One must obey one's conscience?.

A note to a Catholic friend who accuses me of preferring my own conscience to that of the Holy Father, the Pope who Roman Catholics believe is the ultimate source of authority about how to live the gospel of Jesus.

Paul: you ask about my conscience.

It is Catholic theology that one must follow one's conscience even if and even when it goes against the authority of the Pope. Maybe you missed that small piece of theology and the study of religion at Notre Dame? Of course, it must be an informed conscience. Mine is.

I left ND in 1952 at the end of my junior year to give my life to God in monastic vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, conversio and stability, and lived that life for 16 years, with such love and devotion that my community elected me (without my consent or knowledge) to be one of the Council of Elders to advise the Abbot as a member of his executive council at the tender age of 34. When I tried to refuse the honor for the sake of peace of mind and heart is when my faith journey began to change from devotion and conformity to awakening and personal conscience. I had been perfectly happy as a monk, so much that I twice refused to accept major orders.

Now I have witnessed great abuse of Roman Catholic authority. Incredible abuse of people, of good people, of women, of children, of devout and caring Catholic adults, of married people, of women in vows, and on and one. I have personally witnessed the destruction of my own monastic community by an Abbot who assumed his pipeline to God was his property alone. So much so that many of us (perhaps most and most sadly) were forced to leave because we were being bullied into his ways which were obviously counter to the ways of the Holy Rule of St. Benedict. Without respect, or love. I have seen such abuse first hand also in bishops and cardinals and can give examples. It is not simply human failure, but systemic failure, based on false notions of authority.

I have continued the study of Jesus and the gospels my entire life, since age 19, which since I am now 76, is going on 57 years. The Roman Catholic church married and gave its soul to power and privilege a long time ago. Little of the current Roman Catholic structure comes from Jesus. It's origin is tradition, lies and myth. The Pope has been wrong a number of times, for anyone who will examine the matter, as even Cardinal Newman did once. Infallibility is a Roman myth; it is certainly not Catholic and was never intended by Jesus.

I could go on. Current Roman Catholic teaching abuses women, abuses the priesthood, abuses the power of the laity to transform the church from below, from within, and abuses the priestliness and call to be Christ in their own diocese of the bishops. Above all, it abuses children and the conscience of children, as my own conscience was abused by the teaching of mortal sin in the first grade. There is no adequate theology of sexuality and therefore no adequate theology of marriage, nor of celibacy. I have written considerable on this. I have tried repeatedly to communicate with Catholic authority. Bishop Ken Williams knew me, knew me well, was guest in my home, but he refused to listen to my repeated warnings about priestly abuses arising from mis-undertanding of their own sexuality that I warned him about long before scandals broke. Four long letters to him in 1993.

Simply put, I find the current Roman Catholic system far from the intention of Jesus, and far from openness to the actual Spirit today that is needed to transform people and to transform the world.

I called the first meeting of two other ND graduates in Lexington many years ago (around 1970) to organize the Notre Dame club of central Kentucky, when I thought the Louisville Notre Dame club was not sufficient for us here in Lexington. My hope is that the ND gatherings would assist the personal spiritual journey and faith development of my college graduate friends. I discovered quickly that the energy present was mostly for Notre Dame athletics and little else.

Now, at Notre Dame I was a physical education major, fought in the Bengals three years, winning one championship and one runner up, participated in other sports, was a member of the Blue Circle that organized football pep rallies, etc,, along the way being made Cadet Colonel of the Air Force ROTC unit there in 1951, and now my wife and I still ski, and I can still enjoy Notre Dame football. But my enthusiasm for college sports is not what it was when I was 20 years old.

Now my priorities are understanding how God works in our world and in my life, in the mysteries of human love, and in giving back to others, Noblesse Oblige. My faith is the greatest gift I have, even beyond health and being lucky in marriage, in children and grandchildren, and in life. We can never earn or deserve the gift of faith. I once asked the Abbot of Gethsemani, Father Abbot Timothy, if he could ask God for a gift that he knew God wanted to give to him what would he ask for? He, in vows for almost 50 years, was Merton’s novice master and Abbot for 25 years, replied simply "faith."

But my faith is an informed faith, and a personal faith, hardily won and tenderly held. I find much mis-use of the gift of faith, in fundamentalism, in biblical literalism, among many. There is a easy stealth idolatry in religious faith. We end up too easily using the concepts of faith, doctrine about God, Jesus, etc, to judge others.

My study and my faith tells me that fundamentalist faith is destroying the world, destroying the human community, whether that is a radical Islamic faith, or radical conservative Christian faith which lends itself to political manipulation, or a radical Zionist faith that believes the territory of Judea belongs by divine right only to the Jews, or a radical Catholic faith that judges me immediately because I do not accept every word that comes from Rome. I have several Catholic friends who do that and we go back 30 years.

I do not think that any prophet of God desired that we use faith to divide the community the way that zealots of all stripes do today while assuming that God is on their side, alone. The world, and even civilization itself, is in great danger. We have a man in the White House who believes that his morning prayer group gives him and this group a divine guarantee of righteousness, even while he and his group proceed to devastate the environment, the budget, the Middle East and our military. There is no strategic planning on energy, on immigration, the preservation of our resources, etc. Power and spin control everything. But not forever as we may be learning.

Not only the RC hierarchy, but religious zealots, and the Neo-cons, and ideologues are willing to be convinced their way is divinely inspired, without paying attention to others, and therefore to the One who is always Other and always speaking to us through others.

I do not need the consent or the authority of the Pope to motivate or guide me in the seven kinds of ministry that I have. For me it is the command of Jesus in Matthew 25: v. 36 ff. "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers. . ." and my belief that Jesus is the Wisdom of God, and that eventually, against all human perversion, Love shall prevail.

Journaling for October 30, 2005
Namaste, friend Paul.
Paschal Baute