: Christian Moral Principles (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1997), 83.

In other words, we must form our standards of behavior according to the light of faith and look to the Church as the mother and teacher whom God has entrusted us to, using her teachings as our guide to interpret our actions and thoughts, and not seek to use her words in ways she never intended.