There is an old joke about the civil servant who was put in charge of implementing the government’s new policy on “freedom of information”.
When asked by a journalist how the new freedom of information policy was playing out, he replied: “I’m afraid I cannot comment: that matter is classified!”
It may be an apocryphal story, but it does illustrate a human truth: on the whole, organizations like to do things in a private and do not like sharing information.
They prefer “confidentiality” (or “secrecy” – depending on your viewpoint) to widespread discussion. The only discussion encouraged then is that which is sponsored by them – and we tend to dismiss such filtered “openness” with the slur: propaganda.
It should come as no surprise to us then that Church organizations are not famous for their openness – even when discussing the up-coming synod.
Centuries of clerical sticking together, having topics that are off-limits for discussion, secret process for the election of bishops, and frequent declarations that something was sub sigillo (under the seal) or sub secreto (secret) has made the Roman Catholic Church an organization that feels really uncomfortable about openness.
Moreover, in an older, pre-Vatican II, ecclesiology of a Church of leaders/led, clergy/laity, and teachers/taught, the notion that there was a knowledge reserved to the “experts” was commonplace – and unproblematic.
In an ecclesiology of the People of God, however, such an idea is an affront to the Holy Spirit who opens the mind of each of the baptized to the truth.
No surprises
It is not surprising therefore, that, discussions relating to synodality run up against this tendency to keep it confidential.
With reference to the situation in Australia, John Warhurst wrote recently, “Yet it is difficult to have a proper public conversation about this step because it has taken place behind closed doors.”
This is sad in a very poignant way. If synodality means anything, it means that such discussions – and that is all they are – should be the furthest from anything that smacks of “dark back rooms”.
A synodal Church must avoid the notion that being “in the know” is the preserve of a special elite.
The notion of “openness”
Like synodality itself, the notion of openness is a new one – or, at least, a relatively new one.
In the wake of the secret treaties and diplomacy that resulted in World War I, Woodrow Wilson advocated that a more peaceful world needed an end to as much secrecy as possible. He wanted “open treaties, openly arrived at” – where the people in the states concerned know what their governments were doing in their name.
The image of the bee seeking nectar from every flower was a metaphor for many in the early churches that the truth was not restricted but to be found openly.
The Watergate legacy
Since then, now over a century, openness has been an ideal of good government. Even when it has not been openly espoused, we have learned to suspect secret pacts and dealing down in the shade.
Moreover, covering up has become the major political sin. “Watergate” that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon in 1975 has become the benchmark.
Nixon did not resign as a result of the original crimes, but for the crime of covering up. He famously said that there was “no white-wash in the White House” – but when the whitewash was exposed, his lack of openness was damning.
Every cover-up since then has become “Something-gate”.
As a community that seeks to be a witness in the world to the values of truth, love, and peace, the Church – and each church – should see it as part of its mission to be a model of openness.
Just as it was only in the nineteenth century that the Church discovered that part of its moral duty was to witness against slavery, it is only now discovering that part of its moral calling is to demand and model openness in human affairs. Demanding openness is part of its witness to the truth and its pursuit of wisdom.
But to call for openness and not practice it is not only hypocritical but a counter-sign.
The Planet of the Apes
In the classic scifi film from 1968 – based on Pierre Boulle’s novel in French from 1963 – the priests know that information is power and they are charged with keeping it secret.
Knowledge is dangerous and only the select, sacred few could have access. It is a vision of knowing/knowledge/information that flies in the face of the noble tradition of positive searching for the truth, a fearless searching.
This is what inspired men like St Thomas Aquinas, for whom the truth is one and lies at the finality of human endeavour. But that dark linking of “clergy” with “keeping it dark” is a theme found in many cultures.
This notion that the Church fears the truth and fears openness – a meme since the days of the Index of Prohibited Books – is not only destructive of the Church’s mission, but it seeps inward and rots the Church from within.
How much better would the Church have handled the crimes of sexual abuse by clergy if openness had been the norm?
Unfortunately, the frequent appeals to a creepy notion of the “pontifical secret’ and cover-up only added to the sufferings of the abused and reduced the Church’s credibility.
A movement in human society
The move towards openness is a movement within human societies today. The Churches should welcome this as one of “the signs of the times” and promote it.
But it can only do so credibly by practicing it.
This time of preparation for the 2023 assembly of the Synod of Bishops should be a time when Catholics call for openness as part of their ecclesial life, and communities, parishes, dioceses, provinces, and the whole Catholic Church gets used to practicing openness as a virtue.
We might make this – what John 18:20 presents as Jesus’s answer to a question at his trial – our watchword for this virtue:
I have always spoken openly to everyone; all my teaching was done in the synagogues and in the Temple, where all the people come together. I have never said anything in secret.
- Thomas O’Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.
