Intervention of Most
Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin
It is often said that asking the right
question is as important as giving the right answer. Monsignor
Giussani has certainly asked the right question. He has asked
a question and he has challenged us to put that question to ourselves
and others.
It is question to which we must be able to give a convincing answer
when we speak about the Church, both to our own people and others
who are indifferent or alienated from the Church. But it is a
question that the Church, as it were, has also to put to itself
in order to arrive at a pastoral practice which will reflect what
the Church truly is.
“Why the Church” is an all important question for
the Church in Ireland. Census figures show that religious affiliation
in Ireland remains very high by European standards. This applies
to a wide range of parameters. But one can notice a drop in the
number of those attending regular Sunday Mass and in some areas
in Dublin this drop is quite dramatic. What is this saying to
us and how do we interpret it? What answer are people giving to
the question “Why the Church?”
Since my return to Dublin just less than a year ago, I have been
asking myself and others what will the Church in Dublin look like
in ten or twenty years time? The Church remains the same and yet
the Church changes. I can say, for example, that I entered the
Dublin diocesan seminary in 1962, a few days before the opening
of the Second Vatican Council, and that I left that seminary seven
years later, into a different Ireland and a very different Church.
The external structures of the Church inevitably vary from culture
to culture, from historical situation to historical situation.
I have said on another occasion that for generations the Church
in Ireland was very much a doing Church. For a whole series of
circumstances the Church assumed a multitude of responsibilities
in society, and fulfilled them at times very well and at other
times clearly less well. Most of my generation of priests entered
the seminary to do something for people. We were impressed by
priests who were good and mirrored goodness in everything they
did. Most of us were very surprised when we entered the seminary
and the first thing we were asked to do was philosophy, not quite
the material for an action-oriented teenager.
Many who come from an epoch when people looked to the Church as
a doer must ask themselves today anew “why the Church?”
In my youth, someone who wanted to work for and with people found
the priesthood one of the most attractive forms of response. Today
there are so many ways in which one can be involved in shaping
the future of society and enabling people to realize their God-given
potential or in releasing people from the forces which imprison
them. Many of the things which the Church did in the past are
being done just as well or even better by other community organizations.
In many cases, it must be added, the quality of that work is due
to the efforts of people who draw much of their commitment from
their Christian faith, but who realize that faith in action within
structures which are not Church structures.
But the mission of the Church is in the first place about the
inward journey. It is about bringing people to Christ and helping
them to discover through this encounter with Christ their own
dignity and worth. It is a mission to lead us towards the depths
of what our existence is about, though reaching towards the heights
of transcendence. The Church is about being rather than doing.
It is about encountering Jesus, the human incarnation of God,
who leads me to discover what I am searching for in my life and
who offers me meaning and hope in my everyday existence. It is
when I abandon myself to Jesus that I fully find myself. It is
when I know Jesus that I most fully understand humanity.
The encounter with Jesus is always, of course, an encounter with
his gratuitous love. Being a member of the Church, means being
one who allows that gratuitous love to work through me. It means
trying to mirror that love in my life, even though my efforts
will always be imperfect and limited by egoism, self-centeredness
and sin.
Asking the question, then, “Why the Church?” should
help us focus on the essentials of being Church. If we do not
understand the essential Christ-centred nature of the Church,
then the Church will appear to many as just a mixed bag of providing
welfare, of being nice to people, of doing good and having a number
of values. If that is all the Church is then it becomes just one
benevolent organization along side others.
Christian faith is much more than that. It is that “much
more” which is what makes Christianity attractive! It is
a radical option to allow ourselves to be loved by Jesus and to
share that love totally with others, who become our brothers and
sisters in the Lord. It is in a new space of mutual giving, of
welcoming and receiving one another in which God appears present
to us. That is the significance of the words of Jesus in Saint
Matthew: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there
I am among them” (Mt 17, 20).
The act of faith must be a free individual choice. It is a free
choice to follow the path of Jesus. Christian faith, however,
is not just an individual question. Mons. Giussani stresses very
much the role of the Christian community. The Church founded by
Jesus is founded on the community of believers. This community
is not any ordinary community, but one shaped by Jesus himself,
with its own special characteristics. It is a communion. Mons.
Giussani teases out in a fascinating way a number of lessons we
can learn for today’s Church from looking more closely at
that original community of the believers in Jesus Christ.
In the brief period of time allowed me, I would like to set out
just one or two of the reflections which struck me most, as I
in turn reflect on the future of the Church in Dublin
The first aspect which struck me might seem so obvious as not
to need repeating. The Church is a religious reality. I can only
understand the Church when I have a mature understanding of what
that religious nature means. Giussani notes that “if the
religious aspect has not been sparked into life or is childishly
retarded, it will make it difficult for me to judge the religious
fact objectively, with a critical eye” (p.6).
I would like to make three comments on that.
Firstly, many of the criticisms of the Church are made on the
basis of applying non-religious criteria to a religious reality.
The non-believer is certainly free to criticize the Church or,
for that matter, to express appreciation of what the Church does,
and to do so from his or her own viewpoint. He cannot be expected
to do otherwise. But criticism of the Church which does not attempt
to understand its religious character can never really address
the reality of the Church, just as criticism in the field of physics
or economics must show at least minimum appreciation to the laws
of physics or economics.
It is curious that the chances of a religious leader getting coverage
of an address or talk in the media today is almost in inverse
proportion to the level of the specifically religious content
of the talk! The “good news” apparently is not news!
But religious leaders’ views on nearly anything else seem
always to make the headlines.
My second comment is that, of course, at times religious leaders
themselves must take some of the blame for this. History shows
us that there is a recurring real danger for Church leaders to
allow other factors to overshadow the specific religious nature
of the Church and indeed of their own mission. This can happen
by being overly political, overly paternalistic or overly populist.
It can happen by allowing the structure of the Church to drift
towards being more a replica of any public organization rather
than appearing as a communion of faith, a communion of worship,
a communion of service and a communion of mission.
At a later point in the book, Giussani stresses that faith is
about freedom. “The Christian ideal will be actuated only
to the degree that a Christian, with all his or her freedom, chooses”
(p.134). An authoritarian Church style is an attempt to deprive
the believer of his or her own maturity in the faith. It is often
an attempt to impose faith on people or even worse to impose things
that are not essential to the faith. This happens when Church
leaders drift into an authoritarian mode.
This can result from good intentions and from very different motivations.
It is useful to remember that there is “conservative authoritarianism”
and “progressive authoritarianism”! Even in a secularized
era, for example, people to look to the Church for moral guidance
and prophetic comment. But not every critical comment or opinion
by an ecclesiastic is prophecy. Church leaders have to respect
the freedom and maturity of Church members and remember that they
can only bind a person in conscience on those matters which are
in some way closely derived from the Gospel message, as the Gospel
is read in Church tradition.
The Church can have no political manifesto, even though it might
be popular to have one in some cases, especially if it were to
criticize certain political figures. Beyond the central issues
which derive from the Gospel, I cannot impose a particular political
line in areas where persons should be free to make their own responsible
decisions. This does not imply that the Church has nothing to
say on the realities of the world. The recent Apostolic Exhortation
Pastores Gregis, on the role of the Bishop, stresses the prophetic
role of the Bishop in the face of the challenges of the time.
The Bishop is called “a prophet of justice” (#66).
One of the principle ways in which he carries out this mission
is by unmasking false visions of human relationships and providing
criteria for judgment which come from the “radicalism of
the Gospel”. The Bishop can indicate what appears to be
the more likely line of conduct which will lead to the realization
of Gospel values. He can indicate the fundamental Gospel principles
which should guide the behaviour of Christian.
And this leads me to my third comment. The road to change in the
Church is always the path to conversion and evangelization. It
is the road along which the Gospel is preached in its essentials
and people are called to “Repent and believe in the Gospel”
(Mt. 3, 2).
When I talk about this path, I am always reminded of the path
of the disciples with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Conversion
and evangelization are the task of and for all in the Church.
We are all called, like those disciples, to journey with Jesus,
and to enter deeper and deeper into his mystery. The disciples
set out from what is so often the position of many: the factual,
almost journalistic account, of an observer. They ask: “Are
you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things
that have taken place” (Lk 24,19). As the journey goes on,
Jesus begins to explain and interpret the scriptures about himself
and their hearts burn as they begin to understand. Finally they
fully recognize the Lord in the breaking of Bread in the Eucharistic
communion.
In our Church we will have people whose links with and understanding
of Jesus will be varied. There will be persons on different levels
of faith. There will be those who remain on the level of the observable
without deeper commitment; there will be those who ask questions
and who bit by bit become more impassioned and committed; there
will be those who come to the knowledge of Jesus and his mission
through the full communion in the Eucharist.
The Church will always be a communion of sinners and saints, of
those who reach a mature faith and of those who remain blocked
at some stage. Evangelization means helping all to move to a deeper
and closer relationship with Jesus and through that relationship
encountering themselves and what makes their “heart burn”.
The Church is not simply institution like any another administration.
Its membership rules will have to be flexible in embracing those
who sincerely seek Jesus and who take steps to deepen that embrace.
We cannot ask for a “certificate of saintliness” before
membership!.
Let me move on to another reflection of Mons. Giussani. In a very
genial way he draws our attention to another paradox which makes
it once again difficult to fit the Church into normal administrative
structures. It is the paradox of the divine channelled by human
reality. “What characterizes the Christian mystery is the
revelation of the fact that God communicates himself to humanity
through human persons, through human life”. How can finite
men and women witness adequately to the God who is transcendence
and absolute? The messenger would appear to be totally inadequate
to the message he or she is asked to bring. Will the messenger
not inevitably misled the seeker?
Saint Paul is clearly aware of the disproportion that is involved
in the task. He repeats to the Corinthians (1 Cor 2, 4) that he
came among them in weakness, in fear and great trembling. He can
only repeat then that what he spoke and proclaimed was not meant
to convince by philosophical argument but to demonstrate the convincing
power of the Spirit.
There is a similar affirmation in a work by Karl Rahner dealing
with the priesthood but which applies also to the Church. “Persons
are offended when someone appears to do God’s business and
still is only a human. They want messengers who speak more brilliantly,
heralds who preach more persuasively, hearts that burn with a
hotter flame… But what is the terrible and happy truth?
Those who come are weak persons, who live in fear and trembling
and must pray over and over ‘Lord, I believe, help my unbelief’
and who must beat their breasts ‘Lord be merciful to me
a sinner’” (Meditations on the Sacraments p.61). And
yet these same weak persons preach the faith that conquers the
world and bring the grace that makes redeemed saints out of lost
sinners!
Giussani and Rahner stress the fact that the preacher must preach
not himself or herself but Jesus Christ. The evangelizer will
only be effective when he or she clearly speaks in Jesus’
name.
Giussani goes even that little bit further with a wonderful insight:
“If the divine chooses the human as a means of self communication,
then the one who accepts this method, the Christian, becomes and
remains just that: at once an instrument of the divine, but also
a human who maintains his or her own particular temperament”
(p. 129). It is unusual to speak of human temperament as an instrument
of evangelization. But it is useful to realize that evangelization
is not mono-colour! God transforms human qualities and permits
the communication of God to be incarnated in human temperament.
Human temperament is a condition which God accepts and transforms
into an instrument. In this sense every individual Christian is
called to be an instrument of evangelization, with their name,
their history, their hopes and dreams. We all have our talents
and each of us can bring our own witness to Jesus. We should not
be afraid of the new when it comes to methods of evangelization.
To do otherwise would somehow be to affirm that some method has
a monopoly on evangelization. The Church must however be rich
in the diversity of humankind which is its own way a revelation
of God.
The Church is fundamentally communion and belonging. It is communion
with Jesus and belonging to his mystical body. The members of
that body become his people. The early Church understood itself
as a communion invested with strength from on high. The coming
of the Spirit was a foundational dimension of the already existing
community of the disciples of Jesus. They were very much aware
that their lives had been jolted by the gift of the Spirit. “This
gift from on high, Giussani points out, “is not to be considered
a mechanical extraneous investiture” (p.89). He presents
it rather as a new level of self awareness, a new personality
which is born into them, into their hearts. The members of the
Christian community remain themselves, but they are changed into
newness by the radical newness of the gospel.
This new personality also gives them the ability to preach the
newness which Jesus brought into the world. This new personality
means that the message of Jesus is so integrated into their person
that they become prophets of the significance of the world and
the value of life. Jesus is with them with strength and wisdom.
The early disciples were very much aware that their lives had
been jolted by the gift of the Spirit and jolted not just as individuals
but as a community. You cannot be a solo Christian. Gathering
is always a dimension of the Church. Christianity is not an individual
comparative study of values where I pick and choose what I like
and where I go it alone. Christianity is challenge, the antidote
to the individualism and the utilitarianism of modern culture.
Someone who is trapped in an individualist and utilitarian logic
will inevitable ask the question “Why the Church?”,
and feel that really there is no need for it. If the individual
is the primary unit of society and my fulfilment becomes the criterion
for fulfilment and interaction, then there is no need for the
Church as community.
Giussani emphasizes especially that the community of the disciples
is a particular one, it is communion. And he develops the concept
of communion in terms of sharing in joint ownership (cf. p. 95).
What is shared in joint ownership is the fact that Jesus Christ
is the fundamental reason for living. As Giussani notes; “The
property the first Christians shared was the mystery of Christ.
This was at the root of their fellowship. It was not a joint ownership
is the sense of power sharing. The only key to fellowship was
the Lord “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim
to you also that you may have fellowship with us and our fellowship
is with the Father and his only son Jesus Christ” (cf. 1
John 1, 1-7)
That fellowship is not something which can remain closed. What
the disciples have seen and heard they must proclaim. The disciples
are called to proclaim the good news to those they have not yet
known. Their task is to make the name and the message of Jesus
known in every corner of the world and to every new generation.
The motto is “Go: teach all the nations”. The Church
is always a community of mission. Giussani quotes from De Lubac
“The Church only became self aware when it was aroused to
the missionary task its Founder had indicated and it was mainly
though this task that it was revealed to its own eyes”.
This must apply to Church today. It is only when the Church is
outgoing, is missionary, that it will grasp what it is and what
is its mission. A tired, stagnant Church will only loose the essence
of its own identity. A safe, careful Church will fossilize in
its own safety. The Gospel is not the text of yesterday. It brings
a radical newness to every generation. Failure to recognize that
and to have the courage to “put out into the deep”
is in the long term a failure of faith.
The Church must be an enthusiastic Church. Faith is always a leap
into the unknown. It is a risk. It is the risk to open ourselves
to the gratuitous love of God, which is grace. The grace, which
we in no way merit, is as Giussani notes “of divine value,
since only the self communication of the divine is totally gratuitous”.
Opening ourselves to that grace we realize what the Church is,
as Giussani defines in the last sentence of the book: “What
the Church intends to teach us to do is to expand our capacity
as individuals along a road of freedom, and to seek and experience
the truth to which the Church introduces. This forms the outline
in time of the authentic stature of human beings, constantly thirsting
for reality, for true being” (p.234).
There are many who ask the question “Why the Church?"
because they wish to be critical of the Church. If we interpret
the mission of the Church as Giussani has, then all of us, and
especially we as believers, should asking “Why the Church?”
so that we can answer “We need the Church; we need that
encounter with Jesus who reveals ourselves to ourselves”
– and in that way our answer as individuals and as community
will be authentic!
Ireland
