Ephraem Replies to Fr Brennan SJ
October 18th 2007 10:24
It is a startling and unusual experience for me to find myself to the "left" of Fr Brennan. I count him as a friend, though not a close one - we very occasionally share a meal, though more often an e-mail. I'm not sure whose company reflects more adversely on the other, but I'm happy to take the slim chance it's his!
You will find a post of mine further down in which I make a distinction between faith and reason. While I admire Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not just his steadfastness in the face of evil, but also a great deal of his theology, I cannot admire his refusal, following his mentor, Karl Barth, to admit of the Analogia Entis, and its moral concommitant, the natural law. The church's inner life - its sacramental life and doctrines - is the precise area of faith. When it speaks of the law inscribed on every human heart, the law of reasoned moral discourse - it has entered the public domain. Not only may churchmen, such as Fr Brennan, do so, but conscience, and the public good, demand that they must speak out on moral issues with force and thoughtful vigour.
The problem seems to me the confusion between these domains, often brought about by higher churchmen with a fuzzy, un-Thomistic - and frankly incoherent - view of conscience. They ought to consult more closely with their philosophers. "There is no conscience. The Church is arbiter of conscience. If you disagree with me you're not only wrong, but probably in bad faith." There is no easy answer to the question of conscience - it is neither a "Get out of Hell free card" nor the Church's ventriloquist's doll. Conscience is a vengeful muse, not to be invoked, or derided, lightly.
There is also a problem when churchmen change the rules in the middle of the discourse. Most Reverend Gentlemen, if you intend to address yourself to the public then stick to the natural law and don't finish off with a fervorino about how much God hates people who disagree with you. I think this is what annoyed Paul Keating when he was so unkind to "professional Catholics".
Do remember to keep church and state, faith and reason distinct - if not entirely separate. The Lion of Munster's sermons on Euthanasia are a sort of model. (Bearing in mind, though, that he was though using a rhetoric suited to a different and more religious time). The Archbishop, later Cardinal, also spoke in the knowledge that every word he spoke to his flock might easily be his last. It does concentrate the mind rather.
While I'm in a secularist mood, I might mention the Church's exemption from all sorts of laws: IR; HREOC; taxation; welfare; privacy and the general obligation to due process - to name but a few. I find it impossible to take seriously the poltical interventions of churchmen who preside over the most corrupt and degenerate bureaucracy in the country. I'm not given to quoting scripture - another muse best left to herself - but sometimes phrases from the Gospels leap unbidden to one's mind when "Justice and Peace" or "Social Justice" fall trippingly from the lips of prelates and friends. Glass houses, stones, beams, motes, casting first stones.....
Thanks to HB for an historical correction
You will find a post of mine further down in which I make a distinction between faith and reason. While I admire Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not just his steadfastness in the face of evil, but also a great deal of his theology, I cannot admire his refusal, following his mentor, Karl Barth, to admit of the Analogia Entis, and its moral concommitant, the natural law. The church's inner life - its sacramental life and doctrines - is the precise area of faith. When it speaks of the law inscribed on every human heart, the law of reasoned moral discourse - it has entered the public domain. Not only may churchmen, such as Fr Brennan, do so, but conscience, and the public good, demand that they must speak out on moral issues with force and thoughtful vigour.
The problem seems to me the confusion between these domains, often brought about by higher churchmen with a fuzzy, un-Thomistic - and frankly incoherent - view of conscience. They ought to consult more closely with their philosophers. "There is no conscience. The Church is arbiter of conscience. If you disagree with me you're not only wrong, but probably in bad faith." There is no easy answer to the question of conscience - it is neither a "Get out of Hell free card" nor the Church's ventriloquist's doll. Conscience is a vengeful muse, not to be invoked, or derided, lightly.
There is also a problem when churchmen change the rules in the middle of the discourse. Most Reverend Gentlemen, if you intend to address yourself to the public then stick to the natural law and don't finish off with a fervorino about how much God hates people who disagree with you. I think this is what annoyed Paul Keating when he was so unkind to "professional Catholics".
Do remember to keep church and state, faith and reason distinct - if not entirely separate. The Lion of Munster's sermons on Euthanasia are a sort of model. (Bearing in mind, though, that he was though using a rhetoric suited to a different and more religious time). The Archbishop, later Cardinal, also spoke in the knowledge that every word he spoke to his flock might easily be his last. It does concentrate the mind rather.
While I'm in a secularist mood, I might mention the Church's exemption from all sorts of laws: IR; HREOC; taxation; welfare; privacy and the general obligation to due process - to name but a few. I find it impossible to take seriously the poltical interventions of churchmen who preside over the most corrupt and degenerate bureaucracy in the country. I'm not given to quoting scripture - another muse best left to herself - but sometimes phrases from the Gospels leap unbidden to one's mind when "Justice and Peace" or "Social Justice" fall trippingly from the lips of prelates and friends. Glass houses, stones, beams, motes, casting first stones.....
Thanks to HB for an historical correction
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Comment by Frank Brennan
Cheers
Frank