In their first-ever pastoral letter for Advent, our bishops said that the Church should be compared more to an environmental or sports group than to the State when one discusses the level of freedom there should be within its structures. People belong to the State whether they like it or not, they said. On the other hand, people belong to the Church (or to environmental groups, for example) only if they like it.
It is a free choice, and therefore such a choice makes sense only if the people concerned are ready to accept what the bishops describe as the "collective consciousness" of the group in question. (I will not discuss here how opportune the use of this term of Durheimian origin was from the communication perspective.)
Can anyone join an environmental group and then expect to remain in the group while fighting against policies that try to mitigate the effect of climate change? This would be inherently contradictory. The bishops say that the same reasoning applies to the Church and its members.
I agree that there is no place for cafeteria Catholics. One cannot pick and choose from the core Catholic dogmas or moral principles and expect to have the right to form a personal kind of Catholicism. I hasten to add that cafeteria Catholics should not be summarily dismissed, since their subjective allegiance provides pastoral opportunities for the Church.
On the other hand, the acceptance of this collective consciousness does not make Catholics carbon copies of each other. Such acceptance does not imply that if one dissects the theological preferences or practical decisions of a Catholic one can build a universal model of being a Catholic.
Our collective consciousness is varied, dynamic, evolving and creative. Our faith is greater and vaster than what can be embraced by any one theological school or trend of thought. What was considered to be theologically shocking in one era becomes the obvious certainty of another era. Theologians who were suspect at one point in time became the luminaries of a latter generation. Those burnt at the stake in one century are declared saints decades later.
Catholicism is not a strict monolith. The history of the development of theology is peppered with different ways of explaining our basic beliefs. The Jesuits argued with the Dominicans about the theology of grace. Thomists strongly debated Scotists. Harsh words and accusations were thrown around by different groups. There are different Christologies, ecclesiologies and theologies of grace. Moralists contradicted moralists on the application of general principles to concrete situations. A syllabus of errors was written by a pope and dismantled by his successors.
The same applies to the way we live our Catholic-being and to the practical decisions taken in everyday life. Different spiritualities and divergent pastoral strategies coexist. Practical Church policies adopted in one diocese can be different from those of other dioceses.
Different bishops, priests and lay people can, and do, make different prudential judgments and arrive at different practical ways of acting, such as giving Communion to pro-choice politicians. A number of Catholics may take one political stand while others take a completely different position.
It is very clear that our collective consciousness is more like a rainbow than like anything else. Different colours blend into one beautiful whole. If one colour is missing, the rainbow disappears. These differences are therefore a sign of creativity, not of confusion. Divergences and differences are our strength not our weakness. There isn't just one way of being a Catholic.
May all the colours of the rainbow shine under the inspiration of the Spirit and the warmth of a loving community blessed and directed by the different charismas and competencies that exist within it.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt