Polarization in the U.S. Catholic Church: Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal
It is sort of intriguing to be on a panel charged with offering conversation starters. At first sight it appears a modest task, but is in fact quite formidable. I rather think it is best approached lightly, in a Chestertonian sense, that is to say, not gravely. There is perhaps too much gravity and not enough levity in our circles these days. I would go so far as to suggest at the outset that until we have reached a point wherein we can actually laugh together, and enjoy the simple and primary gift of being together in the same world, the same Church, and the same room, then it is not yet time to discuss the issues that divide.
I want to talk a path through a few key words and phrases, and see where that leads.
Polarization is an interesting term. We are using it during this conference as a sort of stand-in term for something that we perceive as a perduring presence in contemporary Church life in the United States. The conference brochures and publicity describe a phenomenon of divisiveness and vitriol in our local churches and in the national discourse within the Church.
We are borrowing the term polarization from the language of political science, which has adopted it to speak of a tendency for extremes of opposition at times to dominate a political discourse.
But, political and social sciences appear to have adopted the paradigm from the field of the physical sciences, where the term implies a separation to opposing fields, occurring by a kind of natural repulsion. The term is also used in optic science, as when describing the behavior of light or sound waves. It is worth noting that both magnetic polar behavior and wave patterns are natural and, in this universe anyway, inevitable phenomena. I suspect that in the social and political sciences, some would argue that the coalescing of extremes is an inevitable manifestation in the generation and degeneration of social dynamics. Perhaps we can examine critically during our time together if shadows of inevitable social dynamics color our optics on how we look at Church life.
Thus it seems that we are here together for the next couple of days because we want to talk openly about our experience of the Church as excessively marked by division into something like polar opposites. Maybe polarization is the best term, or maybe there is a better way to talk about it. I do not know. But I hope to have a better idea by the time I get on a plane home.
For the sake of a conversation starter, though, I should like to invite us to re-visit how the Christian theological tradition has attempted to grapple with what we are trying to name and help heal. Thomas would probably identify it with the term Discordia. Now discord, theologically speaking cannot be understood in isolation from the Christian virtue it opposes, namely, Concordia: Concord is an effect of charity that leads to the union of wills. Discord is a disruption of that union of wills. Thomas notes pointedly, however, that Concord is the union of wills infused with charity, not necessarily the union of opinions: Concordia quae est caritatis effectus est unio voluntatum, non unio opinionum. (2-2, 37, 1, c). As far as Thomas is concerned, difference of opinions need not disrupt the union of wills. Related to Discordia, the contradiction of wills, is the problem of contentiousness, which is the contradictive use of words: saying things that are by design opposed to the charitable union of wills (2-2, 38). And then there is Rixa, actions designed to undermine the union of charity. This seems to be the extreme in the vices opposed to concord, because it is like an enduring private war (2-2, 41).
Now then, I would add into the mix the fact that familial language was adopted early in the Christian community. Identifying one another as brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers is profoundly interwoven into the New Testament record. Late Pauline writings speak of the household of the faith. Without entering into a cultural exegesis about what such terms implied in first century Jewish, Greek, Roman milieu, it seems safe to say that the Christians wanted to convey a series of relationships that were stable and had God as author. In Scripture, Familial language is complemented, and perhaps corrected, by the language of friendship, and the vocabulary of charity: See how they love on another. Taken together, the language of Scripture suggests that we are connected by relationships rooted in a prior bond willed and forged by Christ. Baptism links the members to Christ and through him, to all the other members of the community of believers. These bonds are further characterized by a kind of friendship marked by the New Testament charity of mutual yielding. Charity is the virtue the gives life to the relation willed by Christ. Without it, we are living a show, and the world rightly dismisses us as no different from any other show on television.
I would place on the table my sense that the wounds that divide us are rooted in the loss of confidence that the members of the household of the faith actually love one another. And I think that this loss of confidence is particularly striking when we are talking about relations that imply authority of some kind. In short, we are living in the midst of an ecclesial loss of confidence that fathers in the Church love their children, and that the children love their fathers.
Thus, I think I would name the wound as one that particularly strikes at our relation to the father, particularly as the one who is in some way responsible for the governing of the household. If both sons in the parable of the prodigal son had had faith in the love of the Father, then both would have been at the party. As it happens, only one had that faith, the other is left thinking it over. Hence, the doubt about the love of the father is reflected also in a doubt about whether the children actually love each other. In the parable, evidently there are signs of discord between the brothers; and in the case of the older brother, this is based on a prior discord in his relation to the father. Doubtless, the parable is primarily aimed at forming our perceptions of the Merciful God who is Father. Yet, if the parable cannot in some way find an analogous application to the mystery of relationality of the Church, we are thinking, I think, too univocally.
If the first thing you believe about your father is that he loves you, then the adult conversations you have with him are likely to be of a tone and content not overly marked by easy categorization and facile dismissals. This is true whether we are talking about our natural father, or our bishop. If the first thing a Father believes about his adult children is that they love him and are disposed to be patient with him, then the conversations are less likely to be defensive and rancorous.
That our current struggles with discord and contentiousness, not to mention rixa, coincide with a wider cultural breakdown in familial cohesiveness is at least worth noting. What might be helpful is to begin identifying how cultural categories that are not necessarily compatible with the Gospel have corroded our sense of the primacy of charity and mercy within the household of the Church. Right, left, conservative, traditionalist, radical, intransigent, liberal, etc. are all examples of descriptive terms that exempt the person from the trial of having actually to listen to and know the other person, as person and as person related to me. We should note and then lament the loss of a discourse of respect and affection.
All of which leads me to propose that the uncritical adoption of political paradigms for our discourse serves tragically to preempt the Gospel primacy of relation.
For us the first question is not “what are you?”, rather, it is “who are you to me?” And for the Christian, the answer is always the same, you are my brother, you are my sister. You are my father, and you are my child. You are my mother, and I am your son or daughter. The relation is prior "in being" to the conversation and to the disagreement. But if the relation is not apprehended at the start of the discussion, what happens then? We might as well ask what happens when salt goes flat.
The Christian primacy of relation should be understood in the context of the wider aim of the New Law, which is the grace of the Holy Spirit. Its aim has always been the infusion of new life into old and wounded relations: relations with God, a Trinity of Persons, and with one another. The praxis of mercy, so central to Pope Francis' preaching and life, begins at home. The relation is prior, but for us it is not so easily acknowledged. The father has to ask if he is governing with the mercy of the kingdom, and accept the fact that his adult children may rightly ask him that question. The son or daughter outside the party also has to ask for a grace to see things differently: that in the end a father who loves can make many mistakes, but he will not cease being my father, in the full affectionate use of the term. Without a renewal in the primacy of relation in our dealings with one another, the Church fades into the grey pragmatism of ordinary life, indistinguishable from a world convinced that social dynamics and human relations are governed by some social law unaffected by the redemption.
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