Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

CNA has run an article (posted on EWTN’s news review) on a book by Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, Australia on the issue of Catholics and the practice of artificial contraception. Well, Cardinal Pell is at it again. I guess that he did not learn his lesson when he was reported to the CDF last year for ignoring Church teaching on the primacy of conscience.

In a new book, Cardinal Pell identifies the main problems with the heresy of rejecting this irreformable Church teaching on the supposition that one’s conscience can contradict Magisterial authority. Here are some snippets from the article:

Taking a metaphor from Oxford professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, the cardinal called this belief that has spread among Catholics the “Donald Duck heresy,” referring to the Disney character who “knows it all”, and “has an unshakeable conviction of self-righteousness.” The self-indulgent duck, explains Pell, is well-meaning but “his activity is often disastrous for himself and others.”

The same thing happens with Catholics who practice and promote a disordered vision of human sexuality through contraception, abortion and the destruction of embryos.

With claims to “primacy of conscience,” he said, “they falsely believe themselves in the right, while they thus distort the image of God which the Creator intended to convey in the fruitful sexual union of husband and wife.”

“Too many ‘Donald Ducks’ produce a ‘feel good’ society, which works to remove personal guilt, anything that would make people feel uncomfortable, and complacent self-satisfaction becomes a virtue,” writes Pell. “Confession of sins is replaced with therapy, and self-reproach with self-discovery.”

Well, in case you don’t make it to the article I linked to from last year, here is my short summary of Church teaching on conscience that explains what the Cardinal says what he does:

Conscience is not a source of Divine Revelation, nor it is a process of reflective moral speculation on par with the Magisterium. Rather, it is a faculty by which one 1) becomes aware of objective moral norms, 2) applies the norms to the given situation, 3) judges whether one’s actions are in conformance with these norms, and then 4) either acquits or condemns the person in his action or failure to act. Notice here there is no place for determining whether the Church teaching on objective moral norms is correct or not. That is not a function of conscience. A person can honestly err in any of the above steps and be morally inculpable. However, he cannot consciously dissent from revealed truth as authoritatively taught by the Magisterium and inculpably absolve himself from acting justly, by falsely classifying his action as a judgment of conscience.

You know, I never thought about it before but since an errant will is the primary source of all error it is quite appropriate to use a clown symbol like ole Donald to represent those who steel their wills against the authority Christ left here on earth. In the end, those of us who do so often end up looking quite foolish in our attempts at rationalization.