Posted on 09/11/2015 11:59:28 AM PDT by edwinland
n Instrumentum laboris (working paper) was prepared for the XIV Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops and published on June 23, 2015. It covers a range of topics germane to the Synod’s theme of the family. Paragraph 137 addresses a key document of the modern Magisterium, Humanae Vitae, in a way that both calls the force of that teaching into question and proposes a method of moral discernment that is decidedly not Catholic. This approach to discernment contradicts what has hitherto been taught by the Magisterium of the Church about moral norms, conscience, and moral judgment, by suggesting that a well-formed conscience may be in conflict with objective moral norms.
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The suggestion that the objective content of a moral norm can be “unresponsive to a person’s needs,” so that conformity to its commands might not promote a person’s moral good, i.e. the “good of the person” (cf. VS 50), is contradictory to a Catholic understanding of morality. The view that moral norms might not promote human happiness suggests a nominalist and arbitrary view of the moral law, according to which an act is bad for no other reason than its being forbidden. Such a perspective in no way corresponds to the reality of God’s creation. Rather, the moral law, corresponding to the truth of God’s creative act, expresses anthropological truths about the human person that cannot be ignored or violated without doing harm to our “needs and resources,” which is to say without doing harm to ourselves.
To hold that the objective content of moral norms as found in Scripture and expounded by the Magisterium can be unresponsive to the person’s “resources” denies the explicit, consoling and hopeful teaching of the Council of Trent: “But no one, however much justified, ought to consider himself exempt from the observance of the commandments, nor should he employ that rash statement, forbidden by the Fathers under anathema, that the commandments of God are impossible of observance by one who is justified. For God does not command the impossible, but in commanding he admonishes you to do what you can and to pray for what you cannot, and he gives his aid to enable you. His commandments are not burdensome (cf. 1 Jn 5:3); his yoke is easy and his burden light (cf. Mt 11:30)” (Session VI.11).
Humanae Vitae is a must read.
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