Pope Francis addressing
a church audience on
Synodality large Communal Discernment: A Lamp for our Synodal Journey
by Michael Bach and Esdac Tea, edited and with an introduction by Brian Grogan SJ (Messenger Publications, €14.95 / £12.95)
I am inclined to think that the Synodal process is as significant event in the history of the Church as was the Second Vatican Council. The Council was about the Church catching up with the world, finding in its teaching and tradition, the resources, the stance, to engage with a world transformed by two World Wars and cultural, social, political upheavals.
The Synodal Process is about responding the crisis of authority whose symptoms are manifold. For instance, authorities worry about the speed with which lies spread coalescing into conspiracy theories that distort politics and feed hatred. They understand disinformation as a problem that comes with new technologies that vastly increase the power of political rogues to cause mischief.
Censorship together with greater efforts to propagate the truth will help resolve the problem and reduce the damage.
This, however, is to misconstrue the problem. The problem is not new technology, though it undoubtedly plays a role, nor are individuals with evil intent, though of course they are active.
Authority
The root of the problem is a loss of authority. The mainstream media that once informed citizens of the big picture into which their individual, local, lifestyle were set have lost the trust of increasing numbers.
The impact of the crisis on politics is obvious. Up to the 1970s, political parties across western Europe could rely on solid blocs of voters. For these loyal voters, parties were a source of identity found in belonging to a group. They did not support the party because they judged that its programme matched their interests, they trusted the party to instruct them in their interests and how they could best be defended in the broader scheme of things.
Has any Pope in recent times been written or spoken about with the disdain and contempt directed at Pope Francis by devout Catholics in both liberal and conservative?”
This trust had to be sustained and nurtured, hence the importance of local organisation and a partisan press. In the 1970s surveys reported that some seventy-five per cent of voters were ‘loyal’. Today the figure is about twenty-five percent. The political landscape has been transformed, and not in a good way. Could you explain to your children what attachment to a political party meant to their grandparents?
The Church cannot escape the crisis of authority. We can add it to the list of institutions whose public authority has weakened or evaporated: political parties, the media, trade unions….. . The growing factionalism within the Church shows that its internal authority is challenged. Has any Pope in recent times been written or spoken about with the disdain and contempt directed at Pope Francis by devout Catholics in both liberal and conservative camps?
We commonly suppose that that authority is based on some attribute, office, or position of the person who exercises it. But is this correct? I listen, respectfully, to the consultant and obey her instructions though they include painful surgery, unpleasant medication, and a restrictive regime.
Restore
She has authority because of what I lack— good health and the knowledge to restore it. Her degrees, her appointment as consultant, the recognition of her colleagues, are not the basis of her authority. They are evidence that she has the competence to restore me to health. The basis of her authority is my recognition of a need that she can satisfy. So it is with all authority.
How can the teaching authority of the Church be secured, restored?
When I think of teaching authority, I remember Fergal O’Connor OP. Fergal was a remarkable teacher as generations of students of politics and philosophy in UCD will attest. A good teacher is surely one who answers their students questions.
At the end of a lecture, Fergal would ask ‘are you confused’? ‘Yes’ we would reply; ‘Good’ he would say”
Not so, as Fergal’s example demonstrates. A good teacher provokes questions, providing the need that guides students into the work that they are studying. So in lecturing on Hobbes, he made the questions that Hobbes addressed alive and compelling.
His lectures quickly became Socratic dialogues in which our all too ready assumption that we had the answers were challenged. At the end of a lecture, Fergal would ask ‘are you confused?’ ‘Yes’ we would reply; ‘Good’ he would say. Students clustered around the podium with supplementary questions or challenges before adjourning to continue the discussion in the cafe.
Compelling
If the Church is to make its teachings compelling, it must make real the questions that teaching answers. This starts with challenging our too ready assumption that we know the questions and the answers. We have to escape our ‘bubble’ into the context of the universal Church. As Fergal demonstrated, this is not accomplished by instruction, still less diktat, delivered from a pulpit, or podium. Learning is communal; dialogue is essential. Of course, Fergal did not invent his teaching style, he inherited from the Dominican tradition in which he was formed.
This book, translated from the French , draws on a different tradition. The notion of ‘discernment’, the prayerful openness to what the spirit is telling us in this particular time and place is central to Jesuit spirituality and teaching.
A start has been made, the synodal process its underway”
The long experience of teaching and practising discernment is put to work to provide a practical guide to how we can learn to listen attentively to each other as we seek together, in prayer and discussion, the questions and answers that guide us to the teachings of the spirit.
No doubt, the Dominican and Jesuit traditions differ in this or that aspect. But they belong to the same ‘family’ and demonstrate that Church has the resources to address its crisis of authority.
A start has been made, the Synodal Process its underway. Let us hope that the world will ‘catch up’ as it struggles with its authority crises and their devastating effects.