Sense of the Faithful

by Editor · June 3, 2015

After 62% of Ireland’s population voted against the position represented by the Catholic Church in last months referendum on gay marriage, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin spoke about a social revolution which requires introspection by the Church.

The referendum result is significant. For all the reports of a drain of Catholics from the Church, Ireland still has one of the highest Mass attendance figures in the West, and most people in the republic describe themselves as Catholics. Archbishop Martin noted that most of these young people who voted yes [in favour of same-sex marriage] are products of our Catholic schools for 12 years.

Many loyal Catholics, and even some priests, voted yes to civil same-sex marriage. These attitudes are replicated in polls throughout the West.
This cannot be ascribed simply to a failure of catechetics. The Catholic Church has pronounced its teachings clearly and forcefully. The problem is not that many of the faithful don’t understand or appreciate these teachings, but that they have rejected them as inapplicable to their lives.

Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, who had been a leading voice in the campaign against same-sex marriage, put his finger on it: It seems that many people voted yes as a way of showing their acceptance and their love for friends and family members who are gay. Large numbers obviously believed that they could vote yes without in any way undermining marriage.
Importantly, he showed respect for their position: While I do not share their belief, I understand their reason for celebrating, and I do respect their spirit of solidarity.

The sensus fidelium the sense of the faithful in some areas of the Church seems to reject the Church’s opposition to civil same-sex marriage, and other issues. Conversely, in other areas, especially in Africa, the faithful seem to support the Church’s teachings and positions on matters concerning homosexuality.

The Second Vatican Council stressed the notion of a sensus fidei, the competence of individual believers and the Church as a whole to discern the truths of faith. The sense of the faithful cannot change the unalterable teachings of the Church, but, with due discernment, it could inform the ways in which these teachings are understood and applied.

Speaking in Washington in late May, Cardinal Walter Kasper said that Pope Francis wants to give the sensus fidei complete meaning.

He wants a listening magisterium that makes its position, yes, but makes its position after it has heard what the Spirit says to its churches, said Cardinal Kasper.

Last year Pope Francis told the Vatican’s International Theological Commission: By the gift of the Holy Spirit, the members of the Church possess the sense of the faith. It is a question of a kind of spiritual instinct which permits us to think with the Church and discern what is consistent with the apostolic faith and the spirit of the Gospel.

The magisterium, the pope said, has the duty to pay attention to what the Spirit tells the Church through authentic manifestations of the sense of the faithful, but cautioned that by this he does not mean simple majority opinion.

The decision to circulate a questionnaire aimed at collecting the views of Catholics on the family in preparation for Octobers Synod of Bishops on the subject is a concrete expression of the pope’s desire to know the sense of the faithful.

Of course, the Church is not a democracy and its teachings cannot be altered on the mere basis of opinion polls or questionnaires. As it has been for almost two millennia, however, some teachings, especially those addressing issues of morality, can be expressed, presented, emphasised and applied in different ways and by different means.

In this, it is essential that the magisterium – the teaching authority of the Church remains intact.

We live in times when large proportions of Catholics disregard the magisterium, not only on questions of sexual morality, but also, and perhaps more grievously, on the scandal of poverty.

The Church needs to take stock and interrogate why this is so, and how the teachings of the Catholic Church can be communicated and applied in ways that reach people.