Sensum fidelium

I found this wonderful article on SF by Father Bloom when I was debating the birth control issue before, and as I am doing so again on JCecil’s blog it seemed appropriate to bring it out again.

There is a wide spread misunderstanding of what Sensus fidelium means – we do not vote our own morality. The Presbyterian Church USA does – but Catholics do not.

This excerpt from the article explains it very well I think.

But there is another, much deeper sense. Our democracy includes all those who have ever been part of the Church as well as those alive now. The Holy Spirit not only acts in every living Christian who is in the state of grace, but has acted in all who have ever lived. In expounding Catholic doctrine the pope and bishops must be attentive to present workings of the Spirit, but also to the past. G. K. Chesterton had a colorful expression for this. He called it the “democracy extended through time.”* Even tho there are some one billion Catholics alive today, we are a small minority of all who have ever lived. Furthermore, our own understanding of the faith is likely to be distorted by the particular biases of our culture. The only way to correct those distortions is by listening carefully to Christians who lived in situations very different from our own. If you read Church documents – especially the Catechism – you notice they quote abundantly from teachers who lived centuries ago, especially in the years closest to Jesus. This is not antiquarianism. It is what Vatican II calls the sensum fidelium.** Another name for it is deep democracy, that is respecting the lived and expressed faith of every Christian.

Please feel free to leave a comment under the posting, or sign my Spiritbook (guestbook). You can chat with me on the tag board to the right!