LAUDATO SI'

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I have blogged on some of the talks in this excellent series and the one advertised above is the last in the current season.

It was by Philip McDonagh, who I knew was a diplomat but did not know he was also a poet and playwrite. And I certainly wouldn't have predicted that he would be giving a learned talk on Pope Francis's world view as revealed in the Pope's encyclicals and others of his documents.

We had some few years ago a talk from Paul Vallely on the then newly elected Pope Francis which concentrated very much on his life experiences and his assumed dark night of the soul which transformed him from an anti liberation theology ideologue into a caring and thoughtful pastor.

The emphasis in this talk was quite different. Philip was examining the Pope's analysis of the world situation as he saw it, its causes, its characteristics and possible ways forward.

Needless to say the Pope's analysis was couched in religious terms but taking out God and religion still left you with a robust secular analysis. That's mine and not Philip's remark.

This was quite an extraordinary talk for its breadth and depth. Philip has trawled through and reflected on the Pope's various documents and has attempted to bring us a summary synthesis of what Francis is about. Clearly this does not convey the whole, in the sense that one would be better to read the documents and reflect on them oneself. In other words, follow Philip's own journey.

Nevertheless Philip has given us a worthy map or guide for so doing and if we don't get around to it then we have in his talk an adequate representation and sufficient material for reflection and discernment in relation to Francis's approach. Hopefully the full talk will be published soon.

Meanwhile I am committing what I hope is not a mortaller in distilling further, and commenting on, Philip's talk. It is well to state at the outset that Philip is not entering into discussion on specific theological or pastoral issues, even where he may refer to them in passing. His aim is to convey the broad sweep of Francis's thinking and in this I think he has succeeded admirably. Whether anyone is listening to the message and is prepared to act on it is another matter entirely.

My approach here is to refer to some of the elements in Philip's talk accompanied by comments of my own. I hope I am not doing Philip an injustice in my selection from his selection from Pope Francis.

Text starting from the left margin is mine. That with a single indent and in italics is Philip's. And that with a double indent but without italics is the Pope's direct.

I was aware of Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' but was under the impression that it dealt solely with the environment, particularly knowing that Seán McDonagh was said to have contributed to it. Philip, however, has shown us the breadth of the issues it deals with and I hope he'll forgive me for an extensive quote from his talk:

Laudato Si’, published in May 2015, offers a dramatic and original perspective on global affairs through this ecological lens. For Pope Francis, humanity is now at odds with nature in an unsustainable way. The encyclical deals in a scientific spirit with a whole range of issues including waste disposal, the warming of the climatic system, the destruction of ecosystems, the pressures that lead to mass migration, water quality and the control of water by multinational businesses, the loss of biodiversity, the over-exploitation of forests and oceans, new forms of social breakdown and social aggression, the role of the digital media, the disintegration of cities, weapons development, debt and the financial crisis; all this accompanied by a relative absence of leadership, laws, and political planning. Running through the whole picture are disturbing images of pollution and economic inequality.

Taking just one aspect of the modern world, I have been struck by how the choice of how to approach the economy is usually presented in binary form. Either regulate everything (USSR model) or regulate nothing (USA model). I note how both these approaches result in their own form of oligarchs.

My own view is for the social market economy where strong regulation is in place at a very high level, reflecting the social preferences of the community. Then the market is allowed to perform its distributive, resource allocation and incentive functions within this framework. This, I think, is compatible with Philip's take on the Pope:

Auditing the mechanisms of the economy from a well-rounded human perspective is essential for what Pope Francis has called ‘redemptive change.’

Achieving the well rounded human perspective, or agreeing the rules, is not so easy. This is big stuff going way beyond the market and the economy. And here Francis is insistent on the role of dialogue, the widest possible dialogue:

Pope Francis is deeply interested in dialogue. Laudato Si’ has passages on dialogue on the environment in the international community; dialogue for new national and local policies; dialogue and transparency in decision-making; politics and economy in dialogue; and religions in dialogue with science. Elsewhere the Pope calls for inter-generational dialogue; inter-cultural dialogue; and inter-religious dialogue. In his address on the occasion of the conferral of the Charlemagne Prize in May 2016, Pope Francis states that ‘peace will be lasting in the measure that we arm our children with the weapons of dialogue.’

This quote from Laudato Si' gives an idea of what is behind the Pope's thinking on the dialogue bit:

If the laws are to bring about significant, long-lasting effects, the majority of the members of society must be adequately motivated to accept them (211)

This is like the idea of sensus fidei when it comes to the promulgation of religious dogma or edicts. You have to bring the bulk of the faithful along with you for the edict to not only be obeyed but for it to have any validity. We come across the same distinction when differentiating between simple majority rule and the more complex concept of democracy. It's a distinction that people often find difficult to grasp and that suits their rulers just nicely.

As this advice is emanating from the leader of the Roman Catholic Church it is necessary to mention specifically inclusion of the oft neglected fifty per cent:

At the levels of both principles and ethics, room will have to be found for a dialogue on women’s equality and any lingering assumption that leadership in the different sectors is for a vir bonus, a ‘good man,’ as opposed to a ‘good person.’

And then, even when we get agreed rules they cannot bind everyone absolutely. There clearly has to be room left for individual moral choice, or in RC terms, following your informed conscience.

Discernment is essential, first, because the inner and true nature of any political situation is often not adequately captured by any rule.

Or, as Francis puts it in another way in Amoris Laetitia:

[natural law cannot be] presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject; rather it is a source of objective inspiration for the deeply personal process of making decisions (305)

At the same time we cannot afford to let ourselves be carried away with a sense of our own righteousness at the end of this process:

We might listen to the ancient Greeks: hubris is the archetypal human folly, against which a spontaneous reaction of shame is one of the last lines of defence.

And to put it another way in the vein of "Eternal vigilance is the price of peace":

There are signs that complacency about the state of our societal values can undermine democracy itself.

Philip quotes the Pope's four rules, which I haven't the space to elaborate here:

Time is greater than space
Unity prevails over conflict
Realities are more important than ideas
The whole is greater than the part

And Philip indulges in a little speculation here:

It would be a good exercise to try to imagine a non-violent strategy based on the Pope’s four principles for Israel and its neighbours; for the two Koreas and East Asia; or in any other current crisis.

There is clearly scope for reform, in both attitudes and actions in a lot of aspects of the modern world and Philip has listed a series of ten questions we might ask ourselves. I have just chosen three below by way of illustrationn:

The scope for aggiornamento is evident from the following questions:

2. Do we agree with Pope Francis that where economic decisions impact on others, governments have responsibilities – regarding, for example, our decisions on interest rates?

8. Do we accept that markets need a political context and a culture of trust that they themselves are incapable of producing and what are the implications of this for a values-led approach to security?

10. What are the political responsibilities of those who create platforms on the Internet?

Philip has set forth his own ideas for the future. These pick up very much on Francis's idea of dialogue and Philip's own experience as a diplomat who has been involved in significant and sensitive negotiations on the international front. These envisage a regional approach to widely based stakeholder dialogue.

As far as Ireland is concerned:

In Ireland’s case, to support a new multilateral, multi-stakeholder forum for ‘region-building’ through a deepening of principles and values would be to build on policy foundations that are already there.

And given what's going on here at the moment I should include the following:

In Laudato Si’ (120), Pope Francis states that ‘concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion.’

There followed a lively Q&A where Philip gave substantial answers to questions put and to remarks made.

My attitude at a lot of talks is that I'll wait and see the take up on the Q&A and if it looks like dipping, or not even starting, I'll make an intervention. That was my intention on the night here and it seemed to be flagging after one contribution. That didn't surprise me in a way as the talk, although challenging, had been quite comprehensive.

Anyway I decided to put in my tuppence worth and asked Philip for his reaction to the following. Given that there is a need for change in the church, is it not anomalous that those priests at the vanguard of change have been silenced while dissident cardinals doing everything in their power to oppose change are still at large.

Philip's answer, as I understood it, was that this wasn't really on topic as far as his talk was concerned and anyway it would not be acceptable for priests in their official teaching role to be undermining current church teaching.

I think I must have started something as the next comment was particularly critical of the church's treatment of the late Fr. Seán Fagan.

You might like to supplement this post by reading Philip's article in the Irish Times which sets the wider stage and reflects on his own experience.

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Posts on previous talks:
Michael Jackson, John Coolahan, John McDade SJ, Jim Corkery SJ, John Bruton, Margaret McCurtain, Paul Vallely, Ruth Patterson, Michael Burrows, Richard Clarke, Pat Storey

Tony's Tribulations

Tony Flannery
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It's a while now since I mentioned Tony Flannery and no doubt people are wondering how he is bearing up under CDF abuse.

For those who have not been following the story, Fr. Tony was taken to task for his views on a variety of, relatively minor, issues by the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the Holy Office and before that The Inquisition). These concerned, inter alia, homosexuality, the origins of the priesthood and possible ordination of women. Not exactly earth shattering, but I suspect there were some other trickier issues such as the Real Presence, hovering in the background.

Anyway Fr. Tony came up with a statement with seemed agreeable to the CDF and all was set for a kiss and make-up when the head of the CDF, Cardinal Levada, retired and was replaced by the hard line German, Cardinal Mueller. Fr. Tony was now expected to sign a blank cheque, as it were, swearing allegiance to the teaching of the Church as presently construed and in all its minutiae. He baulked at that, was not supported by his Order, the Redemptorists (REDS), and has been out of ministry and supposedly silenced ever since. There was some hope of a compromise when Pope Francis acceded to the throne of Peter but he is a festina lente man, quite cautious in practice, and currently in the throes of a civil war within the Vatican administration.

Latest vibes from the CDF and the REDS are that Fr. Tony now faces a choice between unconditional surrender or spending the rest of his life out of ministry and probably having to find another way to earn his living at the age of 68. And that's where we're at today.

While he has had to put up with a lot of sniping, including an imposter trying to undermine him on Twitter, Fr. Tony has said that, despite all the difficulties, his recent period of "exile" has been a fruitful one. He has got a lot of support from those, including colleagues, who know in their heart and soul that the Church will have to change if it is to have any meaningful future. He was one of the founders of the Association of Catholic Priests. He has published a book detailing his position and his appalling treatment by the Vatican (CDF). He has just come back from a speaking tour in America which has deepened his understanding of the reform movement.

And he has tweeted his two most recent radio interviews. The first of these was on an American faith station, where a very capable interviewer put him through his paces. This was immediately followed by an interview with a young traditional whippersnapper of a Dominican, who was also put through his paces, but who, in my view, came immeasurably worse out of it. [Tony is 2mins 40secs in and Thomas Petri is 19mins 11secs into the broadcast]. The second of these interviews was with Áine Lawlor on RTÉ radio this morning[9mins 18secs into broadcast]. It was a sympathetic interview which would make your blood boil and your heart cry at the same time.

When the American radio station tweeted a link to their programme the whippersnapper shot back:

On reading Fr. Tony's reply, the whippersnapper immediately deleted his own tweet. Unfortunately for him I had taken a screen shot (above). Otherwise it would not have been clear what Fr. Tony was replying to. He then replied to Fr. Tony (below):

I took him to task for deleting his original tweet (above) and he accepted that he had been thinking of the wrong priest, this one, rather than Fr. Tony. Really sloppy stuff from a Dominican academic.

Anyway, the big question now for Fr. Tony is: does he follow his conscience or buckle. Unfortunately, in an ideal world, or one in the spirit of Jesus, he would not have to face this dilemma. Pre-Vatican II questioners were silenced etc. but were brought back into the Council as periti. People had then thought that the Church would henceforth be able to accommodate questioning or even dissent as it trod the path less traveled into the future. However the old ways reasserted themselves and the big stick has been persistently waved ever since.

The traditional Church attitude to conscience was that you were obliged to follow your informed conscience, and that following this informed conscience took precedence over everything else, including the teaching of the Church. Pope Benedict, in his younger days, taught this.

Even if we accept this view there remain two issues: (i) what exactly is an informed conscience, and (ii) if you have one which is in conflict with the perceived teaching of the Church, are you obliged to follow it out of the Church.

The American whippersnapper, and Fr. Vincent Twomey of this parish, take the view that the proof of an informed conscience is that it leads to an endorsement of existing Church teaching. The Church can never be wrong, therefore any conscience which is in conflict with it is not sufficiently informed. So that part of the problem is defined away. Then if your conscience is in conflict with the Church, you either change your conscience or get out. QED.

+John (Charles), +Connie (Lucey) & +Michael (Browne) are surely locked in a St. Valentine's Day embrace in Heaven (or wherever they are) at that one. You will have noticed that this line of reasoning precludes any change in, or evolution of, Church doctrine initiated from within the Church itself.

Fr. Petri's Twitter banner

Although I had never heard of him before today, I was trying to figure the whippersnapper out. I sense a bit of insecurity there. He is pompous in his presentation, soaks up adulation and has a bevvy of uniformed nuns, listening to him expostulating on the annunciation, in his Twitter banner. Nuff said.

Untying the Knots

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I have reported previously on talks in St. Mary's, Haddington Road, in what has now become known as the Patrick Finn series of lectures. It is to St. Mary's credit that these talks have been of a high standard and have been followed by a no-holds-barred Q&A session.

Last night was no exception and we were treated to a very interesting talk on Pope Francis, by Paul Vallely, who has researched the pope's life in depth and has written a revealing and authoritative book on the pontiff.

The first thing we learn is that there are two Jorge Bergoglios.

The first was such a died in the wool traditionalist and strict disciplinarian that he totally messed up anything he put his hand to in his clerical roles in Argentina, so much so that he had to be got out of the country. It took three subsequent Jesuit provincials to undo the damage he had done to that order in Argentina.

This man was accused of collaborating with the Argentinian junta and specifically of betraying two members of his Jesuit order to the military who inflicted severe torture on both of them.

This man used his power to quash any attempts to bring liberation theology to bear on the plight of the poor and marginalised.

But somewhere along the way, and with no small help from his sojourn abroad and his subsequent banishment to Argentina's second city, Cordoba, hundreds of miles from the capital, he went through the dark night of the soul and emerged a different man.

The second Jorge Bergoglio

This second man was still a conservative as far as doctrine was concerned, but his whole approach to his mission in life had changed and he now not only embraced liberation theology but became the "bishop of the slums". He threw away the trappings of office and lived a life as close to that of an ordinary person as he could.

It is this second man we now have as Pope. Humble by design, a skillful political operator, and a man who hopes to reform the Catholic church and put it in a position to carry out its original religious mission.

He is sending out ambiguous signals, both to avoid confrontation, and to give himself room for manoeuvre. He leaves Müller in charge of the CDF, gives Maradiaga his head, and tells the USA nuns to ignore the same CDF. Unfortunately, in his wish to avoid confrontation, he is unlikely to undo any of the silencing imposed by the CDF under previous pontiffs, so Tony Flannery's analysis, that the ball is now in the court of the Orders' Superiors, is correct.

Fr. Franz Jalics

He just might have become Pope in 2005, but any possibility of this was effectively scuppered by the circulation of accusations of ineptitude and betrayal. The Cardinals, then assembled in Rome for the Conclave, were reminded of his "betrayal" to the Junta of the two Jesuits under his command, Fathers Yorio and Jalics. Subsequent judgement suggests that while his actions may well have contributed to the arrest and torture of the men, he did not consciously give them up to the military, though he should have foreseen the likely consequences of what he did. When he ordered his Jesuits to pull out of any involvement with liberation theology and cease the social work they had been doing, these two priests refused. He was incensed and got the bishop to revoke their faculties. It appears the military interpreted this as a signal that it would be safe to move against the men and so they were arrested and tortured. Fr. Yorio is dead but (the new) Francis has recently been reconciled with Fr. Jalics who runs a retreat centre in Germany.

Paul Vallely drew attention to the symbolism of Francis's actions. As he remarked, symbolism is very important to a church which has its sacraments. And Francis has been sending some mighty signals, from his eschewing the papal apartments in favour of a flat, to his dispensing with most of the ornaments of papal office. In place of the ornate gold bejewelled crosses of previous pontiffs he wears a pewter cross with the motif of a simple shepherd tending his flock under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

The Pope's pewter cross

So what of the future? Well, it remains to be seen if this man can reform centuries of clericalism and make the universal church relevant to ordinary people.

He comes from a region where the church is growing, and, no doubt, hopes to translate that success from a local into a universal success story.


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Posts on previous talks:

Michael Jackson, John Coolahan, John McDade SJ, Jim Corkery SJ, John Bruton, Margaret McCurtain

A Question of Conscience

I first came across Tony Flannery in a piece of his writing on the website of the Association of Catholic Priests, of which he was a co-founder, offering the opinion that the then upcoming International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) in Dublin would be an opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church to pursue the theme of repentance and humility and avoid any of the triumphalism which dominated the last Dublin IEC in 1932. A rock of a sensible suggestion, I thought at the time.

Did the hierarchy pay a whit of attention to this good advice. Not at all. They went out and got brand new bespoke uniforms (vestments to you) for all the clerical participants and had a right extravagant Communio Fest. Mind you, their use of media, including social media, was first class professional, really. Had the message matched up to the quality of the dress and the media we might have been getting somewhere.

The day after I first came across Fr. Flannery, I read a piece in the Irish Catholic newspaper which said he had been silenced by the Vatican and his regular column in the Redemptorist magazine Reality had been pulled.

There followed a good eighteen months when none of us knew what Fr. Flannery's status was, and in the course of which it came to light that other priests had been silenced, not least Fr. Seán Fagan, an inspirational theologian now ageing and in bad health.

Fr. Flannery eventually came to the conclusion that, despite various attempts on his part to satisfy the outrageous demands of the Inquisition (now the Vatican Curial Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - CDF), there was no satisfying them, so he unsilenced himself and gave interviews and wrote articles about his case, and he has now written a book which sums it all up. The book publishes the texts of his correspondence with the Superior of his Order (who was, in effect, a Vatican proxy) and it attempts to explain the context of the views and remarks of his on foot of which he was being condemned.

Among the reasons for his coming to the conclusion that he would never be allowed return to ministry, was the conviction that he was simply being used as a pawn in a wider Vatican game to undermine the newly formed Association of Catholic Priests, of which he was a co-founder and member of the leadership team, and whose independence scared the bejaysus out of the Vatican.

His book is a bloodboiling read, all the more so if you have heard him interviewed on radio or tv. How such a holy man could be so outrageously treated by the Church to which he had given some forty years of sterling service is unbelievable. The saga is a testimony to the unfitness for office of all of those he has come up against.

Funnily enough, the present Pope, Francis, seems to endorse this view in his recent interview. He says, among other things, that

the dicasteries [departments] of the Roman Curia are at the service of the pope and the bishops. They must help both the particular churches and the bishops’ conferences. They are instruments of help. In some cases, however, when they are not functioning well, they run the risk of becoming institutions of censorship. It is amazing to see the denunciations for lack of orthodoxy that come to Rome. I think the cases should be investigated by the local bishops’ conferences, which can get valuable assistance from Rome. These cases, in fact, are much better dealt with locally. The Roman congregations are mediators; they are not middlemen or managers.
[my emphasis]

And now that the cat is out of the bag, the courageous Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, is echoing these sentiments. Pity he didn't say this earlier, if that's what he really thinks.

Meanwhile the question now is: has Fr. Flannery blown it, or will he benefit retrospectively from the Pope's views. His own view is that the Pope's intervention has effectively emasculated the CDF and that his fate is now in the hands of his Redemptorist superiors.

Among the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which he has suffered in the interim was a crude attempt to impersonate and discredit him on Twitter.

With the help and advice of good friends and supporters, he got the imposter "silenced". Slight irony there?

ACP founders, (l-r) Frs. Flannery, Hoban and McDonagh

Anyway, the book is a great read. It is sold out at most outlets and is going into its second run, which should appear next week. I hope to see it going viral, translated into many languages, and on the curriculum of all seminaries (while such institutions last), first as a warning and eventually, hopefully, on the history shelves.