I think that the Church does not officially expect anyone to act in defiance of their own conscience. They do not, however, have the freedom to follow their individual preference when it comes to acts voluntarily done in opposition to Church doctrine.

For example, if you were ordered by a bishop to carry out an act which your conscience told you was immoral, perhaps staying silent on a matter learned without the seal of the confessional, you would be free to act against that order. Suppose a neighbour had told you that she had been raped by a priest – you would be free to refuse to sign any gagging order. (I think)

On the other hand, there is express Papal doctrine, proclaimed ex cathedra, and therefore with the infallibility rules against “artificial contraception”. If you decide that your conscience is clear that artificial contraception is acceptable, then you are not defying the Church in order not to violate your sense of right and wrong. You are choosing to do something which is not necessary (there being other alternatives, starting with abstinence and going on to unfettered procreation) and therefore setting your will up in opposition to that of God (as channelled through the Church, the Pope and the Magisterium of Bishops).

This is the difference between the refusal to do something immoral, as your conscience declares it, and the assertion of the right to put your own decision making on any matters of doctrine and morals above that of the Church. (Go read, “Brideshead Revisited” for a lengthy story designed to make this point.) The Church of Rome is based on the primacy of a hierarchy of obedience.

In the case of the nuns, the matter is (probably) still more clear cut. One of the vows usually taken on entering a religious order is that of Obedience. The entails not just obedience of action, but obedience of “heart and mind.” If the rules of your Order require you to think in a particular way, then you must so think – and do it willingly and wholeheartedly.

If – the argument goes – you wanted to express yourself freely on the need for females in the priesthood, and social justice in third (or even first) world communities, then don’t become a nun. Do not, voluntarily, give up the right to think for yourself.

It rather gives me the creeps – particularly when these same rules are applied the those being educated by nuns. Try reading “Frost in May” – it’s categorised under “Horror” on my shelves.

As for the issue at the heart of this current debate – my own opinions are shaped by my experience as a person who health care is provided by a national, free, secular service – Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

It seems to me that any organisation as large and powerful as the Catholic Church in the US acquires a whole set of relationships with the larger, officially secular, structures of the State. When it is obliged (or chooses) to provide health cover for its employees, then it becomes an agent operating between the employee and the insurance company. Are Jehovah’s Witnesses allowed to opt out of funding blood transfusions for its employees?

As I said, I think the US system is only just rational when considered in the context of a former age – and not completely rational even then. Having Health Insurance as part of one’s contract of employment means, essentially, that money for HI is being taken out of your wages. And if you are happy with a monthly deduction for HI, why give it within a system which won’t help you the minute you lose your job?

When the US had full employment, when a man who wanted to could stay in the same job all his life, and a man who wanted to move could up sticks and get another job somewhere else, then the continuance of proper health cover for himself and his family via his employer might make sense.

But in a modern economy, with frightening unemployment statistics this no longer makes sense. A woman who has to do 3 part time jobs to support her family may get health insurance with none of them, and not be paid enough to get (for example) proper dental care. If you have to reckon with periods when you will have months of unemployment, then a sudden exposure to life-altering disease may leave you financially ruined. And (which is very much to the point in this case) you may have to take any job you can – even working for the Catholic Church. Immediately (if the Bishops have their way) your contraceptive cover via the pill ceases. You have a choice between finding the money yourself, using a less reliable method or giving up sex until the economy picks up and your can find a more enlightened employer.

Or the state can step in and protect your health cover, while it stops supporting you if you give up that job with the Church.

Or, better still, cut employers and the “health insurance tax” which you pay thorough your employers at the moment and get the state to guarantee basic health cover. Then your employer can stop deciding what is and is not permissible for the good of your (and importantly their) immortal souls?

After all, if it’s good enough for American Veterans, is it not good enough for the rest?

What is theoretically incoherent is Prof. Castelli’s comparison of the Catholic church to the secular state in which she suggests that the church is being hypocritical by not modeling itself on the same principle of rights of conscience they expect from the state. But in what way is a voluntary religious community like a secular state? The state is an inescapable reality of life in which individuals are coerced into belonging to the polity (some polity, somewhere). In a multicultural and multireligious context such as the United States, it works relatively well to operate from the enlightenment position of the morally autonomous self as the unit of rights. The state should only have the power to infringe upon the moral self when it is protecting other selves. Religious communities, however, often work on other logics. Many Christian communities see their membership not as independent selves, but as parts of a community under another authority – scripture, tradition, church authority. Belonging to the community necessarily requires a relinquishing of one’s moral autonomy under the authority of the community. When membership in such a community is coerced, it can conflict with the existence of the secular state, but when it is chosen, it is chosen. Once chosen, it is up to the community to decide what level of dissent, conflict and autonomy is part of the community. To suggest that the Catholic church should embrace the ideals of a secular state is a misunderstanding of how the community defines itself, and an improper, if not theoretically incoherent suggestion for someone to make from the public square.