Madam, - Fr Vincent Twomey (January 21st) graciously acknowledges that I made a number of important points in my letter of January 16th.
He admits that official "church teaching" and what people heard from the pulpit and in the confessional did not always coincide. He also says that he is not suggesting a return to the blind obedience of the past. But it is hard to see why he cannot simply accept the crystal clear explanation of the sanctity of conscience as formulated by his former professor, Joseph Ratzinger, after the Second Vatican Council.
One does not need to be an academic theologian to know that many people quote conscience when in fact they are simply doing what they please, without reference to Christian morals or church teaching. But is it not rash judgment to imply that conscientious, deeply committed Catholics who find themselves at variance with some "church teaching" are simply pleasing themselves, following a false, subjective notion of conscience.
Pastoral priests should know from the confessional of the endless torment and agony suffered by married couples who absolutely needed artificial contraception to save their marriage. Pope Paul told these couples not to be afraid, to keep going to confession, but this "teaching" turned the sacrament of reconciliation into a guilt-shedding process that ignored the need for the "purpose of amendment" necessary for absolution.
Fr Twomey says it is all the more urgent that pastors and theologians be in tune with what the church actually teaches and give people the reasons for that teaching. He says this has not been the case since Humanae Vitae. Our church is very fond of authority - the authority of God, the Bible, the church, popes and bishops - but so often neglects the most basic authority of all: that of the facts.
With regard to contraception, the world's bishops solemnly gathered in the Vatican Council were not allowed to discuss it because a papal commission had been set up to make an in-depth study of the question. The commission voted by 68 to four that there could be no objection to artificial contraception. The negative votes came from four clerics, who admitted that their position could not be proved, but argued that to change the "traditional teaching" would lead to schism in the church. No convincing argument to support their position has been discovered during the past 40 years.
Fearing schism, Paul VI wrote the encyclical Humanae Vitaeby himself and it seems that 80 per cent of Catholics have not accepted it.
In spite of the solemn teaching of Vatican II about the nature of the church as the People of God, we have no procedures or structures for consultation, so rules are made and decisions taken by church leaders without any input from the Holy Spirit working through the God-given creative intelligence of the laity or the equally important experience of their lives of faith. It is too easily forgotten that without God's holy people there would be no church.
Fr Twomey's way of thinking of the sanctity of conscience in this context would seem to be an excellent argument for married priests or the ordination of women. - Yours, etc,
SEÁN FAGAN SM, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin 2.