All the readers of this column know that yesterday was the final of the Eurovision in Malmo. For some reason that I never fully understood, this festival is one of the most staple ingredients of the Maltese collective calendar. It is a national pastime.
At the beginning of this century, some 31 cardinals and bishops had written to John Paul II asking for a new ecumenical council
On the other hand, many, not to say most, of my readers do not know that yesterday evening the Archbishop led a celebration on the eve of the feast of Pentecost. (I am certain that many do not even know that today is Pentecost and quite a good number do not have a clear idea of what Pentecost is all about. Very few can say what difference Pentecost does to our everyday mundane existence.)
There are those who believe that these and other problems of the Church will be solved through marketing, better communication strategies, and the organisation of more creative events. While happily conceding that these things help, I do not believe they are the solution.
Even a cursory look at the programme of yesterday’s Church-organised celebration will persuade everyone that the event organised was going to be dynamic and creative. The mobilisation of the members of ecclesial movements such as the Charismatics, Focolarine and the Neo-Cathecumens guaranteed an enthusiastic crowd. If publicity were to be the answer to the Church’s woes then people must have been fully informed about this celebration and cognisant of the meaning of Pentecost.
Last week, an employee at the Curia bragged on Facebook that the Curia reaches 800,000 people worldwide through its Facebook page. Consequently, close to a million people should have been agog about the celebration! Were the numbers discussing its run-up or aftermath anywhere near the awesome figure mentioned as being at the fingertips of the institution? All know the answer.
The above is just one example of the loss of social relevance by the institutional Church which is, however, countered by the increased relevance of the manifestations of popular religiosity many times fanned by the most secular of media technologies. The problem of the Church is too deep to be solved by slick marketing strategies or by just one diocese.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini had a “dream” which he shared with fellow bishops during the 1999 Synod. The cardinal dreamt of a space where “in the full exercise of episcopal collegiality” the bishops and the other participants can “confront with freedom those disciplinary and doctrinal knots” that are so important “for the common good of the Church and all of humanity.”
“We are being impelled to ask ourselves,” stressed the cardinal, “if 40 years after the inauguration of Vatican II, and for the next decade, the awareness of the utility and almost of the necessity of a collegial and authorised confrontation among all the bishops about some themes that have emerged in the past four decades aren’t maturing little by little.”
Most understood the cardinal’s dream as a reveille for Vatican Council III, though Martini himself subsequently told John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter that he was not calling for a general council but “for a way to act collegially in the day-to-day life of the Church”.
Others were more direct and specific. At the beginning of this century, some 31 cardinals and bishops had written to John Paul II asking for a new ecumenical council. There were several others who did the same along the way.
Those of my age can easily understand why. The hope nourished, the optimism generated, the joy experienced and the transformation engendered by Vatican II are freshly embedded in our memory today as they were vividly lived 50 years ago. It was an experience of a new Pentecost; a renovated Church-in-the-making. The Holy Spirit gave us all that and more through the Petrine ministry of John XIII, the gentle Pope who was loved the world over.
I remember a two-page spread in the mass-circulation magazine, Life. It showed the Pope with the caption: A spiritual giant in the guise of a simple man. Vatican II gave us a new understanding of the Church as the ‘People of God’. Instead of a vertical and, many times, authoritarian model, a horizontal and relational one was developed. The laity, who until then were expected to just pray, pay and obey, stopped being subservient to the hierarchy. They came of age: their value, role, and co-responsibility in all domains ecclesiastical were recognised.
The liturgy was radicalised. Other religions were emancipated. The Church opened itself to contemporary culture and society.
This spirit of openness is evidenced in the new language adopted by Vatican II. Cardinal Godfried Danneels said that Vatican II chose a pastorally-oriented language: suggestive, not determinant, calm, and serenely dialogical. “Vatican II speaks in an inviting way, starting with what speaker and listener already have in common. The old language determined and imposed. The new language suggests and invites.”
Today there is another gentle and simple Pope who like John XIII 50 years ago immediately stole the hearts of millions of believers and non-believers by his simple but daring actions. Many a high prelate was scandalised by Pope Francis’s simple garments: no mitre with gold and jewels, no ermine-trimmed cape, no made-to-measure red shoes or headgear, no magnificent throne. Others were irked by the modest abode he lives in.
Rubrics were quoted when he washed the feet of a Muslim female drug addict. Eyebrows were raised by his simplified liturgy. He does not communicate through the use of dense intellectual language. He communicates with the people of the world by using the language – spoken words and gestures – that people in the real world speak and understand.
He speaks the language of Vatican II. Perhaps he will be bold enough to move forward to Vatican III. Perhaps he will conclude that the time for another ecumenical council is not ripe.
Whatever he decides, as the eminent theologian Hans Kung recently wrote in The Tablet, the Catholic Church once again needs to experience the kind of rejuvenation that it did under Pope John XXIII; otherwise it will risk letting the spring of Francis’ pontificate turn to winter.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt