The story invites the question: how will we talk civilly with each other when we disagree on matters considered important for a church -- or any institution or organization struggling with change and reform?
A BEGINNING: CIVIL DISCOURSE
Civil Discourse. In Church?
Stilled Waterfall
Winning. In Civil Discourse?
Civil Discourse. In Church?
by Charles Pilon
The question raised for many readers turning the final page of Waiting for Mozart has been: but now what? Interesting story, to be sure, but how, in the name of the one God, will we talk civilly with each other when we disagree about matters considered important in the Catholic Church?
This topic, civil discourse in the Church, was discussed thoroughly in an article "Overcoming Discord in the Church" by Timothy Radcliffe in the National Catholic Reporter (5.5.06). More recently , as keenly and at greater length, Krista Tippett addressed the issue in her book, Speaking of Faith.
My interest in this matter, after spending a long time writing and endlessly editing Waiting for Mozart, is that I am experiencing a long-hoped-for outcome: it's more than a good story. Readers are telling me that this fiction calls for an answer to a pair of crucial questions: can followers of Jesus of Nazareth talk civilly with each other about their faith and the practices that follow from that faith? And willtheydo so, no matter how profoundly their points of view may differ or how difficult it may be?
My fondest hope is that this story will afford Catholics -- and others, too -- an invitation to consider these two simple questions deeply and at length. If we don't address them, future generations may well have occasion to ask about us: Why didn't they wake up, get busy and do so while they had the chance?
Radcliffe chooses not to use the terms liberal and conservative. He opts for Kingdom Catholics and Communion Catholics. The former found themselves liberated in many ways by the Second Vatican Council. It gave them a profound sense of the Church as the pilgrim people of God, on the way to the Kingdom. For Communion Catholics, Vatican II disrupted centuries of standard belief and practice. They felt forced to believe and to live within a Church that seemed to have changed its mind dramatically.
He describes how both Kingdom Catholics and Communion Catholics have experienced a loss of home in their Church. He calls this loss root shock, defined as an experience --whether a tsunami or war or an interstate highway built through a cherished neighborhood -- that demolishes people and the way of life to which they have grown accustomed. In this case, for both types of Catholic identified by Radcliffe, root shock has followed disruptive changes brought into play by the Church they trusted.
Interpreting the root shock suffered by Communion Catholics beginning in the 1960s, the editor at the National Catholic Reporter, by way of introduction to Radcliffe's article, noted that "in hindsight . . . it can be said that those who embraced the impulses flowing from the council ironically used a pre-conciliar ecclesiology and understanding of authority to impose a post-conciliar openness and collegiality. It didn't work very well." (My emphasis added).
And currently, Kingdom Catholics are feeling from Communion Catholics a notable press for retrenchment from the vision and the changes initiated by Vatican II. Bishops appointed by Pope John Paul II in the 1980s and later, and who largely embraced a Communion Catholic perspective are now heading dioceses around the world and are seated in chairs of power at the Vatican.
These differences and changes and swings in leadership have at times created unbearable tension and pressures, often to the breaking (and breaking away) point for Catholics in each group. We are invited to be one, diverse as we are, in the one Bread that we break, yet so often we find ourselves overwhelmed by the pressures that accompany our differences.
Is it this, then -- root shock -- that puts us so on edge, prompting incivility when we talk about church? If not, what is it that triggers the emotion, makes our eyes burn, causes us to fumble in our speech, unable to neither think clearly nor articulate what it is that we believe and want to say civilly? What is it that unnerves us so and triggers our insensibilities, our instabilities? I will speak for myself, revealing clearly, to be sure (and civilly, I pray) that I am a Kingdom Catholic. Some Kingdom Catholics, and certainly Communion Catholics, will have other issues or see mine differently in whole or in part. In any event, to begin.
How do I say to my soul, "Be still now" when Benedict XVI in his encyclical DominusJesus proclaims salvation for all through merits earned by the death and resurrection of Jesus, no matter the person's stance before the one God with faith and practice in their own religious tradition? In effect I hear him saying, "Your salvation, friend, comes through the Jesus of Christianity, no matter whether you know it or not and whether you believe it or not. So listen up. Our Jesus saved you, Muslim. Jew and Buddhist, you don't get it, I know, but one day you will know and you'll understand who saved you."
Further. I begin to slip and slide into some level of uncivil, internal hostility when a bishop says that homosexual partnering is a mortal sin that could send an individual to eternal punishment in hell. And so it would be curtains for me spiritually if I'm gay and choose to have a loving, intimate relationship and a life-long commitment with another gay person. I find that wholly unlike what Jesus would say, given what we know about him from the Gospels, though there is no specific record of his ever having addressed this matter.
And then, what is going on, I wonder, and what is Rome doing when it re-establishes the Tridentine Mass of the 16th century as an acceptable form of liturgy, equal to the rite promulgated by Vatican II? And why the recent revival of public exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, sometimes explained as keeping Jesus company, supported by theology that would suggest he is in need of comfort or is possibly lonely. Not now, not today, please, when many people continue to think of adoration first of all, even at weekend liturgy, when they think of Eucharist -- apparently still unaware, more that 40 years after Vatican II and some 70 years since the Liturgical Movement was introduced to this country, that the crucial point about Eucharist is that we come to break the bread, share it and then live by that sign for the rest of the week.
And finally, what do I say and how do I say it when people quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church to prove a given point -- this the Catechism published in 1994, authored in part by Benedict XVI as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who then approved it with his imprimatur. This is the Catechism that was out of date in some of its paragraphs on the day it was released because it had not come to terms with the modern world and what we have learned from scholars and experts in various disciplines who have questioned and proven untenable some deeply held Catholic teaching.
These are matters that surface for me -- easily and often. Other people have different issues and there are varying opinions on most of them. The divide is widening. What often does us in is an inexorable need to be right, to win a discussion or confrontation at all costs. Frightful thinking can set in. What's the fun and what's the purpose in dialogue then? If you can't come away with several points well made (wins) and other points at least a tie, then there's neither the sense nor satisfaction that you've spent your time well. How does one live with this grim frame of mind and within the spreading divide -- civilly?
Radcliffe maintains that the first thing that both Kingdom and Communion Catholics can do is to develop an appreciation -- a feel -- for the loss of home that the other congregation feels. It is a pain of exile, of being discounted that prompts members of one group to be afraid of the other and to make assumptions, labeling them and ignoring them to the point of not even seeing them. The heart can heal, however, with reasoned recognition and validation of one worldview by the other. We are fellow seekers.
Preaching on the feast of the Epiphany some time ago, the pastor at my parish, Philip Rask, noted that God's salvation is for all nations, not just one. He continued, "We need to set aside any suspicions that we have and we need to bring ourselves to believe that all the members . . . of our church are acting in good faith. We need to set aside our conviction that we have full possession of the truth and we need to bring ourselves to remember that other people are seeing parts of the truth that we cannot."
My reading recently of Thich Hnat Hanh's Living Buddha, Living Christ suggests to me that Buddhist practice can be helpful here. Looking deeply into another person is the beginning and the requirement for change in my own heart. Truly understanding what is there in the other and, again, looking deeply into the factors that may have caused what is there, will lead to peace in my own heart and eventually to respect for the other.
The mind can help the heart. Krista Tippett quotes the Indian journalist and Buddhist, Pankaj Mishra, in Speaking of Faith. "The mind -- where desire, hatred and delusion run rampant -- is also the place, the only place, where human beings can have full control of their own lives." There is a mindset -- a head, if you will -- that I can put on in addition to the heart that I must bring to civil discourse.
Some people are able to access that mindset through a practiced ability to bring, at first light each morning, a sense of humor to the events of the day at hand. A sense of humor is essentially a capacity and adeptness at gracefully comparing what should be or could be with the actual life situations in which we find ourselves. The contrast can be amusing and at times downright funny.
This is not to make light of the tragic side of the human condition and the terrible things we often do to each other. However, if we can find a way and develop the habit of getting some distance mentally from ourselves and the events of the day, we could find ourselves with lighter hearts and better able to appreciate the humor inherent in the human condition.
Perhaps Kingdom and Communion Catholics alike could appreciate the humor apparent in the contrast between the discipleship Jesus stood for and the empire the Church became in the High Middle Ages, notable traces of which remain with us today.
Another head-set might be to develop and vividly maintain perspective on the place that our planet Earth holds within the universe. Personally, with no science background whatsoever, I have relished the pleasure of reading, re-reading and sitting still for satisfying periods of time with the story of the natural world and what are considered pivotal events in the evolution -- the unfolding -- of the universe. My trust in God each day begins with the earth in orbit around one star a million times its size -- like a child's blue and white marble in orbit around a four-foot inflated playground ball.
This star, our sun, and its orbiting planets lie two thirds of the way out one arm of our galaxy, one of one trillion galaxies in the universe. The universe, however, is not a vast, static, celestial container filled with objects like galaxies. It is a subject -- a varied, multiform, developing subject. A mountain created by the universe, for example, is an acting, a doing subject -- creating weather, affecting every form of life around it and changing the human who hikes its beauty.
Each of us is kinwith the stars, since exploding stars created every chemical element, every part of every creature on earth. And so we are kin, too, with the bearded iris and the tiger lily; with a whale rolling in the ocean; with trees, arms extended, open to the sun -- a diverse, elegant community, to be sure.
To live this, to be inspired by it daily, requires a transformation of consciousness. The first step is simple awareness that the eye that searches the sun is the very eye, the very person, created by it. Through the human creature the universe has given itself consciousness. Imagine! And so, to be in step with the universe, I must, absolutely, find ways to be civil within my religious tradition, within this community we call the Body of Christ.
Language can help. It's better to ask a question than to make a righteous, dogmatic statement. A simple, inquiring attitude goes a long way. "Might it be better to say . . . ?" for example, or "What have you read about that recently?" And "Let me think about that for a minute" or "I'd have to give that some thought" seem to be good responses.
Too quickly we label people, a subject addressed some time ago by John Bauer, a priest of the Saint Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese in The Catholic Spirit, its weekly newspaper. Bauer writes that labels make it almost impossible to find common ground. Labels suggest all there is to know about another personand they separate people who might otherwise be able to talk together civilly. And finally, and most importantly, labelling people is not what Jesus did -- refusing as he did, for example, to label as a sinner the woman who washed his feet.
A heart. A mindset. Civil ways of speaking. We bring these to church discourse -- any discourse, in fact. There is no saying to the head, however, "Here snap this on." Nor to the heart, "Plug this in." The right mindset and the heart that is habitually civil develop slowly, patiently, with practice -- as does everything unfolding within the universe.
At times, it seems to me that the only sure way to remain civil -- all the time, on every occasion -- is to be of the mind that, really, none of it makes a whole lot of difference today, this day. Nothing will change tomorrow or next month, probably, because of what I say today. But say it clearly, I tell myself, and forcefully, if necessary -- what you mean and why -- but don't try to coerce, don't be dogmatic, don't close any doors. Just bring the right intensity at the right time and remember: conversation, not monologue; many questions, no single answer.
The way we approach our differences and divisions is as important as and says as much about our faith as the positions we take (Speaking of Faith, 186). The one God is faithful and, it seems to me, has no preference among religions. For Christians, our differences may well be resolved by some form of natural selection -- what eventually works best for the survival of the essential message of Jesus.
A little over a year ago, standing before the tumbling, artfully constructed waterfall at a small lake hear my home, it struck me that the two levels for observation of the falls offered a fine metaphor for civil discourse and its opposite in the Church.
At the upper level, the water tumbles down into a small pool forcefully, noisily -- so that you hear nothing else -- others passing or talking, bicyclists, children. It is powerful, potentially destructive, raging, won't stop, wouldn't listen if it could.
At the lower level I observed the same water as it flowed from the pool above -- not so noisy, slower, less driven, less powerful, yet churning, twisting, beautiful, a lot more manageable and certainly able to move things and change them. It seemed creative, not destructive, would be a much more manageable flow for most people and surely, over time, more likely to get something done with less destruction.
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Stilled Waterfall
Six months later on a walk around the same lake, the path led me again to the waterfall. As usual I first stood on the overpass to face the upper falls, eyes closed and head bowed. Hands resting on the railing in front of me, I allowed the force and the noise of the rushing water to pound its way onto my chest and into my heart.
All of a sudden, as if by a switch thrown somewhere in City Hall several blocks away, the water shut down at the top, startling me. I opened my eyes. It was true. Flow from the top had stopped completely. Water was emptying rapidly from the short canals that delivered the flow under the bridge on the path where I stood. I hurried to the lower level. From there I watched the water drain under that lower bridge into the lake behind me. It was stunning to see the entire passageway dry up so quickly, unexpectedly.
And then it occurred to me that the experience was a symbol of the retrogression and drying up of the miraculous rush of fresh water, fresh air and new life that poured into the Catholic Church with the Second Vatican Council, the event that had changed my own life and that of millions of Catholics who found themselves freed up from what Pope John XXIII called stale air and dusty furniture in a Church by prophets of doom.
Suddenly, I heard the switch (or whatever had cut the water off five minutes earlier) reverse itself somehow. Water came crashing down again from the top, pushing and roughing its way under the bridge above, down to where I stood now, watching in wonder as the water passed under me there. I had just experienced firsthand a symbol that powerfully described aspects of reform in large institutions like the Roman Catholic Church.
The powerful, divine flow of the Spirit is not ours to control, only to manage and make adjustments as best we can. The very breath of God invites us to stand in awe of the movement and be ready for it, no matter how it expresses itself in varying ways and at different times. And, yes, we're reminded that the flow can be controlled and poorly managed at the top if institutional powers (or others slow to discern) throw the switch, slowing or even stopping the water, the Spirit, from doing what it does naturally.
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Winning. In Civil Discourse?
by Charles Pilon
I have been gratified by reader response to an earlier article that I wrote titled "Civil Discourse. In Church?" Conversation by email, on the phone and via the Internet have led to further thought on this matter. Thus the title: "Winning. In Civil Discourse?"
Vocabulary
Commonly accepted vocabulary is essential for successful discourse. Therefore I will repeat the definitions that I adopted from Timothy Radcliffe for the previous article. Kingdom Catholics found themselves liberated in many ways by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It set forth again the original understanding of the place that common people hold in the Church because of their Baptism and Confirmation. They are the People of God, who loves and moves in them as much as in the parish priest or the bishop. For Communion Catholics, Vatican II reformed centuries of normative belief and practice. They felt forced to believe and to live within a Church that seemed to have changed its mind dramatically about what to believe and how to live as a Catholic. (For more on these definitions, visit the National Catholic Reporter and search Archives, "Overcoming Discord in the Church", issue dated 5.5.06.)
I find these terms usable and workable -- not offensive, certainly descriptive and words for which many people might have an affinity. Alternates might be progressive and traditional, keeping in mind that any label is almost always inadequate and potentially divisive, making it nearly impossible to find common ground. Yet, there is an additional, even more controlling factor, I believe, that will almost always cloud a conversation unless it is acknowledged and addressed.
Worldview
Could it be that the source of our sometimes seemingly irreconcilable differences is that we have differing worldviews? Is it this that make it so difficult for me to look deeply enough into someone to truly understand them and respect the factors that may have created a worldview different from my own?
Scholars define worldview as the totality of one's concept of reality. A worldview (mine or another's or a community's or a society's) is an understanding that a person has about how everythingworks and it includes the feelings and the passion that may accompany that understanding. It holds to a particular philosophy of life and distinct values, ideas and moral precepts, along with religious beliefs and practices (or lack thereof). A world view is shaped by the culture and society where a person lives and it begins with one's earliest and most significant experiences in life -- all of which creates a presumptive point of view. Every human being has a worldview. It is the lens through which one sees things and interprets life.
The traditional worldview of Christians began to change with the scientific discoveries of the 16th and 17th centuries, which led to The Enlightenment and its ongoing challenges to what had previously been the normative ways of viewing life and understanding the world. With the continued explosion of knowledge in every field on into the 20th and 21st centuries, the worldview of many people in many cultures the world over continues to unfold.
Two Worldviews
What I believe about God and religion is one but only one part of my worldview. If I think of God as up above in heaven, for example, and that Adam and Eve were two individuals who committed sin, making God angry so that God closed the gates of heaven until a pre-existent divine Soncame to earth to die on the Cross, thereby softening God's anger and re-opening the gates again so that I could go to heaven -- then all of that is part of my worldview. Further, I might believe that Jesus himself established the Roman Catholic Church, named Peter as the first pope and personally gave to us, his followers, seven Sacraments that would save us -- streams that pour grace into our souls when we receive them worthily. And further, the Catholic Church is the institution whereby we are saved, as is everyone else, even if they don't know it or believe it.
This was the worldview of the 16th century Catechism of the Council of Trent and also of the Baltimore Catechism with which many older and pre-Vatican II Catholics grew up. Some of it can still be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church released by Rome as late as 1994. This is the worldview of many, maybe most, Communion Catholics. Older Kingdom Catholics grew up with it as well, but have largely abandoned it today.
Kingdom Catholics today would generally be comfortable with the idea that God never was (and is not today) angry with anyone or any sinner. Nor does God have a gender -- therefore God is neither He nor She, as we use those terms. The story of Adam and Eve is simply our story, a myth that reminds us that we are sinners when we make gods of ourselves. Largely, Kingdom Catholics would be open to exploring the view that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish sage and prophet, a faithful and true Jewish son of God. He stood for the poor and for peacemakers, for women and the detested Samaritan, lepers and tax collectors, thus breaking down barriers between people that resulted in a following that made the leaders and representatives of the Roman Empire in Palestine nervous. They killed Jesus by crucifying him but his followers discovered him alive in their lives afterwards. He saved them, and us, with his teaching and by paying the price for what he believed in.
Now . . . Can We Talk?
Not necessarily! Imagine several people conversing together about a matter that all consider important for the Church. Widely differing worldviews in the group might well preclude any meaningful discussion. Their worldviews might be so diverse that partners to the discussion could find themselves speaking with an individual or two whose worldviews include firmly held propositions that would be problematic -- the equivalent, for example, of saying that the earth is flat or that Jesus was a Catholic. There would be good reason to question the value or even the possibility of civil or any discourse with others whose worldviews embrace similar ideas and beliefs. Further conversation could be determined meaningless and eventually discontinued.
May We Begin?
Midpoint in a long conversation about civil discourse (The National Catholic Reporter, issue dated 3.21.08) between Jesuit theologian Jacques Dupuis and Cardinal Franz Joseph Koenig of Austria, the cardinal had this to say at one point.
"Genuine dialogue must be honest. There must be no ulterior motives. Of course, each partner has an aim. It's not meant to be a pointless chat, after all. The aim is to convince one's partner of the soundness of one's arguments. But the opposite also applies. One must equally be prepared to allow oneself to be convinced of the soundness of one's partner's arguments -- one must want to gain an insight into them. Dialogue is not an attempt to persuade or convert -- the aim is to get to know your partner and why he or she believes what they do."
And so, yes, we may begin if partners or members of a group in discussion understand and accept the unconditional prerequisite that readily grants that the worldview of some partners may differ. If each keeps in mind that their assumptions, couched in their varying worldviews, will influence the conversation and accept the fact that the outcome will not necessarily be agreement, then the discourse may work and a firm, trusting step toward pluralism might be possible. In sum, they would refrain from claiming for themselves absolute truth absolutely and honestly acknowledge and accept their differences. Nobody wins, therefore.
And so why couldn't Kingdom Catholics and Communion Catholics, one with one or in a group, pick a topic or two and simply talk about their differing points of view for a while? The most important thing would be to really listen and, as Cardinal Koenig said: be prepared to allow yourself to be convinced of the soundness of your dialogue partner's point of view. That's a tough discipline, to be sure, but we will never talk effectively until we can talk civilly -- with no prospect nor even much of an interest in winning the discussion.
A Place to Start
One broadly stated question that may get to the heart of differences for both Kingdom and Communion Catholics born before 1950 might be, "What was your take on the reforms of the Second Vatican Council back in the 1960s and 1970s into the 1980s? And how do you feel about all of it today?" Communion Catholics could describe in some detail their experience withroot shock, defined as an experience that mentally and spiritually traumatizes people and destroys the way of life to which they had grown accustomed. Kingdom Catholics could talk about what seemed to be a divinely inspired, fresh and freeing breeze that swept through the Catholic Church, calling for changes that seemed long overdue. I believe it's crucial that we be able to explain to each other our experience with Vatican II and illustrate it with examples.
Equally important for all Catholics of any age would be, "How does it feel today with the current, obvious retrenchment at the Vatican and in most dioceses around the world from the vision and changes brought on by Vatican II?" The Communion Catholic might be pleased. The Kingdom Catholic could be suffering root shock. Our honesty and our personal witness to how it felt, still feels or feels anew many mean more than any argument presented civilly. In any event, if it seems important to me to convince you or to win the argument over a matter upon which we disagree, then the dialogue has failed before it even begins.
Send in the Clowns
There are various interpretations of Stephen Sondheim's classic "Send in the Clowns", a song he wrote for a 1973 musical. The sense taken on the title by commentators frequently suggests circus scenes, especially in the circus of olden days when circus performers were injured being shot from cannons or doing high wire and trapeze feats without modern safety nets. The circus manager would say, "Send in the clowns" to draw attention away from the disaster.
Maybe there comes a time in many a discourse when we might simply send for the clowns. Perhaps there is a way to live with the clowns -- that is, with a lighter heart and a sense of humor about it all, knowing that no personal or official opinion today nor any insight or definition from the Church of the past or the present is complete or final to the extent that we have the Divine Presence of the universe, the one Lord God, all figured out, packaged on the shelf with no further insight or development allowed nor called for.
I don't believe there is a time limit on discourse about matters divine. The one God does not seem to be particularly bothered by the passage of time. The Church is a human institution, after all, guided by many divine touches and insights from an always available Divine Presence, a presence that over a period of 20 centuries has not always been well heeded. Change and the unfolding of divine revelation are both painfully gradual.
Conclusion
We should be neither clowns nor fools. This division in the Catholic Church is severe. Why couldn't we just wonder more together -- wonder where a point of view or a position taken might lead? In talking like this, however, can we please just lighten up about both fixing and saving today's institutional Church? Perhaps it will or maybe it won't or can't be saved from itself and its current worldview that is affecting so profoundly some language in our Liturgy, various paragraphs in our Catechism, some interpretation within our preaching and certain priorities of the institutional Church. As I said previously, our differences may well be resolved by some form of divinely guided natural selection, that is, what eventually works best for the survival of the essential message of Jesus.
We can work vigorously at tolerance and reconciliation; at diversity as fervently as at unity, listening well and long and looking deeply into our discourse partners to understand what got her or him to where he or she is today. Don't even want to be right, perhaps. Surely don't try to win, knowing that 48 hours after a good conversation is when you may best hear what the Spirit has to say about it, if given a civil hearing.
