Transpositional Theology: Relativism, Conscience, and The Magisterium: The Grace of the Church as a Sacrament and the Error of the Church as “Paperwork”

Relativism, Conscience, and The Magisterium

The Grace of the Church as a Sacrament and the Error of the Church as “Paperwork”

I. Introduction

II. The Specter of Relativism and Catholic Conscience

A. The Problem of Relativism

B. Conscience: Obligations and Culpability

C. Conscience: The Personal Judgment and Ideological Mistakes of Conscience

III. The Magisterium as Static and Malleable

A. Malleability of Church Doctrine

B. What is “the Magisterium”?

C. The Leadership Role of the Magisterium

IV. The Bishop as Teacher and Scapegoat: Conscience Formation and Escaping Sin

A. Soteriology and Conscience Formation

B. Why doesn’t God Just Give us the Knowledge and the Rules?

V. Conclusion

Introduction

When Pope Francis was elected, I remember talking to a friend about our first Jesuit pope. “It will be interesting to see how fast progressive Catholics slip into ultramontanism, while at the same time the conservative will become extremely parsing in their understanding of papal infallibility.” I don’t feel like I am gifted with any special charism of prophecy that allows me certain knowledge of the future, but in this, for once, I was correct. Conservatives have found themselves in the rather awkward position of being the “dissenters” in the Church, while progressives have become the champions of obedience.

It probably is not a secret that, balanced as I try to be, I lean a bit progressive. True to my colors, I am now writing a treatise in favor of obedience to the magisterium, but it is in response to a constant critique I hear of progressives and now the pope, the critique of “relativism”. Only the smallest fringe of progressives who call themselves “catholics” would deny objective truth. So why, besides divisive hype, does this charge seem to be so prevalent on the digital continent? The answer has everything to do with what the authority given to the successors of the Apostles and mistakes some people make as to where that authority resides.

The purpose of this treatise is to dispel the specter of relativism from the Church by demonstrating how the ecclesiological framework of the Church, especially the office of the episcopacy, interfaces soteriologically with the individual Catholic’s conscience, especially in the form of the doctrines of the Church, and how that effects the believer's quest for justification.

In the first section we will begin by briefly discussing the problems of relativism. We will distinguish between two types of relativism, nihilistic relativism, which is dogmatic and agnostic relativism, which is pragmatic. After reviewing the dangers of relativism we will begin an analysis of the Catholic understanding of conscience. We will understand that conscience is an awareness of the difference between good and evil coupled with exercise of judgment. We will also discuss the two obligations a person has toward their conscience, to form and follow it. We will then develop an understanding of the complex relationship between evil actions, which have bad consequences and sinful actions, which accrue culpability through acquisition of knowledge and use of will. With a firm understanding of these relationships we will discuss the how Catholic teaching speaks concerning the personal judgments upon one’s death. Lastly we will contrast the mistakes made about the Church's teaching on conscience by the extremes of the theological spectrum.

In the second section we will discuss the interplay between the truth of dogma and its application as church doctrine. We will discuss the development of doctrine as a teaching response to the revealed dogma of the Church. We will discuss how doctrine develops as the various pedagogical techniques are employed by the magisterium of the Church. In order to completely understand this development we will explore definition of the magisterium. We will discuss how the teaching office is made of humans in relation to the Holy Spirit, and contrast this to the understanding of the magisterium as a set of papers written by members of the hierarchy. This section will wrap up with a brief foray into the role of the bishop as priest and teacher in order to lay the groundwork for the third section.

In the third section we will seek to demonstrate how the teaching office of the bishop is related to his role as sanctifier of the Church. In this section we will develop the idea of conscience formation by means of the magisterium in order to show how by his consecration the bishop takes on the role of the scapegoat. We will show how the bishop takes the burden of our conscience formation as well as the burden of our sin from us by his teaching and how this is an effect of the sacramental nature of the Church. This section will end with the sacramental nature of the Church as a community being contratest to a religion centered around the teachings of a book.

The Specter of Relativism and The Catholic Conscience

In this first section we will begin by briefly discussing the problems of relativism. We will distinguish between two types of relativism, nihilistic relativism, which is dogmatic and agnostic relativism, which is pragmatic. After reviewing the dangers of relativism we will begin an analysis of the Catholic understanding of conscience. We will understand that conscience is an awareness of the difference between good and evil coupled with exercise of judgment. We will also discuss the two obligations a person has toward their conscience, to form and follow it. We will then develop an understanding of the complex relationship between evil actions, which have bad consequences and sinful action, which accrue culpability through use of knowledge and will. With a firm understanding of these relationships will will discuss the how Catholic teaching speaks concerning the personal judgments upon one’s death. Lastly we will contrast the mistakes made about the Church's teaching on conscience by the extremes of the theological spectrum.

The Problem of Relativism

Since the papacy of Leo XII the term Relativism has been on the radar of the Catholic Church as one of the great dangers of the modern world. Especially in the past two papacies the dangers of this philosophical view have been assessed and much commented for the instructional caution of the faithful. In April 2005, in his homily then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stated,

Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.

For the purposes of this treatise we are going to distinguish between two types of relativism. The first would be a nihilistic relativism, which positively and dogmatically asserts that there is no objective truth. Regarding morality, this becomes a view that since there is no truth, moral action is at best whatever a culture decides is moral or at worst whatever any individual decides. The latter is more and more prevalent in our individualistic western society.

The second type of relativism would be agnostic relativism, which asserts that there may or may not be objective truth, but even if there is we cannot know for certain. Criteria for demonstrating any absolute truth are hard to nail down. Defined criteria are simply things we agree upon and are relative themselves. Because there is no way of universally demonstrating truth, there is no way of knowing it. The conclusion for the agnostic relativist is that any quest for ultimate truth should be abandoned and the concept of absolute truth should have no bearing on our beliefs or actions. Agnostic relativism springs for the fact of uncertainty that comes with living in the flow of time. One thwarts agnostic relativism becoming nihilistic relativism by seeking a source of authority, but once one philosophically understands the limits of human authority on finds that authority through faith not certainty.

Both nihilistic relativism and agnostic relativism elicit the most dangerous views of the modern world according the Church, moral relativism, rejection of absolute authority and, from this, functional atheism if not dogmatic atheism. Both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Saint John Paul II have been great shepherds and wise leaders in their condemnation of relativism in each from. But the universal Church cannot afford to focus on one problem alone and overfixation on one moral or philosophical issue for too long in exclusivity tends to breed new moral or philosophical problems. Certainly Benedict XVI and Saint John Paul II commented upon a wide philosophical spectrum, but through no fault of the shepherds of the universal church, members can hyperfixate.

If one were brave enough to enter comment dialogue on an issue of morality or doctrine today, under the papacy of Francis, one would no doubt see the term “relativism” thrown around by papal dissenters and detractors. It seems a common critique of Francis’ papacy by those who do not approve of his pastoral method. There has been a reactive objectivism by some in the Church which ascribes to a very simplistic view of how the Truth is revealed in the mystical body of Christ, the Church. The basic argumentative assumptions start with “Truth doesn't change” continues with, “God revealed the Truth to the Catholic Church” and finish with, “Therefore the Church does not (cannot) change”. These assumptions lead to a suspicion of any changes or vagury from the hierarchy. At best the detractors cry for clarity, which often means validation of their angle on an issue. Or worse they cry relativism which springs from the tunnel vision of their own version of cafeteria catholicism.

The much debated topic at this particular time is the reception of communion by people who have divorced and remarried. It is true that the Church teaches that those who receive the eucharist must be in a state of grace, not in a state of mortal sin. And it does appear that if someone is divorced and remarried, they would be in the process of continual adultery. But to apply this black and white assessment of such a theoretical situation to the complexity of a real life situation speaks to a reactionary objectivism that misunderstands or ignores key teachings of the Church regarding Truth, especially the Church's teaching on Conscience.

Conscience: Obligations and Culpability

Like most complex concepts, the Church’s teaching on conscience is often simplified and to the point of losing the content of the teaching. The complexity leads to multiple types of misunderstandings, so the first question may be, what is a conscience? As a child, the concept is brought to us by many narratives where a protagonist must confront an alter-ego who is their conscience and that alter-ego teaches them some deep moral lesson at a pivotal point in their life. Some from of a hyper moral dissociative disorder is not what the Catholic Church is teaching about in its pronouncements on conscience. Conscience is not an independent voice in one’s head. Neither is conscience infused knowledge, a slightly more complex version of the same idea as the independent voice.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we learn that the human conscience is basically two things, the urge to know and do good as well as the judgment concerning that knowledge and its execution. One’s conscience is part of one’s self, part of the psycho-spiritual makeup of the human.

The first assertion is that conscience is a knowledge that there is good and evil, and a draw to the good. The Catechism states,

Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."

Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil.

This basic law of conscience is the awareness that there is such a thing as good and evil, though it does not assume that one knows what choice to make in a given situation. The knowledge that was promised with the fruit in Genesis 2 is as follows “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.” We are not promised to know how to correctly discern between good and evil as is commonly assumed, and as is evidenced by the wide debate on what constitutes which. We are promise the knowledge that there is good and evil, as was noted in the treatise The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family,

A valid interpretation here is that the tree gives them experiential knowledge not cognitive knowledge. They will now experience not just good, but also the evil, that is pain and suffering. Once one realizes this, the simple fact that we don’t actually know the difference between right and wrong doesn't seem odd and more importantly the punishments become less punishments and more the natural consequences of their actions. By eating the fruit they were basically asking to know (experience) good and evil. They already know the experience of good in the garden, so God grants the request by means of the punishments; the experience of pain and suffering.

This experience of suffering, of good and evil leads to an awareness of the existence of good and evil that extends to the moral realm, but knowledge of how to morally act is not a given.

The assumption of a morality is an almost pan-human phenomenon. Even those who would philosophically claim some sort of ethical nihilism usually end by pleading that those who ascribe to a morality stop foisting their morality on others. This call to action, along with any other, implies some sort of “goodness” from the outcome. Without a framework of good/better bad/worse in action, there is not reason to offer advice, even if the judgment is based on efficiency or naive hedonism, it is still a response to the call to know and do good.

A lack of moral framework is not found in any culture of humanity, only in the rare clinical psychopath. These people see no morality, they see no difference between pedophilia, taking human life, eating cereal, or walking a dog. This is not relativism, it is actual nihilism. These people are as terrifying to the philosophical moral nihilist as they are to everyone else because, according to the teaching, everyone is drawn to the goodness of truth. This draw is why everyone seeks to show how their own judgments are “good” and others’ judgments are “bad”. It would be hard to find an example of a person who intentionally chooses the morally bad thing. Such examples are usually rebelliousness, wherein the “rebelliousness” itself is seen as more good than the “moral order” or a known morally bad choice is made for some short term pleasure. Again the choice is seen as “good” in the moment and is either judged as “bad” later or judged as the right choice over what is perceived to be good.

The second aspect of conscience is the practical judgment of the intellect. The Catechism states,

Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law

This process of judgment sends the soul in two direction, into the past to process information and into the future to exercise the will, and thus conscience is the link between learning and action. This makes a tight bond between conscience, culpability and the final judgment of the soul. These working together place two obligations on the individual regarding their conscience, to form one’s conscience and to follow it.

Choosing to properly form one’s conscience gives on sincerity of conscience. To choose not to form one’s conscience or choose poor sources out of stubborness or pride gives one an insincere conscience. The Church teaches that one must form one’s conscience by the proper sources. Again the Catechism states,

Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.

The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience. Prudent education teaches virtue; it prevents or cures fear, selfishness and pride, resentment arising from guilt, and feelings of complacency, born of human weakness and faults. The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.

In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path, we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience before the Lord's Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church.

This passage reminds us that conscience formation is a lifelong task and to rest from that duty is a sign of an insincere conscience. The passage lays out a dynamic between prayer, the scriptures and the teachings of the Church. These are the primary sources for conscience formation. The passage also show that the education process “guarantees freedom” which could have a few meanings (as we will explore below). For now we will point out that it implies the second obligation, one must follow their conscience, meaning, one is free to act on their best judgments (and possibly be wrong . . .).

The totality of the Church's teaching on conscience is a complex grappling with the relationship between evil and culpability. Christians believe that there are absolutely objectively bad choices to be made. Christians are not nihilistic relativists. But Catholics don’t believe that everyone is born with the perfect knowledge of moral good and evil. Nor does Catholicism assert ability to get that knowledge by a method that supplies certainty. Catholicism teaches with moral authority based only on faith. In his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio Pope Saint John Paul II gives good guidance on what, in Catholic moral theology, is called the law of gradualness,

What is needed is a continuous, permanent conversion which, while requiring an interior detachment from every evil and an adherence to good in its fullness, is brought about concretely in steps which lead us ever forward. Thus a dynamic process develops, one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of His definitive and absolute love in the entire personal and social life of man. Therefore an educational growth process is necessary, in order that individual believers, families and peoples, even civilization itself, by beginning from what they have already received of the mystery of Christ, may patiently be led forward, arriving at a richer understanding and a fuller integration of this mystery in their lives.

It is a lifelong process to grow in the knowledge of moral truth. To “know” something generally means one believes it (you cannot “know” what you do not believe), what you believe is true (you cannot “know” something false) and in the modern world it implies that you can “demonstrate” that truth. Philosophically, the place to for greatest debate comes in hasing out the criteria for “demonstration”. Our demonstration comes by means of the sources above, sacred scripture and the teachings of the Church. But this is hardly a scientific demonstration or a means for rock solid certainty. It is taken on faith. Also, since knowledge implies belief, the Church asks that one engage scripture and Church teaching such that if they do not believe they continue to try until they can accept the teaching. This process is the formation of conscience and it is a lifelong task for every Christian.

Lack of personal certainty makes Catholicism invested with a personal agnosticism. This is admittedly offensive to pious ears, but we are speaking in terms of what humans can know, not whether truth exists. Offensive though it may be, the call to continually be open to the education of one’s conscience means that one can never be certain they have personally attained the truth. This human uncertainty is what drives a constant sincerity of conscience. It is also has a lot to do with the difference between sin and evil, as we shall discuss shortly. This personal agnosticism is different that an agnostic relativism where one gives up into nihilism or indifference. It is an agnosticism instituted by God, that is basically a reference to the limits of human certainty. It allows for the development of human knowledge and the exercise of human will in a postlapsarian world. It is an agnosticism that allows for all humans to personally mature in their relationship with God. This personal agnosticism seems to become “relativistic” when it is linked to the difference between evil and sin. But, what becomes “relative” is not the truth of mortality, what becomes relative is the personal culpability for the choices the individual Christian makes. This seeming relativity is how much misunderstanding happens between where theologically conservative and theologically liberal Catholics lay focus on church teaching about conscience.

Sin implies culpability, which is the guilt accrued for an evil action done. Culpability is a different thing that the evil itself. If one takes an expansive view of “consequences”, what makes an action “evil” are the consequences. With good reason, most Catholics immediately get antsy at any hint of moral consequentialism and ascribe to a deontological from of mortality where duty is the focus. The good reason to get antsy at moral consequentialism is that is it is usually paired with either a hedonistic or utilitarian worldview, both of which see suffering a equivalent to evil. This is opposed to a deontological morality where the action itself is seen as the carrier of moral weight. For a deontological morality one follows the proclaimed law of God out of duty, not because of “consequences” (meaning suffering). This view allows for the beautiful Catholic idea of redemptive suffering. But we say we must take an “expansive view” of consequences. What makes an action evil in this deontological model is still the consequence of an action. By means of the action one has broken faith and proper relationship with God.

A classic illuminator of deontology over consequentialism for Catholic morality is the grave matter of missing mass on Sunday. As an action with the moral weight of “grave matter’, if one were to couple this action with full knowledge and complete consent, of would commit a mortal sin. Given this it seems that deontology has won the day by assertion of the fourth commandment. There is no “consequence” for missing mass. There is no suffering incurred, either by hedonistic or by utilitarian calculation. Indeed it seem that the only way to demonstrate the validity of a deontological morality is to show how God demands useless or maybe even self harming things for us and we still need to follow them out of duty.

Hopefully by this point the Catholic reader will begin to see the flaws in this line of reasoning. Attending mass is not a random demand by God, there are serious consequences to missing mass. One cuts oneself off from the grace of the sacraments. The consequences of missing mass (even accidentally or unintentionally) are a small break (pause?) in proper relationship with God. A similar expansion of the idea of consequences could be applied for any catholic counter example to consequentialism. Evil actions always have negative results on the relationship with the divine because you didn’t follow your duty, and we are going to assume your duty is your duty for a reason order to “the good”. Thus, the “for some reason” for deontologist those consequences don’t count as “consequences”. The “some reason” is the deontologist buy in to the secular hedonistic or utilitarian definition of what moral consequences are. With our expansive view of consequences one can see that what makes an action evil is the consequences. At the very least the one should be able to see that the consequence of doing other than God’s proper ordering of human action will lead to some sort of deficit for the human even regardless of their intention. But we must now distinguish between evil and sin. Catholics can be consequentialists regarding evil, but regarding sin Catholicism leans deontological if one’s deontological morality flows from a sense of duty, which is indicative of some sort of personal relationship. Sin is much less concerned with consequences and much more concerned with personal culpability. For much of the rest of this section we will be developing the complex interplay of evil and sin, of consequence and culpability.

Culpability for an action is different than the moral weight of the action, let’s say the “evil of it”. If the action was evil, one accrues culpability by possession of knowledge of how evil it is and exercise of will. The greater the knowledge and stronger the will the greater the culpability. Again, the three categories for mortal sin, grave matter (an action with serious [expansive] consequences), full knowledge, and complete consent. The old school deontological definition of sin is, “an offense against God” or “against God’s honor.” One way to look at this is the gravity of the consequences coupled with the culpability accrued. Again, an “evil” act is different than a “sinful” act. You can accidentally do great evil, you cannot accidentally, unknowingly or unwillingly commit great sin. In fact you cannot accidentally sin at all. You can be forced to do great evil, but you cannot be forced to sin. You can unknowingly do great evil, you cannot knowingly sin. You cannot accidentally or unknowingly offend God even though you can unknowingly do action that have negative effects on your relationship with God, for example missing mass.

The moral weight of the “evil” action is independent of one’s knowledge or belief about the action. Again, in the Catholic worldview there is an objectively “right” and an objectively “wrong” way to act. That is to say, any given action can be objectively calculated as good or evil to a greater or lesser degree. This calculation can be done at least by God, and church teaching on conscience implies that it can accurately be done by humans, given the right circumstances. But if sin implies culpability, there are not objectively “sinful” actions. Any action could be done by accident, or without proper knowledge. The just response to this is “what about rape or murder? Aren't these sinful no matter what?” And it is true that in the Church firmly teaches the existence of “intrinsically evil acts”. But Intrinsically evil acts are not intrinsically sinful acts (if by sin we imply culpability). Pope Saint John Paul II states in Veritatis Splendor “As is evident, in the question of the morality of human acts, and in particular the question of whether there exist intrinsically evil acts, we find ourselves faced with the question of man himself, of his truth and of the moral consequences flowing from that truth.” Again, this professed consequentialism is not irreconcilable with a deontological morality that frames sin as an offense against God’s honor, because the consequence of the action (human dishonor) makes it evil, not sinful.

Part of the confusion is that our above examples of intrinsically evil acts seem to imply intrinsically sinful acts. The confusion starts with the fact that rape and murder are not acts. They are acts with intentions and circumstances attached to them. The “act” (the moral object) is “sex”, or “taking a human life”. Sex is not an intrinsically evil act, there are many circumstances where, with the proper intention sex is a good act, to the point of being commanded by God. Calling someone a rapist implies at least a baseline of knowledge and intent by the perpetrator. Knowingly having sex with a partner where the partner neither consents nor desires the activity is an intrinsically evil act. The “consequences”, as Pope Saint John Paul calls them, are catastrophic. But a perpetrator cannot (morally) accidentally or unknowingly rape.

In Veritatis Splendor Saint John Paul II employs the idea of intrinsically evil acts to constantly remind us of two things. First that the “evil” of an action is not dependent on our knowledge, feelings, will etc. Veritatis Splendor is a reminder that the Catholic church cannot espouse nihilistic relativism. As he says, “circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act "subjectively" good or defensible as a choice.” Second, the Church cannot espouse a philosophy that says, “the end justifies the means”. Saint John Paul states, “an intention is good when it has as its aim the true good of the person in view of his ultimate end. But acts whose object is "not capable of being ordered" to God and "unworthy of the human person" are always and in every case in conflict with that good.” But when speaking of intrinsically evil acts Pope Saint John Paul II never speaks of culpability or sin. So again, “Murder” the action is taking human life. I would argue that is an intrinsically evil act, there is no situation where having to take human life is “good”. There are situations where the Church judges that someone who takes human life is not “culpable” therefore there is no sin. You can accidentally kill someone. The Church clears someone who takes human life in self-defense or as an act in a just war from culpability, thus it is not a “sin”. But no one would argue these instances of taking human life were proper to the good order of creation. They are not good acts, they are evil acts.

The collapsing of “sin” and “evil action” into synonyms is a constant false equivocation. Conscience formation is the seeking to align one’s sinful actions with evil actions. To help understand why the distinction is important and why, for example, Pope Francis isn’t changing doctrine by footnoting Amoris Laetitia we will now review the role of conscience in the personal judgment after death.

Conscience: The Personal Judgment and Ideological Mistakes of Conscience

Christianity is not gnostic. A gnostic religion believes we are saved by knowledge. The personal judgment is not a judgment of “how much” true knowledge (moral or theological) you have acquired in your life. Christianity is not pelegistic. The pelagian heresy coupled the garnering of moral knowledge with exercise of the will according to that knowledge amounting to a mechanistic salvation based on moral law. Christianity believes in a personal God, not a bureaucratic system. Christianity believes in a personal judgment, that something fundamental to the nature of personhood is being judged. Christian soteriology, at its most fundamental level, rarely references moral law or knowledge. Instead terms like “justification”, “sanctification”, or “holiness” are far more fundamental to Christian soteriology. Pelagius was correct to recognize personal will as a fundamental aspect of human nature that relates to our eternal state. Exercise of will is an extremely important aspect of the personal judgment. Where Pelagius was wrong was his primacy of human will over divine grace and his reliance on the moral knowledge imparted by Christ as opposed to his sacrifice. The Christian concept of conscience, first laid out by St. Paul, is a grappling with the process of this type of judgment as opposed to a judgment by, say, the Law of Karma, that is mechanistic according to the rules.

The following is how the process of personal judgment seems to happen regarding one’s conscience. First, one dies. One’s soul stands before God and the initial question regards sincerity of conscience, “Did you honestly and constantly seek moral truth?” It is most beneficial if the answer to this question is yes. If the answer is no, one has an insincere conscience. One has either stopped studying because they feel they know better than the proper sources, or they feel they perfectly understand morality, such that they need no further study or development. At this point one’s pride will almost certainly condemn one. Since one feels they know everything, God will judge one “by the book” and that person will almost certainly not live up to the standard.

One wants the answer to this question to be “yes”. If the answer is yes then one is judged by the content of one’s conscience. One is judged according to what one thought was right, even though it may not have actually been objectively correct. Once one understands how this works one can make sense of the seemingly convoluted passage in Romans chapter 2

All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people's hidden works through Christ Jesus.

Paul asserts that the more one knows the law, the more one is bound by it. But here it is clear that if one is “outside” the law, one is judged without reference to it. What can it mean that one’s conscience bears witness and conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them at their personal judgment? Here we have devised a graphic that will help us understand.

The dotted line indicates that our subject, we’ll call him “Bob”, has a sincere conscience. In this graphic God is speaking moral truth, and in the man’s conscience is content that is both correct and incorrect. Since Bob has a sincere conscience, he has fulfilled his obligation to form his conscience, he will now be judged on how well he fulfilled his obligation to follow his conscience. Again, sin references culpability not actions. Culpability requires knowledge and will, hence our obligations are to gain knowledge and exercise will. Limits on either diminish and possibly destroy culpability. So let’s begin.

God says, “Bob, did you do Heart?”

“Yes!” Bob says, “Yes! I did!”

“Well done my good and faithful servant! You have done correctly!” Says God. “Now, Bob, did you do Frowny Face?”

Bob is feeling pretty good about himself, “Yes! Yes! I Did!”

“Well” Says God, “Actually you were supposed to be doing Smiley Face.” Bob is aghast. “You did a whole lot of damage out there doing Frowny Face.” Bob is crestfallen. “But! In my perfect knowledge I know that your conscience was sincere, you honestly thought that Frowny Face was the right thing to do, when you did it, you were trying to please me in every way, including trying to find out what was right! That is proper beatitude. Well done my good and faithful servant.”

It seems off that someone could be doing highly destructive moral evil and not be committing sin, but this is a personal judgment, it is a judgment of you as a person who relates to another person, God, and in this instance your relationship is good. In this case, according to Romans chapter 2 Bob’s conscience bears witness and his conflicting thought defend him. But it is also the case that one’s conscience could bear witness and one’s conflicting thoughts could accuse them.

“Bob!” God says, “Did you do star?”

“Well” Says Bob, “No . . . No I didn’t actually do that I did pentagram instead.”

“You knew you shouldn’t have done pentagram right?”

“Yes Lord I did know that” Bob frowns. What has been judged here is Bob’s rebelliousness in doing what he knew was wrong. He did it willfully, not by accident or without proper knowledge. He wasn’t just told “star”, he learned it, meaning he believed it to be true. Let’s add to that that he was not forced to do “pentagram”. In this case Bob bears full culpability for his sin. At this point the only opportunity for mercy left for his rebellious action is the mercy that Bob himself meted out in life. If Bob had been litigious and unforgiving in life, he will be met with the image and likeness of God that he forged by his life. The measure with which he measured will now be measured back to him.

Let’s say Bob was merciful enough in life to continue. “Bob. Did you do Rainbow Swastika?” At this point things are not looking very good for Bob.

“No lord, I did not do Rainbow Swastika. I did Rainbow Arch, and I knew it wasn’t right. No one made me do it Lord, I have failed.” Bob now expects perdition.

“Actually, you did no evil Bob. Rainbow Arch is exactly what you should have been doing! Indeed if you had done Rainbow Swastika, you would have been causing great damage in the world.” A wave of relief crashes over Bob.

But what happens next is the most vexing part of the Catholic teaching on conscience, and highlights the difference between doing evil, which causes harm, and committing personal sin, which is an offense against God’s honor (to go back to the old definition). Sin implies knowledge and exercise of will. It is willful rebelliousness against God.

“Bob! You honestly and constantly through your life sought moral truth and you honestly believed that Rainbow Swastika was the right thing to do. Why did you purposely go against what you truly believe was my will for you? Why did you foster a rebellious spirit? You did no evil, but you have sinned, purposefully breaking your relationship with me.” That’s two marks against Bob giving him a grade of 50%, failing by any grade scale. But Hollywood likes a happy ending and, again, if Bob has been merciful enough in life we can still get one.

That last trope throws most people for a loop. “How can a person sin by doing good actions and avoiding evil ones? So you’re calling good evil and evil good depending on the person! That’s relativism!” To understand how this is not relativism it must be remembered that when it comes to evil Catholics could conceive of evil in consequentialist terms, but when it comes to sin, we are not consequentialists, we are deontologists. Again, sincere formation of conscience is the honest attempt to bring equivocation between one’s sinful actions and evil actions. If Catholics had a consequentialist view of sin, the personal judgment would not be a judgment of the “person” but simply a consequence of a mechanistic cause and effect morality. Personal sin is a personal matter, the only consequence we are worried about is one’s relationship with God, but this is not measured only in an objective act. It has everything to do with how one, as a person, relates to God, as a person. Duty is a word with particular connotations, it bespeaks personhood better than consequence, which is objective and mechanistic.

The Church’s teaching of conscience is complex, but if understood it reminds us that God does not judge us by a secret book of rules. He wants us to seek and discover the best way to be a human being and do it. According to sacred scripture, the entire teaching concerning sincerity of conscience was delivered by Jesus in the most dramatic and effective situation imaginable. The Gospel of Luke states “When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

In this postlapsarian world, we won’t be one hundred percent successful and knowing the truth, thus God will judge us by our best attempt, if we are sincere at it. But this teaching is easily misunderstood on both sides of the theological spectrum. That each side has a focus allows for cross-spectral mutual pedagogy and thereby helps bring the Church into balance. But as is typical, when an individual or micro-culture skews too far into an extreme, tragedy results.

Because of the pronouncements by recent pontiffs concerning the dangers of relativism, probably the bigger fear in the Church generally is the error of the progressive side. Take our diagram again. The progressive side focuses on the personal and the fact that we are judged by our best effort and the content of our conscience. If this is taken to the extreme it makes no reference to moral truth and runs the risk of becoming moral relativism. If one does not have a clear picture of how conscience works and only focuses on the developed content of conscience (even as far as the personal judgment) one can easily lose the clear process of formation and lose sight of the reality of objective truth. In Veritatis Splendor Pope Saint John Paul II lays out the resulting danger,

Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person's intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature.

In short, the worst end of theological progressives are all formation, no objective truth.

But this does not leave the theologically conservative out of danger. In Moral theology there is an object-culpability spectrum of emphasis. The position of the conservative on this spectrum causes them confusion when they hear the pronouncements of Pope Francis that target the dangers of their end of this spectrum. Error on this end of the spectrum results from a poorly developed epistemology and a consequentialist and mechanical view of the judgment. As we said earlier to say a person “knows” something assumes two things, the thing they know is true and they believe it. But for the conservative, if one is exposed to a moral factoid in any way, they “know” it. It is as if it were raining outside and I walked into a basement room and told you “it’s raining outside”, and by that telling, asserted that you know it. But if you don’t believe me because you don’t trust me or some other evidence you have points elsewhere you don’t “know” it.

On the theologically conservative end of the spectrum there is a tendency to downplay the “personal” end of the personal judgment and focus on objective moral truth. In its worst form this turns morality into a grand consequentialism, “if you do these acts the consequence is damnation, so it is a sin” or “if you do these acts the consequence is heaven, so it is good”. Evil and sin are collapsed into an easily recognizable list of actions. Because of human pride, this can easily result in a lack of sincerity, because the easily recognizable list of “sins” is so “obvious” there is no room to learn, no need to form one’s conscience. There is little room for sincerity or mercy, and as we discussed above, this puts those who go to far into the errors of conservatism into great peril.

We have now discussed problems of relativism. We distinguished between two types of relativism, nihilistic relativism, which is dogmatic and agnostic relativism, which is pragmatic. After reviewing the dangers of relativism we began an analysis of the Catholic understanding of conscience. We defined conscience as an awareness of the difference between good and exercise of judgment that comes with two obligations to form one’s conscience and to follow it. We demonstrated the difference between evil and sin and contrasted the mistakes made about the Church's teaching on conscience by the extremes of the theological spectrum.

In the next section we will discuss the interplay between the truth of dogma and its application as church doctrine. We will discuss the development of doctrine as a teaching response to the revealed dogma of the Church. We will discuss how doctrine develops as the various pedagogical techniques are employed by the magisterium of the Church. In order to completely understand this development we will explore definition of the magisterium. We will discuss how the teaching office is made of humans in relation to the Holy Spirit, and contrast this to the understanding of the magisterium as a set of papers written by members of the hierarchy. This section will wrap up with a brief foray into the role of the bishop as priest and teacher in order to lay the groundwork for the third section.

In the last section we will seek to demonstrate how the teaching office of the bishop is related to his role as sanctifier of the Church. In this section we will develop the idea of conscience formation by means of the magisterium in order to show how by his consecration the bishop takes on the role of the scapegoat. We will show how the bishop takes the burden of our conscience formation as well as the burden of our sin from us by his teaching and how this is an effect of the sacramental nature of the Church. This section will end with the sacramental nature of the Church as a community being contratest to a religion centered around the teachings of a book.

The Magisterium as Static and Malleable

In this section we will discuss the interplay between the truth of dogma and its application as church doctrine. We will discuss the development of doctrine as a teaching response to the revealed dogma of the Church. We will discuss how doctrine develops as the various pedagogical techniques are employed by the magisterium of the Church. In order to completely understand this development we will explore definition of the magisterium. We will discuss how the teaching office is made of humans in relation to the Holy Spirit, and contrast this to the understanding of the magisterium as a set of papers written by members of the hierarchy. This section will wrap up with a brief foray into the role of the bishop as priest and teacher in order to lay the groundwork for the third section.

Malleability of Church Doctrine

Again, one of the theological “hot button” issues of today is Pope Francis’ allowance of priests to decide the appropriateness of people who have civilly divorced and remarried to receive communion. In comment-dialogues across the digital continent people on the progressive end of the spectrum claim things like, “look they have to figure out for themselves if it’s right.” Which leads to charges of relativism. The progressive may be poorly wording their statement, but the calculation of Pope Francis is not relativistic at all. First, a declaration of nullity (an annulment) does not “do” anything. It is an official recognition of the state of affairs, there is, nor never was a sacramental marriage. Waiting for a piece of paper from a cumbersome tribunal to receive life giving grace when pastor, couple, and everyone intimately involved knows the situation seems cruel and unusual.

Development of that example is beyond the scope of this treatise, but what is relevant is how in the previous section we discussed, in great detail, the difference between evil acts and sinful acts. Evil acts are known by their consequences, sinful acts imply evil but require culpability, meaning the actor must have knowledge (a thing the actor believes, which is also true) and utilize their will. In this case there is no doubt the matter is grave, the question is one of culpability, that is, knowledge and consent. The epistemological question here is, how aware is the divorcee of the gravity of their action? Again, when we say someone knows something, we are saying they believe it and it is true. In the more traditional moral epistemology, simply telling someone something means they know it, but Pope Francis is recognizing an epistemology that emphasizes the belief, which puts the onus on the catechist and/or evangelizer to present the material in a personally specified way such that it is believed. A parish priest should have a better angle on his individual parishioners moral bearings, and be able to work them towards the truth of the situation. But as long as they are not engaging in mortal sin, requiring full knowledge, they are able to receive the sacrament. To put both examples together, if a person had divorced and remarried, and honestly believes their 1st marriage was null, remember a tribunal does not nullify the marriage it only recognizes the nullity, they could receive in good conscience, though their conscience concerning the facts of their marriage or the authority of a tribunal may be malformed.

It is reasonable for a conservative to answers that the remarried divorcee should be very cautious when it comes to something so profound as the reception of the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ. They should not so rashly and pridefully charge in if they are not one hundred percent sure and no one in that situation is one hundred percent sure. That is a just argument, but the same could be said for a priest or bishop. That they should not rashly deny the life giving graces of the sacrament to a person whom they are not one hundred percent sure is in a state of mortal sin, and it is near impossible to tell for another person, since only one requirement (grave matter) is objective. The other two criteria are spiritual and therefore not observable. They are epistemological (full knowledge) and volitional (complete consent). What evil (consequences) would a priest or bishop invoke by denying a worthy recipient the sacrament? If a worthy recipient is in need of moral growth, what better thing to do than receive, what worse evil than to deny them?

The less impressive charge against Pope Francis’ take on the divorced and remarried taking communion is “relativism”. The word is bandied about the digital continent by the few self proclaimed traditionalists who see the irreformable teaching of the Catholic Church as whatever exact way they envision the Church to be and any attempt to deviate from that vision as modernist relativist heresy. Interestingly, such people are often adept at proof texting their views from magisterial documents such as encyclicals, councils, apostolic exhortations and the like. They are adept at this proof texting, but not more so than their mirror opposite counterparts on the progressive end of the theological spectrum. Denziger’s Enchiridion symbolorum, which purportedly contains all the dogmas and doctrines of the Church, is epic in scope, labyrinthian and ever developing. It is a problem that each side of any debate can find fodder for their argument. To delve into the documented history of dogma and doctrine leads down a winding rollercoaster of a path. So for the rest of this section we will grapple with the question, do dogma and/or doctrine change? Truth certainly does not, so the answer must be “no”. Otherwise how is one to know the sources by which to form one’s conscience? But that may not be as solidly the case as we would like to believe, especially when we have an angle on a doctrine and can proof text it.

We are not going to discuss if Truth changes. It does not. For the rest of this section we are going to discuss peoples relationship to the Truth, which does change. People grow, people forget, people interpret, people reinterpret, people correctly apply variously. We will explore the malleability of Church doctrine, though the Truth of dogma does not change.

Dogma in the Catholic Church is defined by the Catholic Encyclopedia as

a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. It might be described briefly as a revealed truth defined by the Church.

Dogmas are defined by ecumenical councils or by ex cathedra statements from the Pope. Dogmas of the Church are “irreformable”, meaning that they are transmitted truth, thus they cannot be changed by any so called “reform” movement in the Church. But these truths are conveyed in human language and this language is only one small part of how humans communicate. It is also extremely limited on what and how it communicates. Since Divine Truth is perfect, our language has a hard time perfectly capturing it.

The result of this is the formulation of doctrine. When one hears the phrase “doctrines of the Church” one thinks of a list of required belief. Oddly, a doctrine seen as some sort of “truth” of the Church that must be believed but is somehow is a “lesser” degree of authority. How it is lessor often goes unexplained. The reason it seems lessor, though is its requirement of belief is the same, is linked to the difference between what dogma is, a revealed truth, and what doctrine is, an application of that truth. In fact if one were to run up and down the “hierarchy of truth” what one is running up and down is specificity of application of Dogma. The more specific the situation of the application, the lower on the hierarchy. The implication here is that when one is in a low place on the hierarchy of truth a different specific situation may well have a very different correct way to apply, experience, or live out the same dogma of the Church. When one speaks of “doctrine” it has a pretty high place on the hierarchy of truths. So what does it mean?

When one looks into the definition of “Christian Doctrine” in the Catholic Encyclopedia the entire article is on catechesis, its history and its practical methods. The reason is contained in the linguistic analysis in the introduction,

Taken in the sense of "the act of teaching" and "the knowledge imparted by teaching", this term is synonymous with CATECHESIS and CATECHISM. Didaskalia, didache, in the Vulgate, doctrina, are often used in the New Testament, especially in the Pastoral Epistles. As we might expect, the Apostle insists upon "doctrine" as one of the most important duties of a bishop (1 Timothy 4:13, 16; 5:17; 2 Timothy 4:2, etc.).

When one hears the term, catechesis, usually the connotation is not a list, but a teaching dynamic which has ebb and flow, allowing the learning of the student. Church doctrine is church teaching, it is how the Church develops, presents, unfolds, and teaches Dogma age after age. Doctrine develops as the Church develops and is shaped by its experience on its pilgrimage through time. There is a connotative difference between “doctrine” “catechism” and “teaching” but this article, along with a general understanding collapses all of them into one reality. Doctrine has the connotation of a list of things to believe and is “indoctrinated”. Catechism has the connotation of a starting point of faith, catechism during an experience of metanoia. After that catechesis, the convert continues to develop in their understanding and living of the faith. Teaching implies a relationship between the student teacher that is dynamic and responsive to the students needs and the teacher’s curriculum. The three are denotatively the same when speaking of “church doctrine” or “the teaching of the Church”, by which we form our conscience.

Church doctrines do not come into being axiomatically, but grow from the lived experience of the Church. Doctrine does not “develop” from true to more true. Doctrines are developing ways to teach to a pastoral problem the Church is engaged in. This tradition goes back to the earliest writings of the New Testament, the letters of Saint Paul. Paul wrote no systematic treatises. He wrote communications to particular churches with particular motivations and needs.

In recent Church history (the past 200 years) there has been a development that seeks to develop that development. What we are speaking of here is the development of the definition of the ordinary and extraordinary magisterium. This is a complicated thing, but the definition of Papal infallibility in the First Vatican Council needed to be clarified by the Second Vatican Council. After Vatican I some people seemed to think that any statement made by the pope on matters of faith and morals was infalible. The Second Vatican Council clarified that the pope is only infallible when speaking Ex Cathedra and infallibility is also granted to the body of bishops together with the pope when they define dogma in an ecumenical council. As it says in Lumen Gentium,

this is the infallibility which the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops, enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith, by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals. And therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable, since they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, promised to him in blessed Peter, and therefore they need no approval of others, nor do they allow an appeal to any other judgment. For then the Roman Pontiff is not pronouncing judgment as a private person, but as the supreme teacher of the universal Church, in whom the charism of infallibility of the Church itself is individually present, he is expounding or defending a doctrine of Catholic faith. The infallibility promised to the Church resides also in the body of Bishops, when that body exercises the supreme magisterium with the successor of Peter.

Since the Second Vatican Council definition of dogma by these two means has been referred to as the extraordinary magisterium. All other levels of definition and application, seeking to teach and apply dogma, are the doctrines and are defined via the ordinary magisterium. The documents put out by means of the ordinary magisterium are irreformable, though they are treated as infalible by the faithful. Many convoluted statements concerning the extraordinary magisterium basically say something like, “it is infallible when it’s right, but not when it’s not. However, it is really hard for most people to know when it is right, thus it’s better to just offer an assent of faith.” In short, statements by means of the extraordinary magisterium are to be taken with ultimate seriousness, but they are not irreformable. The reason for this is that statements by means of the ordinary magisterium deal with a wide range of specificity regarding how they apply dogma. It is this wide range of specificity is why Denziger’s Enchiridion symbolorum, is epic in scope, labyrinthian and ever developing.

A major thing that this “development that seeks to develop the development of dogma and doctrine” shows is that there is development. This development is a “change” in the doctrines of the Church. Anyone who wishes to say, “truth doesn’t change” and thereby say that doctrine does not change fails to see how untrue this is in the history of the Church. Development of a primary idea is a key tool of a teacher. So imagine this scenario, where I as a teacher teach a curriculum, let's say morality, over and over for decades, and I teach a truth, “killing people is wrong”. The applications I use the examples the methodologies will doubtless change every year depending on the intelligence student body, the news, the cultural strengths and weaknesses etc. Now imagine I taught that class for close to two thousand years, and every handout and study guide was recorded. Even if my curriculum never changed, as a teacher, a real teacher in a real classroom with real students, the paperwork would be epic in scope, labyrinthian and ever developing. It would also seem to contradict itself from time to time over the years because of two other teaching strategies that teachers and the means of the ordinary magisterium must use. Those strategies are refocusing and strategic cloaking.

Apart from development of an idea, which adds inestimable examples for inestimable situational variables, there is also refocusing. Teaching has an agenda, it is not the simple relation of facts. At the very least, if one takes the time to teach facts or skills, the agenda is to relate why these facts are related to skills that are important to know. The agenda becomes stronger when the subject is ideologically or morally loaded. When teaching “faith and morals” this is the case. Depending on the situation the way the same subject content is presented can dramatically shift, even though the basic content is the same.

We can start with morality and discuss refocusing along the object-culpability spectrum. This spectrum requires that we take into account our audience’s need when teaching morality. Is it more important that they understand whether an act is intrinsically evil or do they need to understand the effects of intention and circumstance on culpability (sin)? Their need to either be reigned in or to be better able to assess their culpability in a healthy way needs to be determined and will affect how the subject is taught.

Let’s stick with our original topic, “killing people is wrong”. This action is an “intrinsically evil act” but as we said above, it is not always sinful. Taking variables into account as we teach and we can begin to see how refocusing can cause wide variance in how this issue is understood. For example teaching a group of military combat officers who have never been in war, but may be called upon to defend their country. In a class with an aim of teaching them how to act individually jus in bello begs a certain focus one would probably focus a lot less on how taking human life is “intrinsically evil” and a lot more on the complexities of culpability. It turns out there are quite a few situations where people bear no culpability, self defense being one, as is defense of one’s home(land). Now lets ever so slightly change the situation. Now let’s take soldiers who have been in a combat situation since they were around 8 years old in a war torn country. Two decades of the trauma of absolute destruction has wreaked havoc on these people’s souls. Their culpability is mitigated by the fact that their behavior is habitual and their culture of destruction disallowed for proper moral education, limiting their knowledge. Our aim now is to shift these people’s thoughts concerning the taking of human life, to catechize the soldiers and the culture on exactly how taking a human is an intrinsically evil act. There is no room for subtly, we cannot afford these people room to revert to the habitual expressions of wrath that they have acquired in an unhealthy environment. The handouts between these two classes would be covering the same curriculum, but they would be very different, and each would be possibly damaging to the purpose of the wrong class.

At the same time, in the same culture, an individual may come to you wracked with guilt beyond both necessity and their ability to bear. They know they have done great wrongs, and the effect of your rigged teaching has proved overwhelmingly negative on their spiritual state. In this case, with that person, a discussion of culpability would be of grave importance. At that point it may be helpful to show that student the handout from the other class and start getting to work with their situation.

Closely connected to moral education and refocusing is ideological education. It is often important to apply a certain pedagogical specificity of focus. There are inestimable things in life to learn about any given topic. Even when teaching a rather rote curriculum, there is always much room to play, and if one is a good teacher, one will utilize that room according to the audience and the individual.

Let’s take the example of the scientific method. For simplicity of example we will define the method as, 1) Form a hypothesis 2) Testing the hypothesis using systematic experimentation 3) Revise hypothesis and experimentation 4) Reject hypothesis or formulate theory. The scientific method is not a moral proposition, it is a way of getting at reality. In science class, we don’t argue whether it is right or wrong. But how it is taught may still vary a great deal depending on the aim and need of the individual, class, or culture being taught. As a teacher one may know from experience that a class is extremely disciplined in the laboratory, they follow procedures impeccably. There is little need to teach them about proper controls, or contamination variables. There is little need to discuss the importance of reproducibility. But for this class, constructing a creative hypothesis could be near impossible. And of course the reverse could also be true. Imagine the difference in what a class on “the scientific method” would look like between the two groups. That difference doesn’t even take into account the style of the teacher, how they use classroom management, whether they make up funny songs, teach by rote repetition, rely on student experiences, have the students learn by making craft or making flowcharts, or any other number of pedagogical techniques that could be used to get either focus across. The variability of pedagogy on any given topic are as infinite as the number possible configurations of teachers and students, as individuals or as classes of any size, out of the entire human population throughout history.

The same is true when it comes to how dogmas are taught by means of doctrine. This is what leads to the labyrinthian nature of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal paperwork. This is also what leads to the “hierarchy of truths”. All dogmas and doctrines are true, but some are hyper specifically focused such that if one is reading them with almost any other scenario in mind, one will read them wrong. Some are focused on the broadest of generalities such that if one reads them with almost any scenario in mind one could be correct. In between these extremes is the hierarchy.

This leads to a last way that doctrine appears to change, we will call it pedagogical strategic cloaking. Throughout the digital pages of Smell no Small Laugh we have often spoken of things as “offensive to pious ears” meaning a belief that is orthodox according to church teaching, but easily misunderstood or misapplied. A teachers must take his audience into consideration when it comes to the information they focus on and even the information they choose to discuss at all. The makeup of an audience sometimes leads to inability to talk about certain issues or even use of terms that lead to improper understanding as a stepping stone to better understanding.

For example, the vast majority of five year olds cannot comprehend the difference between “intrinsically evil acts” and sinful acts, which carry culpability based on knowledge and volition. There is no reason to teach this distinction, in fact to teach it would most certainly lead to great confusion. One should use strategic cloaking based simply the cognitive ability of the student. There is also moral stamina to be taken into account. If one is aware of one’s student(s) one may know that certain moral weaknesses are hard to bear and one may not want to give them any avenue to make excuses. This is how, for example Thomas Aquinas’ teachings ended up on the Bishop Tempier's condemnation of 1277, even though today it is impossible to conceive of any bishop brave enough to challenge the Angelic doctor. How can a person who is considered the epitome of high catholic theology also be condemned. Well as society changes and grapples with itself, it changes it’s needs, much like an individual. The child who we dare not broach intrinsic evil and sin with would hopefully one day benefit from a working understanding of the two concepts. As a society shifts, the work of cutting edge theologians may be a bit too cutting edge for the society as a whole. Hence it is pedagogically beneficial to condemn them in order to allow time for culture to catch up. In our aforementioned example, someone may be going around our war torn country insisting “it is not always a sin to kill people” and elaborating for our traumatized soldiers with complicated examples. That person may also be one hundred percent correct. But the bishop may condemn them specifically because at this place and time they are doing more damage than good. They are drawing people away from a pastoral focus necessary for the society.

Another perfect example of pedagogical strategic cloaking for this treatise is various condemnations of freedom of conscience. In 1832 Pope Gregory XVI writes in his rather heavy handed encyclical “Mirari Vos”

This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin.

This passage is a fascinating study for many reasons, but especially for our purposes. First, one can see where the pontiff is contradicting Augustine in what appear to be a very reasonable assertion much along the lines of this treatise, “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,”. Pope Gregory seems to have none of it. But this is because he is in the midst of a teaching moment. He is coupling his condemnation with a “font of indifferentism” and the consequences of people who are going about teaching liberty of conscience. Thus, if there is no indifferentism, liberty of conscience is not condemned.

Also, Pope Gregory speaks here of liberty of conscience in consequentialist terms as “evil” not “sinful”. His sole focus is on the destructive effect of it being taught, in a time after the reformation where religious thought is in an upheaval. Pope Gregory obviously wants people to be able to trust the magisterial authority. But even Gregory earlier in this document is aware that situations change. He quotes St. Gelasius approvingly and states “It is the papal responsibility to keep the canonical decrees in their place and to evaluate the precepts of previous popes so that when the times demand relaxation in order to rejuvenate the churches, they may be adjusted after diligent consideration.”

What were people saying about liberty of conscience at the time? Did they make the stander progressive misinterpretation of,”if you think it’s true it is”? Or were people teaching it correctly, but the populace was taking it incorrectly because of the environment? Pope Gregory, like any pope, is dealing with complex issues among a complex populace and to shepherd them appropriately takes all the skill of a master teacher. If Mirari Vos is compared to Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors both seem more concerned that the good Christian will seek to inform their conscience by means of the civil authorities over Church authorities. This type of liberty is rightly condemned. When the Syllabus of Errors was written the Church is on the verge of ceasing to be a civil authority and it is a just question to parse out. The problem arises when someone takes such condemnations and applies them to an improper specificity, such as condemning liberty of conscience completely. These popes judged that at this time, it is best to quelch discussion of liberty of conscious. Considering the current pontiff and the fact that Mirari Vos is only available in Italian on the Vatican website Gregory’s need does not seem to be judged as the need of today or else the linguistic choices, prominence, and citation would be much more.

But it is part of the magisterium right? It is among the doctrines of the Church? Well, as we said, church doctrines are church “teachings” they are how the Church teaches dogma as the pilgrim church on earth. This involves all the complexity of teaching we have tried to sketch here. But now we must turn our attention to the “magisterium”, because it is our job to honestly and constantly inform our conscience by means of the magisterial teaching. As we shall see, this paperwork is only a small part of the teaching strategy.

What is “the Magisterium”?

At the writing of this treatise there have been many political and religious statements and judgments concerning refugees and immigrants. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been very vocal concerning its demand to respect the dignity of all people and protect the vulnerable. This has not sat well with many people on the politically conservative end of the spectrum in the United States. Recently after a USCCB social-media post on these topics, a commentator said something to the effect of, “These bishops are out of line. They need to get back to the teachings of the magisterium”. Such a comment displays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the magisterium is.

The treatise Sacramental Cosmology discussed fundamental sacral matter, the basic material needed to maintain the Church, and paper was not involved.

the only thing left required to preserve Christianity is water, wheat flour, grape wine, olive oil and three humans; one female two males. . .

Why these specific things? The first male body is the ordained body, which stands in persona christi in the sacramental system as sacramental matter. So, for example, the priest's body and the body of the sinner are the only matter needed for the sacrament of confession. The priest’s body will be needed to mediate the presence of Christ according to how the sacraments work as calculated rituals. A male and a female body are needed to perform the sacrament of marriage, their bodies in sexual congress being the matter of the sacrament. In this sacrament they image the invisible triune God as was the case in the first creation story. Hence, “Where every two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also.” The bodies of these three people are the temple, in which the spirit resides and through which the living sacrifices are made.

Water and olive oil are needed to perform baptism. Bread, made from wheat flour and water as well as grape wine is needed to perform eucharist. Olive oil is needed to perform confirmation and sacrament of the sick.

Thus what you need to make the Church function is a small set of things, each natural. Personally I am a great admirer of highly developed and stylized liturgy. But whatever requirements canon law may make, these six things, along with the knowledge and inspiration of the deposit of faith are all one needs to continue Christianity. Again the deposit of faith is not a set of texts. It is the living relationship the magisterium has with the Holy Spirit, and how they use that relationship to safeguard the Truth possessed by the Church.

The magisterium is “the teaching office of the Church”. Much like how the “doctrines of the Church” are not a list of logical premises but a display of teaching prowess, the magisterium is not the sum of magisterial documents. These documents that contain the doctrines (teachings) and are a teaching strategy of the magisterium. Magisterial documents are akin to a handout in class is, which authoritative for a test (especially if the handout is the study guide). But, the handout does not play the role of “the teacher” in the class. That role is filled by a flesh and blood person who utilizes a variety of methods and skills to get the job done.

The person who made that comment, mistook the paperwork for the teacher. In a former time, most people would not have access to that paperwork, much less be able to read it. In a former time, the relationship would need to be with the bishop and his emissaries, the priests. It is the bishop’s job to teach his people. It is imperative to understand that this office is the office of a person not an office of paperwork. The Church is guided by the Holy Spirit through the magisterium, the bishops in union with the pope, not magisterial documents. Most people would not conceive of the Holy Spirit guiding a diocese by means of it’s charter or all the letters that docses bishops have written in the past. The Spirit guides the diocese through the bishop himself. The Holy Spirit does not have a relationship with these documents, only people.

It is a common problem today among Catholics of any variety to “take to the files” and begin to interpret for themselves the magisterial documents in order to proof text their way out of the authority of a church official they don’t like. Often this is not sincere formation of conscience, this is an attempt to thwart authority. The personal and relational nature of the magisterium cannot be overemphasized at this time. As was discussed in the treatise Sacramental Cosmology, Catholics have taken the lead of Protestants and emphasized writings over the sacramental system left to us by Christ. The difference is that Catholics do what protestants accuse us of doing, adding more paperwork to the Bible as the authority.

The protestant contention is that the Bible alone is the authority. The simple Catholic response is that scripture and tradition are authorities, but it is scripture and tradition as conveyed by the magisterium, how they feel it needs to be taught right now, for this moment in the journey of the pilgrim church. To say, “scripture and tradition!” and mean two types of paperwork means we have a Protestant methodology involving an individual relationship with a set of writings, not an authentic Catholic view involving a communion of persons in a Church. When we make this mistake, we are then subject to the same divisive consequence that befalls protestant Christianity. Each person becomes his own authority. The same interpretive problems becomes apparent.

Another important weakness the protestant approach is that “paperwork” has no voice. This weakness begs for a remedy, and the remedy established by Christ is the magisterium. There is a website that has a picture of Pope Saint John Paul II striking a dancing like pose. The website pronounced judgment that this was “a theatrical behavior hardly befitting the seriousnes [SIC] of the mission of a Supreme Pontiff.” When I first saw this a serious question hit me. “When the people who make this website read the gospel, what does the voice of Jesus sound like?” When training to be a lector, one is often told not to intonate the voices, not to read it like a story. The scripture must be “proclaimed”, by which they mean monotoned solemnity. That actually seems fair enough, to intone is to interpret. When we read the stories of Jesus the tone could be very different from reading to reading, and that can very much change the meaning. Some meanings may be wrong, but doubtless many are valid and good.

It is the job of the magisterium to be the voice of Christ for us. They set the tone of voice for Christ’s mystical body on Earth. The Word of God, through whom all things are made, is eternally spoken and does not change, It has spoken from alpha to omega and has said everything that needs to be said. But the tone changes depending on the situation, and “in time” (as opposed to eternity) certain things need to be emphasized over others at varying times. This malleability shifts across time for the universal church, but is even malleable from nation to nation, diocese to diocese as the bishop sees fit. This may be such that in one diocese people are having an intense and fruitful conversation about an issue and the bishop is fairly silent, whereas in another diocese the conversation on the same topic is shut down and specific guidance is give, because that bishop deems the environment of the discourse as damaging and he recognises that a simple judgment must be made until that environment changes. The Church is teaching throughout time to all of humanity and that takes a wide variety of teaching strategies so that the magisterium can allow for effective formation of conscience.

The treatise Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy discussed how human concupiscence drives people to extremes and away from moral temperance. Our solution was cross-spectral mutual pedagogy.

Cross-spectral mutual pedagogy assumes a dyad along a spectrum that comes into relationship and mutually edifies. The extremes of the spectrum will lead to sin, but the mutual edification along points between the extremes leads to balance and the development of the virtue of temperance as well as the development of moral and spiritual skills specific to the particular issue.

The discussion in that treatise concerned temptation to sin, but in this treatise our focus in concupiscent centrifugal destruction revolves around abuse of the intellect. The pedagogical “handouts” that teach truth toward opposite ends of concupiscent centrifugal destruction can easily be used by someone on the wrong end of a theological spectrum, for example the object-culpability spectrum, to bolster their own opinion. The job of the magisterium to teach to the ultimate wide variety of humanity can easily come of as relativistic or self contradictory. But to what is actually being attempted as a whole is the effective presentation of truth, in such a way that truth will not only be understood, but appropriated and lived. The situation is a humanity that is interwoven with an impossibly complex web of many various intellectual, emotional and spiritual spectrum that any given person will be swinging through in an unsystematic way. A community will be a little more stable in its position in this web, but will probably align in various ways according to various parts of the community. The almost sisyphean job of the magisterium is to untangle this web for each individual and the community as a whole. Then, they must bring all the strings into concert, while allowing each person and each community to eminante an appropriate spectral display. This takes a teaching craft that requires a degree of malleability in order to teach to a community.

This malleability of the magisterium is now under attack because of the fundamental misunderstanding of what the magisterium is. We are in the middle of an information revolution much like the one that began in the 16th century with the printing press and again the role and ability of the teaching office of the Church is being challenged by Catholics, but this time, it is not the Bible that is being employed, it is the collective body of magisterial documents.

Now, on the digital continent, the entire corpus is available, searchable and misinterpretable. The ability of a bishop, the bishops, the pope or the entire magestarium to teach to a moment or situation is stymied by teaching moments of the past that are no doubt true, but deceptively particularly focused. It is now a matter of a few clicks to access Mirari Vos or Syllabus of Errors, and quote them as authoritative against liberty of conscience. But if one follows the links provided here, they do not take you to the vatican website, because those documents have not been deemed important enough to be posted there. They are “old class handouts” that are true as they teach to a specific situation, but easily misunderstood in our current situation. The searchable digital continent disallows the magisterium ability to either easily focus the faithful or strategically cloak distracting information, two key teaching strategies for effective education.

The Leadership Role of the Magisterium

As the teachers of the Church, the bishops also become leaders of the Church thus this constant questioning out of prideful proof texting by everyone with access to a search engine is not in keeping with what any form of edifying dissent looks like. That being said often the episcopal response is not much better. Bishops may need to be clear and stern in particular circumstances, heavy handedness should not be a hallmark of Christian pedagogy. It is bad for those whom the heavy hand is levied against. It is even worse for those who agree with the heavy hand and now feel that “their guy” won against the “other bishops” who are “not real catholics” because of how they teach. This divisiveness does no good. It devalues doctrine as a teaching experience and lessens the dignity of magisterium.

Bishops should be invested with a sense of Christian power dynamics. The basics of Christian power dynamics were laid out in the treatise The Onesiman Interface,

Christian Power dynamics demand that the greater serve the lesser, and it is off this basic Christian teaching that Paul is offering his advice. It must be remembered that according to Paul in his letter to the Philippians, Jesus “ though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” This is a high-christological reframing of Jesus’ admonition to the sons of thunder in Matthew chapter 20, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;” This same sentiment is reiterated in 1 Peter 5:3 and demonstrated by Jesus at The Last Supper in John’s gospel when he washes the disciples’ feet.

Maintaining this type of power dynamic is difficult, because in our postlapsarian world, we have been attuned by God to look for a redeemer, thus we tend to lavish power onto those who take it. This postlapsarian defense mechanism is then twisted in a classic postlapsarian distortion by any given leader, who is corrupted by power, or by the populace, who willingly follow that corruption and allow for it. Jesus very clearly teaches that Christian leaders should not act like pagan kings, seeking to become god kings in order to assert absolute abusive power. But here is the difficulty. The redeemer we are attuned to look for is a human who is the God King. Now we have the consecrated leaders of the Church, the bishops, who are called to be our leaders, our kings. The narrative they must appropriate is the narrative of the true God King. That God king comes to serve. That God King is the sacrificed God king.

The treatise Sacramental Cosmology discussed four pan-human ritual archetypes, growth, sacrifice, healing, and vocation. Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy discussed the diabolical implementation of the scapegoat ritual due to homophobia. “This fear springs from a diabolical manipulation of one manifestation of a panhuman ritual archetypes mentioned in Sacramental Cosmology. The archetype is “the sacrifice” and the manifestation is “the scapegoat”. In a certain type of sacrifice the scapegoat takes on the sins of the community and carries them away or is destroyed with them.” For the rest of this treatise we will discuss the interesting way that the vocation of the bishop plays into this subcategory of the pan-human ritual archetype of sacrifice. Both Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety and Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent discussed the interesting judeo-christian belief that the guilt of sin can be transferred from a person or community to a separate entity, the scapegoat. Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety discussed how the idea of the scapegoat as laid out in Leviticus 16 can be developed into a spirituality that allows that separate entity to be one’s “flesh” (in pauline terms) that part of one’s spirit that needs to die in order for one to be justified. Lastly, Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent discussed how the separate entity is Christ on the cross who, through effective ritual and use of sacred time, offers us the ability through the eucharist across time to place our sins upon him on the cross such that his death will destroy them.

In this treatise, we are discussing the teaching office of the Church, the magisterium. As the teachers of the Church the bishops are the leaders, and as the facilitators of the priestly office in their diocese they offer sacrifice for us in two way. The first is ritual and the second is educational. The priestly office of the bishop is effective through his ordination and offered through the mass. This is an effective scapegoat ritual, where, through sacrifice one’s sin is placed upon another entity. An attempt to explain this mystery was made in Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent.

[A]cross space and time Christ’s body (as the Church), is composed of sinners and their sins one can see how the Eucharist is the matrix for a two way flow of grace. Christ’s body is extended through space and time through the Eucharist making the Church his mystical body. That extension is balanced by a backflow of sin gathering upon Christ’s body hanging upon the cross. Through the Eucharist the communicant is bound to Christ Body, specifically his body at the event of his sacrificial death, where he takes our sin upon his body and destroys it by his death. The effect of “communion” with his body is that, as part of Christ’s body, the venial sin of the communicant is destroyed with Christ Body through his sacrificial death (though not mortal sin, where one who is in open rebellion against God will accept the invitation to the Eschaton nor the forgiveness offered). Through the Eucharist, that mystical body is bound across space and time to his sacrificial death and at the same time the individual sinners are purified of the guilt of venial sin. Thus in mass one can easily assent, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim your death O Lord until you come again.”

Belief in the scapegoat assures us that our sins can be transferred and destroyed if it is taken on by the correct ritual entity. Now we will explore how the teaching office of the Church also has the same effect for the individual. Lumen Gentium explains when talking of the office of the bishop,

In the bishops, therefore, for whom priests are assistants, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme High Priest, is present in the midst of those who believe. For sitting at the right hand of God the Father, He is not absent from the gathering of His high priests, but above all through their excellent service He is preaching the word of God to all nations, and constantly administering the sacraments of faith to those who believe, by their paternal functioning. He incorporates new members in His Body by a heavenly regeneration, and finally by their wisdom and prudence He directs and guides the People of the New Testament in their pilgrimage toward eternal happiness. These pastors, chosen to shepherd the Lord's flock of the elect, are servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, to whom has been assigned the bearing of witness to the Gospel of the grace of God, and the ministration of the Spirit and of justice in glory.

For the discharging of such great duties, the apostles were enriched by Christ with a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and they passed on this spiritual gift to their helpers by the imposition of hands, and it has been transmitted down to us in Episcopal consecration. And the Sacred Council teaches that by Episcopal consecration the fullness of the sacrament of Orders is conferred, that fullness of power, namely, which both in the Church's liturgical practice and in the language of the Fathers of the Church is called the high priesthood, the supreme power of the sacred ministry. But Episcopal consecration, together with the office of sanctifying, also confers the office of teaching and of governing, which, however, of its very nature, can be exercised only in hierarchical communion with the head and the members of the college.

The last of this treatise will be focused how offices of high priest, teacher, king and scapegoat that converge in the person of the bishop according the role of the magisterium. In this role the bishop himself with be the priest and victim, and only his reliance on Christ will bring him through to salvation. Our baptism allows us to cast ourselves onto Christ and escape from sin. What we shall see is that the office of the bishop is invested for our benefit. The bishop allows us to escape sin, even though we may do great evil. We shall also see that the bishop takes on this role at great personal risk.

In this section discussed the interplay between the truth of dogma and its application as church doctrine. We discussed the development of doctrine as a teaching response to the revealed dogma of the Church. We discussed how doctrine develops as the various pedagogical techniques are employed by the magisterium of the Church. In order to completely understand this development we will explored definition of the magisterium. We discussed how the teaching office is made of humans in relation to the Holy Spirit, and contrast this to the understanding of the magisterium as a set of papers written by members of the hierarchy. This section wrapped up with a brief foray into the role of the bishop as priest and teacher in order to lay the groundwork for the next section.

The Bishop as Teacher and Scapegoat: Conscience Formation and Escaping Sin

In this last section we will seek to demonstrate how the teaching office of the bishop is related to his role as sanctifier of the Church. In this section we will develop the idea of conscience formation by means of the magisterium in order to show how by his consecration the bishop takes on the role of the scapegoat. We will show how the bishop takes the burden of our conscience formation as well as the burden of our sin from us by his teaching and how this is an effect of the sacramental nature of the Church. This section will end with the sacramental nature of the Church as a community being contratest to a religion centered around the teachings of a book.

Soteriology and Conscience Formation

The aim of this section we will discuss just how much the bishop as teacher does for us in the sacramental system left to us by Christ. The Church is a community of persons, and the bishop has a pivotal role as a successor of the apostles. As the Catechism says,

The very differences which the Lord has willed to put between the members of his body serve its unity and mission. For "in the Church there is diversity of ministry but unity of mission. To the apostles and their successors Christ has entrusted the office of teaching, sanctifying and governing in his name and by his power. But the laity are made to share in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly office of Christ; they have therefore, in the Church and in the world, their own assignment in the mission of the whole People of God."

It is this “sanctification” performed by the bishop that we will now explore. The most common understanding is through his priestly office as the minister of the Eucharist, which sanctifies the Church and her members. But it is also by his office as part of the magisterium that the bishop sanctifies his people.

As we noted above, a person can perform an intrinsically evil act without actually sinning, depending on their knowledge and the use of their will. Because it is desirable to avoid evil, one is obligated to form’ one’s conscience by the proper sources, and also to follow their sincere conscience. Forming and following are not a “first one then the other” process, but a continual way of life. What Christ offers in the Church is the ability to perform these duties in real time as one lives one’s life. The mediator which allows this to happen is the magisterium, represented in total by the pope and represented locally by the bishop. By placing trust in the bishop’s teaching one places trust in Christ. The bishop is a living mediary of Christ as teacher to the current state of affairs in his diocese. In union with his brother bishops and the pope he offers doctrine, teaching, to his people. For our part, we form our conscience by relationship with him and his teaching. Through obedience you form the content of your conscience, thus when you are judged, your sincere conscience can testify for you. That sincerity is offered by the spirit (another advocate) through the office of the bishop. Ignatius of Antioch states in his Letter to the Trallians

For, since you are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, you appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, in order, by believing in His death, you may escape from death. It is therefore necessary that, as you indeed do, so without the bishop you should do nothing, but should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found.

Once, through faith and obedience, one accepts the appropriate source, once is free to act according to the dictates of one's conscience. This is why the bishop is our hope. We may be objectively wrong because of misunderstanding or our finite ability to attend, but if we are sincere, the office of the bishop allows us freedom of conscience. When Christ established the Church he established a functioning of the magisterium, first present in the apostles, which created the ordinary means of conscience formation. Should one “go one’s own way” to form one’s conscience, take an extraordinary route, one is not taking advantage of a great gift. It does not put one beyond the grace of God’s mercy, but it will make one’s journey much harder.

Our obedience is balanced by the role of the bishop who is the teacher. For his part the bishop must teach to the best of his ability. By his teaching he is “taking on” one’s sin in a way comparable to the way Christ takes on our sin on the cross through the bishop in the administration of the eucharist. Lumen Gentium states,

A bishop, since he is sent by the Father to govern his family, must keep before his eyes the example of the Good Shepherd, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to lay down his life for his sheep. Being taken from among men, and himself beset with weakness, he is able to have compassion on the ignorant and erring. Let him not refuse to listen to his subjects, whom he cherishes as his true sons and exhorts to cooperate readily with him. As having one day to render an account for their souls, he takes care of them by his prayer, preaching, and all the works of charity, and not only of them but also of those who are not yet of the one flock, who also are commended to him in the Lord. Since, like Paul the Apostle, he is debtor to all men, let him be ready to preach the Gospel to all, and to urge his faithful to apostolic and missionary activity. But the faithful must cling to their bishop, as the Church does to Christ, and Jesus Christ to the Father, so that all may be of one mind through unity, and abound to the glory of God.

This passage describes the bishop as a “debtor to all men” and reminds the reader that the bishop will have to “ render an account for their souls”. It is through the obedience and sincerity of the conscience of the faithful that transference of moral guilt happens from the laity to the episcopacy in a classic scapegoat maneuver. The bishop himself is responsible for the moral and dogmatic education, through doctrine, of all people under his care. That would include his subjects, who he is urged to “listen to”. And those who are commended to Christ, but not yet of one flock, those who are baptized by desire, or by water but separated by schism. To listen to these faithful means that the bishop must teach by skillful means such the he can know the people who he is teaching and teach in a way effective for them, taking into account their educational needs and their particular learning style.

The layman can do his best and listen to the bishop with sincerity and still misunderstand. By that, the layman is still saved through the scapegoat effect of the magisterial office. His guilt will be taken from him. But can the bishop be wrong about what he teaches? Absolutely. Most likely the consecration of a bishop does not come with the gift of infused knowledge. That would not effect the state of justification for the layman, though as we will see, it may effect the state of justification for the bishop. The bishop is still effective in his role as a teacher and through that office a sanctifier of the Church. The reader will remember, the personal judgement is about sin, not evil, thus even is the bishop is objectively wrong, his office is still soteriologically effective, because it is the person's ability to come into relationship with God that is being judged not their objective knowledge. For his part, this is true of the bishop as well. If he has been sincere in his effort to teach and has placed trust in Christ through cooperation with the Holy Spirit, he is also justified. Trust in Christ and cooperation with the Spirit is is a win/win for everyone. Reliance on objective knowledge is rarely as successful, especially where justification is concerned.

In this treatise we have talked little of dissent and promote trust in the bishop and the magisterium as the teaching office. We are not disallowing dissent by any means. The directly previous quote from Lumen Gentium bears witness to this. We are not, now, going to lay out the parameters and methodologies of dissent in order to thwart the specter of episcopal corruption. Such corruption can and does exist. Healthy dissent is important in the functioning development of Church doctrine. Even though bishops or even the pope may be wrong and even wrong because of corruption, the gates of hell cannot prevail over the Church and it’s episcopal function. We may need to pause and consider a specific angle on what that means. Generally when a Catholic quotes Matthew 16 disfavorably regarding a bishop, the belief is that doctrine is a list of assertions and the bishop is asserting otherwise. Matthew 16 is invoked to remind us that things will get better eventually and we will be back to the right list in due time. From this treatise’s perspective, doctrine is teaching methodology. When that teaching methodology is coupled with a sincere conscience, even if the bishop is off base, the layman’s sincerity of conscience thwarts the gates of the netherworld.

But what about corruption? Isn’t there danger of such absolute power of obedience? Absolutely. But error or corruption of a particular bishop is no danger to the justification of his charge. The sacramentally consecrated office of bishop as teacher and its effect concerning sincerity of conscience work ex opere operato. If he is wrong in what he teaches it is evil, but that evil will not lead the faithful and obedient to “sin”, nor will that objective evil corrupt a sincere conscience.

Dissent is a healthy way to check a bishop or pope in error. But, the check/balance we are going to assert here is not the route of dissent, rather it is the route of sacral investiture. If a bishop is willfully corrupt or obstinately in error, his sacrifice as the teacher who takes on the burden of conscience for the faithful will work for the layman. But he has taken on that burden by his office, thus if he himself is not justified, his role as teacher will foment exponential destruction upon himself. To explain, it may be helpful to remember what is said concerning teachers in the New Testament.

In all of the synoptic gospels there is the waring not to lead the faithful into “sin” it is better to have a millstone around one’s neck and be thrown into the deep sea. In this case, for a bishop, this would mean that their corrupting influence had been so bad that the faithful now willfully follow corruption into sin. All are judged appropriately at the personal judgment. But the bishop is judged more so. Remember the letter of James,

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you realize that we will be judged more strictly, for we all fall short in many respects. If anyone does not fall short in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body also. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide their whole bodies. It is the same with ships: even though they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot’s inclination wishes.

In this letter the reader is reminded that a leader bears responsibility for all whom are lead. This is how the bishop is a “debtor to all men” and will have to “ render an account for their souls”. By their teaching office, as a scapegoat sacrifice, they accrue the guilt of all actions of the people they shepherd. If they teach wrong purposefully by word or example, their own guilt and the collective culpability of all whom they mislead will crash down upon their soul. The bishop’s only recourse against the accrued guilt of the sacrifice he has entered by his consecration is to trust in the saving power of Christ and “to govern his family, must keep before his eyes the example of the Good Shepherd, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to lay down his life for his sheep.” Like Christ, they will either take on your sin for the glory of God, or, once consecrated, they will take it on to their own exponential destruction. If what we believe is true, and it the bishop also believes it, that responsibility and the consequence of irresponsibility should keep them sincere.

Why doesn’t God Just Give us the Knowledge and the Rules?

The title of this part, here at the end, is a just enough question. There are several things discussed so far that may be disturbing to the person who needs surety of moral action. A person can do evil but not be sinning. A person can do good and be sinning. A bishop can be corrupt and still sanctify. A bishop can be wrong and still sanctify. A bishop or layman can be ignorant, and wreak havoc by evil action and still be justified. Magisterial documents as teaching documents can seem contradictory and still be true [because they are teaching to different audiences]. Doctrine, as the teaching of dogma, develops in response to the needs of the community. There is no list of doctrines. This treatise offers a list of nerve racking assertions. All these things being as they are, at a glance one can see how a person in a certain mindset can look at the entire breadth of church teaching and from the seeming contradictions respond with “ why not relativism?”

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the person who looks at all this and asks our question, “Why doesn’t God just give us the knowledge and the rules?” But instead Christ entrusted the Church to flawed humans, to flawed leaders, starting with Peter himself. To study the letters of Paul one can quickly surmise that the papacy of Peter was not a flawless execution even after the ascension and impartation of the Spirit. There was squabbling and miscommunications. There was fear and doubt. A quick survey of Peter and his relationship to the gentile church demonstrates his personal spiritual conflict, as Paul points out in the second chapter of Galatians. Why set up a sacramentally based magisterium, where we encounter the saving power of Christ through our fellow flawed humans? Can’t we just have a book like the other abrahamic faiths?

It has been often asserted in this treatise that there are Catholics who believe that this is the case, that the Bible and tradition (magisterial documents) is “our book”. But this is not how ancient varieties of Christianity operate. Jesus founded a community not an order. An order, like the benedictines, is run by a rule book. The community of the Church is a sacrament, the outward sign, instituted by Christ, that conveys grace. It is through that community that justification flows in from Christ in the Spirit. Lumen Gentium states

When the work which the Father gave the Son to do on earth was accomplished, the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost in order that He might continually sanctify the Church, and thus, all those who believe would have access through Christ in one Spirit to the Father. He is the Spirit of Life, a fountain of water springing up to life eternal. To men, dead in sin, the Father gives life through Him, until, in Christ, He brings to life their mortal bodies. The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful, as in a temple. In them He prays on their behalf and bears witness to the fact that they are adopted sons. The Church, which the Spirit guides in way of all truth and which He unified in communion and in works of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and charismatic gifts and adorns with His fruits. By the power of the Gospel He makes the Church keep the freshness of youth. Uninterruptedly He renews it and leads it to perfect union with its Spouse. The Spirit and the Bride both say to Jesus, the Lord, "Come!"

Without that Church we would be like the other abrahamic faith who are subject to the same phariseeism that comes with any religion based on a book. It is the same phariseeism that Catholics of either end of the theological spectrum engage in when they take “the paperwork” over the work of the Church.

Don Bosco is known for his dream life. It may be beneficial here to take a moment to reflect on one of his more famous dreams. Here is his description of it,

Try to picture yourselves with me on the seashore, or, better still, on an outlying cliff with no other land in sight. The vast expanse of water is covered with a formidable array of ships in battle formation, prows fitted with sharp spear-like beaks capable of breaking through any defense. All are heavily armed with cannons, incendiary bombs, and firearms of all sorts – even books – and are heading toward one stately ship, mightier than them all. As they try to close in, they try to ram it, set it afire, and cripple it as much as possible.

This stately vessel is shielded by a flotilla escort. Winds and waves are with the enemy. In this midst of this endless sea, two solid columns, a short distance apart, soar high into the sky: one is surmounted by a statue of the Immaculate Virgin at whose feet a large inscription reads: Help of Christians; the other, far loftier and sturdier, supports a [Communion] Host of proportionate size and bears beneath it the inscription Salvation of believers.

The flagship commander – the Roman Pontiff [the Pope]- seeing the enemy’s fury and his auxiliary ships very grave predicament, summons his captains to a conference. However, as they discuss their strategy, a furious storm breaks out and they must return to their ships. When the storm abates, the Pope again summons his captains as the flagship keeps on its course. But the storm rages again. Standing at the helm, the Pope strains every muscle to steer his ship between the two columns from whose summits hang many anchors and strong hooks linked to chains.

The entire enemy fleet closes in to intercept and sink the flagship at all costs. They bombard it with everything they have: books and pamphlets, incendiary bombs, firearms, cannons. The battle rages ever more furious. Beaked prows ram the flagship again and again, but to no avail, as, unscathed and undaunted, it keeps on its course. At times a formidable ram splinters a gaping hole into its hull, but, immediately, a breeze from the two columns instantly seals the gash.

Meanwhile, enemy cannons blow up, firearms and beaks fall to pieces, ships crack up and sink to the bottom. In blind fury the enemy takes to hand-to-hand combat, cursing and blaspheming. Suddenly the Pope falls, seriously wounded. He is instantly helped up but, struck down a second time, dies. A shout of victory rises from the enemy and wild rejoicing sweeps their ships. But no sooner is the Pope dead than another takes his place. The captains of the auxiliary ships elected him so quickly that the news of the Pope’s death coincides with that of his successor’s election. The enemy’s self-assurance wanes.

Breaking through all resistance, the new Pope steers his ship safely between the two columns and moors it to the two columns; first to the one surmounted by the Host, and then to the other, topped by the statue of the Virgin. At this point something unexpected happens. The enemy ships panic and disperse, colliding with and scuttling each other. Some auxiliary ships which had gallantly fought alongside their flagship are the first to tie up at the two columns.

Many others, which had fearfully kept far away from the fight, stand still, cautiously waiting until the wrecked enemy ships vanish under the waves. Then, they too head for the two columns, tie up at the swinging hooks, and ride safe and tranquil beside their flagship. A great calm now covers the sea.

The treatise Somnium Spirituality discussed the importance of the dream world. We tried to relay how the modern scientific worldview, founded on causality can become exclusive to the point of rendering dreams meaningless. Yet we argued that visions and dreams are a deep part of what it means to be human and a person or society ignores such experienced at one’s peril.

[T]he dream world is more in tune with the sacred as opposed to the secular world. It forces one into the present by the suspension of causality and a standard existential summoning to the moment. The dream world itself seems to access a sacred, or etymologically “set apart”, space and time that the individual enters. The experiences there seem to gear one to a transcendent mindset that is intuitive and emotive as opposed to causal and analytic. According to each of the dream theorist we went over the dream world is a place where one can connect to one’s deeper self, and possibly to a deeper humanity. It is also a place where abstracts become real and one can engage with unseen realities in visual form.

That treatise also described two ways that the Bible seems to utilize the dream world one individually geared and one socially geared. Don Bosco’s dream seems to be the latter. Somnium Spirituality discussed three examples of socially geared dreams, Gideon, Mordecai and the apocalyptic genre. Our summations was as follows,

Then there are dreams in the Bible that seem to lay out a social situation. As opposed to revealing to the dreamer specific information regarding their life, these dreams seem to be geared at helping the dreamer understand that God is in control in the big picture sense, or that God is faithful regarding those to whom he is bound. . . .

Each of the biblical dreams whose latent content deals with society have an overarching narrative that recognizes established powers, yet holds them as opposed to justice. Also each of these dreams sees God as faithful to the just and the ultimate power of creation. Each dream also gives the dreamer a disposition toward suffering as an endurance toward a greater justice of God.

With this information we can begin to dissect parts of Don Bosco’s dream for our purpose. His dream follows the typical pattern of the social variety point by point. It is interesting to point out that the ordinance the enemies were firing against the ship of the Church were books.

The Catholic who is suspicious of modern thought would generally see these as the books of philosophical knowledge of the modern world that is bent on critiquing the long asserted truths of the Church. These truths again would be a list of dogmas and doctrines that are established and researchable. The interesting twist for our treatise is that those doctrines would also be in books. What if the enemies firing books were not only the great secular philosophers, but simply those who would rely on their own books as opposed to engagement with the Church as a sacrament.

The pillars the ship is going through bolster the eucharist, Christ in the sacraments, and Mother Mary, who is mother of and symbolizes the Church, a community of people. With the protestant reformation, some Christians thwarted the sacraments and the sacral community for a self reliance religion of “the book”, in this case the Bible. Now we have Catholics who have adopted this same attitude, but added to the Bible a set of writings, Denziger’s Enchiridion symbolorum that they use to argue their own beliefs about what the Church should be. What if the people firing books at the Church include the self appointed theologians of the conservative and progressive stripe? What if they include are our own Catholics who are not seeking relationship with the people of the Church, nor the sacramental system, but are more interested in tearing down the universal catholicity of the Church by blasting it with their hyper-specific idea of what the Church “should be” based on their books? Such people’s attitude leads to gnosticism, a pelagianism of belief and knowledge, which runs the danger of ignoring Christian beatitude. It is the balance of the beatitudes with the decalogue that allow one to do good actions and avoid sin, because as we now know, one can do good action and still be sinning.

This very attitude concerning justification by books is so prevalent in Jesus’ adversaries in the gospels. The problem is that such a spirituality begets a legalism and argumentativeness that inflames human concupiscence, especially pride. God’s plan for our salvation is not based on any legalism. This becomes very clear when one takes into account the stories of Saint Theophilus the Penitent or Blessed Giles of Santarem, each of whom sold their souls to the devil. God did not honor the contract, because salvation is not a contract to be argued and bartered. If humans feel this way, humans tend to want loopholes or to be able to hold salvation over God’s head and demand it. It only takes brief reflection for any Christian to see this is preposterous.

Instead of writing a book, according to the plan of salvation history, in due time Jesus founds a community whose sacramental nature allows for the transference of guilt to him by many means, two of which are through the grace of the eucharist as discussed in Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent and through the teaching office of the Church, as is discussed here. Books are still important, we have a New Testament. But neither they, nor the knowledge in them, are the means of salvation. . The Bible is a “sacramental”, not a sacrament.

Concerning the sanctifying work of the office of bishop and the magisterium, the older watch word is “obedience”. If one desires to be more progressive in one’s language the watchword is “relationship”. Either way communion with the Church is the way we attach ourselves to the saving power of Christ and allow him to free us of the guilt of our sin. It is by relationship with the Church community that one is taught by the living magisterium in a dynamic flow known as doctrine. By assent to this teaching one forms one’s conscience sincerely and is freed to follow the certain dictates of one’s conscience.

If one is attached to a book, one only relies on one’s self and their personal interpretation. There is less of a chance for any openness to learning, because one is not diolouging, only interpreting, and one generally interprets from one’s own point of view. Whereas a dialogue involves another point of view. The best chance one has is dialoguing with The Spirit, but if one has already rejected the Advocate as present in the bishop, it is all the more easy to ignore The Advocate in spirit by careful selection and proof texting. It leads to a practical relativism of self reliance on knowledge obtained through personal engagement with texts.

In the end it must be understood that justification is not a mechanism. It is a relationship with Truth that is attained by a relationship with the Father through Christ in the Spirit. The relationship to Christ in the Spirit is developed in manifold ways. For liberty of conscience, the most important way for Catholics is the relationship in the Spirit to the magisterium as the community of bishops, a relationship in the Spirit with one’s own bishop and his emissaries, and through those relationships, the cognitive relationship to our sacred and authoritative texts.

In this last section we attempted to demonstrate how the teaching office of the bishop is related to his role as sanctifier of the Church. In this section we developed the idea of conscience formation by means of the magisterium in order to show how by his consecration the bishop takes on the role of the scapegoat. We attempted to show how the bishop takes the burden of our conscience formation as well as the burden of our sin from us by his teaching and how this is an effect of the sacramental nature of the Church. This section ended with the sacramental nature of the Church as a community being contratest to a religion centered around the teachings of a book.

Conclusion

The purpose of this treatise has been to dispel the specter of relativism from the Church by demonstrating how the ecclesiological framework of the Church, especially the office of the episcopacy, interfaces soteriologically with the individual Catholic’s conscience, how that effects the believer's quest for justification and how it affects the state of the Bishop’s own salvation in his office a “Teacher”.

In the first section we discussed problems of relativism. We distinguished between two types of relativism, nihilistic relativism, which is dogmatic and agnostic relativism, which is pragmatic. After reviewing the dangers of relativism we began an analysis of the Catholic understanding of conscience. We defined conscience as an awareness of the difference between good and exercise of judgment that comes with two obligations to form one’s conscience and to follow it. We demonstrated the difference between evil and sin and contrasted the mistakes made about the Church's teaching on conscience by the extremes of the theological spectrum.

In the section we discussed the interplay between the truth of dogma and its application as church doctrine. We discussed the development of doctrine as a teaching response to the revealed dogma of the Church. We discussed how doctrine develops as the various pedagogical techniques are employed by the magisterium of the Church. In order to completely understand this development we will explored definition of the magisterium. We discussed how the teaching office is made of humans in relation to the Holy Spirit, and contrast this to the understanding of the magisterium as a set of papers written by members of the hierarchy. This section wrapped up with a brief foray into the role of the bishop as priest and teacher in order to lay the groundwork for the next section.

In the last section we attempted to demonstrate how the teaching office of the bishop is related to his role as sanctifier of the Church. In this section we developed the idea of conscience formation by means of the magisterium in order to show how by his consecration the bishop takes on the role of the scapegoat. We attempted to show how the bishop takes the burden of our conscience formation as well as the burden of our sin from us by his teaching and how this is an effect of the sacramental nature of the Church. This section ended with the sacramental nature of the Church as a community being contratest to a religion centered around the teachings of a book.

The Church as a sacrament offers us the gift of development through proper doctrine and the freedom to engage that doctrine though our entire life in order to be free to choose good, even with an awareness of our own limited knowledge. In this freedom we need have no fear of God, who is our friend because of the reconciliation between God and humanity brought by the saving action of Christ. But doctrine, as dynamic teaching, is not easy. It is a real world application of Dogma. Bishops and the Church must be free to teach Truth in an accessible way and not be litigiously bound by “class handouts” from fifteen hundred years ago.

Our moral lives are not easy, to live the live of Christ as it applies to our situation is not easy. The gift of the magisterium is the gift of a community who offers an ordinary means of formation in order to have sincerity of conscience. A committed bishops takes on this role with the knowledge that only Christ can save him from the destruction of his own errors. A committed bishops also knows that to willfully or obstinately remain in error brings the weight of the sin of his whole community upon him.

All of the freedom necessary for a finite creature to come into a temporally developing loving relationship with God could appear to be relativism. But in truth it is simply the process of the imperfect seeking the perfect. This is what a life in Christ looks like.

Transpositional Theology

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Relativism, Conscience, and The Magisterium: The Grace of the Church as a Sacrament and the Error of the Church as “Paperwork”

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