The communication challenge facing the institutional Church...

This article was written yesterday (Saturday) originally as a contribution in the forum to the string started by Alex headed "Switching onto the Right Wavelength". Since writing it I've also read the text of Pope Benedict's address to academics at the University of Regensberg which also is dealing, from a far more intellectual perspective, the communication challenge the Church (and indeed all religions) have in the modern world. I have left what I originally wrote intact but have added a further paragraph at the end this morning to link the viewpoints I have expressed to the argument Pope Benedict is seeking to prosecute about the relationship between faith and reason.

Dear friends,

I've been struggling all day to find a starting point for this continuing discussion I want to have with Alex (and anyone else who might be interested). The Richard McBrien article, Dialogue in the Church, I posted a link to on the forum yesterday might help. McBrien is essentially arguing that within the Church one side has taken control of the microphones and the debate. I have been arguing that for quite some time.

“Dialogue cannot happen if one side controls the agenda, the invitation list and the microphones, and also has the power to reward or punish participants. Dialogue requires a level playing field.” ...Fr Richard P. McBrien Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology Notre Dame University, Indiana

What has happened recently to the CathNews board I think is illustrative of a much larger trend that has been going on in the institutional Church for decades. In a sense the minority has finally won the day on the CathNews board. They now "control the agenda" there largely because the majority in the end got thoroughly sick of the wasted energy involved in endeavouring to conduct a conversation in their presence. Seemingly also there is little interest in the sponsors of the service – ultimately the Australian Catholic Bishops and the Australian Council of Leaders of Religious Institutes – as to what is happening on the forum they own or, as with the institution, in providing any overall direction to the communications that go on in the name of the institution.

The influences that have shaped the changes in my own outlook...

I suppose I first became aware of what was going on back in 1994. Until that time my activities had basically been confined to the conservative sectors in the lay Church. I had been reasonably active in the Church serving on the parish council and in many local endeavours. My spiritual development though I can see in hindsight was actually pretty limited. In 1994 I began work in a position in the paid professional Church as a media officer in one of the Catholic Education Offices. I suppose one of the greatest surprises, and greatest joys, I found in that position was exposure to a truly rich and diverse level of adult faith education that I had never known existed before. It has largely come about because under government legislation in Australia all employers today are required to provide on-going professional development and training to their employees. Naturally within an Catholic education environment a large element of this translates over into adult faith development even when much of it is presented as professional development in say "teaching skills" or "teaching method". These programs are delivered to participants at a cost of a hundred dollars or more per hour in some cases to each participant. There is simply no financial way that the institution can deliver programs at that sort of cost to the wider and ordinary parish community. (And there is no way that ordinary people might be convinced that they ought to be forking out $100 an hour to attend some program that will enrich their understanding of their faith.)

Sadly most of this professional and faith development takes place effectively "behind closed doors". And behind those "closed doors" a completely different language is spoken to the sort of language that one might pick up in say a magazine like AD2000, or this Lepanto magazine another individual has been talking about recently in that other place, or indeed a lot of what passes for "discussion" of the meaning of our faith and beliefs from that small element who now basically "control the agenda" on the CathNews discussion board.

It was also back in 1994 that I first began to come into contact with the ecclesial leadership of the Church. In my earlier life I had moved in senior circles in politics and business in this country and so had some familiarly of people occupying leadership positions in society. The Church though is a far different animal to the business or political establishments in society.

One senior figure told me he basically saw his position as one of "being a symbol of unity across the divides in the institutional Church". In his conduct of his office I pay him tribute in that I believe he sincerely and conscientiously seeks to live out that vision he has of what his role is. Over time I have also begun to perceive it is a seriously flawed vision when the net effect of his continual endeavours to be "even handed" is that effectively his actions are always caving in to one side of the argument who simply will never take "no" for an answer and who are totally unable to entertain the thought that there might be other points of view in life, or in faith, to their own. While that leader's stated aim is admirable what he seems unable to comprehend is that the net effect of his own policies is an enormous bias and constant "caving in" to the demands of one side, and the minority side, of the debate that goes on within the institution as to how we move forward and re-evangelise the world.

At one time I can remember he told me in all sincerity, "Tom, but I've been told reliably that for every letter that lands on my desk this represents five hundred or a thousand people who might have written but didn't for some reason or another". Now the reality is that the vast majority of people gave up writing to bishops a long, long time ago. They simply exit out the doors quietly and never leave any thankyou, explanatory or protest notes. There is basically only one sector in society that is continually writing to bishops these days. And while it may well be true that each letter a bishop receives might be representative of another five hundred or a thousand people who might have written in similar vein what isn't taken into account today is the fact that there are NO representative voices of the tens of thousands who are leaving without writing any notes whatsoever. The vast majority simply cannot be bothered writing to bishops. They see it as a useless exercise and they have little respect today for "authority figures" in the religious sphere of their lives evidenced by the fact of their leaving in the sorts of numbers they have been.

In contrast to the vision that senior figure had, I worked closely with another senior figure who at least understood the problem of this minority. He had a completely different attitude to them compared to the first figure. However he seemed unable to see that his life was effectively lived out of some kind of paranoia of these people who are forever writing to bishops. He moved in the circles of other senior leadership figures in the professionally employed Church and his attitudes were basically shared by that group. I believe they were basically paranoid of this small element that exists in virtually every State, every diocese and every parish who might be labelled as "the thought police". They were actually fearful of all public statements and basically would not issue them unless it was absolutely necessary because of this fear that whatever they wrote would be "picked over with a fine toothcomb" by the thought police seeking avenues where an attack could be made on them personally or the institutional leadership in general.

I believe, by the way, that most of these attacks by the thought police element in society are basically not actually maliciously intended. It is a symptom of personal insecurity where some people have this deep need to profess their loyalty to something. One of the things they seem to have this compulsive need to do is to prove that they are "more loyal" to Jesus, the rules, the Pope or whatever, than anybody else in society. Part of the game these people play (largely with with themselves but with devastating consequences for everybody else) is that they think if they can prove where some person in a senior position of authority has made some doctrinal or policy mistake this proves "I must be more loyal, or a better person than so and so – and, you know, so and so, occupies this position as a theologian (or some other equally august position in the governing ranks of the institution)". It gives these people (the one's doing the constant complaining) some sense of personal worth. They are though effectively endeavouring to elevate themselves at the expense of others — not by raising their own stature or qualities but by endeavouring to undermine other individuals who in some way might be perceived as having higher qualifications, or social ranking, than themselves.

This person was in senior enough position where, from time to time, he did have to report on various things via the media. When those occasions arose this poor man used to work himself up into a sweat and write these enormously long explanations that "dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't'" out of a paranoid fear that his work was going to be subjected to the minutest scrutiny by the thought police element out in the community. (And invariably it was, I might add.) The net effect though is that when his statements were eventually published — often running to a couple of tabloid pages of newsprint — the average punter I am sure never waded through them. Can you see what is going on here? Even though this man understood the problem of the minority controlling the agenda — and he wanted to counter that in some way — he was unable to see that effectively his entire agenda was dictated by the minority he was so afraid of.

A deep systemic problem...

I honestly believe our institution today has a deeply systemic problem that now extends from the local parish level right the way up to the highest office in the Church. Rather than communicating downwards and outwards the basic orientation of ALL communication in the institution today is inwards and upwards. I have worked closely with a number of editors of Catholic media. I think it is sad but basically when they write what is uppermost in their minds is NOT the needs of the great unwashed "out there", basically the question constantly circulating in their minds is "now will this get me into trouble with the bishop, or will it get the bishop into trouble with his brother bishops or those who he is responsible to in Rome". From what I can see at almost every level in the institution every person in a position of authority is "looking over their shoulders" and paranoid about writing something or saying something that is going to trigger a complaint somewhere or other along the line from the thought police minority in the institution. The net effect of all this is that communications have largely been "shut down" in the institution today. Priests in their homilies stick to what are basically the agenda items where it is accepted that "Catholics are controversial" — it's called "safe controversy"; it gives the impression some (communication) work is being done when in fact none is being done! — but there is this now vast hidden agenda of social and spiritual issues that are never discussed in homilies or anywhere in public. The same goes when priests, bishops and other leaders in the professionally employed Church write in newspapers — except, of course, by those ecclesial leaders who actually share, and foster, the agenda of the minority*.

The changing perceptions of ordinary people towards authority...

There is a further problem. One of the changes that seems to be going on in society is a major re-evaluation on the part of ordinary people towards authority figures. It does not matter today whether one is talking about politicians, business leaders, doctors, lawyers, accountants, royalty or spiritual leaders. Gone, quite possibly forever, are the days when the leaders in our communities were worshipped, lauded, and obeyed without question — and their private beliefs and behaviours were never questioned in the media. The vast mass of educated people in Western society are no longer prepared to be talked down to — or have the wool pulled over their eyes. All leaders in society today have to earn the respect of the communities whom they serve by the intelligence and coherence of their communications to those communities. One can blame this state of affairs on any number of causes including loss of respect for our seniors and authority figures, or the influence of ideas like democracy and liberal political philosophy or simply increased access to education, the reality though is that in the Western world the ordinary citizens today no longer tolerate dictators and those who endeavour to introduce laws or make policy changes without adequate and coherent explanation as to why those laws or policy changes are necessary. Equally society is far less tolerate today also when policy changes are NOT made to overturn beliefs, laws and customs that have become moribund or superseded by new insights arising either within the hard sciences or in the social sciences. I think in numerous places there is endemic inability in the institutional Church, for example, to recognise the changing self perceptions women have of their place in society as equals alongside men. The reluctance in so many quarters of the hierarchical leadership to adopt changes in inclusive language is testimony to the way the institution has almost deliberately distanced itself from the community it is meant to be serving.

Coupled with this reluctance to concede that the power relationships between the served and those who serve is changing we unfortunately have this myth in the Church, again largely fostered and only believed by the tiny minority today, that the institutional Church never makes mistakes and never reverses her position on fundamental insights as to what Divine Revelation is. The clear evidence is that down through the centuries the Church has reversed its position on many of its core insights. There has not merely been "development" of policies and insights but actual reverses in policies and insights in the light of later acquired knowledge and the "continuing Divine Revelation" that our Creator reveals to us about the Created Order and the Creator's Design not only through the minds of theologians and bishops but also through the discoveries through secular scientific laboratories, individuals and human scholarship in other disciplines. Sadly, at the very highest levels of the Church I think there is a degree of obfuscation that has gone on during the course of my lifetime at least that seeks to preserve the myth of not only the infallibility of the Pope but the belief that is held in some quarters that the entire Holy Roman Catholic Church itself is infallible on just about every subject in God's creation. Most people are sick to death of that. And they are sick to death of an institutional leadership and culture that does not endeavour to correct that myth which is still entertained by the minority which endeavours to, and does, "control the microphones" to borrow Richard McBrien's phrase.

Do yourself a favour and just do a Google search of Catholic sites on the internet. The institution I am sure is oblivious to what is the general tone of what is transmitted "out there" as being authoritative in its name. The thought police have certainly "taken over the airwaves" and it is little wonder that the rate of ordinary people accelerating themselves out of the Church is increasing. This stuff that is broadcast in the name of "orthodoxy, loyalty and faithfulness" attracts a tiny minority but it actually turns millions more away than it attracts. Does the institution care?

Responding to Alex on the language used by the Pope and the institutional leadership...

Alex, coupled with the silence that is so patently obvious today in much of the middle management of the Church to speak to their people in "plain language" on the subjects that those people talk very openly about in the privacy of their own homes and workplaces, I think there is a game that is played that when the institution does speak it deliberately speaks in these awfully long-winded and turgid documents that are basically inaccessible today to the average Mary and Fred out in the pews. I am referring, in particular to the sort of documents I referred to yesterday in my thought starter comments accompanying the commentary by our mutual friend Nathanael Theologos.

Even publishing them on the internet does not greatly increase their accessibility. I do concede there are occasions when a bishop, or pope, might need to address an "opinion leader" audience of, say, leading politicians, scientists, academics, medical practitioners or the institutions' own theologians but they are relatively rare occasions. I appreciate it is in the nature of paradox that what our (far more educated) community wants today from the institutional and spiritual leaders is both simpler explanation but, at the same time, far more sophisticated explanations. We do not tolerate "kindergarten level" explanations but, at the same time, we are becoming increasingly intolerant of leaders who attempt to dress up what they are trying to say by either long documents that attempt to dot every "i" and cross every "t", or which use obscure language in some sort of game to avoid the scrutiny of the thought police and this tiny minority that endeavours to set itself up as the only authentic interpreters of Divine Revelation and Catholic teaching. I believe on the evidence even our pontiffs today are caught up in this elaborate game of self-delusion. The people at large though are not deluded and that is a large reason why 85% of them have simply decided to stop listening to the institutional leadership anymore.

Further comments written this morning since reading Pope Benedict's lecture to academics at the University of Regensberg...

Pope Benedict's lecture to academics at the University of Regensberg is one of those occasions when a leader is addressing a specialist audience. Ironically one of his comments where he quoted a centuries' old disputation between two Muslim intellectuals has blown up in his face courtesy of the secular media and fundamentalist misinterpretations of his intention in quoting that dispute.

Right at the outset let me say I have no dispute with what His Holiness is seeking to draw our attention to in the principal thrust of this address. That principal thrust is very closely related to what I have been endeavouring to discuss here — the dialogue between faith and reason; the dialogue between the Church and the wider community. His treatment is far more intellectual than mine and understandably so given the audience he was addressing in the first instance. I would dispute with him though an implication that appears almost as an undercurrent in his thinking that Divine Revelation is something that is the exclusive province of the Church or its theologians and that "reason" (and the wider community) has to dialogue exclusively with "the institution" or "the Magisterium", or "however else one wants to categorise the 'teaching authority' on what 'Divine Revelation' actually is". I think one of the major changes that is going on in educated society today is a sense that God speaks through the whole of humanity. This is at the heart of Cardinal Newman's great insight over a century ago ("On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine"). The institution herself needs to learn to dialogue with her faithful. She also needs to learn to dialogue, not endeavour to dictate to, the scientific and secular world who are the communicators of another source of Divine Revelation and insight into "the Mind of God". When she loses the ability to dialogue with these other important sectors her own "faithful" do what they've done. They vamoose out the door!

*As far as I know there is no formal research into how large this "insecure" or thought police element might be in the institutional church. My gut feeling is that it is probably around 5% of the total baptised Catholic population and, in McBrien's words, that is the element today that broadly "controls the microphones". My further gut instinct is that the numbers in the ecclesial ranks are slightly higher than that but not enormously higher. It might run to 10% in the ordained ranks. Again though they seem to exert an influence way out of all proportion to their numerical lack of strength.

Blessings, Tom

Tom Scott is the pen name of the editor of Catholica, Brian Coyne.

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