Columban missionary Fr Frank Hoare spoke to the Federation of Conferences of Catholic Bishops of Oceania (FCBCO) earlier this week. Synodality and formation for mission were two of the three major themes of the bishops’ assembly along with the effects of a changing climate on the oceans. Here is the text of Fr Hoare’s address:
- INTRODUCTION
The Working Document of the Continental Stage of the Synod of Synods is entitled ‘Widen the Space of your Tent.’ It has a focus on mission. It emphasizes listening, welcome and radical inclusion – no one is to be excluded. The tent is a space of communion, a place of participation, and a foundation for mission. All the baptized are co-responsible for the one mission of the Church, the one Missio Dei. But can our Church provide spaces of radical inclusion when it is in crisis?
- OUR CHURCH CRISIS
is especially apparent in modern Western countries like Australia and New Zealand. But even in the islands of the Pacific or the highlands of PNG globalization and modern media ensure that the challenges of modernity are not far away. The institutional European Churches (and by extension, all Western Churches) are said to be in a process of dissolution. Many church buildings in the West are almost empty on Sundays.
Mass attendance in France is less than 5%. In Australia in 2016 it was 11.8%. We seem to have lost, or are losing, the youth. Most parishes have only one priest and many are without any priest. The average age of priests in Europe is close to 70 years old. It is similar for local Australian and New Zealand priests. Oceania and PNG have an insufficient number of local priests. This crisis is a silent earthquake.
Many reasons are given for the Church crisis: secularization, consumerism, radical individualism, globalization, moral relativity, media, and other socio-cultural forces. But the Church’s own sins contribute to this silent earthquake; issues such as clerical child abuse and the treatment of women as second class citizens in the Church.
- INCULTURATION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES
Theologian, Peter Hunermann connects the Church crisis to another issue – modern changes in Western society. He believes that Church structures must be compatible with the fundamental values of social life where the Church finds itself. In previous eras the Church inculturated its governing structures – its hierarchical structure was compatible with feudalism in Europe and with the hierarchical cultures of Polynesia.
Three principles operate in pre-modern societies: 1) the community as a whole prevails over the individual; 2) only the ruler may speak for the community; 3) only the ruler can make decisions for the community as a whole. Since Constantine’s time the centralized structures of the Church, local and universal, follow those principles.
But now most modern Western people don’t accept the centralized structures of the Church based on these three principles. They consider human rights central to their self-understanding. For instance, human rights is the decisive condition for countries to join the EU. So Western people protest if an individual is forced to conform to the community.
In modern society, the government, parliament and courts must have appropriate independence. If the government dominates the courts the guarantee of human rights will be empty. Free speech and public media apply pressure to ensure that the checks and balances of power prevail. The constitution, not the authority of the ruler is the basis of State legitimacy. The ruler now has a functionally limited role. A political leader is not allowed a concentration of power. So the Church has a model of society that Western people consider obsolete.
The 2nd Vatican Council tried to go beyond the hierarchical model in Lumen Gentium – the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church. Chapters One and Two spoke of the Church as mystery and as the People of God. However, the hierarchical nature of the Church followed in Chapter 3. Its juridical application remains the concrete experience of Church members. For example, lay people can give advice but may not participate in decision making in pastoral councils.
- MISSION AND SIMPLIFICATION OF STRUCTURES
Missionary theologian Jose Comblin claims that the Church discovers its true nature when on mission in a new context. For instance, through mission to the Greek world St Paul discovered that faith in Jesus Christ need not be tied to Judaic culture and traditions. But later the Church tended to add new elements and incorporate aspects of Greco-Roman and other European cultures. It then accepted these institutional and cultural accretions as integral to Christianity. However, the Church must not interpret scripture from the perspective of its social reality. Rather the Church must critique its life and reality with the Word of God.
Inculturation means, for Comblin, simplifying institutions that are not biblically necessary. A new era of Christian mission will be grounded on a return to the gospel message and a simplification of these accretions of past centuries.
The Holy Spirit, the instigator of mission, helps us to recognize the signs of the times. We live in a globalized mainly urban technological society facing a climate crisis. Signs of the times are seen in the responses of particular persons to societal crises e.g. the Samaritan woman in John’s gospel. Jesus Christ himself, in his life, death and resurrection, was a sign of a new stage of sacred history. Saints Benedict, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas, were signs of their times calling the Church to proclaim the gospel message to the world in a new way. Greta Thunberg, in resisting climate change, is a sign of our times.
- POPE FRANCIS – A SIGN OF OUR TIMES.
Pope Francis gives witness that Christianity is not a corpus of laws, doctrines, and rites. It is a relationship with Jesus Christ which frees us from sin and death and leads to freedom, love, and full humanity in community, here and hereafter. This is our inspiration for evangelization according to the Pope in Evangelium Gaudium (EG).
He writes: ‘I dream of “a missionary option” that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything so that the Church’s … structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” (EG 27) He also said, “Mere administration can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be permanently in a state of mission.” (EG 25)
Pope Francis, agreeing with Hunermann and Comblin on simplification of structures says “There are ecclesial structures which can hamper efforts at evangelization … (EG 26).” And “the Church has rules or precepts which… no longer have the same usefulness for directing and shaping people’s lives (EG 43).” Instead “the message has to concentrate on the essentials (EG 35)…aware of a ‘hierarchy’ of truths (EG 36).
Pope Francis also acts to change structures. He reorganized the Curia to serve rather than dominate local Churches. He encourages bishops’ conferences to take decisions for their areas. He promoted women to important positions in the Roman curia. A commission is investigating the historical situation regarding women deacons. But his biggest contribution to modifying the hierarchical structures of the Church is the present synodal journey. It invites all Catholics to participate in spiritual conversations and discernment.
- MISSION AS INTERFAITH DIALOGUE:
Pope Francis says, “Missionary outreach is paradigmatic for all the Church’s activity (EG 15).” He affirms, quoting St. John Paul II, that Ad Gentes mission is “the first task of the Church.” However, through migration, the gentes are now coming to us. This will increase as climate change worsens and it could spark violence. Yet, migrants, like the Magi, often bring gifts of deep faith which can inspire local Christians and enrich the local Church. Migrants have a great longing for an equal relationship.
For a fruitful interaction the host population must be open to migrants. Openness and friendship are a sign of a Church with a missionary outlook. Jesus broke down barriers by calling his disciples friends (Jn. 15:15). Jesus Christ now missions us to create Christian and human communities based on intercultural and inter-religious friendship and mutual love. Intercultural and interfaith dialogue can inspire a deeper spiritual life in participants and become a witness to God’s Kingdom.
- MISSION AS JUSTICE, PEACE AND RESPONSE TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The Old Testament prophets and Jesus have shown that speaking the truth to power is part of the Church’s mission. Our most urgent present issue is the climate crisis of global warming and the extinction of species. The science is clear about the crisis. The challenge is to motivate people and governments to bring about radical change now, rather than kick it down the road when it will be too late.
We need our Church leaders to dramatize the urgency of responsible government policies on carbon pollution. We also need our Church leaders to motivate believers to accept the sacrifices needed to reduce their carbon footprint. Laudato Si has lit the torch. We must spread the light.
- MISSION AS PROCLAMATION.
Proclamation through dialogue, witness and telling the Jesus story is another essential element of mission. Vincent Donovan in his book ‘Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai’ tells how he recognized that parish structures were impeding the offer of the gospel message to the Masai people in Africa. He abandoned the mission station, the church, the school and clinic. He began visiting the communities of Masai in their camps. He listened with respect to their myths and spiritual seeking and, in turn, told them bible stories, especially stories about Jesus.
Some Masai communities decided to become disciples. Donovan built no churches. But he supported gifted people among the Masai to engage in ministries of catechesis, liturgy, preaching and services of mercy. He was a latter day St Paul recognizing that imported forms of religion were not needed by the Masai to become Christian. An evangelical Christian leader in Suva also refuses to build churches but evangelizes in market places and on media. He says that once you build churches your attention becomes focused inwards rather than outwards.
- FORMATION FOR MISSION
Formation for mission, discernment and synodality are, I believe, best done in Small Christian communities. I highly recommend the Lumko 7 Step Method of gospel sharing, which is a form of lectio divina. The concept of synodality, which includes mission, is difficult to understand or explain. The Lumko gospel sharing is an experiential way of understanding synodality and, importantly, of practicing it. It begins by inviting the presence of the Lord Jesus. Intense listening to the gospel passage is facilitated by twice reading the chosen passage and by having the participants individually pick out a phrase that touched them.
A third reading of the passage is followed by 2 or 3 minutes silence to allow the Holy Spirit to enlighten participants. The fifth step consists of sharing and listening to what captured participants’s attention during the silence. This is followed by a group discussion and decision about what action God seems to be asking of them.
So in this process people are brought to listen intently to the Word of God, to the Holy Spirit in the depths of their hearts and to the Holy Spirit speaking through others. The Spirit also helps them to decide as a group what God wants and gives them grace to do it.
Here is a method of training in discernment, in synodality, and in mission. It is not hindered by unnecessary structures and it helps Christians to look deeper and outwards to a needy world. It is surely a way to widen the space of our tent.
Select Bibliography:
– Comblin, Jose. The meaning of mission: Jesus, Christians, and the wayfaring Church. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1977.
– Donovan, Vincent J. Christianity Rediscovered: an Epistle from the Masai. Maryknoll N.Y.: Orbis, 1978.
– Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013.
– Hunermann, Peter. “Evangerlization of Europe? Observations on a Church in Peril” in Mission in the Third Millenium, Ed. Robert Schreiter. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001.