The People Speak Out

Local voices connecting globally

This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.  (Pope Francis)

Canon Law 212 calls upon the laity to speak up:

2 - The Christian faithful are free to make known to the pastors of the Church their needs, especially spiritual ones, and their desires.

§3. - According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons.

From Saving the Catholic Church Newsletter, 1 December 2016

Ever since Vatican II, people have talked about reforming the Curia, but the Curia didn’t want to be reformed. It was a good deal. Great power. Not much hard work. Why change anything except to steadily take the Church backward to before John XXIII threw open those windows? 

Famously, when the ultimate conservative insider Benedict XVI was asked if he would try to reform it, he said that it was impossible, because no one knew how to do that.

When I was about eight years old, my dad organized a Boy Scout troop in our parish and served many years as chairman of the troop committee. I couldn’t wait to join. There was no Cub Pack so I had four years to wait. In those pre-historic times, you had to be twelve to become a Scout.

Of course, there was a Cub Pack at the Baptist Church across the street, but our pastor wouldn’t allow us to join it.

When I turned eleven, I talked my mother into give me about a six-foot piece of her clothesline, which I cut into one-foot lengths to practice tying knots so I would breeze through that task. My dad was watching me practice one day and he asked me if I knew how to tie a Gordian knot. I looked at my prescribed list and there was no Gordian knot. I asked what it looked like and he gave me his standard answer: “Look it up.”

I did and found that it was a knot that no one could tie and therefore it couldn’t be untied. In fact no one even knows what it looked like. Seven centuries passed until Alexander the Great figured out the solution. He pulled out his sword and chopped it in half.

The Gordian knot is an appropriate metaphor for the entire hierarchy of the Church and especially the Curia. Pope Francis has tried mightily to untie it, but it seems to be getting tighter. He is the only one with an interest in untying it, so we have more synods, commissions and letters with paragraphs that require 75 percent agreement for acceptance and publication.

There is no chance for a reformed hierarchy and a surviving Church until someone pulls out his or her sword and chops that metaphoric knot in half. {jcomments on}

Subject: RE: Pope Francis to Europe: A Pep Talk

Regarding implementation, here is an assessment by theologian and ecclesiologist Richard Gaillardetz (from his essay “The Pastoral Orientation of Doctrine” in the recently released book Go Into the Streets! The Welcoming Church of Pope Francis):

Will or will not this pope reverse this or that controversial church teaching? However, the “will he or won’t he” question misconstrues how doctrine develops. It is a common misconception that doctrinal change and development occur primarily by ecclesiastical fiat. In fact, history shows that doctrine changes when pastoral contexts shift and new insights emerge such that particular doctrinal formulations no longer mediate the saving message of God’s transforming love. The gradual shift in the church’s condemnation of usury offers us a classic example of what I have in mind here. That teaching was not reversed in a single papal decree. Rather, there was a gradual and halting pastoral discernment that the teaching, in its classical formulation, no longer served the central values it was intended to protect, namely, the welfare of the poor. … Magisterial teaching should come at the end of our tradition’s lively engagement with a particular question, not as a way of preempting its consideration.
Certainly, church leaders are to be faithful to our doctrinal heritage. They serve that heritage best, not by wielding the doctrine of the church as a club, but by heeding Pope Francis’s injunction to abandon a place of safety and certitude, moving from the center to the periphery. As they meet people ‘in the streets,’ listening to their concerns and attending to their wounds, they will know … how the church’s doctrine can best be employed to announce God’s solidarity with the poor and suffering of this world and the profligate mercy of God. This is the primary purpose of church doctrine, and in reminding us of this, Francis stands as its authentic guardian.

While this confirms why we have had little success in getting Francis to change doctrine, it indicates just how significant the Francis strategy is: he is urging the grass roots to “speak up” not as an idealization of lay participation but because “speaking up” is the only way change is going to happen.

Furthermore, “change” first comes with pastoral practice; doctrinal formulations follow, rather than lead. It is no wonder that Francis is focusing on the pastoral process of “encounter, dialogue and accompaniment”. It is no wonder that he is leaving doctrine aside. If we see his doctrinal “pause button” as some kind of evasion we are missing the point.

This makes our strategic engagement with local gatherings all the more important. It is not about grass roots support for doctrinal change, it is about confronting injustice at the local level so that “pastoral contexts shift and new insights emerge such that particular doctrinal formulations no longer mediate the saving message of God’s transforming love”. The emphasis upon God’s mercy is central to changing local pastoral practice. Doctrinal change is at the tail end of this process, and should not wag the dog. Indeed, we are not talking about “doctrinal change” (as if it were a mere reversal) but about a paradigm shift, a fresh way of looking at how to “mediate the saving message of God’s transforming love”.

And this process is daunting (which is why it is tempting to seek a papal edict as a work around). In the end, the source of consensus is the Spirit, who is available to everyone.

How can we frame our encouragement (or, perhaps, simple monitoring) of local gatherings so that “God’s transforming love” is at the center of it?

Just musings in response to Gaillardetz.

Clyde{jcomments on}

For those feeling discouraged about the pace of reform, we should wish for the kind of pep talk Pope Francis gave to the European Union on May 6, 2016.

There is a life within what he says that is quite remarkable. It is a “must read” for anyone hoping for dynamism in this world. Can it really be true that such a dynamo is our pope, the head of this sometimes stodgy old Catholic Church?

He speaks in language that is reminiscent of “the widow, the orphan and the stranger in the land” but not so much with respect to their external needs as for the dignity of their conscious participation in an inclusive society governed through encounter and dialogue.

And he has something to say about the young, too. “Peace will be lasting in the measure that we arm our children with the weapons of dialogue, that we teach them to fight the good fight of encounter and negotiation. … our young people have a critical role. They are not the future of our peoples; they are the present.”

Clyde

From: Brad
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2016 1:36 AM
Subject: Re: Pope Francis to Europe: A Pep Talk
Less talk….more implementation.
More sugar speeches than we know what to do with.

  • Your Country: USA

{jcomments on}

It seemed like two different Churches:

1) Archdiocese of Detroit, 1970 to 1975: I was active, even as Inner-City Vicar; It seemed close to the Reign of God with Cardinal Dearden, great auxiliary bishops, parishes open and very aware of the poor. Then I went out of country for 7 years.

2) Archdiocese of Detroit, 1982 to 1992: new leadership, much more conservative. New Archbishop had public quarrels on many issues. Came to our historic Church for historic event and Mass 20 minutes late. He was angry and late, but then spent an extra ten minutes showing me his vestments and explaining them. Cardinal Dearden (then retired) and other bishops vested separately, and still showed much of the same old spirit. It seemed as if we were changing from a Vatican II Church back into a Vatican I Church.
Canon Lawyers I knew had been teaching about “Conscience Solutions” to some marriage problems; I brought it up at a Vicars’ meeting and other vicars looked at me as if I was crazy to bring it up there. The bishop’s response made me very aware why: this wasn’t part of his thinking at all. It no longer seemed like a Vatican II Church. Authority at the top was obvious, and people were now thinking: “Top Down” and “Down Here, we’re not really the Church”!

Response from JanStephen  (17 July 2015)

Larry, Your story of the two churches reads like the tale of two cities … and so well captures what happened. And, having undergone some attempts to reverse the direction of Vatican II, all part of how people grow, like a dialectic, now with Pope Francis, for sure evidence of the Holy Spirit, putting wind in the sail of making this Church into what is envisioned in Vatican II… in essence undergoing Reformation II.

The Church of Detroit in the 70s the right direction.{jcomments on}