On Reform in the Catholic Church

At the conclusion of The Great Grace conference (www.thegreatgrace.org.au), I offer the following reflection...

Each year the 'Season of Grace' takes on its own particular flavour, reflecting something of the concerns that currently occupy the lives of Christians. Sometimes the difference is significant, sometime not. The season is for the people, not the people for the season.

For Australian Catholics, this year has been dominated by two issues: the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI along with the election of Pope Francis. As it happens, the two are not unrelated because at the centre of both lies the question of ecclesial reform.

The appalling phenomenon of child sexual abuse by some clergy, religious and church personnel – and the inaction of some bishops in dealing forthrightly and appropriately with it – has come to dominate the life of the Church in Australia. As hard questions of justice, honesty and accountability are asked of the Church, it is fair to expect that the call for reform will become a recurring theme.

What confronts the Australian Church specifically also confronts the global Church generally. For a variety of reasons, governance has emerged as a key issue for Pope Emeritus Benedict as he resigned, and as Pope Francis has taken up the Petrine ministry simplicity and resolve. Again, this has raised questions of reform.

But what shape does reform in the life of the Church need to take – locally and globally, individually and collectively – for it to become effective and fruitful? What, in other words, makes for good reform in an ecclesial context? It is perhaps providential that this question has emerged in the confluence of the sexual abuse crisis and the papal election. Providential, because this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, a Council often seen as one of the great reforming Councils of the Church, and whose ongoing relevance might best be achieved by approaching it from the perspective of a hermeneutic of reform. Ecclesia semper reformanda est, as the saying goes.

But how is this to be done fruitfully? How does the Church go about learning well the way of ongoing reform? Reform is often seen as a ‘root and branch’ kind of thing: find the roots, and the branches will follow. For corporations, reform will need to be couched in economic terms; for civic authorities, in bureaucratic terms. While the Church has both corporate and civic dimensions to it, it is neither of these in essence. Consequently, the kind of reform that the Church needs to undertake has to be particular to its essentially ecclesial reality.

In other words, each reality calls for a response that is particular to its identity and structure. This is because the sources for reform will be found from within, even when the need for reform is recognised from without. Otherwise, there will be no genuine effort to foster a culture of reform, no real movement towards the good. Political parties know this principle only too well; they are reminded of it every time they lose an election. In other words, imposing change from without is not the same as undertaking reform from within. Change can be imposed but need not be causally related to identity and structure. Consequently, it can be ill fitting and latter abandoned. Reform, on the other hand, when based on the principle of internal re-sourcement, will always have a better chance of taking hold.

For the Church, the principle of reform particular to its identity and structure has its biblical roots in the theological notion of conversion. The Prophecy of Isaiah, for example, begins with – and is based on – the call to conversion of heart. The Lord’s Chosen People had rebelled against truth and goodness; their practices and their very lives had become corrupt. The Lord, through Isaiah, calls them back to himself and back to their status as God’s chosen:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause. (Isa 1.16-17)

The Lord’s call to conversion takes the form of a twofold command. The first part is: cease to do evil. A decisive break with the past is required, so as to make a start on the road to transformation. An immediate end to evil behaviour by individuals, along with any cultural practices that have become corrupt, is the first step on the road to reform.

In the matter of sexual abuse, practical measures must be adopted to address the harm already done to innocent and vulnerable lives, and to deal resolutely with perpetrators. ‘Truth’, ‘justice’ and ‘healing’ need to be more than mere words spoken by the Church; they must be firm resolutions implemented in the life of the Church and her members. Along with genuine repentance, they form the basis from which the Church can begin the journey of reform. Here are her roots.

On its own, however, the cessation of evil is not enough. A more radical step is required by the Lord to bring about a lasting culture of conversion: learn to do good. This second half of the commandment is future oriented. The task of transformation is never finished; the work of reform is ongoing. Conversion is neither a static thing, nor a once-and-for-all, one-off occurrence. While it has an identifiable beginning, it has no fixed conclusion. Conversion is a way of life lived ‘in the Lord’, who is the source and summit of all that is good.

While the evil of sexual abuse of minors by Church personnel and the inaction of Church authorities must cease, the task of the Church into the future – both locally and globally – will be to pursue a culture that is ever more effective in protecting and nurturing the vulnerable amongst her members. This shift has been underway for some time in Australia, and more recently internationally (acknowledging that not all would accept this claim). But more can be done; more will need to be done.

If genuine reform in the Church can occur only if it is based on a principle of internal re-sourcement particular to her ecclesial identity and structure, then how is the Church to go about doing this? This is not the question of changing things that need immediate rectification (the first part of the call to conversion), but the deeper and more challenging question of what constitutes effective and lasting cultural transformation in the life of the Church. The Second Vatican Council provides an excellent means of answering this question. As the most significant moment of renewal in the life of the Church in recent times, and as the principle compass available for pointing the way into the 21^st century, Vatican II provides a unique reference point for the question of reform.

Benedict XVI, now Pope emeritus, is the last of the current leaders of the Church to have personally participated in the Council. As historians note, his role in shaping the texts of the Council was quite significant. Consequently, Benedict offers a unique insider perspective on what the Council set out to do, and significantly, he places the question of reform at the centre of how Vatican II is to be understood and received.

In 2005 (at the time of the 40^th anniversary of the Council’s conclusion), Benedict had this to say about the problems that arose as a result of covering the interpretation of the Council in the twin veils of ‘rupture’ and ‘continuity’, and the need instead of uncovering the true meaning of the Council from the perspective of ‘reform’:

The hermeneutic of discontinuity is countered by the hermeneutic of reform, as it was presented first by Pope John XXIII in his Speech inaugurating the Council on 11 October 1962… It is clear that this commitment to expressing a specific truth in a new way demands new thinking on this truth and a new and vital relationship with it; it is also clear that new words can only develop if they come from an informed understanding of the truth expressed... (Benedict XVI, Address to Roman Curia, 2005)

Notice how Benedict points to the operation of the principle of internal re-sourcement as being the basis both of a true reform in ecclesial identity and structure, and of a true interpretation of what the Council was on about. The effective development of ‘new ways’, ‘new thinking’ and ‘new words’ comes about only by a thorough commitment to and understanding of what has already been established as true. The commitment of the Council was to the reform of the Church; but the means through which this was undertaken was to be the growth of new branches from the roots of the Christian tradition.

What Benedict is expressing here is the principle of catholicity, the internal process of ensuring that the Christian tradition remains both faithful to its roots and fruitful for the world at any given time. The emphasis to highlight here is the ‘for the world’, noting that it is not ‘of the world’. To recall, external categories of change imposed on a particular culture will not bring about the genuine internal reform desired of that culture.

Consider, for example, from where the chief Conciliar reforms in liturgy, scripture and ecclesiology emerged. Each of these underwent major internal renewal in the period between Vatican I and Vatican II, precipitated by the contemporary circumstances, but undertaken from a principle of re-sourcement. When the Council came to find the language into which these areas of Church life would reside, the work of re-sourcement had already been done. These are all examples of reform ‘from within’ that have led to major and positive developments in the way the Church worships, in ecumenical and interfaith relations, and in the vocation of the laity in the mission of the Church. (Remembering, of course, that reform is ongoing, and none of these developments have reached their peak of understanding and commitment.)

In comparison, sexual abuse as an ecclesial phenomenon has been most prevalent in the 60s, 70s and 80s, precisely the time period in which, first, continuity with the past dominated Church life and seminary formation, and then its dialectical bedfellow, rupture, predominated. While not reading a direct correspondence into things, it is not without significance that this phenomenon in the Church parallels the rise and mainstreaming of the sexual revolution in society. Both outright rejection in Church life of the issues underlying the sexual revolution, on the one hand, and uncritical accommodation of its manifestations, on the other, took its toll. The change in sexual morality  ‘from without’ certainly had its impact on the life of the Church (and quite evidently in houses of formation). But can it be justifiably claimed to have precipitated a genuine reform – that is: a development for the good – in the culture of the Church?

The elements of Benedict’s ‘hermeneutic of reform’ is nothing new in the life of the Church. Both Yves Congar in the 1960s and John Henry Newman in the late 1800s, made exactly the same arguments for genuine reform: the application of a principle of internal re-sourcement is the only way to a true expression of catholicity.

Firstly, Congar:

There are only two possible ways of bringing about renewal or updating. You can either make the new element that you want to put forward normative, or you can take as normative the existing reality that needs to be updated or renewed… You will end up with either a mechanical updating in danger of becoming both a novelty and a schismatic reform, on the one hand, or a genuine renewal (a true development) that is a reform in and of the Church, on the other hand. (Y Congar, True and False Reform in the Church, 1967)

Secondly, Newman:

Those [developments] which do but contradict and reverse the course of doctrine which has been developed before them, and out of which they spring, are certainly corrupt; for a corruption is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous history. (J H Newman, A Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878)

It should not be seen as a mere coincidence that both Newman and Congar are universally recognised as being two of the great ‘prophets’ who shaped the reforming agenda taken up by the Second Vatican Council. Any analysis of the reception of the Council in the life of the Church today, any contemporary call for reform in the life of the Church precipitated by current events and times, and any future reform proposed by the new Pope, would do well to keep in mind the elements by which genuine ecclesial reform will happen.

As a theological friend from outside of the Catholic tradition has recently put it: “No one who has not learned to be traditional can dare to innovate.” (Oliver O’Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Happen, 2009)