“A NEW WAY of BEING CHURCH” the Title Is from a Speech of Cardinal Blaise Cupich Quoted More Fully at the Conclusion

“A NEW WAY of BEING CHURCH” The title is from a speech of Cardinal Blaise Cupich quoted more fully at the conclusion

This presentation has three sections. 1. What I will call The Pius X Church – for reasons that will become obvious very shortly. This part is largely historical because I think it is useful to have a sense of where we have been and why we were that way. 2. Then I will move on to what I describe as The John XXIII Church – again for obvious reasons – and some of its characteristics as spelt out by the 2nd Vatican Council. 3. Finally, I’d like to make some suggestions for a way forward – which I hope you will find worthwhile and challenging. Born in 1944, my early experiences of Church were of an institution described by Pope Pius X, in his 1906 encyclical Vehementer Nos. This encyclical was addressed specifically to the Church in France because of the particular circumstances in that country. Before dealing with those particular circumstances, Pius lays down principles on which to base his subsequent reasoning. He describes the Church thus: “… essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful ” (par.8). For Pius, the underlying rationale is a legal concept – the Church as a perfect society: a self-sufficient or independent organisation which has all the necessary resources and conditions to achieve its overall goal, notwithstanding any imperfections or the sinfulness of individual members. It is not subordinate to any other authority or power, e.g. civil government; and it has Jesus promise – the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Mt.16:17-19). Pius X went on: “So distinct are these categories (hierarchy and faithful) that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors”. This very clear concept of the Church would not, at that time, have been seriously challenged. In passing, I particularly draw your attention to a term used by Pius X namely: ‘the faithful’ to which I will return later. 1

This papal declaration is the theoretical/doctrinal basis for what I have described as the Pius X Church. I was brought up in this Church. I treasure its legacy in my life. In many respects, I am who I am today because of this Church. In my recollection, this Church and its members had many positive qualities. There was a robust sense of identity; a dedication to personal prayer; an awareness of, and respect for, the sacred; a quite vigorous social life (often based on the need for fund-raising); and it was much more representative of the community – age wise – than is the greying Church of today.

There were, however, negatives – and I accept that what follows may be generalised and possibly superficial. But this is my memory, my experience of the Church of those days: we were suspicious of the Bible as being somehow Protestant; the requirements of the flock were mostly specified in the negative – about NOT doing (not missing Mass, not eating meat on Friday and especially not doing or thinking anything sexual except in very specific circumstances); faith was seen as acceptance of a set of propositions (as expressed, for example, in the Creed but including other difficult to comprehend items such as Blessed Trinity, Real Presence, Immaculate Conception, etc); being saved was a solitary/individual exercise – my scraping into heaven depended on my own efforts; the practice of the faith was law-based, focussed on the individual and her/his necessary efforts to comply with the commandments and, where that failed, to seek forgiveness through the confessional from a member of the pastoral body.

A fundamental flaw in this approach of the Pius X Church can be identified in its presentation of the ten commandments. Ask any Catholic (of a certain age) to recite the first commandment and the confident response invariably will be: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other God but me”. My perception of this God was of a remote demanding figure, jealous of His prerogatives (and somewhat prone to anger if those prerogatives were flouted), who recorded my wrongdoings in meticulous detail for the inevitable judgement day (with an ever-present possibility of eternal damnation), and who had to be convinced by the efforts that I made (keeping the commandments, praying, doing penance and the like) to let me into heaven. If I made it, I would do so by the skin of my teeth.

However, the fact of the matter is that the statement of the commandment as cited is deficient. The Book of Exodus (20:1ff) actually reads: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods but me”. THIS GOD, of the missing clause, is a saving God: ‘land of Egypt’, ‘house of slavery’ being metaphors for anything that hurts, frightens or shames me. THIS GOD saves for other reason than His own gracious benevolence. Again, I will say more about this later.

The Church of Pius X, especially in its hierarchical manifestation, seems very different from Jesus of Nazareth, friend of, and indeed frequent fellow-diner with, those on the fringes, a man despised by the hierarchy of his time – ultimately executed as a criminal by shameful crucifixion. It’s worth briefly tracing the path from that crucifixion to subsequent episcopal purple and cardinal scarlet.

For three centuries after the crucifixion, being a Christian was a felonious endeavour which could result in persecution and death. Early in the 4th century Roman Emperor Constantine, having converted, first decriminalises Christianity and then, grasping an opportunity to unite his disparate territories and people, makes it the state religion. Church leaders come to be influential. The institutional Church becomes part of the political scene with steadily expanding power and wealth. The Papal States – where the Pope was ruler, territorial monarch – date from around the 8th century. In well under a thousand years, the Church’s status shifts from powerless outcast to ruling aristocrat. Thence, until the 16th century the Church, through its hierarchy, is a significant player on the geopolitical stage. Pope and hierarchy are at the same level as nobility giving rise, for example, to the Prince-Bishop phenomenon in parts of Europe. The Gospel is no longer the only priority.

Where there is money and power, corruption follows. In 590 AD, Gregorius Anicius is elected – very reluctantly on his part – as Pope. He becomes known to history as Saint Gregory the Great, in part, because of his commitment to reform. The struggle for Church reform has gone on through succeeding generations playing out in many ways, e.g. in the establishment of religious orders like the Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits: all of whom started out as fringe movements wanting to set things straight. While there may be differences today in the motivation for reform, CCWWD belongs in that tradition. 3

What we have come to know as the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century was not an isolated event occurring out of the blue. In its genesis, it was a continuation of the constant movement for Church reform. Many of the issues the Reformers wanted to address desperately needed rectification, as can be seen in events immediately preceding the Reformation.

Prince Albrecht of Brandenburg, Luther’s bishop, was a member of the aristocratic Hohenzolleren dynasty. He became a bishop at the age of twenty-three and cardinal by twenty-eight. He funded his hierarchical promotion through a sizeable donation to the then Pope, Leo X, for the building of St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome – a donation underwritten by a loan from a merchant banker, Jakob Fugger the Rich.

Pope Leo X was a Medici. He became cardinal at the age of thirteen and had to be ordained a priest after his election in order to take up the papal role. To repay the Fugger loan, Albrecht gained permission (today we might call it a franchise) from Leo to trade indulgences. Luther objected. His ninety-five theses, initially far from being a rebellious act, in effect were saying “We need to talk about this”. His intent was to spark theological discussion about the nature of indulgences – discussion which might have brought about change in what was a thoroughly perverted practice.

Subsequently and for all sorts of reasons – political, dynastic, personal, theological – a formal ecclesiastical split develops, and new churches are established.

The reaction of the Roman Church was, understandably, defensive of itself, though protectiveness of personal position/status may also have played a part. Wagons were circled. Efforts at reform, notably the long-running Council of Trent, were put in place even if two decades were to pass before that Council actually met.

Subsequent history then played into this defensive mindset. After the Reformation came the French Revolution, the American War of Independence, the Enlightenment, scientific developments and advances in biblical understanding and interpretation, the unification of Italy with the consequent loss of the Papal States. Because the hierarchy had become so identified with the ruling classes, these events – associated as they were with moves toward

4 democratisation, independent thinking and personal decision-making – generated more defensiveness. The French Revolution in particular had a devasting impact because so many clergy were guillotined and so much Church property seized; for a ten-year period, traditional religious observance was replaced with a sort of secular religion – all of this in France once known as the eldest daughter of the Church. In the latter part of the 19th century the efforts of Garibaldi and Cavour for the reunification of Italy took away the Papal States resulting in further perceived loss of prestige for the papacy.

The defensive mindset remained until the 1940s and due credit should be given to Pius XII (1939-1958). Change began during his papacy with significant developments in biblical interpretation, liturgy and the relationship of faith and science.

Of course, the real mover and shaker was Pope John XIII with his decision to call a Council of the Universal Church – based on two pillars: aggiornamento (renewal) to ensure that the Church would be effective in the world of today and ressourcement (return to the sources) – a recognition that the practices of the early Church (the pre-reformation Church) could provide a lead for the Church today. In my view, the 2nd Vatican Council is the most representative and authoritative Catholic body at least since the time of Constantine. Its teaching about the Church definitively marks the end of what I have called the Pius X Church and gives rise to what I am calling the John XXIII Church. These are not different churches but there are significant differences – differences to which we must attend if we are to be faithful to what our Church is saying to us today. My assertion that the Pius X Church ended with the 2nd Vatican Council has two justifications. Firstly, at the opening of the Council the attending Bishops were presented with a ‘schema’ – effectively a discussion paper – for debate and approval. This schema reiterated the Church-as-perfect-society theory. It was rejected by the bishops and sent back for redrafting. Secondly, at subsequent sessions, the Council produced a significantly different notion of Church – one based not on a legalism but on a fundamental biblical concept: the Church as the People of God.

“God, however, does not make men (and women) holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased Him to bring men (and women) together as one people, a people which acknowledges Him in truth and serves Him in holiness”. (Light of the Nations par.32)

This is the basic conciliar statement about the Church. It uses a descriptor rooted in the Bible – an element notably absent from the thinking of Pius X – which calls to mind the deliverance of the Hebrew people from “the land of Egypt, the house of slavery”. This people then wandered through the desert toward the promised land experiencing a repeated cycle of deliverance, rebellion, punishment, conversion. The Vatican II bishops expressed the reality thus: “ … the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal" (Light of the Nations par.8) – clearly, not a “perfect” society.

Pope Francis has the identified himself with need for reform and in doing so focusses on the Church’s raison d’etre: “I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. (Joy of the Gospel: par.27)

The Church’s Code of Canon Law – revised after the Council – gave the concept legal expression, under the heading People of God: “The Christian faithful (Christifideles) are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through baptism, have been constituted as the people of God. For this reason, made sharers in their own way in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal function, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each” (Canon 204).

Martin Luther, for one, would have applauded.

Of particular note is the change of terminology. When Pius X referred to “the faithful” (Latin: fideles), he meant the laity passively occupying the pews: the Code of Canon Law, identifying the fundamental importance of Baptism, speaks of the “Christfaithful” (Christifideles) referring to every individual who has been

6 baptised – from Bishop of Rome to most recently christened infant. Henceforth, it might perhaps be concluded that Baptism trumps Ordination.

On the basis of this new view of the Church, I’d like now to introduce three principles which mark the Church of John XXIII. While I may have been selective, each of these principles is expressed in the authoritative words of the Council itself. Principle 1: “The Church seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit” (Joy and Hope par.3). Unlike the earlier statement from Pius X here we have a clear specification of what the Church is about. And note – it is a solitary goal which becomes the one criterion for assessing every Church activity be it providing Sunday worship, establishing schools and hospitals, providing moral guidance, etc. Carrying forward the work of Christ could also be expressed as the ‘mission of the Church’, as ‘preaching the Gospel’ (evangelisation), as ‘building up the Body of Christ’ or as ‘establishing the Kingdom’.

Principle 2: “All (the Christifideles) share a true equality with regard to their dignity and to the activity common to all the faithful for the building up of the Body of Christ” (Light of Nations par.32). It is this statement that I want to suggest marks the definitive changeover from the Church of Pius X to the Church of John XXIII. In my view, it simply cannot be reconciled with what Pius X wrote. Of note are the specifics of this teaching – true equality of dignity or status, true equality in the common activity of each Christifidelis.

Principle 3: “What specifically characterises the laity is their secular nature. … The laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. (Light of Nations pars 31 and 32). 7

As far as I am aware, it is the first time in the history of the Church that a positive description of the lay role has been formulated. In the Pius X Church, laity were the-NOT-clergy or the-NOT-religious. Now, from Vatican II, there is a positive descriptor – an unambiguous affirmation of the secular character of the lay vocation. Now it is clear that, while specifically religious activity (prayer, penance, etc) might be essential, these are, for the lay person, means to an end. What is particularly notable is that the lay vocation is exercised, not by “churchy” or spiritual activities but by their engagement in temporal affairs in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life through which they “seek the Kingdom of God” and “work for the sanctification of the world”. Previously, the work sanctification was seen as an exclusively priestly action.

There is a myriad of possibilities from which to choose – my devotion to my spouse, my care for my child’s dirty nappy, my preparedness to give way to another driver in traffic, my attention to the customer I am serving, my chit- chat with the check-out operator, my attitude to other players on the sporting field even opposing rugby forwards (the opportunities are endless) – all these take on value as occasions for sanctification (holy-making) opportunities for bringing the reality Kingdom into the everyday here and now.

Thus far we have looked at the Pius X Church and how it got to be that way; and we’ve explored the Church of John XXIII, its characteristics and some of its principles of operation.

One final issue remains. Faced with the situation of our Church today, how might I respond. To imagine that all responsibility for Church reform lies with solely the hierarchy is to betray the 2nd Vatican Council and to revert to the mentality of previous times.

In the same way that the Church is always in need of reformation, a corresponding process is required of each individual Christifidelis. The biblical term for this process is metanoia – μετάνοια – sometimes translated, inaccurately, as “do penance”, or “repentance”. Neither of these translations does justice to the radical demand that is metanoia – deep down change of mind and heart.

In my view, the hardest element of metanoia takes us back to that first commandment and the effort required to make it personal – to hear my God

8 address me personally, to hear “I am the Lord your God who saves you from all that hurts frightens or shames you”; to believe, in the depths of my heart that God wants me to be saved, free, happy.

In his Apostolic Exhortation, Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis describes this reality in three-steps: Before all else, the Gospel invites us to: - respond to the God of love who saves us - to see God in others and - to go forth from ourselves to seek the good of others. Under no circumstance can this invitation be obscured! par.39

This understanding makes it clear that we don’t have to convince God to save/love us. He already does and nothing we can do will change that. What is required of me, in the first place, is to respond to that God.

Religion (or faith) is often presented in the form of imperatives for moral behaviour – as if to convince the ultimate Judge that I am worthy of a heavenly afterlife. The Catholic ideal is quite the contrary. Aware of myself as being loved by God, I respond to that love identifying my sisters and brothers as equally loved by God and treat them accordingly. My behaviour changes but the motivation for that change is quite different

Pope Francis makes this point forcefully in a continuation of par.39 in Joy of the Gospel cited above, he writes: ‘If this invitation does not radiate forcefully and attractively, the edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards, and this is our greatest risk. It would mean that it is not the Gospel which is being preached but certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options. The message will run the risk of losing its freshness and will cease to have ‘the fragrance of the Gospel’”.

In simple terms, communicating a sense of God’s love takes precedence over convincing people to change their behaviour to comply with the moral law. In par.3 of the same Apostolic Exhortation, Francis quotes his predecessor, Paul VI: “ … no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord”; and in par.14 he spells out the consequence for us: Christians have the duty to proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone. Instead of seeming to impose new

9 obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but ’by attraction’”.

If we want to reform the Church, our starting point must be our own metanoia, our own personal conversion – a genuine challenge, for which I suggest the following.

1. Commitment to regular prayer and reflection – without which genuine change, metanoia, is unlikely. 2. Active participation in Sunday Mass after the ideal enunciated by the Council – fully aware, … actively engaged, … enriched (Constitution on the Liturgy par.11). I have found it useful to have trigger points to remind me what I am about – e.g. when I arrive a the Church an awareness of fellow worshippers as loved by God with whom I am called; at the beginning of each of the Readings to ask myself: What is God saying to me today?; the Prayers of the Faithful, the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer, etc become moments of renewed engagement. And one neglected trigger point deserves specific mention. At the end of every Mass the celebrant intones: “Go, the Mass is ended” or something similar. My guess is that most of us hear: “it’s over, folks; you can go home now” whereas the reality is that we are being sent to live our secular lay vocation in the reality of our everyday lives. If each of us left Mass each Sunday with the personal conviction of being sent, it would likely have far greater impact than any Plenary Council or episcopal edict. 3. Become informed and develop your faith knowledge beyond what you learned at school or heard on the media. There is a wealth of material on the CCWWD website but I would particularly commend to everyone a reflective reading of Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation ‘The Joy of the Gospel’ issued at the beginning of his papacy and which spells out, often in an unexpectedly personal way, his hopes and dreams for the Church. It is readily available online. 4. Be involved in your local Church in any way that is possible for you. Your credibility as well as opportunities for the next step will be advanced if you are recognised as an active member.

5. Speak up. If something is happening, or not happening, in your parish talk to your parish priest or the parish council – don’t just whinge in the background. Similarly, don’t hesitate to make your views known to your Bishop, to the Apostolic Delegate, to the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The coin of clericalism has a passive laity as its obverse. 6. At all times remember that Church reform is but a means to an end. What matters is that the message of the Gospel be heard as far and as wide as possible; that is the “solitary goal” for which the Church exists.

Perhaps the best way to conclude is to hear again a couple of examples of what our leadership is saying to us today. Archbishop Coleridge, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference has said on several occasions that, as a Church we cannot now go back to business as usual; Pope Francis is quoted as declaring that we live not in an era of change but in a change of era and Cardinal Blaise Cupich, of Chicago, speaking about the 2nd Vatican Council, recently made the following observation: “This new appreciation of our relationships with one another as the place where God is at work opens up a new way of being Church and of understanding our baptismal call” (Address to the annual Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, Jan 25 2019).

CCWWD is about exploring “what a new way of being Church” might mean as we search to understand how our baptismal call might be most effectively lived in these times.

Denis Nickle 10 March 2020 ______

NOTES:

Apart from the encyclical of Pius X, I have referred to all other papal and conciliar documents by their (translated) English titles.

Any emphasis (underlining or bold type) in quotations has been added by me.

I have taken the liberty of adding gender balance the quote from Light of the Nations at the top of page 6.