RULE BOOK RELIGION

Rule-book Religion

Healthy disagreements are usually necessary for successful dialogue, but there is something really sad about an intransigent attitude where members of the same family, whose name and logo is love, struggle to sit down and just talk to each other in a normal, trusting way. 

And there is, indeed, so much to discuss. There are priests and parishioners, for instance, who are aware of the pastoral power of general absolution, of freedom in choosing appropriate Eucharistic Prayers, of sharing Holy Communion, on occasion, with Christians other than Catholics in the “state of grace”, of respect and understanding in discussions around gay marriage, of the urgent and obvious need to ordain married men, and of many other disputed occasions of grace. Ideally, a central role of the institutional Church would be to provide an open forum for such pressing and life-giving dialogue. 
Pope Francis has made clear his desire for open discussion. People need a welcoming forum for freedom of expression. This has long been a contentious issue. Sixty years ago Karl Rahner’s pamphlet “Free Speech in the Church” attempted to help Catholics move beyond the norm of passive acceptance. He was trying to encourage dialogue, to clarify the vital difference between unchangeable doctrine and negotiable, developing teachings.

How utterly disappointing it is, in a world dissected by terrorism, genocide, avarice and poverty, for members of the community called “God’s People” to be so reluctant about talking to each other regarding those matters that touch hearts so deeply. We ask the Putins and Obamas of this world to sit and share at the same negotiating table, yet in our own family we struggle to trust each other, to incarnate new love, to build community. 

This is the saddest state of affairs. People wonder whether we clerics have ever really read the Gospels with open hearts, whether we have gazed on God’s Earth and its peoples with utter tenderness, whether we have ever experienced within us the healing power of divine mercy. There is a kind of clericalism that dries up our hearts, that drains the stream of God’s unconditional compassion. Too many of us still play the clerical game. 

Out of fear, out of a misplaced loyalty, out of ignorance of God’s fragile fleshiness, we blindly continue to rule from the book. But we are “people of the flesh” before we are “people of the book”. Pope Francis contrasted “laboratory beliefs” with the experience of falling in love with God, and reserves his harshest criticism for lip-serving hypocrisy. Thinkers such as psychotherapist Carl Jung and Jewish philosopher Martin Buber have held that nothing blocks God’s love like book-religion does. 

After all, for what purpose other than the kindling and nourishing of true love in the human heart does the Church exist? Did Jesus not make it utterly clear that this was his one passion in life and in death? Too often we turn the hard face towards other faiths and denominations, excluding in our certainties those who are “different”, over-defending our “one, true Church” status whereas, in a radical vulnerability, we are called to touch human hearts with the spiritual power of powerlessness. 

We forget that every written and spoken word in our homilies, catechesis and parish ministry must first present the love story of a God who daily lives and dies for us with an extravagant longing? This is the vibrant passion that millions of concerned Catholics long for, and sorely miss; this is why they want to talk to us. It is the experience of God’s compassion they seek, not more information about it. 

Creeds and catechisms have their necessary places, but always at the service of a trusting surrender to the incarnate Word. Pure Christianity has no purpose other than the revealing and nourishing of humanity’s intimacy with God. Maybe today the Holy Spirit is inspiring people with a new confidence in their God-given gifts and authority.

These are the newly empowered hearts that will restore a spiritual energy to an anxious institution. In his A Different Journey, Fr Brian D’Arcy wrote: “The only choice for the Church is another radical Reformation. The deeply ingrained evil of clericalism destroyed the credibility of our beautiful Church. Because of it, one important point has been missed – the Church will be saved by its laity, or it will not be saved at all.”

In the meantime we remember that we are engaged in unpredictable mystery, that no person or group can ever have all the wisdom, that the challenge of paradox will mark every step of the way, that the shadow of the cross will fall everywhere, and that the Holy Spirit is free and invincible. And so we try to hold the tensions, but to do so in humble, loving dialogue. For Christians, and especially during these urgent years, there is no other way.