The post-pandemic Church – business as usual?

When exile and despair chilled the hearts of God’s people, when none were found to sing the Lord's songs, prophets and priests, in order to be that to which they were called, sought to create a future. When God’s people had become, not a light to the nations, but a byword for godlessness, God uncovered their transgressions and poured out indignation, creating a ruin where once glory had shone round about. When exile and its concomitant ills followed godlessness and profanity, those few who dared to speak in the Lord's name set about doing a theology that would be heard in the market-place, and would re-create a residence befitting divine glory.

For at the heart of prophetical discourse was the conviction that the world is the place where God’s steadfast love governs, the kingdom where God’s will is done, not to inflate the divine ego, but to sow love and mercy and justice and peace, in short, to make God’s people safe. Ancient prophets configured a re-ordering of things so that God became a palpable presence, even in the estrangement of exile. Their unwelcome but ultimately embraced prescription created a new dwelling-place for God on earth, a renewed people, and a way of holiness consonant with the holiness of God. Being traditionalists, they turned to the very foundations of faith to seek the God of creation who alone could re-create a new earth and issue a new deliverance from exile, chaos, and despair. To construct a future, they returned to the past. (1)

The prophetical imagination of Israel is not the preserve of the past. For the men and women who pronounced the word of the Lord to a people far away and long ago are not bound to a particular historical instance. They are part of that choir of voices, which sings to every age, that is to say, the Isaiahs and Huldahs of ancient faith have become a defining theological presence, articulating the concerns of a God who refuses to go away. That is what the canon of Scripture is: a resource of divine and human words, recourse to which enables the articulation of divine love in every time and every place. 

It is disturbing to hear prophetical voices. It is easier (some would say safer) to prattle catechisms and indiscriminately to sprinkle human perceptions with holy water. But the prophets and the wise who are canonised in our holy books are congruent with God’s will and purpose. They rock the boat in God’s name and articulate visions which refuse to bow to conventional wisdom or to worship the status quo. Those who believe that the Church will be the same in a hundred years need to get out more and prayerfully to engage with the Spirit of Holiness blowing in the wind. For such people are of the company of demons who fly in the face of the Spirit; they belong to the legions who inhabit the tombs of Gerasa. If there is to be a future, it will be created by God out of the formless void and darkness we have created.

Those on the side of the angels dare to believe that the Spirit of God is forever hovering over the face of the waters of chaos. To create a future it is necessary to know the present. Those who created the future of Israel at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple and the exile in Babylon (587 B. C.), Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the inheritors of the spirit of Isaiah, began their reconstruction with a long, impassioned look at the present.

What they saw was a covenant people cursed, a people whose heart had been drawn to worship other gods, to serve other masters. Kings called to be shepherds battened on the lowly, obscuring rather than highlighting the face of God. Fat cows of Bashan paraded their fripperies as their husbands trampled on the poor.

The watchmen of the city of God opened the gates to the enemies of their covenant God. In short, they were complicit in the dismantling of the holy monarchy, the holy city, the holy temple, and a holy people. What those who criticise (with righteous anger and passionate prayer) our present disordered creation must realise is that divine judgement is always redemptive. No matter how ominous the prophetical critique, there is always an assurance of salvation, of love embracing the unlovely and unlovable.

There is ever the imperative of God’s holiness: Thus says the Lord God: “It is not for your sake, O House of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which you have profaned among the nations … and the nations shall know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 36:22-23)

It is God who commands the light to shine out of darkness. Therefore a prophetical configuration of the future always looks to the past to find the God who has been despised and neglected. The whole of the Pentateuch and the assessment of Israel’s religious sensibilities to be found in what we somewhat mistakenly call the historical books are a search for the God whose creation is so insidiously defiled by those who mouth “Lord! Lord!” but who are deaf to the pain of the people. Our looking back to re-discover the God who brings to birth new life is called Christology. For the God who gives light where darkness rules is the God who has given to us the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ Jesus. There will be no redemption of our times unless we engage in a Christological catechesis, rooted in a biblical understanding of Father, Son, and the creative Spirit of Holiness.

There is only one Christian question: Who do you say that I am? All else is commentary and footnote. When we look to the God of the Old Testament we see many, often conflicting, images. But we come nearest to the throne of grace when we meet the God whose steadfast love endures for ever. Psalm 136 sings of the God who made the heavens and remembers us in our low estate. Twenty-six times, as goodness is piled upon goodness, God is declared to be the one whose steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 136 is a psalm for slow learners. Such slow learners, if they have eyes to see, must look to the Son to learn the Father. When we look to what has happened in the island of saints and scholars, we must be aware that our image of God was seriously distorted. Consequently, a deficient Christology was foisted upon us, and, as night follows day, an ungodly soteriology, and an imperialistic, coercive ecclesiology. Whatever may be laid at the doors of economic illiteracy and the rapidity of social change, only in a Church which has lost contact with God can a child be violated and the watchmen protect the violator. If the Catholic Church on these islands has a future, that redeemed future will be realised when we have ceased to profane the holy name which we have so conspicuously profaned among the nations.

What kind of church would we like to become? A church where Jesus would be welcomed and made to feel at home? Indeed. This is what Jesus did and does: Jesus welcomes people Jesus talks constantly of the Father of forgiveness Jesus heals where healing must be done Jesus feeds the hungry Jesus prays Jesus suffers that justice may be done Jesus dies that peace may come Jesus calls people to learn. (2)

If we are to be what God-in-Christ calls us to be, if we are to become part of God’s future for this world, we must, as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna has reminded us, embrace a “culture of freedom” for “freedom is the best starting point for the convincing, believing, and strong Church of the future”. Indeed, “it is when we are free that we most resemble God”. The Second Vatican Council provides the blue-print and the impetus for locating the Church in the hearts of free people. Our future Church will not be a place of coercion but rather a Church open to the capricious Spirit Jesus breathed into us, a Church which doesn’t know where it is going, for anything might turn up; rather, since the Spirit blows where it wills, we will be a Church which listens and learns and gradually discerns to what beauty we are called. As the Spirit moulds the sensus fidelium, the watchmen of our faith will confirm the place to which we have together come.

The model for such a Church will not be a pyramid but a contentious family of raucous voices, graced with sense and sensibility, determined to close ranks and speak with one voice when the world calls on our compassion, demands that we uphold justice, and applauds when we are peacemakers and a blessing. If we are to draw a blueprint for the future, we must realise that God’s blessing is always vocational. We are blessed in order to come to the kingdom, to articulate its values, to do God’s will in God’s world. We are blessed in order to give backbone to our mourning for the world’s ills. We are blessed to be meek because then we are strong. We are blessed in order to become a people who hunger and thirst for justice. We are blessed so that mercy may flow in a hard world.

Matthew’s in the most ecclesial of our Gospels and the first description of the Church he offers is the blessing of the Lord’s first sermon. The voice of Jesus calls out our future. To know him and to hear his voice is the future. The future Church will be a Church structured to enable the voice of God to be heard in the world. It will be a Church where the Spirit of God in all the people will be cherished. Wouldn’t it be a wonder, a blessing, if women baptised into the Church were not baptised into discrimination? Wouldn’t it be a wonder if the opinions of the laity were heard and not ignored because a clerical establishment considers what laity think to be of no consequence? Would it not be a blessing if the Olivia O’Leary’s of this world were heard and not driven out of our holy family? Would it not be a blessing if those sitting on the church wall crossed our doors because we had something sensible to say?

Would it not be a blessing to honour bishops for speaking ex corde? If bishops speak as one would it not be a joy to recognise true unity in the Spirit and not an imposed, centrally controlled consensus? Would a Church of the future not recognise diversity, as Peter and Paul were forced to recognise as they proclaimed to divers peoples the wonderful works of God? Would it not be a wonder if we became what we are ordained to be, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people after God’s own heart?

Prophets were not given to long range forecasts. The crises they faced demanded the immediate removal ofsin and the re-consecration of the people to holiness. Their call to repentance, that is, their appeal to the people to see the world from a God’s eye point of view, was an indicative and an imperative: “Thus says the Lord” and “Listen, Israel”. It so happens that the man from Nazareth preached in like form: “The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe!” (Mark 1:15). Lest we are unsure of the identity of the one amongst us, a voice from heaven likewise proclaims in an indicative and imperative: “This is my beloved Son! Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7). We will align ourselves with the divine re-ordering of our Church if we start to listen and learn. We might begin by understanding what the word “disciple” means. The Greek noun mathetes occurs 261 times in the New Testament and is found only in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Matthew 10:24 reads, A disciple is not above his teacher; it is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher.

The relationship is between pupil and teacher, between one who is a learner and one who is a teacher. Likewise the Latin discipulus means “a pupil”. Neither word means “a follower”. Those called by Jesus are called to be learners. Jesus is routinely called “Teacher” in Mark’s Gospel and those who are closest to him are pupils (all notorious failures, except for the women). There will be no future for a Church which pays no more than lip service to what it is called to be. We are called to be learners, to learn Jesus who embodies what he teaches (the kingdom of God), and called to learn from Jesus how to live with the God who has covenanted to be with and for humanity.

There are none but learners in this Church of ours. The Church of the future will sit upon the ground, listening and learning. First, bishops will see to it that priests and deacons can preach. American research has shown time and again that the pews regard the homily as the most precious of all contacts with their priests. Biblical preaching is always Christocentric, and it happens when the preachers know the scriptures and, through study, prayer, and competence, cause hearts to burn within. We have a fine lectionary. We have Verbum Domini. We have scholarship aplenty. We must learn who Jesus is and why he is. There is no future unless we have a people who are Christologically literate. It is time to abandon moving statues and Balkan pilgrimages.

Secondly, we need a Church where people sit at the top table. Others are there to serve. As Father Raymond Brown said many years ago, the Church is the only institution where the servants never do what they are told. To serve is to debase oneself, to be a nameless hewer of wood and drawer of water. It is to be the one who washes feet. We need to have a permanent national synod with a house of bishops, a house of clergy, and a house of laity, with equal voting rights, and with a constitution that mandates regular meetings. Technology enables the deliberations of such a body to be accessed and assessed by almost all pew holders. It is just possible that some of our sister churches have more sense than we have, more sense, that is, in good stewardship. In his first letter to tiny communities of Christians in Corinth Paul asks 97 questions. That is what you call good teaching and shared learning (discipleship). It is, by the way, characteristic of his apostolic ministry. The reorganisation of dioceses and other institutional tinkering will count for nought if the heart of the matter falls by the wayside. The future is learning Jesus and learning from Jesus.

We live in the twenty-first century. This is our time. I belong to the generation of priests and bishops on these islands who have presided over the greatest abandonment of the Catholic Church since the Reformation. It happened on our watch. A statistic from 1960: Catholics in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Ireland comprised 1 per cent of the Catholic population of the world. These four tiny countries supplied 40 per cent of the world’s priests. 

Paul was scarcely read in the second and third centuries. The same neglect is evident in our pulpits and there is even a vociferous anti-Paul voice to be heard in the land. But if I dream of a church which is truly one, holy, catholic, and apostolic (as revealed in I Corinthians 1:1-2), my inspiration would come from beloved Paul and from his creations. This is what he made of non-people, nobodies, the foolish of this world, the weak, the baseborn (1 Corinthians 2:26-29 – please read it) who heard him speak of the living God and of the Jesus who had captured his heart: You are the church of God (1:2) You are made holy in Christ Jesus (1:2) You are full of grace (1:4) You are enriched with every heavenly gift (1:5) You are full of God’s word (1:5) You are enriched with all knowledge (1:5) You are not lacking in any spiritual gift (1:7) You are sisters and brothers (koinonia) of our Lord Jesus Christ (1:9) You are God’s chosen ones (1:27) You are the temple of God (3:16-17) You are the body of Christ (12:20). You are ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor 5:20) This is but a tiny corner of the portrait of Paul’s people to be found in his pages. And listen to this: You are a letter from Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Cor 3:3) It breaks your heart.

Joseph O’Hanlon, a priest of Nottingham diocese, lectures in biblical studies at Allen Hall Seminary, London. 

References:

1. Readers familiar with Old Testament studies will recognise that I am indebted to the writings of Denis McCarthy, S.J., Joseph Blenkinsopp, and Walter Brueggemann.

2. 2 For a development of the propostition that the person, activities, and teaching of Jesus provide the basis for a viable ecclesiology, see Joseph O’Hanlon, The Jesus Who Was : The Jesus Who Is, published by The Columba Press, Dublin.