Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - April 7, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
The college chaplain remembers how fearful and uncertain he felt while talking with a student at a time when the expansive work of Vatican II had not yet germinated. A student Bob had come into the college chaplain’s office. Attending Mass on Sundays, he said, left him so unmoved and bored that he couldn’t “stand it”. The possibilities for variety introduced after Vatican II had not yet become a reality. To make matters worse, the Mass at the time was still in Latin.
After more discussion the chaplain finally said to Bob: “Well, Bob, why don’t you skip it for a month or so and see if that helps?” Trained in a moral theology that had little time for conscience, the chaplain thought to himself: “What have I done? Did I go too far? What right did I have to cancel the ‘Sunday obligation’?”
The teaching and rules of the church were presented in such a way that they were your conscience, you didn’t have to worry about any personal decisions (God forbid!). How refreshing it has been to hear Pope Francis: “We (Pope, bishop, priests) have been called to form consciences, not to replace them.”
By thinking that everything is black and white (i.e., by telling people what their conscience is), he says, we discourage people who are doing their best as Christians but cannot at the present reach the ideal in every situation. (They are in the gray area.) Most of us, you and I, know in conscience that we should love all our fellow humans but some of them (including me, for example) make that pretty tough to do.
Under several previous popes we have had examples of bishops claiming to decide for laypeople what their conscience is on particular issues, determining for lay people that they were not ‘worthy’ to receive communion. But most Catholic Christians have recovered some trust in their own conscience. Francis supports this when he says that conscience “is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person. There each one is alone with God.”
To the annoyance of some Christian churches this exercise of conscience has often led to walking away from the churches. Almut Furchert has put it this way: “Søren Kierkegaard used to say: you first have to reflect yourself out of Christianity in order to come back to it anew.” Possibly this leads to more convinced and committed Christians, people who experience trust in Jesus Christ and his loving embrace as the heart of belief, of faith.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
