Pope Francis is a leader out of his time. Generally the style and vision of governance in the Catholic Church correspond to those current in the broader society. He is out of sync. That has inevitably led many to ask whether his vision and style of governance will endure in the Catholic Church. Some indications may be found during the current Synod on the family.
In Western society the times are sombre and fearful. In governance there is a strong emphasis on control, on security and on strong leadership. It reflects a desire for clear boundaries marking who is in and who is out. We see a recurrent rush to military adventures, sharp divisions made between citizens and asylum seekers, between the advantaged and disadvantaged, and between Christians and Muslims. The executive seeks total control and the avoidance of risk.
In more confident times governance has been characterised by an emphasis on freedom, on local initiative, on crossing and blurring boundaries, on layered rather than on narrow identity. This is reflected in the desire for effective consultation, for strengthening the rule of law and ensuring due process, for paying more attention to the needs of the disadvantaged and to ethnic and religious minorities.
The vision and governance of the Catholic Church have generally corresponded to the times. In fearful times they have emphasised Papal authority and stressed the boundaries between clerical and lay, men and women, Catholic and non-Catholic, faith and secular, orthodox and heretical. They have privileged central control over local initiative.
The oddity of Pope Francis is that at a time when national governments have become increasingly authoritarian and have emphasised narrowly defined national identity and interests and strong boundaries, he has advocated local initiative and constantly blurred boundaries in his action and his speech. He sees the identity of the Catholic Church to lie in its going out to the margins.
The question arises then is whether the Pope’s vision of mission and governance will shape the Catholic future, or whether his image of church leaders coming back from the badlands smelling like lost sheep will give way to sheep waiting in line in the designated paddock where their shepherds can feed them on sheeply food and protect them from danger. Sociologically, you would have to bet on the latter. But it is never a done deal.
The current church Synod on the Family will be illuminating. It will show how far Pope Francis’ open and inclusive style can be reflected in the processes of the Synod which have become instruments of control. More subtly, because the family is a microcosm and an image of society and of church, the way the family is imagined at the Synod will also reveal what vision of the church is operative.
In sombre times we would expect the Synod to focus on an idealised, true Christian family consisting of a husband and wife of faith duly married, living prayerful lives and blessed with children. The threats to this ideal would be identified and ways of sustaining it named. This would find expression in a high theology of Christian marriage and family life.
Outside the boundaries of the authentically Christian family lie same sex parents with children, couples practising contraception, divorced and remarried people with children, families with serial parents or with children artificially conceived and unmarried couples with children. They would not be the object of the care or the curiosity of the Synod but rather outsiders to be recalled to the true ideal of family. Given the large number of baptised Catholics who live outside the boundary, such a Synod would live on only in the archives.
That is one possibility. But Pope Francis’ recent celebration of marriages for a typical group of Catholics in varying relationships and his introductory homily suggest another possibility. He may encourage the Synod to reach out to the people whose family arrangements lie outside the boundaries, to reflect on their dreams and struggles, and to ask what makes the family life they desire difficult. The same openness was commended by Sydney married couple, Ron and Mavis Pirola, in their presentation to the Synod.
This approach will lead to reflection on the emphasis in society on the economically productive individual, the absence of a living wage and the punitive approach to people who are disadvantaged and the lack of support for family groupings in which there is no tradition of parenting. Families at the margins will then be placed at the centre: families without income and other support, the families of prisoners, the separation of children from parents who seek protection.
Discussion of the Synod has focused on allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. That is mostly a problem for the devout, often resolved by pastoral commonsense. But it points to the larger reality: that at Mass, the place where Catholics mostly meet, a strict application of church rules would exclude most baptised Catholics from full participation. That underlines the importance of the question Pope Francis has posed: how can people, on the borders of the Catholic Church or beyond, find from Catholics encouragement and support in their messy lives? In asking that question so insistently he is a man for all times.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
Pope Francis image by Shutterstock.