I get criticized for criticizing the Church, am told that there is a penalty for opposing "the official teachings" and often it is an automatic excommunication. My criticizers warn me that we must obey those "teachings" or pay the penalty imposed. Any institution does the same to and for its members. Do the crime, do the time, the law says. Right?
Wrong. I have a conscience and a mind that does its best to interpret the thoughts within it, so as to form my conscience. Obviously, I am not intelligent or wise enough to present many of the perplexing – and deadly – moral issues for that conscience's review and go, therefore, humbly, to others who are so gifted. As a Catholic, that means my priest, confessor, spiritual director, superior, bishop, cardinal, pope. Often, I get very widely different answers, some opposing others, and am cautioned by each of those advisors that I may act at the peril of losing my soul.
I wonder, then, what is this insistence about on "The Official Teachings of the Roman Catholic Church?" Is there such a thing as the Magisterium at all? Do we not have a huge, no, an enormous bibliography indexed somewhere in "The History of All Theological Writings on Issues of Morality and Obedience to the Official Teachings of the Roman Catholic Church"? Where?
On Father Roy Bourgeois' attendance and preaching at the ordination of a woman priest in August, he has been told by the Vatican that he will be excommunicated unless he recants in 30 days. Apparently, that deadline is long past.
Our Catholic media is abuzz with the story. I wrote a blog on it, laughing at the comedy of The Vatican and its dire threats of punishment. http://epkblog.blogspot.com/ Have I been automatically excommunicated? Is Cardinal Martini excommunicated, too, as far back as May, 2006?
Are official teachings the same as dogmas or doctrines or disciplines? What is a "teaching" anyway?
There is another question, bigger than those and their punishments. What did Father Roy, Cardinal Martini or I do wrong? We questioned a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. That is all, as far as I can see.
I'll go further. I question the infallibility of the pope, have doubts on lots of miracles, find it hard to accept original sin, virgin birth, walking on water, loaves and fishes out of scraps, RCC's obsession with pelvicity, but don't feel like risking the loss of my soul in a debate over them.
Perhaps, these wondrous events and doings are facts. Maybe, they are myths. Could be the way people at those events in those days reported what they thought they saw. But why do I have to die and go to hell with no chance for a second chance or even forgiveness, if I cannot understand or somehow believe, just because some curial cardinal pontificates: "Out! You unbeliever. Out! For your refusal to accept the official teachings."
Who does he think he is? By the same token, in the same spirit, who do I think I am?
No sense asking here: “What about the Sensus Fidelium – Sense of the Faithful?” The Official Teachings teach that the Sensus Fidelium is part of the Magisterium. I’m one of the Fidelium, I think, and might have a little Sensus, maybe. And it is supposed to be side by side with professionals in the Magisterium. Right?
But our hierarchs never refer to the Sensus Fidelium. It’s like some kind of empty compliment, a little ribbon to hang on a photograph of the pope on the wall, a memento of our donation at the last Bishop’s Appeal. Just a souvenir? Sad, isn’t it. We get so pumped up at what looks like a genuine acknowledgment of our dignity, only to see it go poof! and vanish before we can even grab it and hug it as a measure before God of our equality with clergy .
I think Father Roy speaks for the Sensus Fidelium on women priests. So does Cardinal Martini, SJ, on the terrible cleavage cut into our souls by Humanae Vitae.
If hierarchs listened a bit more patiently, lovingly, to us, they might hear the Sensus Fidelium. They might even go so far as to think we are Church.
Just think what we could be and do together! There are about 5,000 +/- of them, and we number 1,200,000,000 +. We wouldn’t even have to whisper any more, would we? And we could honestly, with integrity, call ourselves a Church. The Catholic Church.
Shortly after writing the blog on Father Roy's excommunication, I saw a couple of items in America, both on-line and in print, followed them up, and offer them here for consideration, with references to find them, for all of them are much too long for posting here. One was scanned in, so it is copied. I call them:
A Bunch of Stuff on The Official Teachings and Penalties for Not Being Taught With a Big Question Mark--?
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=A0EB46C8-1321-AEAA-D3AD45EB48BD2597&comment=1#readerscomments
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0805600.htm -- this URL adds: "HUMANAE-MARTINI (CORRECTED) Nov-13-2008 (490 words) xxxi"
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/51790?eng=y
Scanned copy of America's short note on Cardinal Martini's criticism of Humanae Vitae 
November 17, 2008
Signs of the Times
Page 6
Martini: 'Serious Damage' After Humanae Vitae
Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said the 1968 encyclical Hunanae Vitae ("Of Human Life'') has cut off the church from many of the people who most need its advice about human sexuality. The encyclical, which taught that artificial birth control was morally wrong, caused a large number of people to stop taking the church's views into serious consideration, Cardinal Martini said. "Many have distanced themselves from the church, and the church from the people. Serious damage was done," he said. Cardinal Martini, an 81-year-old Jesuit and the former archbishop of Milan, made the comments in a book-length interview titled Nighttime Conversations in Jerusalem. The cardinal did not address specifically the issue of the morality of contraception. He suggested, however, that the whole question might be better approached from a more pastoral perspective. "Today we have a broader horizon in which to confront the questions of sexuality. The needs of confessors and young people, too, need much more attention. We cannot abandon these people," he said.
From CNS and other sources.
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