A languge that speaks the capacity of expansion

Image: Stairway at Vatican Museum

The Catholic blogosphere is littered with combox dust-ups over issues that surface over and over again. The responses are predictable and usually the generation of heat far exceeds that of light.

Refreshingly, three articles by NCR's John Allen over the past couple of days offer an insight into church life that offers food for thought. These pieces don't end up calling for women's ordination or an end to mandatory celibacy or church approval of same-sex marriage as the solution for all problems ecclesial. Rather, they invite us to look at matters much larger as a way of understanding some of what's happening in the life of our communion in faith.

First, Allen offers an essay (Diagnosing the Implosion of Benedict's Vatican) on a new book, Once Upon a Time, There was a Vatican by Massimo Franco, a veteran political writer for Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most prestigious daily newspaper.  Franco writes of the PR and managerial problems that have surfaced in the current papal administration and offers a sober critique of what's taken place.  In a follow-up column titled, Sex Abuse is the Catholic 9/11, Allen interviews Franco and draws him out on the issues covered in his book.  Here's a telling snip from that conversation, with Franco speaking:

I think the problem is one of intellectual categories. It’s a problem of language, of being in tune with the Western world. That’s not the case at the moment. The Vatican, of course, boasts of being counter-cultural, but I think sometimes that’s a form of self-consolation.

Actually, I think the Vatican is right when it says that in the future, the West will have to come back to religion. The question is, which religion? Will the Vatican be there at the right moment, to respond to the questions people will be asking?

I don’t have the answer, but I can say that there’s a disconnection between the West and the Vatican from the point of view of language. It’s not the fact that Catholics are a minority, but they are a self-referential one, not a creative one, with no capacity of expansion. That’s what I fear. The risk is to circle in on yourself more and more, divorced from the external world. 

(Read the complete interview here)

Please note clearly that there is not here a call to revolutionize Church teaching or practice.  This critique can't be dismissed on such grounds but rather deserves to stand and be recognized.

And Allen's most recent piece in NCR offers a classroom "example from current events" of what's at stake in Franco's critique.  Allen reports that Lesley-Anne Knight, a Zimbabwe-born lay woman who was recently denied Vatican approval to stand for another four-year term as secretary general of Caritas.

Here's the lede from Allen's piece but you'll need to read the whole article to understand the story and its connection to the Franco pieces above:

Caritas Internationalis, a Rome-based confederation of 165 Catholic charitable organizations around the world, is committed to improved communication with the Vatican, the group’s embattled head has said, but with a proviso: Vatican officials have to understand that dialogue is a two-way street.

Lesley-Anne Knight, a Zimbabwe-born lay woman who was recently denied Vatican approval to stand for another four-year term as secretary general of Caritas, also warned that if relations with the Vatican continue to deteriorate, some Caritas organizations could become “disillusioned” and distance themselves from the confederation – an unraveling she said she keenly hopes to avoid.

Quite often, Knight argued, the humanitarian bodies that make up the Caritas network provide a positive face for Catholicism in the societies they serve, working with the poorest of the poor, and it would be tragic if that resource were placed in jeopardy.

(Read the complete interview here)

If you'll take the time to read and think about the three articles, you'll understand the nature of the critique being offered and the connection between these columns.  Some readers will be impatient and think the criticism here to be remote and impractical.  I contend that the vantage point Franco offers and Allen applies suggest a path through serious issues leading to the possibility of organic development.


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