Michael KellyNeither the Pope nor Church teaching is a battering ram to be used against those who we see as our rivals within the Church.
It is a truth of our Faith that the Gospel is both consoling and challenging at the same time. The message of Christ, communicated via the Church, is both liberating and demanding. The challenge for the Church in every generation is find new and creative ways of preaching and presenting the Gospel. When the Church becomes the state, it is unable to offer a credible witness to the world of God’s saving plan for humanity.
One of the major challenges facing the Church in every generation is that of language. The remarkable document released by the Synod of Bishops in Rome this week is astonishing simply because of the tone. For example, affirming the fact that gay people and Catholics who have been divorced and civilly remarried have a vital contribution to make to the life of the Church.
Of course, some people will think the document has gone too far and the text – which is a working document of sorts – will be refined. One cardinal, for example, has complained that there is scant mention of sin in the text. Others, however, welcome this fact, insisting that the Church has too often used sin as the starting point in the past.
It’s hard to find a balance. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has warned about the dangers of falling into extremes of rigourism and laxism. In other words, either the Church is too harsh and exacting, or the Church is too weak and refuses to preach the high standards of the Gospel.
If it’s true that for large parts of the 19th and 20th Century the Church in Ireland was too rigid, it’s also true that recent decades have seen a reluctance by many Church people, especially priests, to preach and teach the more demanding elements of the Faith. I hear older Irish Catholics speak of harsh sermons from the past about sexuality. My generation of Catholics seem to be exposed to an opposite extreme: I have never heard a homily that even touches on the area of human sexuality.
The Church needs to find a via media between an ‘anything goes’ mentality that is prevalent and a harsh judgmental interpretation of the Faith that only serves to discourage people.
Elements
One of the elements emerging at the Synod of Bishops is the idea that the lived reality for the believer is one of stepping stones. The concept of gradualism is not new in the Church and holds that, while the moral law is unchanging, people are at different stages on the path to holiness. For some, living the Church’s teaching on marriage, family and sexuality is easier than for others. The ideal remains, not as some lofty, unreachable Utopia, but as a realistic goal on the journey of faith.
But the danger is that one tends towards the graduality of the law, rather than the law of graduality, falling into the trap of believing that the Church’s teaching is no longer objectively true, that it should only apply to some people or in some cases.
Pope Francis’ emphasis on mercy and tenderness in the Church has struck a chord with people. He is calling us to a new way of being the Church together, a keener understanding of the Church as the pilgrim people of God. But the Church is also “mother and teacher”, as Pope St John XXIII said. There are pastoral consequences of what is being discussed at the Synod of Bishops that need to be taken seriously. I know of an Irish parish where a young man was recently told it was no longer appropriate for him to act as a reader at Mass because the parish priest had discovered the young man was gay. At a time when people are struggling with the Church’s teaching, they need to be embraced, welcomed and assured of a place within the Christian community. This emphatically does not mean adopting an “I’m okay, you’re okay” approach where there are no standards. But it means taking on the eyes and heart of Christ, and as he did on the road to Emmaus, drawing near to people in their need for healing and wholeness.
We also need unity of purpose in the Church. Understandably, some more traditional or conservative Catholics feel unsettled by some of the language coming from the synod. Other more liberal Catholics turn a blind eye to anything from the synod that clearly upholds the Church’s teaching. Catholics have to stop trying to point-score with one another.
Neither the Pope nor Church teaching is a battering ram to be used against those who we see as our rivals within the Church.