Canon Lawyer… Notes Clergy Confusion About Preaching On Contraception, Related Issues

By DEXTER DUGGAN

Part 2

PHOENIX — A member of the leadership team of the Diocese of Phoenix explored contraception and related issues in an interview with The Wanderer after he preached on the topics during July 22-23 weekend Masses at one of the large diocesan parishes, St. Thomas the Apostle, in a residential area of Phoenix.
Fr. Chris Fraser, JCL, ordained a priest for this diocese in 2001, earned a licentiate in canon law in 2006 at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation, he returned here to work full time in the diocesan tribunal, where he has served as judicial vicar since late 2007.
During a Q-and-A interview, Fraser told The Wanderer that “when the clergy attempt to preach on this topic, they are well aware that there is disagreement, confusion, and also outright opposition to the Church’s position.”
Email questions for this lightly edited interview were submitted in advance to Fraser, who provided his responses. An audio of his homily may be found at the St. Thomas the Apostle website, staphx.org, at Podcasts.
The first portion of this interview appeared in last week’s Wanderer, August 17, 2017, on page 4B. Below is the concluding part.
Q. Why do you think culture is so hostile to traditional values? I’ve just started reading a 2001 book by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, about the hopelessness he sees in lower-class British patients, as if they have nothing to live for: sex, drugs, violence. He recalls that wasn’t the way people lived when they were fighting to save London against the Nazis. Like, the postwar welfare state and secularism have drained their lives of meaning.
A. That is a very good but complicated question that would require a long answer.
There is a resistance to traditional values today and it is increasing exponentially because of the overinflated sense of self and ego. In some cases, it is the “primacy of Me!” Facebook and other social mediums have enabled many people to become narcissists, such that every move they make must be captured, commented upon, and shown to the world who is closely following them.
They think, everybody is wondering what I am doing right now, so I have to post a picture. Also, everyone is interested in my opinion, so I’m going to post my take on things.
Traditional values and the like are seen as a bad dream we have woken up from, and we are reminded again and again that the “good ol’ days weren’t as good as you might think.” Of course. No culture or society is perfect. But, compared to what we have today, yesterday seems reasonable, ordered, and responsible.
We are flirting with a departure from all that came before us and we are now redefining everything, especially our humanity. We can be men or women, or both. We can pretend to be married to others of the same sex, etc. It is the ultimate offense to God to presume that you can define your humanity for yourself and be whatever or whomever you choose.
Without religious faith to keep us rooted in reality, humble, and in check, we are bound to ignore our limitations and sinfulness, which will lead to our doom.
The irony is that we are precious creatures and we are special to God. But people today do not get their sense of self-worth from the revelation that we are created in the image and likeness of God and that we have been saved by the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
Since this world is led and influenced by the Father of Lies, we believe the lie that says we have no inherent self-worth, so we have to make it up, or get more money and material things to give our lives meaning, or we need to pretend to be people we are not.
As the great Fulton Sheen said, people today (even priests) will say, “I gotta be me — I’ve gotta do my thing!” He said, “Since when? Isn’t charity doing the other person’s thing?” We no longer want to serve. Rather, we want to be served.
Traditional values are the antidote to pride and arrogance. At the same time, we cannot ignore that the application of traditional values in our culture in the past was not perfect or without mistakes, but at least people agreed upon right and wrong, personal responsibility, and the gift of the Fear of the Lord.
Q. Could you comment on how so-called primacy of conscience has been distorted since the 1960s to mean do whatever you want?
A. I think that the title of E. Michael Jones’ book Degenerate Moderns sums it all up for me. The subtitle is, Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior. The so-called “primacy of conscience” is really nothing more than a sophisticated excuse to do what I want to do; and to reject what God commands of me.
In one way or another, it is an attempt to rationalize and legitimize any and all actions that I choose to do, and then to pretend that God is going to be okay with it. Appealing to “conscience” in matters that tradition and faith have deemed sinful or immoral for that last 2,000 to 4,000 years is simply a sophisticated intellectual exercise to excuse myself from what is true or good, so that I can do what I want.
Most people do not understand the Church’s teaching on conscience and what it is. They do not understand how a conscience has to be “informed” in order to work properly. Yet, most everyone understands conscience to have something to do with “what my gut is telling me is right or true.”
If we can get people to admit that every rational human being can evaluate the Ten Commandments and admit that in their “gut” they would agree that this is the best code to live by in your life, and that children must be raised in accordance with these timeless Commandments and the Golden Rule of doing unto others what we would have done to us, then we have something to work with and build upon in teaching people what conscience is.
I think when you are talking to people on the street, people in communities, and the general public at the grocery store, the appeal to one’s conscience about doing this or that will only be applied when that action or that result is something they desire. And we fallen creatures usually strive after things that we desire that give us pleasure, feed our appetites (that must be kept in check), and build up our egos.
The point is that conscience must also apply to things that are very hard to do! Conscience can lead us to give up our life for that which is right, true, and beautiful. Yet, so many people only talk about appealing to their conscience when it is something that they have been told they may not have, or shouldn’t do, but which they desire and want anyway. It is an obvious child to Relativism.
It simply makes no sense that one person’s conscience tells them one thing and another person’s conscience tells them to do something the opposite. If conscience is not subjective, if conscience is something real, and if conscience speaks the truth, then how can the truth be divided or contradictory? Each person cannot have their own truth. Truth is one thing.
The bottom of all this falls out when you start talking about some of the things that people today are still opposed to, such as cruelty to animals, or killing people or other living things for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment of it, or enslaving people even when it could help them to survive and live. These point to things that are objectively right and things that are inherently bad and evil.
But people who misuse and misapply conscience don’t understand that they are building their houses on sand. You can’t have it both ways. If conscience is real and is a true application of human knowing and discernment, there are going to be actions that are good and virtuous and actions that are evil and must be forbidden.
From the Catholic perspective, “Conscience” must be studied and thought about. Moreover, conscience does not stand on its own. This is why we believe in Church authority. As one of my seminary professors used to teach us, Cardinal Newman’s teaching on conscience reminds us that the principle of natural religion is conscience; the authority of conscience. These folks say that I believe what my conscience is telling me is true and I follow it and trust it.
Okay. That means that you trust yourself. You believe that this inner voice speaks clearly enough and loudly enough and you trust it. But the Principle of Revealed Religion is the authority of a voice outside me. A voice distinctly not my own. A voice easily recognizable as not my own voice which I freely adhere to and embrace. This is what people of religious faith do.
Religion comes from the Latin, religare, which means to bind or to tie down. We bind ourselves to these teachings, to this Church because we submit to the authority of the voice outside of ourselves — the Pope, the Sacred Scripture, the Magisterial teaching authority of the Church.
In effect, if we claim to believe in the divine Revelation of Jesus Christ and we acknowledge the authority of the Church He founded literally on the Rock of Peter’s grave, then we are freely embracing the authority of this Church that seeks to inform, enhance, and complete our understanding of good and evil; right and wrong.
Left to our own lights, we will merely be practicing the principles of natural religion and not the revealed religion which comes to us from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and is fulfilled in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
My professor then asks the million-dollar question which human logic then moves to immediately: So, wouldn’t my submission to this Church then be abdication of my freedom, of reason, and personal responsibility? His answer is that for many people, they might feel that the kind of faith I am speaking of, the kind of suppression of one’s own judgments (“conscience”), is the abdication of freedom, reason, and responsibility. But this is the crux of the matter.
Can a man make a principled decision to be ruled by a principle outside him, and one which he does not perspicuously see or understand, much less control? If we say yes, we are Jews or Christians, Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox, or Muslims — at least according as these groups have historically understood themselves. If we say no, we are good rationalists, good moderns, good Enlightenment men.
But the “no” answer would mean in addition that one cannot fall in love: for what is love except the decision to be ruled by a principle outside oneself? Is love unprincipled? Does living by principle require one never to love?
In the end, living the Catholic Christian life is not about following laws, walking the straight line, and being obedient like some kind of preprogrammed robot. It is about falling in love with Jesus Christ and His Bride the Church.
In exercising our conscience as we make serious decisions in our lives about life and death, right and wrong, and determine the morality and goodness of our actions, we submit ourselves to the Church and the teachings of the Sacred Scriptures because we have freely entered into a loving relationship with God and the Church.
If a person does not understand this, then they will never understand or accept the Church’s teaching on what a conscience is and what it is not.