Enshittification is perfectly crafted to match our times.

It is dismissive, slightly pretentious, sets a scatological word within a scientific frame and turns worthless behaviour into a technological process.

The naming of the freshly coined word of the year made me wonder about the fate of unused words.

Should we also have a yearly burial service for words that have recently died?

One such rarely used word is classy.

It differs from the New Word for 2024 in its construction. It is laudatory, domesticates a word in common use, and lets it stand for itself without prompting.

Its meaning, however, is also ultimately defined by the examples it is used to describe.

• Classy is when Sydney Carton sacrifices his life for his friend in A Tale of Two Cities.
• Classy is when, in ‘the mile race of the century', John Landy stops to help up Ron Clarke.
• Classy is when Weary Dunlop, having tirelessly helped and stood up for ill and injured prisoners of war, forgives his captors.

Classy, of course, is derived from class.

It connotes First Class, and also Upper Class.

It embraces the self-sacrificing, understated, behaviour expected of the Upper Class and attributed to them as typical in books and comics. On Scott's Expedition to the South Pole, for example, Lawrence ‘Titus' Oates steps out ‘for a while' from his tent in order to give his companions a better chance of living.

The association with Class has contributed to the decommissioning of classy.

As journalists focused on the pretensions and hypocrisy of the Upper Classes and on the gap between their representation in popular literature and their behaviour, class became a pejorative word and classy was also tainted.

Whether society is the better for the dethroning of classy and the coronation of enshittification, I leave for you to decide.

It is the nature of Stray Thoughts to conclude with a question: Are there other once popular and now little-used words whose passing you regret?

• Andrew Hamilton SJ is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
• First published in Eureka Street. Published with the writer's permission.

It seemed hardly newsworthy.

The Pontifical Institute of Theology was founded in 1718 for the theological formation of priests, and later for bringing theologians together to discuss theological topics.

More recently it has held an occasional conference, mainly with Italian contributors, and has issued occasional publications.

The document is of interest, however, because it clarifies the place within the Catholic Church which the Pope ascribes to theology and consequently to theologians and theological colleges.

In doing so, it summarises his more detailed treatments of the subject and also illuminates the different ways of viewing the Catholic Church which separate him from many of his critics.

In describing the place of theology in the Catholic Church, the Pope appeals to the same metaphors that he applies to the Church. It is to be outgoing, to work at the frontiers of church, and to be open to the world it enters.

He contrasts this with a church and theology that are self-referential, inward-turned, and stand over and against the world.

This openness implies that theology will be attentive to its context and not self-contained. Theologians should reflect on faith from inside their engagement with the world and not from above it.

It follows that theology will take the natural form of dialogue in which it engages with in the language of the cultural frameworks it enters. In the Pope's vision it is not interdisciplinary but transdisciplinary.

The emphasis on dialogue in theology corresponds to Pope Francis' understanding of synodality within the Church.

It naturally flows into communal practices of listening and discernment among theologians, which will also be reflected in their teaching and formation of ministers.

The centrifugal mission of theology to proclaim and articulate faith in dialogue with the non-Christian world also demands also a corresponding centripetal movement. Pope Francis defines this as the search for wisdom. Theology must begin on bended knees in adoration, turning naturally to love for people in need and in reaching out to them.

Finally, he describes Catholic theology as inductive, in that it begins with the concrete situations of people and there finds and discerns the proclamation of the Gospel.

This outline echoes other reflections by Pope Francis on the place of theology in the Catholic Church.

It raises five questions. Why does he see it as important? Why is it controversial in the Catholic Church? What are its limits? What does it take for granted? How does it hang together?

First, the Pope sees Catholic Theology as part of a larger reform of the Catholic Church guided by Vatican II.

The mission of the Church at all levels is to proclaim the Good News to people at its margins and allow the Gospel to speak to them. This means engaging with different cultures on their own terms.

For this to happen Catholics at all levels need to listen and to discern where God is leading them. Pope Francis embodies this way of being Church in the idea and practices of synodality.

Within the Catholic Church, theologians and theological institutions in which priests are educated are central in this process of listening to the Word of God through the lives of other Catholics and through the world views of those to whom they reach out, especially the poor.

Second, this understanding of theology and its place in the Catholic Church is not shared by all Catholics or theologians.

It is inductive, in beginning with the world to which we go out and allowing the Gospel to illuminate and be illuminated by it.

Many theologians begin with the understanding of faith and ask about its ramifications for the world.

Their approach is more deductive.

Such disputes about theological method and conclusions are common in Catholic as in other theology. The parties usually coexist more or less amicably, allowing the non-committed or less rigorous to borrow from each of them.

In the Catholic Church today, however, a relatively small number of theologians, high Church officials and lay Catholics regard Pope Francis' theology and the practices he is introducing as a betrayal of the faith that has been handed down to him.

Pope Francis, in turn, has accused them of rejecting the authority of the Spirit in Vatican II, of being narrowly concerned with the internal life of the Church, and of separating themselves from the Church.

In many Catholic communities around the world, however, Pope Francis' vision of the Church also faces immobility in which many bishops and priests, including younger ones, do privilege the inner life of the Church and its hierarchies and boundaries over engagement.

Pope Francis describes this attitude as clericalism.

This resistance is often less theologically than personally based.

For that reason, the Pope sees the importance of the formation of priests and of local congregations in a synodal rather than hierarchical vision of their ministry.

Third, the mission the Pope gives to theologians and institutions within the Catholic Church is necessarily limited in its expression and scope. It takes for granted that Catholic theology will work within the developing tradition of the Church and not above it.

Many fine theologians, too, are not Catholic, and many theologians who are Catholic define their role by the canons of secular universities and not by the needs of the Catholic Church.

The mission given to theology, too, is also limited by the very argument made for it.

Pope Francis addresses the needs of a Church that he sees as tempted to be introverted, to be self-referential and not to communicate the joy of the Gospel. He also addresses a world on the edge of self-destruction.

In such a Church and in such a world, the task of theology is to model a way of engaging with faith and the wider world. In the future, other situations may demand other priorities.

Fourth, the account of the mission of theology is necessarily broad.

It understandably fails to mention the human factors involved in any large reorientation. Theologians must bring scholarship and specialisation to their understanding of the Gospel throughout the Christian tradition.

These qualities and the laborious development of them do not always lend themselves to going out to the boundaries of the Catholic Church and engaging in dialogue.

Nor do theological degrees always provide wisdom. Pope Francis' desired reform, then, will demand a diversity of personal gifts, knowledge, experience and enthusiasms that cannot be regimented.

Finally, the central point and the test of success of Pope Francis' hope for theology lie less in its method than in its sapiential character.

Discernment through prayer nurtured by the Gospel and by life within the Church is the centripetal force that holds together the going out to and entering of other worlds.

• Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
• First published in Eureka Street. Published with the writer's permission.

From being little known members of small institutes they became rock stars, invited to press conferences, deferred to by politicians, selectively chosen for comment by the media, but also resented by representatives of big business and defenders of individual freedom.

The resentment is understandable because their expert advice has urged restrictions on freedom that business groups wanted removed, and their advice has prevailed.

But perhaps it also points to deeper differences between the two approaches.

The business lobby looked for a response that focused on the big, the certain and the technological. Scientists concerned with the spread of epidemics and the response to them focus simultaneously on the big and the small, on the probable and the human.

Those who wanted to remove restrictions in the interests of economic growth wanted certainty in naming a timetable for freedom and in fixing in advance the conditions that must be met, and promising certainty.

Without certainty about laying in supplies, contracting staff and opening premises, it is difficult for big businesses to operate.

They wanted a hard science that could deal with large quantities, organise deliveries on time, find the technological challenges to sourcing and delivery.

If they had in mind a relevant field of expertise it would be mechanical engineering.

Instead of that, they got epidemiology, assisted by the human sciences.

It is paradoxical in that it also deals in very large numbers — trillions of viruses, large human populations and potential infections. But at is centre is the need to predict the behaviour of small and uncertain things and to give advice based on that behaviour.

The cause of the pandemic was the simplest and smallest of beings — a protein and a prick, as the Coronavirus was described.

It had the capacity to change unpredictably and so defeat the defences marshalled against it.

Those defences lay partly in technology — vaccines — but also necessarily in the changed behaviour of large populations of people and in the acceptance by individual persons of those changes.

Both the spread and the restriction of infection have been shaped by human behaviour.

The epidemiological response also lay in modifying that behaviour through large scale organisation to dismantle shared workplaces, close schools and shops, limit freedom of movement and of association in groups at pubs, churches and sporting grounds.

These are precisely the activities that mediate economic activity and underpin social life.

Instead, people were asked to live restricted lives with all the effects that this had on their mental and physical health and on their financial security.

The target of the sweeping organisation, of course, was the variety of people and groups who were affected by these measures and particularly of those who would be most at risk of catching and spreading infection. Together with the aged and the elderly in nursing homes, these included people who are least valued in society: the people who were mentally ill, homeless, unemployed and immigrants.

Their health, crowded accommodation and presence on the streets meant that they were more likely to be infected and to infect others.

They also included people who in their work were exposed to infection, including nurses, doctors and quarantine staff.

Among them were the least noticed people whose work, often at the risk to their health and lives, was the most significant. They included people involved in caring for the aged, delivering food and supplies, ensuring the integrity of quarantine, and cleaning in nursing homes and hospitals.

They were often lowly paid, less likely to be vaccinated, and forced to work casually in more than one job to support their families.

These formed part of the vast interlocking network of relationships that epidemiologists and other experts had to take into account when evaluating responses to the coronavirus.

Each of these relationships was subject to change as the virus mutated, transmission times shortened and social conditions also changed.

In such a world the inability and refusal of experts to name definitively the dates for loosening restrictions and reopening the economy, even after a serious program of vaccinations has begun, is both necessary and principled.

The answers depend on many variables:

• the number of vaccinations,
• their take-up by vulnerable people and areas,
• the compliance with restrictions,
• the effects of mutations in the virus on health and on infection,
• the pressure on hospitals,
• health workers and others,
• the spread of infection despite tracing and other controls, and
• the harmful effects of lockdown on people, to name just a few.

Any judgment about opening times will depend on a series of other provisional judgments.

The response to the coronavirus, too, disclosed the gap between the value of the work of different groups of people and its remuneration and esteem.

People involved in caring for the aged, delivering food and supplies, ensuring the integrity of quarantine, and cleaning in nursing homes and hospitals were among the least well paid. But their contribution to the community was of vital importance and far greater than the highly remunerated executives in business and politicians.

The discrepancy between the value of work and its remuneration was shown in the spread of the virus in nursing homes by people forced to support their families by working on different sites.

The deeper challenge posed by epidemiology and allied sciences to the received wisdom about business lay in the reconsideration of values prompted by the necessary response to the virus.

Instead of relying on economically competitive individuals to generate wealth, society now depended on people's readiness to sacrifice themselves for others.

Governments, in turn, had to support people in order to avoid economic collapse.

The dignity of each human person, the care for the common good and the precariousness of all human enterprises were the pillars on which a resilient society needed to be built.

The central questions were human, not technological.

If we look in retrospect at the effects of the coronavirus and of the response to it on Australian society, we can see on the one hand the move from big to small, from competitive to cooperative and self-sacrificing, from the exclusion of people who are marginal to inclusion and protection, from the institutional settings that viewed managers, financiers and investors as the most important in society to the recognition that the most important were actually those looked down on and badly paid.

Those re-evaluations were the sign of a well-functioning society.

On the other hand, the outcome of the response to the virus has revealed an opposed dynamic.

• Wealthy individuals and corporations have grown richer while those on precarious incomes have grown in number.
• Those left unemployed in the lockdowns have had their support sharply reduced.
• House prices and rents have risen.
• The most valuable members of society still need to work multiple jobs to support their families.
• The comfortably off are vaccinated while those more in need of it, and more vulnerable to its spread are not.

The emblem of the values espoused by the Federal Government remains its encouragement to large corporations to milk Jobkeeper, to retain their profits from it, and to have their identity concealed.

It is evident that the values of big business have triumphed over the values whose adoption proved central in responding to the coronavirus. But the victory will come at a cost to social cohesion.

It will also make it more difficult to put out the fire next time.

• Andrew Hamilton SJ is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
• First published in Eureka Street.
• CathNews NZ is grateful to Andrew Hamilton SJ for his permission to re-publish this and future columns.