CathNews New Zealand

The worldwide Catholic Church has now officially embarked on the “synodal process 2021-2023”.

Pope Francis launched the project at the Vatican on October 10 with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and bishops around the globe (though not all of them) inaugurated the process at the diocesan level the following Sunday with celebrations in their local cathedrals.

The Synod of Bishops’ secretariat in Rome has put extensive emphasis on listening — to God in the Holy Spirit and to one another.

But in the Christian tradition, the act of listening is always connected to reading: not just Scripture, but also whatever is conducive to listening to the revelation of God in history and our lives in order to discern the ways God speaks to us today.

The problem is that there are new forms of illiteracy and ignorance today that affect the Church, and this is a key element in understanding why a number of Catholics seem indifferent to or uninterested in the “synodal process”.

Some of the reticence is rooted in an opposition to Pope Francis or the Second Vatican Council. But the problem is actually much deeper.

From the printing press to social media

The Reformation and the Council of Trent (1545-63) took place in the 16th century during the age of the printing press, and books made an important impact on the religious culture and theological debates of that time.

The First Vatican Council (1869-70) was held in the 19th century during the age of newspapers, magazines, and the emergence of public intellectuals.

When Vatican II (1962-65) rolled around, we were already in the age of television and mass media.

And now we have the synodal process 2021-2023, the biggest consultation of the People of God in Church history. It is taking place in the age of digital and social media, a phenomenon that has shown the Church to be deeply divided along generational and cultural lines.

Many who belong to the Catholic gerontocracy are digitally illiterate, while people in other sections of the Church are illiterate in a more traditional sense of the word.

Even in Catholic institutions of higher education, we have many people who are “graduated but not literate”.

There are disturbing signs of a plummeting cultural level among today’s Catholics. In Europe and the Western world, many Catholic newspapers, magazines and publishing houses have shut down over the past few years.

The end of an era

After nourishing the intellect of Catholics for generations, especially during Vatican II and the first decades following the Council, there are now fewer avenues for the cultural production and consumption of writing that can help believers make sense of the signs of the times.

One of the latest examples is the shocking news of the bankruptcy and closure of one of Italy’s most important Catholic publishers, Edizioni Dehoniane.

Based in Bologna, it has produced many essential volumes over the years, including the Italian edition of the much-acclaimed Jerusalem Bible.

The closing of this publishing house marks the end of an era for Catholic culture in Italy and raises serious concerns about how believers will continue to be intellectually engaged in the future.

The Roman Curia, the Vatican and the pontifical universities and academies in Rome were once centres of cultural production and consumption, but today this is no longer the case or at least not to the same extent it once was.

I have lost count of how many religious bookshops in the Eternal City have closed over the past few years and I wonder how many more will be shuttered. The problem is not just the emergence of e-commerce, digital libraries, nor the pandemic.

What we are witnessing is a substantial change in the culture of Catholics compared to the expectations raised by the reforms of Vatican II.

Devotionalism is overtaking intellectual rigour

The question is whether Catholics still read about religion and the Church; and, if so, what they are reading.

High school and college professors are used to dealing with the declining level of literacy among their students — the ability to read critically, write intelligibly, and orient oneself in the cultural canon required not only of a professional but also of a citizen.

Theology is not exempt from this trend.

In the last few years, a return of devotionalism (something different from devotions) has taken the place of intellectual rigour.

In seminaries, there is a new emphasis on the basic human formation and psychological screenings, which has been made necessary by the sex abuse scandal, as well as by the difficult family and personal backgrounds from which many priesthood candidates come.

But, unfortunately, human formation — as essential as it is — has often come at the expense of historical, philosophical and theological formation.

This is not only a problem that affects seminarians and the young clergy. It is also a problem of ideology in the Catholic Church at large.

Books are not just objects, but also companions

The consumption of content provided by religious blogs and websites has further pushed pre-existing currents of devout anti-intellectualism. The so-called “proud ignorance” is not unknown in militant Catholic circles, where Vatican II theology is bashed as a sellout to secularism.

If one looks at the militant Catholic websites favoured by many seminarians, young priests and various ecclesial activists, it is easy to understand why Catholic publishing is in crisis – especially for the kind of books and magazines that one could loosely call “Vatican II Catholicism”.

However, on the neo-traditionalist and anti-Vatican II side of the spectrum, there seems to be an energy that liberals are ignoring at their own peril.

The crisis of Catholic publishing is not just a problem for those who directly or even indirectly work in this industry.

Books are not just objects: they are an emanation of a personality and can be good companions and friends that chase away moments of solitude and sorrow. They provide a kind of companionship that persons of faith cannot find in digital or social media.

There is a kind of militant anti-intellectualism that is truly a disaster, and it is truly anti-Catholic without knowing it.

The most important Church document on listening and reading is Dei Verbum, the Vatican II Constitution on Divine Revelation. It offers an understanding of the faith that is not intellectualistic, while also rejecting anti-intellectualism.

Intellectual disarmament before huge cultural challenges

Self-abandonment in faith is not without direction. It necessarily includes a commitment to the Word, which must be listened to and read.

Reading the Scriptures is not just a Protestant thing. And Christianity is not a “religion of the book”, in the sense that it is not bound to a literalist reading of the Holy Writ.

We believe the Scriptures have emerged under the influence of the Holy Spirit. And reading and interpreting them includes an intellectual process, without which there is no tradition of the Church.

But there seems to be intellectual disarmament before the huge cultural challenges facing the Church in the global world of today.

It’s a disarmament that affects different ideological corners of Catholicism in different ways.

Some of the Church’s “cultural warriors” understood before and in a better way than most progressives that this is not the time to divest from theological culture.

The crisis of Catholic culture has an impact on the synodal process 2021-2023 and on Pope Francis’ pontificate.

A Church that invites people to listen must invest in culture

Catholics who have kept alive the theology of Vatican II over the last few decades have been better equipped to understand the link between the pope’s synodality and the tradition of the Church.

That’s because they are part of a generation of avid readers. Unfortunately, it is an ageing generation and most of those who belong to it are already retired.

Church leaders are eager to emphasize that synodality is not a political mechanism, but a spiritual process. This is true, but that spiritual process relies on basic skills that we learn from the humanities and liberal arts.

There is a contradiction between a Church that invites Catholics to listen and at the same time does not understand the necessity to invest in culture.

The need to address ignorance among Church leaders

In ancient culture, during a time when the biblical canon was formed and for many centuries afterwards, learning happened largely by listening. In an oral culture, the act of reading was not essential.

Then in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, we moved to a visual culture where religious content was dominant.

In this age of digital and social media, we are bombarded with ubiquitous images freed from the monopoly of art (especially religious art).

In previous centuries when the religious message reached Christians through different channels, illiteracy was not such an impediment to growth in faith.

But today the inability to read critically has more serious consequences for the life of the faith.

Not all Catholics are expected or required to be bookworms or to own a library – literally or figuratively. But the expectations must be higher for the Church’s ordained and lay leaders.

Being a “listening Church” does not mean just listening to one another or listening to the Holy Spirit. It also means listening to what culture – religious and secular – has to say to the Church.

The Council of Trent tackled the problem of ignorance among the clergy.

Today, some 450 years later, there are signs that the Catholic Church is once again facing that same problem again, at a moment when its leadership is or should no longer be identified only with the clergy.

The assumption that Church leaders can afford to be ignorant is just another form of clericalism.

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia) and a much-published author and commentator. He is a visiting professor in Europe and Australia.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

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News category: Analysis and Comment, Palmerston.