Massachusetts officials, anxious to advance the radical homosexual agenda, reject their obligation to seek the truth

Dignitatis Humanae, No. 2 of the Second Vatican Council teaches us that, "It is in accordance with their dignity as persons-that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility-that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth.."

But some are not interested in this moral obligation to seek the truth, and especially religious truth, and to adhere to it once it is known.  Such people do not want to hear.  They refuse to open their eyes.  They refuse to be converted.  To such people Our Lord issues a stern rebuke: "He who is of God hears the words of God.  The reason why you do not hear is that you are not of God." (John 8:47).

For such people, the first demand of conscience, which is that the truth be honestly sought, is not essential.  For they have a different concept of conscience.  One which Pope Benedict XVI has rejected.  Our Holy Father explains that liberalism's idea of conscience, "...does not mean man's openness to the ground of his being, the power of perception for what is highest and most essential.  Rather, it appears as subjectivity's protective shell, into which man can escape and there hide from reality."  Such a notion of conscience, ".does not open the way to the redemptive road to truth - which either does not exist or, if it does, is too demanding.  It is the faculty that dispenses with truth.  It thereby becomes the justification for subjectivity, which would not like to have itself called into question.  Similarly, it becomes the justification for social conformity...The obligation to seek the truth terminates, as do any doubts about the general inclination of society and what it has become accustomed to.  Being convinced of oneself, as well as conforming to others, is sufficient.  Man is reduced to his superficial conviction.." (Keynote Address of the Tenth Bishops' Workshop of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on "Catholic Conscience: Foundation and Formation," February 1991).

The liberal notion of conscience becomes the justification for subjectivity and becomes the faculty that dispenses with truth.  This erroneous notion of conscience was in evidence in Massachusetts as one official called for those who oppose the homosexual agenda to be banned and another dismissed their concerns as "irrelevant and ignorant."  See here.

It was Noam Chomsky who wrote, "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."  Apparently Massachusetts officials such as Jennie Caissie really do not believe in freedom of expression.  Further evidence of the truth that while the Church proposes, the world imposes.