Does "trickle down" work in the Catholic Church?
That’s one of the statements that echoed in my mind and feelings as I flew home from the annual meeting of the Catholic Theological Society of America, in Cleveland, June 10-13.
This image of a “spiritual Reaganomics” operating within the Catholic Church was offered in the Plenary Address by Catherine Clifford and Richard Gaillardetz to the over 400 Catholic theologians assembled from around the USA and Canada.
A Reaganomics of spiritual truth and beliefs, the two speakers pointed out, claims that truth is delivered from above – from God’s revelation and then through the bishops, especially the Bishop of Rome. It then is to “trickle down” to the ordinary faith. In this understanding, the primary role of theologians is to help it trickle.
Such an understanding of how things work, Clifford and Gaillardetz made clear, does not conform to the nature of the Catholic Church, especially as the church as been understood in the Second Vatican Council. In their lecture, which they presented as a verbally danced duet, they gathered, refocused, and recharged what has been the pretty standard “ecclesiology’ (understanding of the church) that Catholic theologians have advanced since the explosive breakthroughs of the Second Vatican Council:
- That the beliefs of the Catholic Church are to be worked out through the collaborative and dialogical mining of three sources: the people of God (or the sensus fidelium – the sense of the faithful), the bishops (with the Bishop of Rome providing the unifying center), and theologians.
- While each of these sources of Catholic belief have different roles within the Church, none of them can be placed “above” the other.
- Each of these sources – bishops, theologians, people — has to “receive” (that means, listen to) what the others are saying.
- If any of the three sources has a certain “primacy” it is the “the people of God.” Therefore, as Clifford and Gaillardetz stressed, the exercise of the bishops’ and Pope’s teaching office must begin with listening carefully and respectfully to the “sense of the faithful.” The role of the theologians is “to help the bishops listen carefully.”
But the problem that is rankling the Catholic Church today – and one of the primary reasons why a lot of people are opting to move out of the Church – is that this leadership of the Catholic Church – yes, the bishops and yes, especially the Bishop of Rome – are NOT LISTENING. Clifford and Gaillardetz pointed out what most of their audience of theologians knew only too well: many bishops in the US look on theologians with “a presumption of suspicion” that theologians are up to no good and are the primary causes of unrest in the church.
So the conclusion to Clifford and Gaillardetz’s presentation was that theologians, as well as ordinary Catholics in the pews, have to carry out the responsibility given to everyone in their baptism: the responsibility of being prophets. If theologians and ordinary Catholics always have to listen carefully and respectfully to the bishops and Pope, they sometimes have to speak up and resist honestly and humbly.
In the present state of turmoil and confusion in the Catholic church, that responsibility of speaking up weighs more heavily than ever on the shoulders of Catholics and especially of theologians. The job description of the theologian is to be a researcher and a teacher – but also to be a prophet.
The problem is that so often when theologians exercise their jobs as prophets and speak up to the bishops and Pope, they get into trouble, even lose their jobs – especially if they are priests or religious.
The power structures today in the Catholic Church do not correspond to the nature of the Church as a community of co-responsibility between people, theologians, bishops.
If the church, as is often said, “is not a democracy” (I’m not so sure about that), neither should it be the monarchy or oligarchy that it seems to be today.
