"Synodality" subverts conscience

Conscience possesses a completely singular force; we must defend it!

Insofar as we must pay attention to the Synod for Synodality, and we certainly wish we did not have to, we need to avoid the trap it sets about conscience and objective truth. It’s not what you might think.

Synodality’s proponents and star architects, some of the most subversive players in the Church with, nevertheless, the souls of bureaucrats, aim to replace the Church handed down to us with an organization comprised of endless ask-the-audience processes, garnished with “phone-a-friend” theology.

Long ago, back in Vatican II times, erupting in the Humanae Vitae era, before they knew what their method would be called — before they hit upon that masterfully paralyzing idea of synodality — they employed the strategy with which they hope to accomplish their goal, based on draining the word conscience of its vital meaning, and substituting its opposite.

What is the opposite of conscience? The silencing of objective truth in the soul.

In this effort, synodalists have been, ironically, abetted by the orthodox and conservative faithful. Instead of identifying and resisting the attack on conscience, defenders of objective truth began to doubt its validity and have come to view it with suspicion if not outright rejection. Say the word “conscience” in some circles and prepare to be met with knowing snickers; one might as well say “dissenter.”

I would say that now, for opponents of Pope Francis and synodality and all the rest, conscience is a dirty word. This is a real problem and a sign we’ve lost the thread.

Going back to manualism and bursting forth in flourishing branches during the pontificate of John Paul II, a large and detailed edifice of authoritative proclamations has grown in our midst, an edifice with which earnest workers hoped to make conscience obsolete, replaceable by proclamations of theologians, often conveyed in encyclicals (a relatively new method of promulgating teachings).

In Catholic World Report, Richard A. Spinello expresses frustration with attacks by synodalists on the work of John Paul II. He delineates a common characterization of this protracted struggle as a battle between pontiffs, namely, John Paul II vs. Francis:

Veritatis Splendor is now virtually ignored at the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences, which seems determined to sweep away the Pope’s theological legacy…

At a conference on moral theology held two years ago in Rome, several moral theologians expressed their utter disdain for Veritatis Splendor and the need for a modification of its key doctrines.

Fr. Julio Martinez, S.J., professor of moral theology at Comillas Pontifical University, said that it was necessary “to untie the knots Veritatis Splendor made in Catholic morals.” Veritatis Splendor, he asserted, initiated “a very profound development in moral theology with the introduction of the concept we call intrinsic evil.” According to Fr. Martinez, this is a “controversial philosophical concept that brought serious difficulties for moral theology.”

But surely the real problem is their opposition to the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Decalogue, not really to John Paul II per se? Or are we reduced to faction?

My problem with Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia is not his “siding with the revisionists” of the work of the previous pope (though I have written about his grave lies about it), but of his contradiction of the Gospel, which he cannot bring himself to cite in over 300 pages in that document, on the matter of marriage and adultery.

Spinello says, “Any paradigm that deprives morality of its objectivity is profoundly unstable and implicitly licenses a certain skepticism about the moral worth of every human person. The Church can successfully oppose these falsehoods only if it stands on the firm ground of natural law, anchored in our immutable human nature.”

True enough. Until opposition extends to conscience (not what the synodalists call it, but what it really is).

As I said about Cardinal McElroy’s promotion of synodality,

Catholics have developed an unsatisfying response to the claim that sinners are simply taking a noble stand on the basis of some twisted principle; we ourselves have unwittingly enabled this claim by denying conscience’s real power.

Conscience can’t be outsourced; it is interior to man…

We leave the high ground to dissenters by making that divine voice into something like “things you learn about decision-making from books written by theologians and apologists.”

What the synodalists are saying is precisely, “give your uneasy conscience over to us, the real experts who will rationalize away its prickings, warnings, and avengings.”

After all, no one has to consult with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith about getting a broken bone set. Something, some interior voice, is truly making people squirm when it comes to moral questions.

Far from going along with synodality’s degrading view of man, we should fight to reclaim conscience as our true freedom, the freedom to follow the good as persons who can respond to God’s law.

You know who saw this clearly?

The man who saw it clearly was Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of four signers of the Dubia presented to Pope Francis, who on his deathbed was found with a copy of John Henry Newman on his bedside table, and whose “final testimony,” a paper he was about to deliver entitled “The Restoration of Man,” laid out the vital importance of conscience’s relationship with objective truth:

“Moral conscience. . .is the place where God addresses his first, original, permanent word to man: the place where God is revealed as man’s guide. If you turn off this light, man will blunder around in the dark.”

… “The most unmistakable pathological symptom. . .is the counterfeiting which the concept and experience of moral conscience has undergone. . . .We have to start from our daily experience. It attests to the fact that the judgement of conscience possesses a completely singular force: that of compelling our decisions, our freedom, in an absolute and not just a hypothetical way.” [emphasis added]

The attack of synodality is not on John Paul II or “centuries of moral teaching” or even on the unborn. It’s on the very nature of man and on the Gospel handed down to us. Let’s resist the temptation to take what the attackers say at face value; they have already revealed their intention to change the meaning of words, to make us accept that 2 + 2 = 5, that conscience means what they want it to mean.

Make no mistake. We will be in a continual wrangle if we don’t stop acting as if it’s “our pope” against “your pope” when it’s really about the Gospel and the nature of man’s inner being.

Synodalists claim conscience as theirs to twist; it is, rather, ours to defend.

Illustration of François Chifflart (1825–1901) for La Conscience (by Victor Hugo)

Not ready to subscribe, but enjoyed this post? How about this: