Conscience

In my ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, I advised the people a lot on “conscience” with regard to “birth control and family planning.” Only recently have I realized that I have not adequately instructed LGBT people on conscience. Conscience is the honorable way out of “moral slavery.” Moral slavery is “no condoms, no masturbation, no sex ever in your whole life if you are given a same-sex attraction.”

I have written briefly about it a couple of times recently. But now I realize from hundreds of conversations in counseling that I have not written, spoken, and taught enough about conscience.

Here in the Philippines, a cult of conscience is arising around a new “national hero,” Jun Lazada. People from former President Cory Aquino, many senators, religious people, and people on the street are praising Mr. Lozada for following his conscience as a whistleblower in a prominent investigation of corruption in government.

A full page ad by the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines today begins with a quotation from Martin Luther King: On some positions, COWARDICE asks the question, “Is it safe?” EXPEDIENCY asks the question, “Is it politic?” VANITY asks the question, “Is it popular? CONSCIENCE asks the question, “Is it right?”

Dr. King continues: There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but one must take it because CONSCIENCE says, “It is right.”

For too many years, black people stayed in the back of the bus because of COWARDICE or EXPEDIENCY. CONSCIENCE finally told them: It is right to stand up for your rights.

Martin Luther King continued, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent on things that matter.”

The issue here, in this blog, in my ministry, is moral slavery of LGBT people, the minority, to the homophobic human teachings and traditions which have bound them to a moral code of the majority that comes neither from God, not from the Bible. (When you allow the majority to make “rules” for the minority, the minority will suffer on the short end of the proposition.)

The Catholic Encyclopedia on the internet devotes 11 pages to an intricate “explanation” of CONSCIENCE. The bottom line is that it does not negate or contradict my definition, from church textbooks, that CONSCIENCE IS A CHRISTIAN MORAL JUDGMENT.

LGBT people have a basic human right to form their conscience without bowing to the chains of moral slavery.

They will do this first by listening to the teaching voice of their Christian church (and Moslems will make an Islamic moral judgment after first listening to the teaching voice of Islam.)

Secondly they will weigh, examine, and consider (the word of the Catholic Encyclopedia) all the factors that make a decision a personal moral judgment. This will include cultural matters, human psychology, and their own personal situation. (For example: To kill is a sin, but my personal situation is that if I don’t kill this intruder, the intruder will kill me.)

Thirdly, each person in each situation decides, makes a judgment about what is right or wrong, sin or not sin in that situation. (For example: Judgment: it is not a sin for me to kill in self defense.)

The mother and father with low income, perhaps no employment, with four kids whom they cannot house, feed, and send to school adequately must decide if it is sinful to protect their family from deeper poverty by using condoms or other appropriate methods which cause nobody any harm.

The LGBT person, then, in freedom of conscience, will weigh all the factors which affect the expression of same-sex love. They are aware of centuries old prohibitions, but they have a right to recognize these prohibitions of their love as moral slavery and move on to consider all the personal human psychology which makes this attraction and its expression “right” for them. And the finishing touch could well be that God is love and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And they will then decide to love according to their nature with the full confidence that God is smiling upon their love.

LGBT people can make a Christian Moral Decision to express their same-sex love according to their nature with the confidence that their love and its expression is not sin. Indeed, God smiles upon their love.