People have become accustomed to Pope Francis’s successful moves to change the style of the stuffy and formal Vatican. He has blown cobwebs away, opened locked doors and offered the warmest of welcomes to everyone who has crossed his path. For the first time in years, Catholics feel like the Pope is their parish priest. For this he has deservedly received almost universal praise.
But last week he went one step further after launching a questionnaire for the lay faithful to answer, giving rise to the possibility that he may be prepared to go beyond a change in style; and actually look at changing substance.
Even though Church authorities have attempted to play down its significance, the questionnaire is quite unique. In the past, the Vatican has not asked people what they think, but rather been more about telling people how they should be behave. That is not to say that through certain channels it has not received feedback, just that it has chosen to more or less ignore it.
This questionnaire, being distributed to bishops all over the world in preparation for their synod next year, is comprehensive and wide-ranging. It contains 39 questions. It also substitutes the word ‘reality’ in certain cases, such as when it mentions the family, for ‘doctrine’. This is quite a shift in stance.
It is also potentially controversial, probing a number of areas the Church has for several years been unwilling to engage upon. These include the use of artificial contraception, the possibility of a divorced Catholic remarrying or receiving Communion, and same-sex marriage.
Our local Church chose to remain silent when the questionnaire was launched. But others, such as the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, is urging British Catholics to complete the survey. He told the BBC: “Listening never did us any harm. God gave us one mouth and two ears. The fact that we may hear things that make us uncomfortable – that’s fine.”
Wise words. But there are a few potential problems with this survey. One, will there be a uniform approach among bishops around the world to getting the questions to the survey answered? In other words, are they going to set up a process to collate the information and will this be uniform? It does not make sense to have one approach in the UK and another in, say, Brazil. And will everybody be capable of answering some of the more intricate questions?
Two, how is this survey going to be distributed? Online is the most obvious option, but that will leave out a significant number of people; in churches is another option, but that may leave out the people who have not walked through the threshold for some time. The challenge will be to get as many people filling it in as possible.
The third point, however, is perhaps the biggest conundrum. A lawyer learning to cross-exam a witness is told never to ask a question he does not know the answer to, or perhaps to never ask a question when he does not want the answer he is likely to get. This is where the Church might be opening a Pandora’s Box.
While launching such a survey is in itself a praiseworthy initiative, it is unlikely to achieve much unless people feel that the Vatican has acted on it. Collecting all this information from a billion or so Catholics is as daunting as tasks get. Digesting the information will take even longer. But the fundamental question is, can the Church change its position on certain doctrinal issues? If the answer is no, then people will wonder why it bothered asking for their opinion about certain things in the first place.