Saturday, October 25, 2008

'Conscience' controversial topic

Retired Monsignor Paul Byrnes, former pastor at St. Michael Catholic Church in Frostburg, Maryland, caused quite a stir in our third-week "Why Catholic" session Thursday this week.

Father Byrnes revealed his pride in being one of the 72 Baltimore diocesan priests who signed a letter of dissent in response to Pope Paul VI's decision in 1968 to uphold the traditional Catholc Church's teaching against contraception. The priests then published the letter with their signatures in a full-page space in the Balitmore Sun newspaper, he said. In the ad, he said, the priests instructed their parishioners who had been practicing contraception, whom they had advised to follow their consciences and contracept if their consciences told them to do so, to continue to contracept.

Current Baltimore Achbishop Edwin F. O'Brien presents a concise history of this saga (another that can be attributed to the workings of Vatican II) in his September 4, 2008, column in the Catholic Reivew titled "How the Cafeteria Opened." Bishop O'Brien writes his column to mark the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical "Humanae Vitae."

Father Byrnes' presentation was all about "conscience" being innately infallible, an undeniable force from within that must be obeyed, regardless of the circumstances, motivations or consequences and regardless of authority from any civil or moral law.

His presentation was quite controversial. His viewpoint is considered authoritatively to be heretical. Read more about it in my posts from October 23 and October 24.

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