In a really brilliant post by Amy Welborn, tongue-in-cheek titled Synodicalisminity, she referred to a previous post, But do you gird your loins and quoted from it:
The greatest irony about this irony-stuffed Synod on Synodality is fundamental and glaring. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
It’s this:
Anxiously desiring to show that it’s a listening Church, institutional church leaders perfectly demonstrate that they aren’t listening.
In short:
Take a look at the world around you. If your first response to the seeking, pain, suffering and questions that’s glaring evident at every level of society, in almost every home and even every heart is: let’s have a meeting on Church process and structure….you’re not listening.
This time around, reading this, this struck me even more. Just at the surface and rather petty level, “Listening Church”, always struck me the wrong way. It has the ring of political jargon. Politicians often go on listening tours and then change policies based on what they heard. Oops, I misstated that. They go on listening tours and change nothing regarding their policy. They pretend to listen to show how much they care and then do exactly what they wanted.
Do I have a jaundice view of the synodal process and see this same phenomenon? Unfortunately, yes. I try to temper that skeptical attitude and know that there have been places where local synods seem much closer to the ideal. Most of the coverage I have seen, from what I consider solid news sources without pre-determined hot takes, confirms my skepticism.
As a retired Navy chief, I think of metaphors in that vein. I think of the situation in the Church as an “all hands on deck” situation. Most Catholics in the world don’t go to Mass regularly, if at all. The ones who do often have an inadequate understanding of fundamental Church teaching. The views Catholics hold, in general, fall right along secular/political lines. There is just not a Catholic distinctive, for example, divorce and abortion rates.
“When the Church does not go out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential; she grows ill (like the stooped woman in the Gospel). Evangelii Gaudium | Francis
There is so much pain and isolation in the modern world with a lack of understanding of the human person in the image and likeness of God. They are desperate for the very mission of the Church, for the answers and accompaniment they need from her.
Instead as, Amy writes: “let’s have a meeting on Church process and structure.” Can we get more self-referential than this?
We are hemorrhaging people and not only are we losing 41% or more of those raised Catholic, we also have a dismal rate of those leaving other faiths to become Catholic.
Leah Lebresco, previously looked at the numbers from the 2014 Religious Landscape study.
Why do evangelicals wind up ahead of other Christian sects in this model? They’re better at holding on to the people born into their tradition (65 percent retention compared to 59 percent for Catholics and 45 percent for Mainline Protestants), and they’re a stronger attractor for people leaving other faiths. According to Pew’s data on conversion rates, 10 percent of people raised Catholic wind up as evangelicals. Just 2 percent of people born as evangelicals wind up Catholic. The flow between mainline and evangelical Protestants is also tilted in evangelicals’ favor. Twelve percent of those raised evangelical wind up in mainline congregations, but 19 percent of mainline Protestants wind up becoming evangelical.Evangelical Protestants Are The Biggest Winners When People Change Faiths
Since then, these trends have not gotten better, and if anything, worse.
While the phrase, “the listening Church,” annoys me, not that this is not a valid role for the Church. Jesus would ask questions and listen to what they wanted. Often getting them to narrow down to the healing they most needed. This moment of contact could grow faith in them that seemed to have dissipated, like the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda. It is of great importance to listen to those around us and not just assign them what we think they need, whatever our particular hobby horse might be.
The phrase that I seem to hear seldom is “the teaching Church.”
“We do not want a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.” — G.K. Chesterton
To mix scriptural metaphors (4 days in Purgatory for me), we have the pearl of great price and are hiding it under a bushel basket. It is as if we are afraid to invoke Church teaching and are rather embarrassed about it. No wonder Catholic Apologists have to keep explaining what apologist means since so many have embraced the modern meaning regarding the faith. Sure, people can be a jerk invoking Church teaching, but people can be a jerk about anything, including truths.
God is guiding the Church and has equipped his Church with everything needed to heal those in our midst. We can do the both/and of listening/teaching. But hey, we wouldn’t want to appear triumphant or something.
