In the second paragraph of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI makes the following quote:
"The Church cannot ignore these questions, for they concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings."
I would just like to say that I wholeheartedly agree with Paul VI on this brief statement. Regardless of whether or not I agree with his actual position on birth regulation, I do think that the Church cannot ignore these questions. Why? Because our culture is looking to worldviews which claim objective morality to answer fundamental moral issues of our day. When we debate about homosexuality, birth control, and abortion, people need to know what sort of moral implications these decisions have, and so we turn to the pastors, priests, and the pope. For the church to ignore these questions would imply that the church has no answers, which the church doesn't believe is true. Also, like Paul VI said, these matters have direct connection with life and happiness of humans, so the church must be prepared to engage or they will lost their place in our culture.
I believe this blog post peaks honestly from a christian standpoint. The problem is though, this assumes all moral implications are rooted in the church. Specifically, when you say that we turn to pastors, priests, and the pope for an understanding of "what moral implications these decisions have", I would say that perhaps this is exactly our problem. Instead of living our individual lives, and keeping in mind our personal stories of history, this suggests that we should find importance in what an exclusive group of old, white men believe. And the line that you picked to discuss cannot be looked at as though it was written in a vacuum. This line comes from a context of Pope Paul VI imposing a "natural law" onto huge numbers of human beings. Thus, this line also comes from the assumption that the church is so significant that if not adhered to, the "natural law" would collapse. In this case, the church views itself on a pedestal; the church imposes onto people, for its own sake, the 'right' to interfere with the personal decisions (Birth control, abortion), as well as individual lifestyles (homosexuality) that we humans encounter in 2011.
ReplyDeleteYou framed very clearly the reasons why you believe in the line from the Pope. But I will counter it by saying that the church should ignore these issues because humans have slowly started thinking for themselves, already moving the church from such an important role in our culture. To look at a document like this in 2011, a document specifically written by and for the catholic church in 1968, as something that is universally relevant, important for humanity, or even self-identifiably "correct" is an empowerment to the catholic church and gives allowances to the church to continue their construction of OUR history.
Hey Jacob,
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you will read this, because I don't think you get notified on comment responses (which is a shame). With all due respect, I think that you greatly misconstrue my post. There are many misunderstandings I could address here, but we don't have all the time in the world, so i'm going to be very selective. First,
"The problem is... this assumes all moral implications are rooted in the church."
Jacob, this is exactly what the Pope believes! If he is to be consistent with Catholicism, he must believe that he knows God's moral law and that the church CAN answer these moral questions. Of course it's assumed! It's necessarily assumed!
You are also, I think, a bit confused on the context of this statement. You say that the statement wasn't spoken in a vacuum. You are correct. It was spoken to other catholic clergymen, which even further supports my idea that the pope is speaking to fellow churchmen saying that they (the church) cannot ignore these issues to stay relevant with the culture!
Finally, you say "The church should ignore these issues because humans have slowly started thinking for themselves". First, I see no logical connection between the following premise and conclusion:
P1: People have started thinking for themselves
C1: Therefore, the church ought to ignore these issues.
This is a non sequitur of the highest degree. I can only guess at what other implicit premises you are holding to draw the logical conclusion there. I would need to see a much more well formulated argument before I would accept that statement.
Thanks for the comment, though! Always good to hear others' opinions, and I think that I could stand to write more clearly, so that confusion doesn't occur in the future.
And, also, I think that you believe I'm writing from a Christian perspective, yet in reality, I have not committed myself in this blogpost in any way to a Christian perspective. I was simply commenting on the pope and his consistency with catholicism.
ReplyDelete