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 50th 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 21st 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 40th
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)
