Priest Assembly Days. Danville Wedding.
Our entire presbyterate meets each October in Peoria for a Tuesday-Wednesday conference. All priests will be in Peoria October 22-23. Following this, I have a Friday wedding in Danville for a young woman whom I’ve known since she was in seventh grade (she was a cantor). Thus, the 5:15 PM Masses at Historic Saint Patrick are cancelled on October 22 and 24.
A Truth-Full Conscience
“Then many of His disciples who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard; who can accept it?’ …As a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied Him.” (John 6:60, 66)
Original sin has left our willpower weakened and our mind clouded; we conveniently choose whatever fits our wishes and our sins…and then we magically declare it “good for me”, as Eve did when she arrogated to herself the fruit forbidden by God. I term this the “make-believe conscience” or the “rubberstamp conscience”. It is, in fact, a false and malformed conscience, and it is deadly to a Catholic’s salvation to insist that the Church change her moral teaching to suit my sins and my errant conscience: “I am infallible. The Catholic Church must get with it, i.e. agree with my opinion.” Protestantism fractures into numerous sects, and eventually dies out altogether, because its ultimate “authority” (and its ultimate interpreter of Sacred Scripture) is…me! A very proud and fallible me. This is the chaos of moral relativism. Within the Catholic Church, this attitude often labels itself as “progressive” or “mature”, but it progresses right out of the Church. “Anyone who is so ‘progressive’ as not to remain in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever remains in the teaching has the Father and the Son.” (2 John 9)
The one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church has the 100% correct conscience in matters of faith and morals. She has real, God-given authority. Jesus guaranteed that the gates of hell will not prevail against her (Matthew 16:18). Her soul is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. The Church is put here on earth by her Savior and Founder, the Lord Jesus Christ, to guide our conscience. We do not correct and admonish the Catholic Church; she corrects and admonishes us, if we are humble enough to allow her. We disobey and override her to our eternal demise. “Whoever listens to you listens to Me,” Jesus Christ said. “Whoever rejects you rejects Me.” (Luke 10:16)