We need to be civilised in our arguments

Decades old tensions within the Church are showing themselves in a new and ugly fashion, writes Fr Bill Dailey CSC

In the seminary, I had a moral theology professor who took a liberal, revisionist approach to Church teaching. They had a course packed with standard issue critiques of teachings I agreed with, and to my mind the arguments they favoured were tired and wrong. But they loved God and were trying to teach us to the best of their abilities, so I took their course pack to the chapel to read it to remind myself that we were all working to serve God even when we disagreed.

Things came to a bad end on the last day of the semester, when for whatever reason they decided to make the class a defence of their teaching methods, and then asked for comments. Prudently, we were all silent. So then they looked right at me and said: “I’m surprised none of the seminarians want to comment.”

Provoked, I said: “Well, I think theology should be led by the Spirit, so I take your course pack to the chapel since as you know I would not have chosen many of the readings you did. That’s the spirit we’re called to. On the other hand, when the instructor critiques the Pope as an old Polish scold, and even does mocking impressions of him, I’m not sure that’s being done in the same spirit.”

Liberal

You might imagine this was not well received. Indeed, the professor wrote to the seminary to try to have me disciplined for what they called an unprovoked attack. Happily, even the most liberal of my classmates came to my defence for having spoken the truth and done so in charity.

I recount this episode from the 1990s because my entire life in the Church seems to have been filled with disputes in which many lose track of the real evils in the world — human trafficking, endless war, despotic regimes torturing their opponents, tens of millions of people displaced by warfare and famine — and behave instead as if the real evil is in whichever faction of the Church doesn’t share their view of the Second Vatican Council.

If I were the Devil, I’d be quite pleased to see Catholics on the internet tearing into one another. The example of the just-concluded Amazon Synod is the latest sad illustration of the phenomenon.

You may have read that early in the synod a prayer service was held in the presence of the Pope in the Vatican gardens. At that prayer service symbols were assembled – a pregnant woman, symbols of nature, and so forth.

Participants in the prayer were seen to be bowing down low, and it wasn’t clear the nature of the exercise. Very quickly accusations began to fly that these pilgrims from the Amazon were bringing pagan rituals to the heart of the Church, and there was the Pope himself going along with it!

Soon terms like ‘idolatry’ were in the air – or on the internet – and eventually some self-appointed guardians of the faith took the ‘offending’ symbols and threw them into the Tiber, posting a video of their actions online of course.

Meanwhile, many people did have legitimate questions about what exactly the pictures were depicting, and what those symbols were, and the organisers of the synod and the Holy See Press Office were not able to give ready answers. Defenders of the synod and the prayer accused those asking questions of being racist, and the tensions within the Church – decades old tensions – were showing themselves anew in ugly fashion.

Idolatry

Can we not step back for a moment and think before we accuse others in our Church of bad faith, even of idolatry? Yes, it’s a very important sin throughout scripture and one we must all be on guard of – we can make idols of money, of our own image, even of our sense of religious practice, and these idols can prevent us from giving due worship to the one God.

We should not be doing the Devil’s work of ignoring the real evils in the world…that our prayer should be helping to ameliorate”

But what are the odds that Catholic pilgrims from the Amazon came to pray with the Holy Father and brought with them pagan idols? It seems that if we have questions about their posture and their symbols we should not begin with the assumption that it’s an effort to turn the Catholic faith into a pagan polytheism.

At the same time, if the cultural exchange is to be a learning opportunity for all, asking questions about what was going on can’t be seen as an act of racism, but one of concern by members of a Church for whom worship is the source and summit of who we are.

So just as we should assume good faith on the part of the pilgrims, we ought to assume those puzzled by what they were seeing are also genuinely worried about liturgy and prayer and are owed decent answers for what they are seeing.

A mature discussion in humility, led by the Spirit and respecting that from the earliest days of the Church we have had arguments about how to pray and how to live, should be possible.

We should not be doing the Devil’s work of ignoring the real evils in the world, evils that our prayer, our devotion to the self-giving love of Jesus, and our own service of God and neighbour should be helping to ameliorate by getting caught up in thinking that the really bad people are the ones praying in a way that looks unfamiliar, or the ones asking about that prayer.

Jesus prays to the Father that we may be one. Let’s live together as if that prayer has taught us what to strive for.

Fr Bill Dailey CSC is the Director of the Notre Dame Newman Centre for Faith and Reason in Dublin.