I am an optimistic person by nature, but also as a man of faith. Faith and pessimism do not go hand in hand. Sayings like ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ and ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’ have always helped me psychologically to strengthen my optimism. And faith-wise thoughts which learned Catholics passed on to us, like considering hope as a force and a weapon, and believing that the greatest grace that God can give us is to die still searching for the truth, helped me in no small way to deepen my optimism and build it on solid grounds.
There is solid proof, even in our lifetime, that when the Church meets to discuss in crucial moments, in a spirit of genuine auto-criticism, she always comes out young in spirit, witnessing the truth courageously and indicating the true paths to follow.
This has repeatedly occurred since the first Council of Jerusalem we read about in the Acts of the Apostles and proves that the Church has an intrinsic need to meet and discuss; it is indeed her essence.
Pope Francis, coming as he is from the periphery, in the sense that he has a different experience, called a Universal Synod so that any developed teaching he might give will not be of one man but rather, a synthesis of what the universal Church believes.
This decision revealed a person of great acumen. One should note that together with the experience in his diocese of Buenes Aires, Pope Francis has another rich experience as member of the Conference of the Latin American Bishops (CELAM).
During a week of formation I attended recently in our diocese of Maringa, a progressive Brazilian theologian gave us a surprisingly interesting lecture in which he positively evaluated the Council of Trent.
It brought with it teaching and norms which the Church then badly needed, like the creation of the seminaries to better educate those who aspire for the priesthood and the creation of the parish, which stood the test of time. Of course this does not mean that we have to return to the Tridentine Discipline. Not at all. It means that the Church collegially, being sincere with herself, has an extraordinary capacity to understand the signs of the times.
When the Church meets to discuss in crucial moments, in a spirit of genuine auto-criticism, she always comes out young in spirit
The originality of Pope Francis is not so much that he called a Synod on the Family, but that he asked bishops from 2000 or so dioceses, scattered across five continents, to answer a survey, making it a point that he wants them to spread and divulge this questionnaire to as many people, environments, cultures and age groups as possible. In this sense, once more I want to congratulate the Church of Malta and Gozo.
Pope Francis is not interested in the opinions of the western world alone - varied as they are - but of the whole planet. I am not expecting U-turns in the Church teaching but the development of doctrine, giving due importance to unity and pluriformity within the Church, in some 200 countries with as many different cultures and traditions.
I am not expecting a levelling down of the importance of the Petrine Magisterium but a further development of post-Vatican II ecclesiology, by listening more to the theologians, and as a consequence giving due consideration to the sensum fidelium which even traditional theology treasured.
When my generation studied moral theo-logy, some fifty years ago, the text book gave importance to the Holy Scriptures, to tradition, the magisterium and to the sensum fidelium – in that order. And that was before Vatican II. Let us therefore show our solidarity with Pope Francis, avoiding cynicism, fundamentalism and above all pessimism.
Let us all be realistically optimistic.