Heh heh heh. A group of Australian theologians sent a letter to the CDF in Rome accusing Archbishop Pell of dissenting opinions.
His crime? Denying the supremacy of conscience.
Pell’s response? He laughed.
Now some might jump at this, as Catholic tradition has always upheld the “supremacy” of conscience in the sense that we have the faculties of right judgment. But Pell has argued that conscience must be subordiante to truth – a supremacy within truth as opposed to a supremacy beyond truth.
Pell is not new with this approach. The Council of Trent started down this road as a response to Martin Luther in the mid-16th century.
What is new is how the dissenters are squealing about it.
There are of course two ways to go. Firstly, one can argue that conscience will always act on what it knows to be true, and therefore we have an obligation to act upon that. Secondly, there is the traditional argument that decisions of conscience dictate what is and what is not true, e.g. war, birth control, racism, or other relativistic arguments.
The former argument was specifically rejected by the Council of Trent. The latter on the other hand saw a rejuvenation with the Second Vatican Council, proceeding from Pius IX’s “invincible ignorance” commentaries in the mid-19th century. Does conscience truly have supremacy not just in perceived truth, but Actual Truth? And what if the two conflict?
The dissenters in Australia have chosen a rather interesting path, of which there can be three solutions:
(1) Pell is reprimanded.
(2) Pell is affirmed.
(3) The issue is placed up for debate, in which case the rubric of “dissent” is set up (which is probably what the Australian professors are hoping for in the end).
Interesting strategy on the part of the dissenting theologians, but in the end I think Archbishop Pell is mostly right. Interesting as well as to how deeply – if at all – Rome will intervene. If they step back and allow the situation to resolve itself, then the dissenters get another token point, that intellectual freedom is a vital part of dissent and should be tolerated, even if coming from a cardinal so close to Rome. If they squash the dissenter’s letter, then what do they do to the idea of intellectual freedom?
Even if it is dissenting?