An instruction based on a model not fit for purpose

A few years ago, I had to endure listening to a panegyric delivered at the Requiem Mass for a fellow priest of our diocese, by a former student from the seminary. 

Although he had sat through my classes on Ecclesiology many years previously, he seemed not to have taken on board a fundamental part of the teaching of Lumen Gentium on the People of God. 

This priest, in presenting his remarks about the well-read and very pastorally minded priest who lay nearby in the coffin, kept referring to “You, the People of God” who were in front of him in the pews, and of “We, the clergy” who sat behind him on the sanctuary. 

At one point “the clergy” consisted only of the priests present but, almost as an afterthought, he then included the deacons present. The fact that this was a kind of functional heresy passed him by completely. 

He would, in fact, have been mortified to think that he was being in any way heterodox in what he was saying, and yet he was, and he is not alone amongst clergy – and quite a proportion of lay people, I suspect – in thinking in this way.

The fact is, of course, that in Lumen Gentium the Fathers at the Second Vatican Council very carefully and deliberately placed the chapter on the People of God – which includes all the baptised – before moving on in subsequent chapters to deal separately with clergy, laity and religious. 

We desperately need a different paradigm

The People of God clearly consists in all those who are baptised, not just one section of them. 

One of the most memorable ways of stating that fact was made later by one of the Presidents of the Council, Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens of Brussels, when he remarked that the most significant date in the life of a pope was not the date of his election to that office, but the date of his baptism – without which he could not have been ordained, even less elected to his office!

The mindset that separates “the People” from “the Clergy” has been one that has infected (sic) reflections on the Church and on pastoral issues even as the ink was still drying on the promulgated text of Lumen Gentium. 

As someone who was ordained in 1978, thirteen years after the close of the Council, I used to hear clergy at that time refer to “the People” as a very separate group – even among priests who considered themselves to be progressive in their thinking. Clerical ideology runs very deep indeed in the psyche of our Church.

This came to mind when I read through the recent “Instruction” from the Congregation for Clergy entitled, “The Pastoral Conversion of the Parish Community”.

On July 24^thin his Letter from Rome (in La Croix International), Robert Mickens opined that this document was “Not worth the paper it’s written on”. I disagree with that judgement, at least to the extent that it offers a perfect example of just how redundant is the frame of mind that produces such an instruction and the canon law on which it is based. In current parlance it is “not fit for purpose”. 

We desperately need a different paradigm and a different code of law based on that paradigm to help the church become, at all levels, what is clearly the call of the present situation to become “missionary disciples” in the world today.

Although the Instruction initially sets out a bold vision for the parish going into the future – a vision rooted in part, at least, of Pope Francis’ vision given in Evangelii Gaudium – it hits the buffers once it comes down to practicalities when, at the end of the day there is no doubt that the clergy – the Bishop first, but mainly in the parish context, of course, the priest – are firmly in charge.

Reading the Instruction reminded me of a book published in 2018 by Mark Massa SJ, of Boston College. 

Entitled, “The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism”, Massa sets out to describe the aftermath, in the American Catholic academy, of the publication of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. 

Part of his thesis is that the neo-scholastic understanding of natural law, on which the central decision of the Encyclical was based, was no longer capable of sustaining the arguments as presented. 

He goes into great detail about this but, for our purposes here, I am only concerned with his use of Thomas Kuhn’s classical work of 1962, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.

Kuhn’s thesis is that, far from there being a smooth transition from one paradigm to another in scientific thought - Newton building on Galileo, who himself built on Aristotle, and so on – in reality the change is much more dramatic and traumatic. It is revolutionary!

The power to change or not to change

Whenever new observations are made that call into question a current paradigm what happens, at first, is that the paradigm is bent every which way in order to accommodate those anomalies. 

This keeps happening until finally there is a revolution in thinking and the old paradigm is replaced by a new one that better explains the facts as currently known. 

This paradigm will itself be subject to the same processes as further observations are made which may not fit within its parameters. 

This is a hopelessly summarised version of Kuhn’s theory, but it seems to me that it resonates rather well with our current situation vis-à-vis becoming a community of missionary disciples at all levels of the Church.

It is my contention that the current paradigm of the Code of Canon Law cannot be bent sufficiently to accommodate the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves today. It, not the reflections on becoming missionary disciples, needs to change the better to deal with this urgent calling.

To be fair, the authors do try to set out the ways in which the Parish may become more missionary in its life and work. 

It calls on priests to do all they can to facilitate this noting that, “It should be recalled that the Parish Priest is at the service of the Parish, not the other way round.” (Instruction §69). 

However, it all ultimately unravels when it comes to the role of those who are not priests in running a parish and the role of Finance and Parish Councils. 

The power to change or not to change resides solely where it always has, in one person alone: the priest who is mandated by the bishop to oversee the running of the parish, whatever title he may hold. 

In the Conclusion to the Instruction the authors have this to say,

Recalling the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council in the light of recent Magisterium, and considering the social context that are profoundly changed, the present Instruction is intended to focus the topic of renewal of the Parish in a missionary sense. (§122)

The “intention” is laudable, but the final document is not. 

Almost forty years on from the promulgation of the current Code of Canon Law surely it is time for an overhaul of an outdated system of laws written for a very different age. 

Pope Francis has announced recently that the focus of his catechetical instructions during forthcoming General Audiences will be about the Church’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic,

In the next few weeks, I invite you to tackle together the pressing questions that the pandemic has brough to the fore, social ills above all. And we will do it in the light of the Gospel, of the theological virtues and the principles of the Church’s social doctrine.

  (From the General Audience allocution 5^thAugust 2020)

Something similar needs to be done in regard to our outdated, not fit for purpose, law in regard to many aspects of church structures, including especially the Parish. 

In the case of a new approach to law we have the tools of the Gospel, of an evolving ecclesiology and of the tradition of jurisprudence all of which need to take into account those developments. 

Although this Instruction was issued during the current pandemic it was in preparation for a long time prior to this, and the authors could not have foreseen what was about to happen across the world. 

However, recent events and the challenges they have brought to the Church make it even more imperative that conversations rooted in the reality of this new context need urgently to move ahead so that the Church is equipped with a better paradigm of law that can accommodate the changes that need to be made.

Sean Hall is currently parish priest in North Tyneside (England) and a member of the Vicariate for Faith and Mission for the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. He previously taught theology at Ushaw College and has served as advisor for religious education in the diocese.