AUTHORITY AS CHARM A young village girl told me that, when I am about to talk to anyone, I picture Jesus Christ and how gracious and friendly he was to everyone.
The fear of beauty is rooted under the roots of fear
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| . I begin with stories about the Sacrament of Confirmation. Three Irish priests were huddling under their umbrellas on a strand in County Mayo. All three of reported problems with bats in their belfries, that is flying rodents in their bell towers. Didn't I shoot at them with me rifle to scare them off said one. It did no good at all at all and only damaged my belfry. The second priest said I didn't want to hurt the poor things so didn't I give them a shot of gas, put em in box and bring them over to County Tip where they have lots of bats in their belfries? And weren't they back in me tower the next day? | ||
| Ah, you don't have the right of it at all, at all, said the third. Didn't I give them a touch of the gas and then administer Confirmation to them. And I haven't seen a one of them since!In a certain parish children were being prepared for confirmation. They were denied the sacrament if a) they missed one of the twelve sessions or b) if their parents would not submit an affidavit that the children had done twenty hours of volunteer service or c)if they didn't hold their folded hands at the proper angle during practice processions -- a fine combination of the old and the new in styles of Catholic oppression. In another parish a baptized Protestant seeking to become a Catholic was consigned to the RCIA, rather a violation of the purpose of the RCIA which is supposed to be only for the unbaptized, but we'll let that pass. Before she decided to become a Catholic she went to Mass with her husband and children every Sunday. Now she was ejected from the church after the homily. She was told that she would be permitted to participate in the Eucharist only after her confirmation. | _ |
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. Two years later she was told that she was a fit candidate for
Confirmation. Then at the last moment the RCIA director decided that she was not quite
ready and would have to wait two more years for the next confirmation. The woman protested
loudly and a compromise was reached: she would be confirmed but she would not be given her
confirmation certificate until the RCIA director felt she was ready. Without the
Confirmation certificate she would still have to depart after the homily (not, alas,
before the homily) and could not receive Communion. I cite the last two stories from a
long litany of horror stories I have collected about the abuse of the laity by untrained,
authoritarian, and enthusiastic parish staff members who are determined to force
parishioners down the path of virtue. Short of a major research, I cannot argue that they
are typical. However, I can say that in many, many parishes these abuses occur and
infuriate the Catholic laity. My purpose is to suggest that the problem of authority is
experienced in the Church not so much with the authority exercised by the Vatican or the
by Chancery Offices but by the local parish. For weal or woe the laity figure that the
former two levels are far away, have no direct influence in their lives and can safely be
ignored. However, it is in the local parish where the church exercises its only remaining
power to control the lives of the people - the denial of access to the Sacraments.
Reception of Baptism, Confirmation, First Communion, and Matrimony has often been turned
into an obstacle course the laity must survive rather than experiences of grace. Many of
them come away from the experience not transformed by an encounter with grace but bitterly
angry at the church-like the bats in the third priest's belfry. I propose to suggest a
reform of authority at this local level and then argue that a similar reform should occur
up the line. Relying on the theology of John Shea and the scriptural analysis of Roland
Murphy, O.Carm I propose that the church re-model its authority to reflect God more as
final cause than as efficient cause, God as inviting, calling, attracting, instead of God
as controlling, directing, regulating, God as Omega more than Alpha, God as the one who
gathers in the fragments more than God of the Big Bang To change the quasi-philosophical
terminology by turning to the three Transcendentals, the church should put more emphasis
on the Beautiful in its exercise of authority. As von Baltassar says we apprehend first
the Beautiful and perceive that it is Good and then finally that it is True. Often, it
seems, in contemporary American Catholicism we start with the True and never get beyond
it. At the parish level this would mean that the relevant authority figures - Directors of Music, Liturgy, of Religion Education, and of RCIA - would see their authority mission as to invite, charm, and enchant the laity as they approach the sacraments instead of imposing rules and regulations, creating obstacles, and demanding compliance. Their job would not be to say, "this is what you have to do before you (or your child) have to do before you can have the sacrament" but instead "these are the resources we can make available to you as you prepare for the sacrament." Preparation for and reception of a sacrament should then become a rich and glorious celebration of the presence of Grace, a presence which would be reflected in the gracefulness of the parish staff. Preparatory classes should be optional and excellent, the kind of experience about which people would say, "that was really good, I learned a lot I didn't know about God, I'm glad I took it." (One almost never hears such comments about the present preparatory classes. If the members of the class have to take it, the instructor doesn't have to worry about the Beauty of God, the Church, and the Sacrament). Similarly the sacramental ritual itself should be elegant, moving, joyous, memorable, the kind of experience of which one can honestly say, it was so beautiful I will never forget it. This is not easily done. It requires training, time, intelligence, and money. I doubt that most parish staffs are capable of it. Moreover, many parish staff members, including it is to be feared priests, see such an approach as optional - fine if you have the time and money but not really important or necessary. They misunderstand the role of Beauty in sacramentality as reflecting God's beauty. The lay people, they will tell you (often with their eyes glowing with zeal), don't understand what Catholicism is and they do not live Catholic lives. They are secularists, consumerists, materialists. They must be converted. Preparations for the sacraments are one of the few times that we have to teach them about Christianity and the Church and change the direction of their lives. Pre-sacrament classes are something like retreats in which we aim for conversion. If there's no sign of conversion we can't let them receive the sacraments. Only Catholics can receive the sacraments and these people aren't really Catholic. Reactions such as these suggest that parish staffs have succumbed to the terrible temptation to do good, that is to impose virtue by force. Their assumptions about the religious faith of the laity are gratuitous, demeaning, patronizing - and contradicted both by the empirical data and by open-minded anecdotal contact with the laity (who are often better Catholics in many respects than their clergy). Moreover, Canon Law guarantees that the lay people have the right to receive the sacraments, a right which can be denied only on rare occasions. The addition of requirements is a violation of canon law. One cannot even demand a pre-Cana conference as a condition for the reception of the sacrament of matrimony. One can of course strongly urge participation in preparatory classes, after one has made sure that they will be well done, but one cannot insist. Furthermore, As St. Thomas has insisted, virtue is a habit acquired by the repetition of free acts. Actions which are compelled do not develop virtue. Obstacle courses don't work. It is psychologically naïve (and patently so) to assume that six classes or twelve classes or even two years of RCIA will induce fundamental changes in human behavior. In the short run brain washing (and compulsory classes are a form of, usually inefficient, brain-washing) may produce superficial effects. Long term impact, however, has to come from a change in religious environment, an exposure to the Beauty of sacramental liturgy (which is also difficult and expensive), and through that liturgy to a God who calls, who gathers together the fragments. There is no way such a long term environment can be created in a couple of weeks. Often the impact of the obstacles surrounding reception of the sacraments is negative, angry, bitter lay people whose behavior is not unlike that of the third priest's County Mayo bats. That which has been done in the name of making them better Catholics has in fact alienated them from the Church. It is no longer possible (indeed it has never been possible) to force men and women to become better Catholics There is no alternative (and there never has been) to a strategy of attracting them with Beauty. To the extent that people remain Catholic the reason is because they are caught up in the beauty of sacramental Catholicism and the stories it tells, no matter how shoddy the presentation of beauty is now inept the telling of stories. Beauty and the charm it exercises on the human personality are not options. Without them we fail. Strategically, perhaps more than ever (though only perhaps), we will communicate the Good and the True only (or mostly if one wishes) through the Beautiful. Why then do members of parish teams try to control rather than attract, dominate rather than invite, force rather than charm, push rather than call? Perhaps some of them are not very charming people and would find such an orientation difficult. However, what reason do they have to think that Church authority ought to be charming, that it ought to reflect the God that calls? Most of the examples they see of the exercise of church authority are innocent of charm. To possess some of the Church's authority is a license to control, not an invitation to invite, not a mandate to call. How else do you act in the name of the Church except by controlling people's lives? Isn't that what hierarchy is for? Why do we have to be charming parish staff when pastors and bishops and Vatican officials are not charming? I wonder often whether parish staff members and priests ought to have a course from the people who administer the Four Seasons Hotel chain on how to be friendly and attractive to the people they welcome to the sacraments. As it is now it often seems as if they have been trained by the U.S. Postal Service. ( I must note in passing that many parish priests and even many bishops do indeed reflect the God who invites, calls, charms. However among these some still see this as secondary to their obligation to control or to try to control the lives of others.) Thus I come to my main argument: There must be a reform at every level authority in the Church in which authority moves more in the direction of charm, of the final cause, of the Beauty of an incredibly attractive God, of a God who calls, even of God who tries to lure with Beauty . I do not say that all activities which might be subsumed under the rubric of efficient cause (the philosophical term is used loosely here) should be abandoned. Any community needs book-keeping and house-keeping rules, decision making executive, institutions which protect the rights and freedom of its members. Someone has to stop parish staff from abusing the rights of the laity. Someone has to protect people from sexual abuse. Someone has to launch fund-raising drives. Someone has to oversee the training of parish staff both lay and clerical. The change I propose is less drastic and (perhaps) more subtle. At every level of the Church leaders and teachers should realize that Beauty ( by which Goodness and Truth are most attractively presented) is their strongest weapon and, especially today (perhaps) the only really effective weapon for drawing the faithful closer to the Church and to the God for which the Church is a sacrament. They must understand that it will not do to appeal and invite until it does not work and then fall back on control. Rather they must persist in attraction as their only effective, long-run strategy. Obviously such a shift will be wrenching. I would suggest that their isn't much choice. Jesus was perhaps the most charming man who ever lived. People followed him because of his enormous attractiveness and the appeal of the good news he preached. (Why does the word "evangelization" on the mouths of many clerics seem so unattractive? Why does it sound so often like high-powered advertising, mixed with enthusiastic brain wash?) Jesus was, in full theological literalness, the embodiment of the God who called. Christianity spread through its early years because it was so attractive. Professor Rodney Stark has persuasively argued that Constantine's establishment of Christianity was a shrewd acceptance of an accomplished fact: Christianity was well on its way to becoming the religion of most people in the Empire. Professor Stark (who is not a Christian, or at least not a practicing one) says that the appeal of the new religion was that Christians were such good people, good indeed to their relatives and friends, but good to everyone. "By this all shall know that you are my disciples . . ." Active control of the lives of the faithful (to the extent that it was possible) came as part of the conversion of the barbarians as the Church sought to Christianize those who had been converted en mass and sometimes by the sword. Even then, Alcuin argued with Charlemagne that conversion of the Saxons by force was wrong. Moreover, wherever the Irish monks prevailed there were never any forced conversions. Rather the Irish established monasteries and monastery schools and attracted by their charm the local pagan nobility. (Whether charm is a virtue in the Irish or merely a genetically programmed trait need not detain us.) Nonetheless for centuries as the Church strove to Christianize the so-called barbarians it normally felt the need to force virtue upon them. Ironically, it was probably the beauty and the stories of Christianity which most impressed the poorly educated laity and their poorly educated clergy. Authoritative control no longer works anywhere, not even in the Northern European and the North American countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Ireland, Canada, the United States - and by extension Australia and New Zealand). In the destabilization of 19th Century Catholic structures which resulted from the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, Church hierarchy lost all remaining ability to force the consent of its members. There is no longer a secular arm, no longer even the threat of mortal sin. Men and women are Catholic on their own terms. This situation may be good or not, but it is real. Attempts to restore the docile (and it wasn't always so docile) obedience of the first half of this century cannot work because such attempts assume that the laity still concede to authority the right to demand that obedience. In fact, the confidence in and credibility of Church authority is declining rapidly in both North Atlantic and Eastern European countries. What is left of the Church's power to control? The Church can deny sacraments to the laity and violate its own laws, but the faithful will often shop for another parish where they can receive the sacraments. It can warn them that they are committing mortal sins, but the laity all over the world have reserved to themselves the right to decided what is mortal sin and what isn't. Because of the priest shortage bishops are reluctant to crack down on pastors. The Vatican can denounce a theologian, but unless he is a priest there's no way to stop him. If the objectionable theologian is lay, he can perhaps be barred from Catholic universities. But the Church has no power to do anything to a lay theologian teaching at a secular university. Control is finished. Hierarchy has no choice to fall back on the appeal of Beauty. The primary role of hierarchy, it is said, is to protect the faith. Might not rather its primary role be to present the faith in all its attractiveness and thereby protect it in the most effective way possible? Investigations and condemnations may still be necessary, but they don't have much impact and should be only a means of last resort. Those with authority, it is said, have the right to demand obedience from those under their authority. Granted for the sake of the argument that there is such a right, it seems unlikely that it can be effectively exercised (at any time or place in history) in the absence of effective sanctions. The Vatican can sanction bishops and priests and bishop can sanction priests. But there are no sanctions available that can be applied to the laity. It is unlikely therefore that this right, should it exist, can be effectively exercised. Finally, it may be argued, a pastor, a priest, a Pope should be the efficacious sign of unity in his community and therefore must strive to control, direct and regulate lest unity be lost. Calling, inviting, charming are luxuries he cannot afford. I would argue that a hierarch's most effective strategy for becoming a sign of unity is precisely to stand as a sacrament of a Church which calls and a God who calls. Let us consider the issue on the parish level by studying two pastors. Pastor Primus believes in a well regulated parish so he has rules for everything. Because it is proper liturgically, for example, he insists that bride and groom must march down the aisle together instead of meeting at the front. At a wedding rehearsal he lays down all the rules which must be followed in his parish. Several times during a wedding or funeral liturgy he warns that those who are not Catholic may not receive Communion. He is stern with the grammar school kids who, he believes, must be taught respect and discipline. He bans teenagers from the parish gym because they are destructive. He insists that he need not follow any recommendations of the parish council, the school board, or the finance committee because they are only advisory. He does not consult on mass schedules Parish liturgy is poor because he does not believe in wasting a lot of money on an organist. His homilies are long and boring. He insists on absolute obedience from the parish staff. He rarely smiles and is nervous and defensive with lay women who, he believes, want to take over the Church. He argues that his tough approach to authority in the parish is necessary to preserve unity.Pastor Secundus works for consensus and cooperation. He has his own ideas about what needs to be done in the parish but he listens, persuades, argues and even changes his mind. Rarely does he say a flat "no." He is a polished preacher and supports an extensive liturgy program. The kids claim that he is a good friend. The teens adore him. He listens, listens, listens. He likes and respects women. He is always open to new ideas. The various factions and groups in the parish are convinced he understands their problems and perspectives. Like a good precinct captain, he tries to keep everyone happy and usually does. At wedding rehearsals, he turns to the bride (and the bride's mother) and asks, "How do you folks want to do this?" When faced with difficulties, his first words are, "Let's see how we can work this out." He seems a genuinely happy, secure and joyous man who likes being a parish priest and likes people. Occasionally he will whisper to someone who thinks he ought to be tougher, "Ah sure, don't you catch more flies with honey?" Which pastor is a more efficacious sign of unity in his parish? Cannot the themes latent in this typology be applied up the hiearchical line, even to the very top? The two volumes of the history of the Vatican Council by Komonchak and Alberigo describe the resistance of the Curial opponents to the convening of the Council as based on the fear that the Church ought not to trust the bishops of the world and the theologians and the laity because all were infected by the evil doctrines which permeate the modern world - even though the bishops were men of the Curia's own choosing. If the old mechanisms of control were abandoned, the Church would be overwhelmed. That attitude has not, incidentally, completely disappeared in Rome. For weal or woe, however, the old methods of control were destabilized by the Council and no longer operate and will never operate again. Control is finished. There seems no alternative to charm which reveals Charm.
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