Evangelium gaudii, 7: Sactifying grace for pagans

There is one really troubling paragraph in the Exhortation.

It's not the bit in which the Holy Father rejects 'trickle down theories'. Economics is not 'faith and morals' and his views on this subject don't bind Catholics, although Catholics would be foolish indeed to take up dogmatic economic liberalism.

It isn't the bit about promethean neo-pelagians, which could mean a lot of different things and is not exactly news, coming from Pope Francis.

It isn't even the bit about the Jewish Covenant. This is a bit unclear, but this kind of thing has been said a lot in official (not necessarily magisterial) documents, and the problem, if it is one, is a long-established one.

No, the problem is this.

"Non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live “justified by the grace of God”, and thus be “associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ”. But due to the sacramental dimension of sanctifying grace, God’s working in them tends to produce signs and rites, sacred expressions which in turn bring others to a communitarian experience of journeying towards God. While these lack the meaning and efficacy of the sacraments instituted by Christ, they can be channels which the Holy Spirit raises up in order to liberate non-Christians from atheistic immanentism or from purely individual religious experiences.(EG 254)"

Remember, first, that Jews are excluded from this generalisation: their situation has been addressed separately (247-249). They are not part of conventional 'inter-religious dialogue', they are sui generis. The section on inter-religious dialogue has two paragraphs on Islam preceding the paragraph just quoted; this looks like taking a step back to make a generalisation about all non-Christian and non-Jewish religions.

It appears to be saying that when individual non-Christians, who have some intimation of the existence of God and even some kind of relationship with him, get drawn into some kind of possibly idolatrous cult, this is not only a good thing but a means of salvation for them. This would appear to invert the teaching of the Church, which is that all are bound to believe in God and worship Him (by prayer, for example), and that idolatry is not a way of doing this, but a way of not doing this. It is the worship of something other than God - idols - and is against Natural Law.

This comment, left on on earlier post in this series, deserves wider attention.

I don't see that the statement 'Non-Christians, by God’s gracious initiative, when they are faithful to their own consciences, can live “justified by the grace of God”, and thus be “associated to the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ”', is unclear. The key notions are being a non-Christian, being faithful to your own conscience, and being justified by the grace of God. Being a non-Christian is self-explanatory. Being faithful to your conscience means doing whatever your conscience tells you is right, and the fact that it is applied to non-Christians means that the commands of conscience in these cases are not considered to include conversion to Christianity. Being justified by the grace of God means that you are saved.

The passage insinuates, but does not clearly state, that the rites of non-Christian religions can be channels of sanctifying grace, but it does clearly describe such rites as good and even as sacred. Things can of course be good and sacred without being channels of sanctifying grace, and not all grace is sanctifying grace. It is reasonable to describe the work of the Holy Spirit as a grace of some kind, so since the passage describes the rites of non-Christian religions as works of the Holy Spirit, it describes these rites as conveying grace.

Of course you will be puzzled by this passage if you begin with the a priori assumption that the Pope cannot be describing idolatry as good or as a channel of grace. But there is no basis for this assumption. The Pope is not God, and this document is not an infallible definition or even clearly intended to teach authoritatively on matters of faith and morals. It is the personal opinion of the Pope, and thus there is no barrier to its expressing claims contrary to the Catholic faith, if that is what the Pope happens to believe.

My concern from the start in blogging about Pope Francis has not been to hide those views of his with which I don't agree, or to twist his words into meaning something different from what he intended. My concern, rather, has been twofold: to understand his thinking, and to come up with ways in which Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass can engage positively with it. Ways, for example, in which to make those influenced by the Holy Father stop and think, that perhaps really their concerns are not best served by attacking the Traditional Mass.

In this case the best approach might be to consider the possible scenarios the Holy Father may have in mind. I differ from the commenter I quote above in thinking that, even at a purely human level, Pope Francis can't have idolatry in mind. If you said to him: 'Pope Francis, idolatry is a sin isn't it?' He wouldn't say, 'Oh no, not at all, the First Commandment has been abolished by Vatican II.' As a matter of fact, he is quite fond of talking about the sin of idolatry, interpreted in quite a broad sense. In this very document he says (55)

The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex 32:1-35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.

When he says that the rites of non-Christian religions can be 'channels of the Holy Spirit', he doesn't have, at the front of his mind, the example of the worship of the Golden Calf. Either he has forgotten that many non-Christians are idolatrous, or he believes that they are not.

The second possibility can be expressed like this. It may be argued that the condemnation of idolatry we hear in Scripture does not apply to the religious rites of, for example,  modern Hindus and Animists. You often hear Christian homosexual activists saying that what St Paul condemned is not what homosexuals do today, it is different somehow. And it is true that we need to exercise some caution in applying the categories found in the Book of Deuteronomy and so on to people we meet today. Specifically, the point of idolatry as condemned in the Bible is that the worshipper addressed himself to the idol, and not to a (genuine) supernatural reality which it represented. Depending on the Hindu you ask, you may hear arguments to the effect that this criticism does not apply to them, any more than to the Catholic cult of icons.

This is all far too complicated to attribute to the Holy Father, of course, on the basis of this paragraph. I mention it because it is one line of thought which his defenders or those influenced by him might wheel out. And it doesn't work. Because the Catholic cult of images is premised on the Incarnation. We have an incarnational religion because it is the religion of the incarnation. The ancient Jews were right not to use images in the way we use icons and holy statues because God had not taken flesh, which is the pre-requisite for Him to be represented and honoured by way of honouring that representation. (Images of God the Father are visual metaphors, and are not given the honour accorded to images of Our Lord. We don't light candles in front of images of the Ancient of Days.)

I can only leave this issue with the hope that it will be clarified in some authoritative way. There is enough confusion about interreligious dialogue already.

Pictures: honouring images of the Virgin and Child, at Walsingham, at Willesden, and at Caversham.

Evangelii gaudium 6: favourite bits

LMS Pilgrimage to Walsingham: 'an evangelising gesture'.

When EG first came out there was a lot of focus on the bits about 'promethean neo-pelagians', which I have already addressed to some extent, and on economic issues, which I am not going to discuss (life is too short), and on one or two more positive passages, such as this one:

Evangelisation with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelises and is herself evangelised through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelisation and the source of her renewed self-giving. (24)

For a bit of mental exercise, I recommend the passages which explain why 'time is greater than space' (222ff) and polyhedrons are preferable to spheres (236). However, I don't have the time (or space) to go into those here and now.

Here are some other passages which illustrate some of the range of interesting, and sometimes neglected, ideas Pope Francis set out in the Exhortation, which I haven't otherwise addressed in the series of posts.

43: In her ongoing discernment, the Church can also come to see that certain customs not directly connected to the heart of the Gospel, even some which have deep historical roots, are no longer properly understood and appreciated. Some of these customs may be beautiful, but they no longer serve as means of communicating the Gospel. We should not be afraid to re-examine them. At the same time, the Church has rules or precepts which may have been quite effective in their time, but no longer have the same usefulness for directing and shaping people’s lives.

We need to be unapologetic about applying this passage to customs such as getting children to carry up the gifts at the Offertory or compose the Bidding Prayers, about putting teddy bears on the Altar, dancing in the aisles or using or home-made communion hosts. It is these kinds of things, which are on the borders of liturgical law or cross over it, which have been criticised as 'no longer properly understood' since were allowed or just developed after the Council, in a string of official documents, but have nevertheless become cherished customs in some places, often on the basis of the claim that they are restorations of ancient practices (ie that they have 'deep roots'). If they are misleading people, they should be reconsidered. To give just one example, consider Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (Redemptionis sacramentum 151):

Only out of true necessity is there to be recourse to the assistance of extraordinary ministers in the celebration of the Liturgy. Such recourse is not intended for the sake of a fuller participation of the laity but rather, by its very nature, is supplementary and provisional.

Another issue: closed churches.

47. The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door. There are other doors that should not be closed either. Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason.

I hate to see church doors locked. I know there are security problems in some places, but these problems can be usually addressed in various ways. And I heartily endorse the idea that parishes should not develop an inner clique who look down on everyone else, and bar the way to the Parish Priest and indeed the Sacraments.

Persecution.

61. We also evangelize when we attempt to confront the various challenges which can arise.[56] On occasion these may take the form of veritable attacks on religious freedom or new persecutions directed against Christians; in some countries these have reached alarming levels of hatred and violence. In many places, the problem is more that of widespread indifference and relativism, linked to disillusionment and the crisis of ideologies which has come about as a reaction to any-thing which might appear totalitarian. This not only harms the Church but the fabric of society as a whole. We should recognize how in a culture where each person wants to be bearer of his or her own subjective truth, it becomes difficult for citizens to devise a common plan which transcends individual gain and personal ambitions.

Marriage.

66. The family is experiencing a profound cultural crisis, as are all communities and social bonds. In the case of the family, the weakening of these bonds is particularly serious because the family is the fundamental cell of society, where we learn to live with others despite our differences and to belong to one another; it is also the place where parents pass on the faith to their children. Marriage now tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will. But the indispensible contribution of marriage to society transcends the feelings and momentary needs of the couple.

The New Evangelisation and secularisation.

68. The Christian substratum of certain peoples – most of all in the West – is a living reality. Here we find, especially among the most needy, a moral resource which preserves the values of an authentic Christian humanism. Seeing reality with the eyes of faith, we cannot fail to acknowledge what the Holy Spirit is sowing. It would show a lack of trust in his free and unstinting activity to think that authentic Christian values are absent where great numbers of people have received baptism and express their faith and solidarity with others in a variety of ways. This means more than acknowledging occasional “seeds of the word”, since it has to do with an authentic Christian faith which has its own expressions and means of showing its relationship to the Church. The immense importance of a culture marked by faith cannot be overlooked; before the onslaught of contemporary secularism an evangelized culture, for all its limits, has many more resources than the mere sum total of believers. An evangelized popular culture contains values of faith and solidarity capable of encouraging the development of a more just and believing society, and possesses a particular wisdom which ought to be gratefully acknowledged.

86. In some places a spiritual “desertification” has evidently come about, as the result of attempts by some societies to build without God or to eliminate their Christian roots. In those places “the Christian world is becoming sterile, and it is depleting itself like an overexploited ground, which transforms into a desert”. In other countries, violent opposition to Christianity forces Christians to hide their faith in their own beloved homeland. This is another painful kind of desert.

Persecutions within the Church. Those attached to the Traditional Mass know exactly what Pope Francis means in this paragraph.

100. Those wounded by historical divisions find it difficult to accept our invitation to forgiveness and reconciliation, since they think that we are ignoring their pain or are asking them to give up their memory and ideals. But if they see the witness of authentically fraternal and reconciled communities, they will find that witness luminous and attractive. It always pains me greatly to discover how some Christian communities, and even consecrated persons, can tolerate different forms of enmity, division, calumny, defamation, vendetta, jealousy and the desire to impose certain ideas at all costs, even to persecutions which appear as veritable witch hunts. Whom are we going to evangelize if this is the way we act?

Other issues.

115: Grace supposes culture, and God's gift becomes flesh in the culture of those who receive it.

124: “Journeying together to shrines and taking part in other manifestations of popular piety, also by taking one’s children or inviting others, is in itself an evangelizing gesture”. Let us not stifle or presume to control this missionary power!

132. When certain categories of reason and the sciences are taken up into the proclamation of the message, these categories then become tools of evangelization; water is changed into wine. Whatever is taken up is not just redeemed, but becomes an instrument of the Spirit for enlightening and renewing the world.

183. Consequently, no one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society.

233: ... the Church’s history is a history of salvation, to be mindful of those saints who inculturated the Gospel in the life of our peoples and to reap the fruits of the Church’s rich bimillennial tradition, without pretending to come up with a system of thought detached from this treasury, as if we wanted to reinvent the Gospel.

Evangelii gaudium, 6: why evangelise?

Witness: the Rosary Crusade of Reparation in London, 2013

I have a couple more posts to add to my series about the Holy Father's Exhortation. The first, this one, is an area which I think it should have been clearer. Surprisingly, this is the question which is central to the whole document, evangelisation. The question is, why should we do it?

The traditional answer is to play our part, under providence, in the salvation of souls. That we should work for the conversion of non-believers out of a concern for their eternal salvation does not imply that we believe their salvation is absolutely impossible without their conversion. We should promote the sacrament of Penance out of a concern for the salvation of Catholics already baptised; that doesn't involve a denial that mortal sin can be forgiven by an act of perfect contrition, without sacramental absolution. Indeed, one can have quite a broad view of the possibility of salvation outside the visible boundaries of the Church, and still want to see people come into the Church, visibly, in order to make their salvation more likely. To this extent the debate about how people can be saved outside the Church, interesting as it is, is a red herring. We all think that the sacraments are at least very useful aids in escaping the state of mortal sin. As useful, say, as anti-malaria tablets for those visiting a malarial region, for those who want to avoid a state of malaria. Can't we at least agree about that?

But the motivation of saving souls for evangelisation is not stated in the Exhortation. Instead, Pope Francis talks first about how we want to evagelise because we love God, rather than because of our love for the people we are evangelising. Thus (264):

The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known? If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence. Standing before him with open hearts, letting him look at us, we see that gaze of love which Nathaniel glimpsed on the day when Jesus said to him: “I saw you under the fig tree” (Jn 1:48). How good it is to stand before a crucifix, or on our knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and simply to be in his presence! How much good it does us when he once more touches our lives and impels us to share his new life! What then happens is that “we speak of what we have seen and heard” (1 Jn 1:3). The best incentive for sharing the Gospel comes from contemplating it with love, lingering over its pages and reading it with the heart. If we approach it in this way, its beauty will amaze and constantly excite us. But if this is to come about, we need to recover a contemplative spirit which can help us to realize ever anew that we have been entrusted with a treasure which makes us more human and helps us to lead a new life. There is nothing more precious which we can give to others.

The LMS Oxford Pilgrimage, 2013

This leaves open the question: why, exactly, does love of God lead us to seek the conversion of others? Why does spending time before the crucifix inspire this kind of work, rather than any other? The answer must be sought in the benefits gained by converts who receive the message. This is referred to more briefly and rather vaguely.

272: A committed missionary knows the joy of being a spring which spills over and refreshes others. Only the person who feels happiness in seeking the good of others, in desiring their happiness, can be a missionary.

Again, in 274:

Consequently, if I can help at least one person to have a better life, that already justifies the offering of my life. It is a wonderful thing to be God’s faithful people. We achieve fulfilment when we break down walls and our heart is filled with faces and names!

Those who receive the Gospel are refreshed. It assists their happiness. They are helped to lead a better life. Is that all? Of course not. Only a few years ago, in 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith produced a 'Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelisation'. This asserted the obvious (1): 

The Apostles, therefore, “prompted by the Spirit, invited all to change their lives, to be converted and to be baptized”, because the “pilgrim Church is necessary for salvation”.

A talk at the SCT Summer School, 2013

The reason this had to be re-stated was:

3. There is today, however, a growing confusion which leads many to leave the missionary command of the Lord unheard and ineffective (cf. Mt 28:19). Often it is maintained that any attempt to convince others on religious matters is a limitation of their freedom. From this perspective, it would only be legitimate to present one’s own ideas and to invite people to act according to their consciences, without aiming at their conversion to Christ and to the Catholic faith. It is enough, so they say, to help people to become more human or more faithful to their own religion; it is enough to build communities which strive for justice, freedom, peace and solidarity. Furthermore, some maintain that Christ should not be proclaimed to those who do not know him, nor should joining the Church be promoted, since it would also be possible to be saved without explicit knowledge of Christ and without formal incorporation in the Church.

I do not think Pope Francis is a victim of this 'confusion'; I do wish, however, that he had taken the opportunity of his Exhortation to dispel it. But the fact is that, after its initial linkage of evangelisation with salvation in the opening section, even the CDF (under Pope Benedict, of course) seemed reluctant to call a spade a spade. It goes on to talk (very interestingly, it must be said) about things like the fullness of truth which Christ represents. Fine. But I can go to heaven without the fullness of truth about mathematics, and the same is true of theology. The only sense in which individual Catholics have the fullness of truth is the sense in which they possess it by virtue of their incorporation into the Mystical Body by Baptism. What gets us to heaven, if we go, will be the sacraments.

It is obvious that the missionary impulse is going to be blunted if the missionaries think that what they are offering others is little more than a combination of truths and a life-enhancing way of life. The people who promote Yoga or skin products with similar claims usually do so with financial incentives. We aren't going to get Catholics to be effective witnesses and evangelisers of the Faith until they are once again convinced, as they were until about fifty or sixty years ago, that their interlocuter's salvation may be at stake.

In preparation for the beatification of Pope Paul VI, let's just ponder his words (Evangelium nuntiandi (1975) 5):

Such an exhortation seems to us to be of capital importance, for the presentation of the Gospel message is not an optional contribution for the Church. It is the duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus, so that people can believe and be saved. This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either indifference, syncretism or accommodation. It is a question of people's salvation.

Someone being received into the Church.

Evangelii gaudium 5: the bureaucratic attitude

A Catholic charity at work. The LMS Walsingham Pilgrimage in Ely.

Yesterday I quoted Pope Francis:

279. Sometimes it seems that our work is fruitless, but mission is not like a business transaction or investment, or even a humanitarian activity. It is not a show where we count how many people come as a result of our publicity; it is something much deeper, which escapes all measurement.

This is linked to a number of other passages. For example, speaking of society as a whole:

239.  We do not need plans drawn up by a few for the few, or an enlightened or outspoken minority which claims to speak for everyone. It is about agreeing to live together, a social and cultural pact.

The concern of a state agency or secular NGO is to get as many units of welfare delivered as efficiently as possible. There is something to be said for this approach, obviously, particularly in emergencies. But when a Catholic is confronted by a person in need, he is confronted by a person: a creature made in the likeness of God, about whom Christ will say 'as you treated one of these, you treated Me.' This has the result that Catholic agencies are often - and always should be - characterised by the development of human relationships, conversations, personal warmth. A prime example of this is given by Bl Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa, and (among other things) it infuriated some of her critics, like the late Christopher Hitchens. She would spend hours talking to just one person. Was this the misallocation of resources? This kind of resource, 'talking to Mother Teresa', isn't something which can be rationed out in life-preserving mouthfuls to thousands, it is something which, under providence, she gave with total selflessness to those with whom she happened to be confronted. 

Is this kind of thing going to solve the world's social problems? We don't know the good God will draw from it. But in human terms, no: these problems will not be solved without the involvement of the state, because they derive from fundamental economic and social issues created and sustained by laws, regulations, and policies controlled by the state. That the Church can't solve these problems is no criticism of the Church, it is just the nature of things. What we can do is to bring Christ to people, whether it be by addressing spiritual poverty directly, or by giving a tramp a smile as well as a bowl of soup.

The contrast between state efficiency and charitable human warmth is well worn theme. In creating the National Health Service, Anuerin Bevan famously said 'I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.' The small hospitals he had in mind were the ones created often by private philanthropy which the new NHS closed down in the hundreds. (The NHS inherited 2,800 hospitals from its predecessor institutions in 1948; today, for a vastly bigger population, it has 2,300.) Since then every charity has been exposed to the temptation to ape the cold altruism of efficiency, and Church institutions have often succumbed to this. In practice, of course, the efficiency can be lost along the way, leaving only the coldness.

Related to this is another problem Pope Francis has picked out: of Catholics and Catholic institutions losing their Catholic identity.

79. At times our media culture and some intellectual circles convey a marked scepticism with regard to the Church’s message, along with a certain cynicism. As a consequence, many pastoral workers, although they pray, develop a sort of inferiority complex which leads them to relativize or conceal their Christian identity and convictions. This produces a vicious circle. They end up being unhappy with who they are and what they do; they do not identify with their mission of evangelization and this weakens their commitment. They end up stifling the joy of mission with a kind of obsession about being like everyone else and possessing what everyone else possesses. Their work of evangelization thus becomes forced, and they devote little energy and very limited time to it.

80. Pastoral workers can thus fall into a relativism which, whatever their particular style of spirituality or way of thinking, proves even more dangerous than doctrinal relativism. It has to do with the deepest and inmost decisions that shape their way of life. This practical relativism consists in acting as if God did not exist, making decisions as if the poor did not exist, setting goals as if others did not exist, working as if people who have not received the Gospel did not exist. It is striking that even some who clearly have solid doctrinal and spiritual convictions frequently fall into a lifestyle which leads to an attachment to financial security, or to a desire for power or human glory at all cost, rather than giving their lives to others in mission. Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of missionary enthusiasm!

We all know about the Catholic charities which want to get government grants, or grants from secular-minded charitable trusts, and gradually change both their policies and their names to play down their Catholic identity: indeed, 'a Catholic charity' becomes one with a 'Catholic ethos', then a 'Catholic heritage', and then it gets forgotten altogether, even if it lingers in the pages of the Catholic Directory for a few more years out of sheer habit. It is clear what they are getting: money ('financial security'), contracts, a seat on various committees set up by the government. What are they losing? Their whole raison d'etre. Because these institutions were not set up as organs of the state, but as ways of reaching out in Catholic charity to those in need, and this means reaching out as Catholics. 

Evangelii gaudium 4: Activism and spiritual poverty

This and the other photos: the SCT Summer School 2013

A neglected aspect of the Holy Father's Exhortation Evangelii gaudium is his condemnation of activism and of a bureaucratic attitude.

46. Going out to others in order to reach the fringes of humanity does not mean rushing out aimlessly into the world. Often it is better simply to slow down, to put aside our eagerness in order to see and listen to others, to stop rushing from one thing to another and to remain with someone who has faltered along the way.

199. Our commitment does not consist exclusively in activities or programmes of promotion and assistance; what the Holy Spirit mobilizes is not an unruly activism, but above all an attentiveness which considers the other “in a certain sense as one with ourselves”. This loving attentiveness is the beginning of a true concern for their person which inspires me effectively to seek their good.

279. Sometimes it seems that our work is fruitless, but mission is not like a business transaction or investment, or even a humanitarian activity. It is not a show where we count how many people come as a result of our publicity; it is something much deeper, which escapes all measurement. It may be that the Lord uses our sacrifices to shower blessings in another part of the world which we will never visit. The Holy Spirit works as he wills, when he wills and where he wills; we entrust ourselves without pretending to see striking results.

The heresy of activism is part of the heresy of Americanism, and was condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899): 

'This overesteem of natural virtue finds a method of expression in assuming to divide all virtues in active and passive, and it is alleged that whereas passive virtues found better place in past times, our age is to be characterized by the active. That such a division and distinction cannot be maintained is patent-for there is not, nor can there be, merely passive virtue.'

In that context it manifested itself with a mistrust of the contemplative religious life, which was slow to root itself in North America. Those infected by Americanism were inclined to see contemplatives as useless to the Church. The late Fr Paul Crane recounted an anecdote of an American army chaplain in World War II, in Italy, who, when told a community of Italian Carmelites were starving, refused to help them, with the words 'What have they ever done for anyone?' 

An unbalanced emphasis on 'active' virtue, notably that directed towards social problems, is not what Pope Francis has been promoting in his concern for social justice. When the Church addresses social problems, she does not do so as a 'humanitarian NGO' does: Pope Francis has made this very clear. Nor is the Church a branch of the public sector, carrying out programmes of social improvement - however worthy these may be. What does this contrast, between the Church and other bodied, mean?

One part of the contrast Pope Francis has been underlining is that the Church is always concerned with the worst kind of poverty, spiritual poverty. As he said to the diplomatic corps:

'But there is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the "tyranny of relativism", which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples.'

This is obviously something the Church is uniquely well suited to address. It should not be forgotten, of course, that there is a connection between material and spiritual poverty in the West. Although the poor in developed countries are materially better off than the poor in poor countries, the destruction of working class communities and culture, and the disastrous social and educational experiments to which they have been subjected, means that they are particularly badly off in terms of contact with the kinds of social and cultural resources which could address spiritual poverty. Mother Teresa expressed it this way:

'The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.'

The tyranny of relativism, hunger for God, loneliness: these not seem closely connected but they are. An attitude of relativism, which is now the official ideology of the educational establishment, serves as a lens of cynicism through which to look at everything. Anything lacking cynicism is ridiculed as naive. Cynicism is safe, cool with the gang; it means you'll never be taken in. Sadly, it also makes it impossible to take any truth or any relationship seriously. The products of modern education, except to the degree that they can free themselves from this, are condemned to lonliness from people and from God by a horror of being thought gullible. They have been innoculated against Christ.

The best way to address this is by education, and the best time to address it is with children. This is why the kind of work done most characteristically by traditionalist groups, schools and summer camps and catechism for children, is very much to the point. Given the chronic lack of material resources in the traditional movement, I don't think trads have anything to be ashamed of in this regard. Wherever there are trads gathered together there is a ferment of work going on related to education and spiritual development. I wish this were so in the rest of the Church.

The SCT Summer School, supported by the Latin Mass Society, is free at the point of delivery: no one is turned away. The dates this year are 3-10th August.

Another project of the Latin Mass Society this year is sponsorsip of some places are the Roman Forum Lake Garda conference; we will also be having another one-day conference of our own in London. Watch this space for more details.

Another part of the contrast between the Church and the public sector or the humanitarian NGO, is that of mindset, even when the Church is engaged in directly addressing material poverty, as with a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. I will address this in the next post.

Evangelii gaudium 3: open and closed worship

As I quoted in my last post, Pope Francis has written, in his Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, that a parish must not be 'a self-absorbed cluster made up of a chosen few.' (28)

The second idea I want to put forward in relation to these remarks of Pope Francis is about open and closed forms of worship. What I mean derives from the different conceptions of participation characteristic of the traditional and the reformed liturgy. In the traditional liturgy we participate by uniting heart and soul with the offering at which the priest officiates. We do this mostly in silence, our prayer stimulated and focused by the ceremonies, chants and so on of the liturgy, which lend themselves so well to contemplative engagement. The usual understanding of 'active participation' following the Council has it that it helps participation if the Faithful are saying and doing things: making responses, carrying up the gifts at the Offertory, reading the readings, leading bidding prayers, distributing Communion and so on. This idea is not the teaching of the Church; on the contrary it has come under a lot of criticism from Bl. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Nevertheless it has been very influential, and one can see the results. Pope John Paul II felt it necessary to underline the point that one can participate by listening to a reading, and not just be reading it (aloud, at the lectern) oneself:

'Worshipers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily'.

If that needed saying, then heaven help us. (See the Position Paper on Participation here.)

My point is this. A liturgy which has been shaped by the second understanding of participation is one which is closed to outsiders. The person who comes in from the street (if only because he is on holiday), who doesn't know the responses, isn't on the Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion Rota, etc. etc. has no way of participating in this liturgy. He becomes what liberal critics of the Traditional Mass call a 'dumb spectator.' Sometimes proponents of this kind of liturgy are aware of the problem and try to meet it by having 'greeters' at the entrance, shoving various books and flyers into your hand as you go in, inviting you (at small week-day Masses particularly) to come and stand hand in hand round the Altar at the Consecration, and so on; again, English-speaking tourists, they worry, should not have to mingle with the natives when they go to Mass. For anyone not weirdly extroverted, this can be a very trying, not to say humiliating, experience, as if one turned up at the wrong dinner party and the host and other guests tried to treat you as a old friend when you'd never met them before. What is quite out of the question, in this kind of liturgy, is that you should engage with it at your own pace, on your own level, in prayer. Prayerful contemplation is simply not allowed: it will be interrupted within a few minutes, and you'll get funny looks.

The opposite is the case with the Traditional Mass. You are, essentially, left alone, but left alone united with the community in the act of worship. You may have things given to you to help you follow the Mass, there may even be responses (especially at a sung Mass), but no one will think you odd if you just look at what is happening on the Alter in prayerful silence. And for the Canon, that is what everyone is doing. You are drawn in: it may be to something unfamiliar, if contemplative prayer is unfamiliar, but it is something which you can do your own way. It is not a Procrustean bed; you can make of it what you will.

This is open worship: in a very practical, sociological sense it is open to everyone who turns up. This has always been a very Catholic attitude: as the sociologist Anthony Archer pointed out, people were never turned away from Mass because they are in their work clothes. But we have lost something of this in the modern parish, where so often everyone else can appear to be on first-name terms.

In a more abstract sense the Traditional Mass is open because of the universality of Latin. This was the major argument in favour of Latin at the time of the reform, and Bugnini acknowledged it, saying only that universality would have have to be emphasised in some other way. But it hasn't been. Every modern parish is in a bubble far more impermeable to outsiders than that surrounding the different Rites and Usages of the Middle Ages. You can read the words of a 14th century pilgrim, Margary Kempe, about experiencing the liturgies of Jerusalem, Germany, Rome, of the Franciscans and her own Sarum Rite, and she appreciated everything and was excluded nowhere. Not once in her travels does she complain about the liturgy. A modern Catholic can't go to the next parish without coming back with a litany of grumbles.

Just come in and make yourself at home.

To return to the theme of the last post, what of the people who attend the Old Mass? Those not familiar with Traditional Catholics may think of them as an inner core, an elite within an elite, in the Church. In fact there are many in traddy congregations who are rather marginal Catholics, students who don't always make it to Church, new converts, people who are finding out about the Vetus Ordo for the first time, people in complex personal circumstances, married people with children whose spouses don't attend, and those unable to receive Communion. The Traditional Mass, in many cases, is what keeps them going, spiritually. It doesn't do so because it affirms them as members of some artificial, closed, 'community', it does so because it facilitates their participation in the Church's eternal offering of worship to God.

Evangelii gaudium 2: the closed community

Pope Francis writes:

A parish must not be 'a self-absorbed cluster made up of a chosen few.' (28)

63: 'We must recognize that if part of our baptized people lack a sense of belonging to the Church, this is also due to certain structures and the occasionally unwelcoming atmosphere of some of our parishes and communities, or to a bureaucratic way of dealing with problems, be they simple or complex, in the lives of our people. In many places an administrative approach prevails over a pastoral approach, as does a concentration on administering the sacraments apart from other forms of evangelization.'

88: 'Many try to escape from others and take refuge in the comfort of their privacy or in a small circle of close friends, renouncing the realism of the social aspect of the Gospel.'

This is a theme he has developed before, and I blogged about it here. I drew attention there to two things: what Pope Benedict said about celebration of Mass versus populum creating a 'closed circle', and what the sociologist Anthony Archer said about the post-Conciliar developments such as prayer-groups, house Masses, and parish committees appealing to cliquey middle-class types and not to the Church's working-class base.

In this and the next post I want to develop a couple of other ideas. The first, for this post, is the question of whether those attached to the Traditional Mass can justly be regarded as a 'closed group'. The other is about closed and open liturgy.

Part of Pope Francis' notion of the closed and self-absorbed is connected with his critique of judgmentalism. Thus (94):

'A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.'

The reference to 'soundness of doctrine' suggests he has in mind conservative groups which pride themselves on their orthodoxy, as does the reference to authoritarianism, though of course others can be pretty smug about their doctrinal superiority, and abuse positions of power, as well. It can't apply to trads, of course: we can't be authoritarian, as we are invariably excluded from exercising authority... Neveretheless, in general terms it might appear that the closed community idea is or at least can be linked to a holier-than-thou conservatism. On a conception of the Church in which traditionalists are regarded as extreme conservatives, then trads are in trouble here too.

I have argued already that trads are not best understood as extreme conservatives. But let me put the situation another way. What Pope Francis is wary of here is a self-appointed gang of perfecti - to use the Catharist term - who are more interested in criticising others than in spreading the gospel. I'm sure we've all seen this kind of thing; no group within the Church is immune from this temptation. We all think we are right - by definition, we believe what we believe - and thinking others are wrong can lead to an 'I'm all right Jack' attitude instead of a more positive response, such as dialogue with those with whom one disagrees, or putting one's ideas into some kind of evangelical action.

There are ideas, however, which push those holding them towards the negative, and away from the positive, options here. These are ideas which give us the impression either that others don't need the Gospel, or that they are incapable of receiving it, or both. These ideas are, of course, incompatible with the Christian message, but they are held by those liberals who think that non-Catholics are just as well off lacking the sacraments, and non-Christians lacking the revelation of Jesus Christ. Pope Francis goes to some lengths to oppose these ideas in the Exhortation, as I will show in a later post; they are, of course, directly hostile to the project of evangelisation. Much as I am irritated by the smug superiority of neo-conservative Catholics who think they have all the answers (having just dreamt them up), this is not a problem characteristic of them, or of Traditionalists either. The real danger - whether Pope Francis had this in mind or not - of Catholics getting into little groups to analyse and categorise everyone else, and not bother actually evangelising, is to be found among the liberals.

I am sure many readers of this blog have had the experience I have often had, of a liberal interlocuter giving you a pitying look as someone so backward, unenlightened, and childish, as to take seriously the teachings of the Church, such as Our Lord's physical resurrection from the dead. They are so superior to this way of thinking that they don't even think it necessary, always, to argue about it, any more than they would tell a small child that Father Christmas doesn't exist. From their lofty, indeed Promethian heights, they look down on all the different Faiths as expressing in different terms the pure Truth which they alone have been given to grasp in its fullness. They think the rest of us are incorrigible, but it is they who are incapable of receiving the message of the Gospel: in the famous phrase of the American liberal nuns, they have 'moved beyond Jesus'. They represent the complete closure and indeed death of a Catholic community.

All these people are looking at Someone else.

Evangelii gaudium: 1, Introduction

I have in mind a short series of posts about the Holy Father's Apostolic Exhortation; this has been somewhat delayed by domestic matters but it is important enough to wait. In this post I just want to give my overall impressions.

When Pope Francis gave an interview, now more or less repudiated for its inaccuracies, in which he said 'proselytism is solemn nonsense', it was presented as a response to the question 'are you going to try to convert me?' It wasn't clear to many people whether he was contrasting proselytism with evangelisation or witness, or repudiating the entire mission of proclaiming the gospel. (I pointed out that he wouldn't have said 'evangelisation is solemn nonsense'.) Well, we know now. This man is Mr Evangelisation. Bringing the Good News of the Gospel to unbelievers and the lapsed is his number one priority, and he wants it to be the number one priority for every Catholic. He has thought about it very hard over many years, and is concerned above all in this Exhortation with the attitudes of Catholics which are un-evangelical, which are closed in on themselves, which are too comfortable and content with the little group in which they find themselves. I think what he says about this is extremely interesting, and I will set it out in more detail in a later post. He also, very interestingly, condemns activism.

in case there might be any ambiguity about the place of evangelisation in our lives he goes to the trouble of describing in some detail what he has in mind by talking about person-to-person evangelisation (127-130). He also goes into a lot of detail about sermons, and how to prepare them. I wish this chapter had received as much attention as the little snippets about unbridled capitalism; if priests followed the Holy Father's advice on how to prepare to preach homilies would be transformed. Get this, for example (145):

'A preacher who has not prepared is not "spiritual"; he is dishonest and irresponsible with the the gifts he has received.'

He also clarifies has this to say about abortion:

214. 'Precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person, the Church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.'

In the next post, I will talk about the notion of 'closed', un-evangelical communities.


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