Pope Francis Vicar of St. Peter for the Church
There has been a lot of back and forth especially on the internet in blogs and among Catholic journals, journalists and writers. While controversy feeds journalism it is not serving the Church's mission very well and it is making the Church appear at least in some places to be divided.
As with his predecessors we need to be attentive to Pope Francis. His penchant for direct address, eschewing theological and magisterial language has been prone to varied interpretations. In turn, this has been used to assert that the Holy Father is somehow muddying the waters of Catholic teaching.
Having read and listened frequently I think I can say that the Holy Father has been particularly clear to us clergy. We have an obligation to help people live their relationship with Jesus and in the community of the Church. The Pope has urged this consistently and perhaps purposefully to such a degree that we feel challenged. That's good. So many people are much more than challenged in their lives. To us ecclesiastical practitioners, Pope Francis has been prodding us to revisit and deepen pastoral theology.
This focus on pastoral theology might not be thought of as "characteristic" of the work of the Holy See. This has been coming in various forms for a long time. In my own lifetime, John Paul II, took the papacy out of the Vatican and to the world, literally embracing a good chunk of the nations on earth. While his teaching output was large in quantity and dense in quality, he also made many statements calling on us to have attitudes and dispositions for the good of the whole Church. His whole catechesis, before, during and after the Jubilee of the Third Millennium of Christianity gave us work to do, a vision for our plans and undertakings and shared mindset about the self-understanding of the Church in that moment of history. This was not teaching per se, and it anticipated a diversity of responses.
The pastoral stance of Pope Francis would hardly be possible without the solid foundations of his predecessors, especially John Paul.
Long ago I decided that as a pastoral practice I would always try to give people the time and space to tell their stories. And when someone comes to see me 28 years in priestly ministry now, I am no more sure about whether or how I can help them, until I listen. Of the myriad things I might say or do, I have to try to choose those that will be most fruitful for encounter with Christ and in practical terms helpful for someone to integrate their faith in daily living. I know also my own struggles and how these have seemed to go forward and backward sometimes at the same time. I recognize that growth in the faith may not follow a straight line.
This has nothing to do with a lack of resolve to live the faith fully. In fact, it is the reverse. It is to take seriously the proposition of living the faith as fully as I can that causes me to be patient, seek advice, learn to be honest and place my trust in the Lord's help as I go.
While there has been much analysis of the Holy Father's words whether ones off the cuff or in documents there is a clear line of interpretation that simply places priority on persons and of the relational requirement we have to help each other, because of fidelity to the Gospel, not somehow competing against it.
The Pope is inviting unity by encouraging us all to make contribution to the good of the Church.
The recent synods on family life and the upcoming one that will reflect on young people are not merely exercises in formalized input. The Holy Father is inviting us all to look more deeply for ways to support family life and faith. Sometimes we clergy can content ourselves that we are doing something by offering a program. The Holy Father has done us a great favour by reminding us of our mission to proclaim the Gospel everywhere especially to those who are marginalized. There are many people who have become marginalized in our societies, and if we are truthful there are those who are marginalized in their relationship with the Church. It would be a mistake to assume that all those who are marginalized are simply people who refuse to affirm the Church's teachings on faith and morals.
In my experience, quite often people whose relationship has been marginal have been a blessing to meet and listen to. Regularly in my ministry this has led to a return to faith and its practice. And some who are marginalized have something in their life that puts them at odds with the objective expectations we understand to be those of Our Lord. Surely, we are called to be messengers of hope. People caught in addictions or who meet life with restricted skills and relationship capacity because of abuse do these not also have a right to the consolation of our faith? The plea of the Holy Father is to forge ways while being faithful to Church teaching. It is hard, but the lives of the people we are trying to accompany is often harder. The more difficult challenge may be indifference, but efforts with those who suffer may rouse some of those hearts too.
As clerics especially we have a duty that goes with the name and the office to strengthen the unity of the Church. When we are genuinely confused or even at odds, it is still our duty to address these things in a charitable and mature way. It does great harm to the Church when we treat it as the subject of lobbying or we blindly use the tools of political manoeuvring in order to create pressure or manufacture the appearance of consent at the expense of a proper understanding that would allow the full pursuit of the moral life.
The democratic institutions of the English-speaking world are based on an adversarial approach to problem solving. The mode the Church needs is one that listens with care and concern and then discerns. And this requires prayer, meditated about, with a view to persons, real people who rely on us to shepherd them with care. If it appears the shepherds are scattered what will become of the sheep? It is not as if the Church is short of resources either. We have the rich spiritual traditions and wisdom of the saints and the fruits of the dedicated labours of so many over the years in our parishes, dioceses and at the Holy See.
I have resolved to listen to the Holy Father and strive to develop in my ministry and among my brother priests, with our bishops, the kind of involvement that will really help us to live our faith.
It is a sign of maturing faith that we can learn to listen to one another constructively and charitably. Without this direct encounter we will be lost. Is this not our faith: "Take and eat this is my body"? It is the real encounter we have with Christ, freely given to us, not merited, that makes us "fit" for the Kingdom. In participating in the sacraments we are also to be sacraments of Christ. Arguments in the blogosphere and even in published Catholic journals are not encounters. They can provide information, but they can also contribute to a cacophony that itself is opposed to unity. It is not our agreeing with one another that can justify our claim on the Kingdom of God. Living an authentic moral life, seeking genuine integrity, and humbly following one's vocation to serve have perennially been the signs of active grace that we have recognized in the saints.
Our duty to serve the unity of the Church and of the faith may be stressful sometimes. The Holy Father seems to be suggesting that a greater maturity in dialogue and engagement are not only necessary for the life of the Church in its relations among active members but that this is also necessary in the work of evangelization. For those of us on the "inside", that is working every day in our mission in communion with the Holy Father, this is not only looking outward toward new Christians, but inward to what Pope John Paul II, called a "New Advent" in the Church. Pope Francis is suggesting to us clergy especially, that we will find a New Advent in our own ministries by listening to and accompanying those who are "poor" whether physically or otherwise on the margins.
In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says clearly to us that we are in step with the Kingdom to the extent that we serve "the least". That has to mean serving their inherent dignity despite what we may see on the "outside" when we first encounter them. I have often wondered if these are the very people who will greet me on the threshold of the Lord's and our true home. How do I treat them? How are we closing the wide and unjust gaps that exist? It may be true that in secular quarters those who profess to be most concerned about issues of social justice miss extremely important marks. Again a kind of literalism that attempts to apply western democratic principles to societies whose evolutions have been radically different will be prone to a rigidity (as well as substantive errors in judgement) that become at least two dimensional if not a dangerous caricature. The Church's vision of social justice is not a kind of pipe dream. It proposes what we believe. That each person is created by God and not only dignified but entitled to their proper fulfillment in Christ. As the Council Fathers tell us this does not always become visible or fully expressed. Unity will only be won by charity, patience and a healthy reliance on God's grace. In the office each morning we pray the Canticle of Zechariah and ask God to help us find "the way of peace". That peace and unity is found in the person of Jesus and by encounter.
Calories burned on simply having differing views use time and energy that could be far more fruitfully spent encountering Christ in the lives of one another. This is where we look for the light in the faith story of the Church. Even in differing views it is harder but more useful to look and find the avenues of grace that those we disagree with carry. If the world is to know Christ in a renewed way it is not going to be a "success" here or there that will determine it. It will be the vitality and integrity of the living out of the faith by actual people. I commend the care of these challenges to Blessed Charles de Foucauld, beatified by Pope Benedict XVI.
