Madam, - Joseph Foyle (January 18th, February 4th) is totally confused in his thinking on conscience in five fundamental ways.
1. He reduces ethics to one model, that of law, as if that were its unique essence, and not just one more way of trying to express the universal and obligatory character of values and reasonable conduct.
2. He fails to see that such a reduction traps him into elevating general principles or guidelines into absolute and irreformable rules allowing of no exceptions, such as the need for divorce.
3. He treats the Pope as not merely having formal official authority within his institution, but also as being himself an authority as regards the subject of universal human ethics. Mr Foyle confuses power with truth. Any pope may be a fact-factory and make laws, but no-one, pope or not, simply can ever be a truth-factory.
4. Mr Foyle further ignores the fundamental difference between (a) conduct demanded of Catholics on the basis of church dogma, such as monogamy being derived from the understanding of marriage as a sacrament, and (b) conduct that arises from a shared understanding of humanity. The latter field, historically termed Natural Law, is where objective ethical understanding, not obedience to any external authority or dogma or tradition, constitutes not only the sole reason for the conduct, but also alone enables us to know whether any conduct is responsible.
Reasons and reasoning, and their open, public, critical analysis, alone guide us to right conduct. Faith-inspired conduct may indeed lead believers to acts (eg of self-sacrifice) that are beyond, but never contrary to, human reason. Since Humanae Vitaeprofessed to be about universal human morality, Natural Law, not church dogma or revelation, its whole validity stands or falls on the cogency of its reasons and reasoning. Which is precisely why it continues to be rejected as incoherent by 80 per cent of Irish Catholics.
5. Infallibility is simply impossible in dealing with universal human morality, Natural Law, because it is both constituted, and also known, precisely and solely by the reasons and reasoning involved.
A rational, responsible understanding of ethics avoids the twin pitfalls of (a) relativism/subjectivism, which imagines that, eg, "women have a right to choose", whereas it is people who have a duty to decide intelligently and reasonably; and (b) authoritarianism (be it papal or biblical), which reduces ethics to command and obedience, and so evacuates it of objectivity, intelligibility and personal responsibility.
- Yours, etc,
TOM CAREW, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.