From the Pastor’s Desk:
Each day we make hundreds of choices. Some of those choices involve making a moral decision. How do we make that decision? Is it the same way as choosing which shirt or blouse to wear that day? In making a moral decision, we are called to follow our conscience. Our conscience is actually our sense of the moral goodness or evil of something. Each of us has a duty to listen to God, to listen to the facts, to discern right from wrong, and finally, the responsibility to choose what is right. Morality is the “rightness or wrongness of an action.” I bring this to our attention this weekend because I had a very angry young man tell me I was wrong in requiring masks to be worn in the Cathedral.
He refused and walked out after a rather heated exchange telling me I should not believe everything I read. He would not listen to the fact that Fr. Allen and I minister at South Cox, even stating the doctors and scientists were wrong. At that point I said no more and told him he was welcome any time as long as he was wearing a mask to protect the people of our parish. He was not from the parish.
The question arises, especially in our society today, “How do we form our conscience?” Our conscience is formed by our faith in God and in God’s teachings. For the Muslim, conscience is formed through the Quran. For the Jew, conscience is formed through the Old Testament. For the Christian, the conscience is formed through Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament, and for the Catholic Christian, our conscience is formed through Jesus’ teachings along with 2000 years of Catholic teachings. Being guided by these three major religions we have a responsibility, a duty to care for one another. A mask is a small thing to ask of people if it helps to protect our neighbor. To take the vaccine shot is a choice each of us will need to make to protect ourselves.
When we look at moral issues today, many of these issues may not have been present at the time of Christ or the early church. However, there are issues that may have been close to, or of the same era. There were no nuclear weapons before the 1940s, but even in the Roman Empire, in the time of the Crusades, there were terrible wars that caused complete destruction of civilizations, even genocide. When the Catholic Church makes a decision on the morality of an issue such as abortion or gay marriage, it does not make that decision quickly or easily. Part of the study of that issue is to look to the past. What did the early church—the church that was coming from Christ through the Apostles—have to say on that issue or an issue close to it? The Catholic Church struggles in looking at the morality of certain issues, and sometimes the Church and her Bishops must make unpopular decisions concerning those issues.
What we cannot allow is for modern society to form our conscience. Neither can we allow politicians or even courts of law to form our conscience. All of these change as the winds of time blow. Our society has become driven by the news media and Hollywood. It has become a society that centers around the “me, myself, and I” attitude.
The Church not only has the right, it has the obligation to speak out on moral issues. If the Church remains silent from the pulpit, it becomes only a feel-good organization of service and does not follow in the footsteps of our founder, JESUS CHRIST!