The Primacy of Conscience in Catholic Theology

Salient points in Senator Santiago’s

 “The Primacy of Conscience in Catholic Theology”
By Joaquin Salvador

(Part 1)

Imagine, Senator Miriam Santiago joined the plenary assembly of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in the Philippines (CBCP) and confronted the bishops with their own teachings, arguing the primacy of conscience in Catholic theology. Who among the bishops would stand up to rebut her?

In this article I will be pondering on some salient points in Senator Miriam Santiago’s co-sponsorship speech on RH Bill, part 1: “The primacy of conscience in Catholic theology.”

I.          Defining the field.

Senator Santiago told us about the status of the bill pending before the Senate with a strong opposition from the Catholic church and asked us to consider the following facts:

• ·       Reproductive health law in Catholic countries

o   Out of 48 Catholic countries profiled by United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), now known as the UN Population Fund, only six countries did not have a reproductive health law. The Philippines is one of them.

• ·       RH Bill is supported by major Christian Churches and Islam.

o   Interfaith Partnership for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood, 2007

o   National Council of Churches in the Philippines, 2009

o   Iglesia ni Cristo, 2010

o   Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, 2011

o   Assembly of Darul-Iftah, 2003 (Muslims to practice family planning)

• ·       RH Bill is supported by majority of the Filipinos (Survey)

o   Social Weather Stations reported that 71 percent were in favor of the RH bill in 2008.

o   Pulse Asia reported that 69 percent were in favor of the RH bill in 2010.

YET, certain Catholics, certain bishops oppose the RH Bill. WHY?

To understand the strong opposition of the Catholic church, Senator Miriam Santiago, who has a master’s degree from Maryhill School of Theology, revisited the aggiornamento in Vatican II and its revolutionary impact to moral theology.

II.       Vatican II and the Revolution in Moral Theology

Central Issue in Vatican II: Authority

Senator Santiago went into one of the main controversies in the Vatican II council, the issue of authority --particularly on papal authority and collegiality, and lay participation in the life and mission of the Church.

·    Before Vatican II, the emphasis was on the authoritarian structure of the church where “the Pope was as a kind of superhuman potentate, whose every word was a command coming from a supernatural authority.” 

·      Vatican II (1962-1965) emphasizes on collegiality or the role of the college of bishops in leading, guiding and teaching the church. “It emphasized that the Church is primarily the whole people of God.  It called for dialogue between all members of the Church.  It asserted that the Pope and bishops are collegial.  And it called for the establishment of senates among the priests and of pastoral councils that include the laity.”

Pope John XXIII (1958-63) envisioned an aggiornamento, a renewal within the Catholic church and the opening of windows for a fresh dialogue with the world. As a result, the Vatican II council produced four great constitutions: on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 1963); on revelation (Dei Verbum, 1965); on the Church (Lumen Gentium, 1964); on the Church in the modern world (Gaudium et Spes, 1965).

In Lumen Gentium, we find three (3) ecclesiologies (in a sense of Church’s self-understanding), namely: Society, People of God, and Servant. The Society ecclesiology refers to the Church as a “hierarchically structured society” in which “the Roman Pontiff [the Pope] has full, supreme, and universal power.” (LG, art 20, 22) We find here the Church as a “perfect society” affirming the old teaching of Pre-Vatican II (from the Council of Trent to Vatican I) concerning the hierarchical conception of authority where the supreme authority resides at the top of the pyramid, the Pope. While Lumen Gentium (chapter III) introduces “new ideas like local church, co-responsibility, collegiality, authority as service” it only extends “the pyramid to the second layer of the pyramid, the college of bishop.”  (Wostyn, Lode. “Doing Ecclesiology” 1990: 46) However, the perspective of Vatican II in this Society ecclesiology remained that of Vatican I’s image of a perfect society.

I agree with Senator Santiago that Vatican II sown “the seeds of a democratic revolution” in the Church as People of God and as Servant. Lumen Gentium, inspired by the New Testament images of the Church as the people of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, looks at the Church as “a pilgrim church in history heading towards the kingdom. She is a participatory community, a fellowship of life, charity and truth, sent forth into the world as a light, as a sign of the salvation. She has to enter into the history of mankind. And she may never cease to renew herself until through the cross she arrives at the light.” (LG, art 9; Wostyn, 1990:47) In this image of the Church as People of God, all members, including the leaders, are fundamentally equal by baptism. In so doing, the Church “should be the primary witness and manifestation of the authentic freedom and equality every human being deeply yearns for.” (LG, art 10-13, 31-32; Wostyn, 1990: 47) This is the foundation of Senator Santiago’s claim about the participation of the laity in the Church.

However, while the lay members can contribute and cooperate in the life and mission of the Church, they are excluded in the decision-making. Filipino theologian Levy Lanaria, who made his dissertation on lay participation in the Church, focused on domestic church, aptly observed:

Clerical hegemony in theological education/formation, although concededly not of the same degree as pre-Vatican II, can be linked to the hierarchy’s traditional claim over "sacred traditions," that is, their exclusive right to teach, preach, or govern—a claim that virtually reduces the understanding of Vatican II affirmative statements on the role of the laity in the Church to orthodox (read: magisterial) reading of the texts to the exclusion of possible heterodox interpretations that are rooted in the social location of the laity. (Lanaria, Levy. “Towards a ‘Lay Hermeneutic’ in Ecclesiology”, East Asian Pastoral Review, volume 47 (2010) number 3.)

The same sentiment voiced out by Hans Kung, putting himself in the shoes of the laity, that “for as long as I can contribute advice and work, but am excluded from decision-making, I remain, no matter how many fine things are said about my status, a second-class member of this community: I am more an object which is utilized than a subject who is actively responsible. The person who can advise and collaborate, but not participate in decision-making in a manner befitting that person’s status, is not really the Church, but only belongs to the Church." (Kung, Hans. “Reforming the Church Today: Keeping Hope Alive” 1990:75 as quoted by Professor Levy Lanaria).

Senator Santiago’s assertion on the fruits of Vatican II in terms of collegiality and lay participation remains a struggle within the Catholic church today. On January 27, 1989, 163 theologians signed the Cologne Declaration saddened, nay depressed, by the restoration course of the Catholic church to the pre-Vatican's centralized authority of the Pope, particularly the issue of Papal Infallibility viz collegiality. Interestingly, the dominant voice of this restoration movement was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. 

The theologians who signed the Cologne Declaration were alarmed by the (1) appointment of conservative bishops without consultation with the local churches (no wonder we don’t have another Cardinal Sin); (2) harassment of theologians, forbidding them to teach or publish writings (victims were the progressive theologians Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx; the liberation theologians Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Guiterrez, and Jon Sobrino; the moral theologians like Charles Curran and Margareth Farley for their teaching favoring artificial methods of contraception, masturbation, pre-marital sex and homosexuality.); (3) the attempt to concentrate the whole life of the Church (doctrinal/teaching, jurisdiction, Christian witness via media, etc.) in one person, the pope.

Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) re-affirming the traditional teaching of the church on family planning, especially the condemnation of the artificial methods of contraception, including the pill.

Humanae Vitae was controversial because Pope Paul VI rejected the majority report which proposed to allow the use of contraception among Catholic couples. Alarmingly, the Pope did not act collegially with the bishops in publishing the encyclical Humanae Vitae. Senator Santiago wrote:

Paradoxically, Pope Paul 6 decided in favor of the minority view.  His unusual decision shook the Catholic world, and that is the reason why the Catholics in this country are so intensely divided over the RH bill.

After Pope Paul 6 rejected the majority report, many Catholics were no longer ready to give blind obedience to his decree.  It is fair to say that no moral issue in the 20th century impacted so profoundly on the discipline of moral theology.  As a result of the contretemps and the succeeding controversy, Catholics now raise such questions on how conscience is to be sought, the response due to the ordinary magisterium or teaching function of the Pope and bishops, and the meaning of the guidelines of the Holy Spirit.

Catholic theologians and even some Episcopal conferences voiced opposition to the Humanae Vitae encyclical, or at least took positions that were less than enthusiastic in their support.  Surveys in the United States, for example, have indicated that the overwhelming majority (more than 80%) of Catholics of childbearing age do not, in fact, observe the encyclical’s teachings.

Senator Santiago did her homework well. I will continue my reflection on her speech re the primacy of conscience in Catholic theology. Keep well.