The pandemic can lead to ‘pastoral creativity’ through families

While the pandemic restricts pastoral outreach, it can lead to greater creativity in families, Cardinal Tagle tells Ruadhán Jones

The Irish Bishops recently released a statement criticising the Government for their inaction over a return to public worship. It was another reminder of the challenges the Church in Ireland has faced as a result of the pandemic. We are now likely to experience a second Easter in the Republic without Mass.

What effects will this have on the Church, as an organisation and as a community? How will people cope without Mass, potentially for some time to come? How will Church infrastructure survive?

These questions were posed to Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect for the Congregation of Evangelisation of Peoples and president of Caritas Internationalis, in a private question and answer session with Irish journalists. The Filipino cardinal spoke to us shortly before delivering Trócaire’s annual Lenten lecture on the theme ‘Caring for the Human Family and our Common Home’.

A sense of hope

In his role as Prefect of Evangelisation, these questions are of especial significance to him – but of course, they are questions which the entire Church community are asking. Cardinal Tagle’s response balanced the obvious challenges the Church faces with a sense of hope for how it will respond.

He said that while the pandemic has restricted some elements of the Faith, “it might lead also to pastoral creativity, especially through families”. Cardinal Tagle put the challenges facing the Church in perspective, comparing the situation we are now experiencing with the one faced by Christian missionaries in Japan 200 years ago.

“If we feel that the pandemic has set limits to our public exercise of the Faith, we remember in some countries today and in the past, even without the pandemic, they were not allowed to publicly display their faith for various reasons,” he said. “For example in Japan 200 years ago, Christianity was banned.

“The Imperial rulers thought that they had eliminated Christianity because of the number of martyrs and those who had been expelled.

For Cardinal Tagle, then, as for many others, the pandemic is a time of opportunity and challenge”

“About 200 years later, the Japanese government opened the doors to missionaries. And the French missionaries who went to Nagasaki were surprised to find that there were Christians hidden, who survived for more than 200 years, in the midst of restrictions.

“It was the families, the laypeople, especially the mothers and the grandmothers, who passed on the Faith. They were creative. So the pandemic may restrict some exercise of the faith, but this pandemic might also lead to pastoral creativity, especially within the families,” Cardinal Tagle finished.

For Cardinal Tagle, then, as for many others, the pandemic is a time of opportunity and challenge. What he hopes will emerge from it is a Church which is creative in its outreach. It will also be a ‘domestic Church’, one lived in and through homes and families.

Speaking on a related matter, Cardinal Tagle discussed the way in which a “culture of encounter” can be facilitated by “natural and human caused calamities”.

“In a way the natural calamities – even the human-caused calamities – can be a fertile ground that puts a lot of flesh into ecumenical and interreligious dialogue,” the Cardinal said. “Because the encounter is the common human situation of suffering, it does not distinguish between the educated and not so educated, between Christian and non-Christian. Suffering could be the sure footing for encounter and dialogue.”

Cardinal Tagle recalled an encounter he had in Lebanon, while working in a refugee camp, with a Muslim patriarch. The patriarch asked him, ‘You are not one of us, but why are you doing this? Why do you care for us?’

Calls for love

“And I thought, he was the one who opened the door for me to tell the Good News,” Cardinal Tagle said. “And I said, ‘Our teacher, Our Lord Jesus Christ, taught us to love everyone. So we’re here for love.’ An encounter happens very often without words, but there is intense communication. People know you are there not to take advantage of them, not because you can get anything from them, but because there is a need that calls for love and compassion – they understand that.”

The impression the cardinal gives is of a resourceful and active mind, and it is that which may best serve the Church in its post-pandemic mission. One further reflection demonstrates the versatility he brings to the role of evangelisation. When I asked if the Church sees climate change as an issue which can connect Church teaching with the views and interests of young people, he says “very much so”.

Lo and behold, of the many, many possible ministries in the pastoral assembly, the ministry that got the most volunteers was the ecology ministry”

“I would like to share an experience of mine as a young bishop in the first diocese I served. We started an ecological ministry. This was way before Laudato Si’. When we thought of it, there was this fear that many people might find it strange, we would not get volunteers.

“Lo and behold, of the many, many possible ministries in the pastoral assembly, the ministry that got the most volunteers was the ecology ministry. Especially in a place like the Philippines, where we have an average of 22 hurricanes or typhoons a year, hitting different parts of the country… even without a scientific or professional study of what you call climate change, we experience the changes.

“When I was growing up the most intense typhoon was up to grade three, now it is up to grade five. So you can imagine how the velocity of typhoons has doubled in these past 40 years. So young people, seeing all of this, they have more of a sensibility because of their scientific and technological studies.

Youth

“I think this is one area where the Church can really work hand-in-hand with the youth. The Holy Father is quite clear, Laudato Si’ is not just a ‘green’ document. It is part of the social teachings of the Church… it is a part of the Gospel lived so that we could be good stewards of the Earth and of humanity. I think the young people would find an avenue for Church involvement through Laudato Si’.”