Roots and Wings

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Sometime into his first year of college in the 1990s, I asked my oldest son what was the main message he had learned so far. He said he learned that half of his professors believed that “the sixties” were the greatest period in modern history with the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, gay liberation, concern for the environment, and the anti-war movement. The other half of his professors saw the sixties as the beginning of the downfall of civilization. The Catholic Church was not immune from this split. The majority of bishops at Vatican Council II, the church’s major event of the sixties, believed that humanity had moved away from a more static understanding of reality toward a more dynamic one, opening the door to wholesale changes in the church. There was a backlash against Vatican Council II, the most extreme coming from a French cardinal who broke away from the Catholic Church altogether. However, many members of the church questioned the changes begun with the Council and that continued thereafter. For them, the church was a rock, not a flowing stream that changed with the landscape.

In my recent book on Catholicism, I mention a concept I read about from the English Dominican Timothy Radcliffe—root shock. The term is self-explanatory. The rapid pace of change taking place in modern times has left many people feeling uprooted. It’s a shock to the psyche. So much of what was familiar has vanished. That word, “familiar,” derives from “family.” Shopping in locally-owned stores was like visiting family, now replaced by less personal shopping in big box stores, or even more impersonal on-line shopping. For Catholics, the ringing of bells at Mass is seldom heard, a practice that was intimately associated with Catholic worship not too long ago. Flicking a switch to turn on an electric votive light before a statue just doesn’t have the symbolic power of lighting a candle for someone who is sick. The aura of reverential silence in church has been replaced by attempts to get a congregation to actively participate. 

Along with all people today, Catholics are faced with how to balance holding onto one’s roots while incorporating the new. The turn toward change seems inevitable. Conservative Catholics feel that more liberal-leaning Catholics are turning the faith into a social-justice movement divorced from a sense of the sacred and the divine. Liberal Catholics are frustrated that conservative Catholics are turning a blind eye to the many ways people are hurting in our world. For them, “Let us pray for those less fortunate” is an empty diversion when getting out there and being involved in solving the world’s problems is called for.

Pope Francis has committed himself to bridging the gap between these groups, although many conservatives see him as aligned too closely with the liberal wing. His synod is an attempt to arrive at common ground, achieving a consensus that at least the great majority of Catholics would agree on. Francis speaks and writes about the need for both roots and wings, holding onto the foundations of the faith while being open to change. In his mind, the so-called social justice agenda is not giving into secular values. Rather, he sees addressing social problems as flowing from Catholicism itself. He attempts to link traditional Catholicism with social concerns. For instance, he has been talking about a re-emphasis on no meat on Fridays, standard practice for Catholics sixty years ago, and linking it to cutting back on consumption of meat in order to have a positive impact on the environment and the world’s food supply. He emphasizes the Eucharist as a place of welcome and communal sharing, which can inspire Catholics to welcome strangers such as immigrants and sharing bread with those in need. He suggested that Catholics use the tradition of “giving up” something for Lent and making it a time to commit to doing something positive for others instead.

Recognizing the need for both roots and wings is reasonable enough on Francis’s part. However, the challenges Catholics face today seem insurmountable. What gets included in the roots, and how far is it acceptable for wings to spread? Pope Francis doesn’t want to judge people committed to living out their lives as other than traditional heterosexual, male or female persons. Does that open the door to same-sex unions or even marriage and sex-change procedures? Does permitting divorced and remarried couples who have not had previous marriages annulled to receive communion undermine the sanctity of marriage as a life-long commitment? Does working alongside health care and hunger relief programs that also advocate for birth control and abortion rights water down Catholic teaching on these matters?

Battle grounds are drawn and are not likely to dissolve anytime soon, synod or not. Perhaps a Gandhian approach would be helpful. Identify what everyone has in common. Build on that. Celebrate that. Keep coming back to that. Have conversations about that. Set animosity aside. As Francis reminds us, roots grow best in a garden, not a museum; and growth is always dynamic, not static.