{"id":25881,"date":"2013-10-03T16:21:40","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T21:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=25881"},"modified":"2017-05-03T19:01:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T00:01:49","slug":"is-pope-francis-a-relativist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2013\/10\/03\/is-pope-francis-a-relativist\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Pope Francis a Relativist?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a second major interview<\/a>, this time with a noted atheist Italian journalist, Pope Francis has made more waves.\u00a0 Certain elements in the Church have started hunkering down assuming that this will be the Pope\u2019s modus operandi<\/em> for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 They imagine several years of clarifying off\u2013the-cuff papal statements given in uncontrolled fora that the media and, worse than that, the liberals in the Church are going to use as excuses to downplay or altogether reject central Catholic teachings, particularly of the moral variety.<\/p>\n

Now, as has been pointed out<\/a>, this new interview does suffer from translation issues, though apparently not as many as initially hoped.\u00a0 Francis says a few odd things that appear to be mere issues of hasty translation work.\u00a0 The most significant one being that Francis did not say, \u201d The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood,\u201d as reported, but said rather, \u201cIl Filgio di Dio (The Son of God) si \u00e9 incarnato (became incarnate) per infondere (in order to infuse)<\/strong> nell\u2019anima degli uomini (in the souls of men) il sentimento della fratellanza (the feeling of brotherhood).\u201d<\/p>\n

So, we don\u2019t need to worry that the Pope has invented some (in my understanding anyway) new Christological heresy.\u00a0 (A patristics scholar might be able to show that such a heresy is not new at all, but a simple rehashing of some error or other that besought the early Church.)<\/p>\n

But what about Francis\u2019s teachings about conscience?\u00a0 Robert Royal suggests that Francis\u2019s statemen<\/a>t, \u201cEveryone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place,\u201d\u00a0 is simply untrue.\u00a0 Writes Royal:<\/p>\n

Nazis, racists, abortionists, eugenicists, promoters of euthanasia, jihadists and terrorists of all kinds, and various other unfortunate human types all believe they\u2019re right.\u00a0 They\u2019re wrong.\u00a0 And no one in his right mind, let alone the pope, wants them to follow their own conception of good and evil.\u00a0 It won\u2019t make the world a better place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now let me say right off that I quite liked Royal\u2019s conclusion, and I recommend you read his piece through to the end.\u00a0 But, despite the rather straightforward logic of his concerns about Francis\u2019s teaching about conscience, Royal seems to have rather misrepresented Church teaching on conscience, and, in the process, taught a very strange version of universalism.<\/p>\n

Royal\u2019s assertion that Francis is simply mistaken rests on the assumption that a good deal of the evil done in the world (perhaps even all of it, though he doesn\u2019t say as much) is done in good conscience.\u00a0 But, if this is actually the case, everyone is saved, because the Church teaches quite clearly that for a sin to actually be a sin it must be done in bad conscience, that is, with knowledge and consent of the will<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, following Chesterton\u2019s insight that I am what is wrong with the world, Francis is exactly right:\u00a0 the world would be a better place if everyone followed their conscience because it is a very basic fact that I would be a better person if I always followed my conscience.<\/em>\u00a0 The fact that I don\u2019t always follow my conscience is precisely why I need a saviour!<\/p>\n

Now, this is not to deny that people can and do commit terrible atrocities because they somehow think it is the right thing to do.\u00a0 But Church teaching on conscience is subtle enough to handle this.\u00a0 If you have been convinced that you must, in conscience, abort this baby or bomb these civilians or defraud this business or lie to this electorate or whatever, then somewhere further up the line someone was not following their conscience.\u00a0 And it may well have been you!<\/p>\n

People who end up justifying genuine evil have very often ignored or flat out disobeyed their consciences long before the moment of gravity presents itself.\u00a0 This is called vincible ignorance, and we are responsible for it.\u00a0 We must still follow our consciences \u2013 because, honestly, what else can you actually ask someone to do?\u00a0 \u201cDo what you are convinced in conscience is wrong because I<\/em> say so!\u201d? \u2013 but we are responsible for ill-forming them precisely by not following them earlier.\u00a0 Read any honest biography of a great sinner who has repented and you will find in it the awareness, however dim, that this was wrong all along and that one needed to consciously look away from reality to continue in it.\u00a0 The Catholic conviction is that the natural law will assert itself.\u00a0 Even in times of grave depravity, when the whole culture conspires to cover up a systematic sin like slavery or abortion, the natural law can reveal itself through the consciences of those who honestly seek to know the truth.<\/p>\n

And if someone commits a grave evil in good conscience with no history of abandoning their own conscience, then their ignorance is invincible \u2013 in which case they have been lied to, damaged, abused, etc. by someone who did<\/em> ignore their conscience, if not in the first generation removed, at some point in the past.\u00a0 There is no moral evil in the world that does not stem from someone somewhere ignoring their own conscience.<\/p>\n

In fact, conscience is what makes morality possible.\u00a0 It is simply meaningless to speak of someone sinning without knowledge and consent.\u00a0 This is why the Church does not condemn lions when they maul tourists or rabbits for garden theft.<\/p>\n

Francis is right.\u00a0 If everyone were to follow their conscience, it would make the world a better place.\u00a0 Note, it would not make the world a perfect place, that is, it would not save<\/em> the world.\u00a0 If everyone had always and everywhere followed their consciences, the world would need no saving.\u00a0 But once sin has entered the system, we humans cannot root it out.\u00a0 This is the doctrine of Original Sin.\u00a0 Without grace, sin will perpetuate itself and finally determine our reality in an ultimate sense.\u00a0 But, and here perhaps is one of the jewels of Francis\u2019s interview: \u201cEven you, without knowing it, could be touched by grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Brett Salkeld<\/a> is Archdiocesan Theologian for the Catholic Archdiocese of Regina, Saskatchewan. He is a father of four (so far) and husband of one.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a second major interview, this time with a noted atheist Italian journalist, Pope Francis has made more waves.\u00a0 Certain elements in the Church have started hunkering down assuming that this will be the Pope\u2019s modus operandi for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 They imagine several years of clarifying off\u2013the-cuff papal statements given in uncontrolled fora that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2991,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[350,529],"tags":[413,813,5],"class_list":["post-25881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brett-salkeld","category-grace","tag-conscience","tag-interview","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Pope Francis a Relativist?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a second major interview, this time with a noted atheist Italian journalist, Pope Francis has made more 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