There are two aspects of the Catholic Church that many feel are rather disconnected. The pastoral nature of the church is what the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics are most familiar with. Those who still practise their faith often treasure their relationship with their parish priest from whom they often seek support for spiritual as well as material guidance.
But there is another aspect to the Church that many feel is very remote from the pastoral one. This is the institutional church with its monolithic governance structure, its internal politics, its strategic outlook and its market share ambitions. This aspect of the institutional church was graphically described in an article in The Economist in 2013: “The Roman Catholic Church is the world’s oldest multinational. It is also, by many measures, its most successful, with 1.2 billion customers, 1 million employees, tens of thousands of volunteers, a global distribution network, a universally recognised logo, unrivalled lobbying clout and, auguring well for the future, a successful emerging-markets operation.”
This institution is facing major challenges in the way it is managed. Let us start with the Church’s strategic approach to certain hot social and political issues that are very relevant in today’s society. The Church has always struggled with issues that relate to sexuality. Up to recently, homosexuality was shunned by the Catholic Church in a way that to many believers looks mediaeval. Most modern societies in the Western world have become far more tolerant and, in fact, today politicians compete to grant homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals.
Pope Francis, who unlike his predecessor, comes with a wealth of pastoral experience, recognised that it was time to “welcome homosexuals into the church family”. Like a good CEO, he consulted his executive managers (the bishops) on how the church could abandon its discrimination against gays. Unlike other lay CEOs, the Pope has a formidable crisis management tool – his claim to infallibility. But being the sensible person that he is, Pope Francis preferred not to use it.
The Catholic Church has once again shown that it is averse to change
In the end the more conservative arm of the Church won the day. The document issued at the end of the October Vatican Synod departs substantially from what the Pope – and arguably the vast majority of ordinary Catholics would have liked to see – a Church that is more tolerant to gays and divorced people who still want to be active members of the religious community.
Despite the PR gloss that covered this final document, the Catholic Church has once again shown that it is averse to change even in a time when society is changing so fast. This will, in my opinion, make church teaching and practice irrelevant for the lives of many more ordinary Catholics.
In the local scene we saw the amiable Archbishop Cremona asking to be relieved of his duties for health reasons. While no one is guaranteed good health, especially as one gets older, some illnesses are undoubtedly made worse by stress and there is no more effective stress factor than the toxic internal politics that permeates most institutions. For thousands of Catholics who do not care much about the power struggles that undoubtedly take place in the local Curia, the departure of a leader with his heart in the right place on the issues that affect Maltese society is a sad event.
One hopes that his successor will be equally interested in the social issues that should be the backbone of the pastoral church that so many Catholics prefer to the stuffier institutional Church which a small minority of Catholics want to be more hawkish on socio-political issues. Those who still remember the Church governance strategy of the sixties were shocked when a few years ago some maverick clerics began spewing fire and brimstone during the debate on the introduction of divorce in Malta. The scars of intolerance never heal and one hopes that no new scars are inflicted on ordinary Catholics by the institutional arm of the Catholic Church in Malta.
The institutional Church will only be relevant to practicing Catholics if it connects with them in that multitude of small issues that make up their lives. Society is changing at a very fast rate and even political leaders are hardly coping to bring about the transformational change that is needed to ensure that politics really serves society.
It is time for the Church to discard the ‘pray, pay and obey’ style of management. Reluctance to change will never be a divinely inspired strategy.
johncasarwhite@yahoo.com