Ten Steps to a Healthier Church: How to fix the Vatican
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by Michael Kelly SJ
My high school chemistry teacher’s motto, “The facts are friendly,” applies to a lot more than scientific experiments.
The English version of the German magazine, Der Spiegel offers a summary of and explanation for the disarray and confusion at senior levels of the Vatican that have resulted from rivalries, scandals, blunt and even brutal administrative acts, falsification of facts and monumental mismanagement.
Almost daily, the woes of the Vatican are made more extreme by coverage of the scandals of the Church in the United States where one senior cleric has been convicted of “child endangerment” and a bishop will go on trial in September to face a charge of failure to report the sexual abuse of a child. The US bishops’ conference has embarked on a high-risk strategy to oppose President Barack Obama over contraception insurance, a subject where a majority of Catholics in the US, especially women, don’t share their bishops’ passion.
After the failure of his first attempt to overthrow the rule of the in Russia Czars, Lenin asked, “What is to be done?” It’s a frequent question when we are faced with failure and a mess.
We can bemoan the misfortune, look for scapegoats, blame anything from evil people through to the Devil (as people in the Vatican have done), start a revolution, just walk away or try a combination of these.
Or we can, with my high school teacher, say that the facts are friendly. It has taken a long time to create the mess and it may well take longer to remedy it. But for everyone’s sake, fix it we must.
Here are ten tips that might be considered as ways out of the mess:
- Learn to listen: A maxim dating from Patristic times is that the teaching Church is first of all the learning Church. That was one of the great achievements of Vatican 2: the Council fathers heard what the world in its diversity was saying to and about the Church. Preoccupation with the supply side – what I have to tell you – to the exclusion of the concerns and interests of the “consumer” always leads to a breakdown in communication.
- Learn other languages: To become part of the Church’s leadership, it is necessary to speak Italian and know Canon Law. Without them, not much can get done in the Church as currently governed. But, they greatly narrow the range of possibilities for hearing from fresh thinkers, understanding the cultures and concerns of those outside the inner circle of Vaticanistas, or hinder even knowing that such cultures and concerns exist.
- Don’t shoot the messenger: At last the Vatican is being forced to realize what every other public institution, government or business knows: that it is impossible to hide bad news and that lamenting the motivations or actions of who expose a crisis is the worst form of crisis management. Rather than trying to hide behind cover-ups that exacerbate the problem, it is necessary to admit problems and be clearly seen as taking the situation and its rectification seriously.
- Tensions are natural: There is no escaping the tensions of the world in which we live. Sanity and success come from managing those tensions, threats, risks and uncertainties. People who hold different views offer an opportunity to enrich your own if you are willing to avoid viewing them as enemies to be eliminated.
- European culture wars are for Europeans: They aren’t for export and don’t mean much to people who don’t appreciate their genesis or history. There are culture wars elsewhere, but they have a local genesis and can only have local resolutions. People in Asia, Africa and the Americas look at Europeans and wonder what all the fuss is about. The Church’s leaders would do well to accept the relativity of cultures, forget the fiction of Europe as a benchmark and work with other cultures as they are rather than as Eurocentric imagination thinks them to be.
- Learn from Max Weber: Weber’s observations about the connections between increased specialization, complexity, the need for open ways of operating and clear rules for limiting the claims of authority have become more relevant as populations grow, organizations diversify and specialization increases. In light of this, the Church’ practice of appointing office holders in its centralized organization on the basis of status rather than competence is a recipe for disaster. To fix it, the Vatican must restructure itself to limit the power of particular parts of the organization to control the whole, specify how the elements of the bureaucracy interact so that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing rather than having things done by one office surprising the others. The Vatican can only work better if there is a commitment to choosing competence over status in making appointments.
- Learn from the history: Today’s problems in the Church are mostly of Western origin. The history of the last two hundred years in the West has emphasized that if people don’t have a say in their destiny, they at least opt out or even overthrow a regime. In many parts of the West, people are walking away from the Church, most especially women who want to make a contribution but are held in check by male hierarchies. To fix it, Church leadership in general and the Vatican in particular need root and branch reform to foster effective participation, including that of women, in decision making at all levels.
- Recognize that people have options and are exercising them: Gone are the days of “command and control” as a sustainable management strategy for any organization. Long gone for many Catholics in the West is a religion of rituals, tribal or national bonds and a culture of fear as a motive for submission. The future of faith is in the free choice to accept a persuasive invitation to join a journey. Vatican practice is perceived as more related to the procedures of the Inquisition than to the message of Jesus. To fix it, the operations of Vatican offices need to accept the dismissive attitude of many Catholics to it and recognize how much trust has to be regained.
- Become really catholic again: The numbers say it all; there are three Asians, a few Africans, and a sprinkling from the Americas among the top leaders of Vatican offices even though the only places the Church is growing are in Asia and Africa. Within the old world, the exclusion of fresh thinking and discussion of issues that societies are facing – the role of women, the place of homosexuals, the reexamination of moral rules formed when biological knowledge was primitive – have marginalized the Church as a discussion partner not only in society, but even in Catholics’ minds. To fix it, the Vatican has to see that real catholicity calls for inclusiveness and a more representative leadership for the Church. This means that the Church is truly Catholic when, for example, dioceses are seen not as branch offices of a centralized multinational but as the authentic local realizations of a universal faith.
10. Accept that the facts are friendly: God “writes straight with crooked lines.” But to appreciate just what God is up to requires a sober acceptance that the lines are crooked. Jesus tried to burst the bubble in which religious leaders of his time were living. He appeared to them to be at least destabilizing and perhaps demonic. But he confidently worked in the real world because in that world God is at work and “Wisdom is proved right by her deeds” (Matt 11:19). In the Incarnation the Son did not enter some perfect realm, but took on the reality of a particular time and place. The Vatican has nothing to lose by doing the same, engaging with the real world, listening to it and learning from it. And it has everything to gain.
Michael Kelly SJ, a frequent writer, publisher and broadcaster who was founding publisher of the Australian Jesuits’ Eureka Street Magazine.
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27 Comments
I see that many young and old people are spiritually hungry. They join vibrant break-away groups.
The church is slow to recognise the revelations that are being given to mankind. Mary is appearing in person and Jesus is giving messages. “The Poem of the Man-God” dictated by Jesus is a visual, detailed elaboration of the new testament, a needed source for reviving the gospel teachings and providing the visual element that is accepted in our technological era.
How can we survive on a diet of weekly half hour sermons, that are usually a retelling of the gospel readings? How can children find God through unbelieving teachers who teach Jesus as a historical figure?
God is love, a verb grounded in relationships and our Church has grown into a legalistic fortress.
On the information available to me (all from the mass media, including catholic) it would appear the governance of The Vatican, the Curia, and hence of the universal catholic church is in a mess. If the mess is half as bad as described then something must be done if the church is to survive and grow as the Mystical Body of Christ.
Fr Kelly invokes Lenin who did more than ask the question “What is to be done?”. He wrote a whole pamplet on the subject. His first proposition was that the revolutionaries must not just understand the workers, they must understand the whole of society ie, they must make a strategic assessment of the total situation. From that assessment they can work out the best tactics to effect revolutionary change. Lenin’s suggested tactic was to form a political party to spread Marxist theory among the disaffected and suppressed workers.
By all means 6. Learn from Max Weber, but also learn from Vladimir Lenin, and for good measure from C. Northcote Parkinson. Parkinson in “Parkinson’s Law” (1958) wrote: “We find everywhere a type of organisation … in which the higher officials are plodding and dull, those less senior are active only in intrigue against each other, and the junior men are frustrated or frivolous.” I regret to say Parkinson suggests the only treatment for such a diseased organisation is complete annihilation. He concludes: “As for the buildings, the best plan is to insure them heavily, and them set them alight. Only when the site is a blackened ruin can we feel certain that the germs of the disease are dead.”
I’m not so pessimistic about my church but the majority of the masses (the laity)seems to have opted out of communion, while the rest just plod along and hope for the best. As I do. Oh, and I pray to the Holy Spirit for help, for inspiration, and for courage to change the things I can.
Thank you Michael for excellent article…which I will link on June 30 menu of http://www.v2catholic.com – a site trying to promote and defend the vision of Vatican II
Father John, Thank you so much for providing the website that is working towards promoting and defending the vision of Vatican II.
Sometimes it seems on the internet that the silent majority of Catholics are silenced by the myopic and stunted views of conservative Catholics.
An excellent article. Jesus founded his Church to embrace all, not to become a reclusive ghetto, distancing itself from the lives of ordinary people. Vatican II asked us to respond to the “signs of the times”, yet so many conservatives do not grasp that our understanding of Church teaching is an ongoing process ( cf Cardinal Newman and the Development of Doctrine). Our understanding of Church teaching did not end with the Council of Trent!
I would be interested to read Michael Kelly’s views on doing the will of the Father and on faith. His analysis seems simply secular to me.
GJH listen Fr Michael Kelly’s comments and views are Catholic, and well pointed.
its time the Vatican listened to the people of Faith… Confession needs to be for all. and not the lay people…
God Bless Mary Mackillop pray for your Church . Chris Reynolds Perth WA…
Surely a visibly closer relationship with Jesus and the joy and love that flows from it merit a place in the top 10?
The only thing that will change vatican thinking is jump starting them into the era of the 2000′s. They are so mired in the past any new thought is a threat to them in control and the hierarchy.
Thomas — I suggest you read today’s Gospel. It hopefully will be a big heads-up for you.
8. I resent your dismissing me, and others like me, as not important to the Church because ‘you’ have decided what is important leadership in the Church.
9. You point to accepting Homosexual sexual activity as new biological knowledge. There is nothing new that would change the argument since creation.
10. Jesus didn’t ask for a show of hands for agreement when he taught. He went against the grain of the culture at large and presented a new vision. And a pretty strict one at that. The Church should stand firm in its teaching of morals and faith–that I suppose does include women’s ordination at which you seem to be hinting.
Thanks, Tee — it is always encouraging to me when I read the post of a faithful Catholic.
Today’s gospel should be read by most of the posters here, including Tony and Chuck Hunt:
Matthew 7:13-14 — the gate to eternal life is narrow, and FEW there are that find it, while the gate to perdition is broad, and MANY (like the author of this article, and the people about whom he is writing) enter there. “As for me and my house, we will worship the Lord.” Such interesting times, to see people so blinded by their arrongance and pride who are sending themselves to Hell forever little by little, day by day. I wish Hell on no one, but the Fatima seers saw souls going to Hell like snowflakes falling from the sky.
Hey there may be no truth to Fatima it’s not something Catholics must believe
True, Tony — except 70,000 people, believers and non-believers alike, saw the miracle of the sun. If I see a radiant woman hovering in the sky who says she is the Blessed Mother, I am listening to her.
Jim, On what grounds are you sure Kelly is travelling down the road to perdition?
Graham — I don’t believe I mentioned Fr. Kelly in particular with my reference to Matthew 7:13-14. However, reading that verse should give one great pause. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” (Mt 16:26). To the extent that Father’s article legitimizes things like homosexual sex (he seems to hint at its legitimacy), to that extent is he in serious trouble: “Whomever would lead the little ones astray, it would be better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea.” Priests have an enormous responsibility to lead people to Heaven, not Hell. Thus, Father Kelly takes much risk in writing what he does.
Jim , Including priests for Sins against humanity ? … worst than Judas ?.
Chris R — Your post is obscure — I don’t know what you’re referring to.
I am concerned about this article. As a women, from the US, recently (2 years) converted, I don’t feel that we (women) are ignored, that we (any human) need to change Church doctrine or tradition to keep up with society, period. Tee is absolutely correct in his #10 “Jesus didn’t ask for a show of hands for agreement when he taught”. If one truely seeks Christ and His will, you will find yourself at the doorstep of the one true Church, just as I did. Then you change yourself and your beliefs to that of Jesus himself and as such the bride of Christ, His Church. Those that do NOT want to follow His “narrow path” are sadly following the board way. We have to be willing to give up EVERYTHING and follow Him, whether or not we want to be a Priest (being female), or be an active homosexual (key here is ACTIVE), I personally love to be eat to gluttony, smoke like a choo choo train and avoid people like the plague so I can play with my plants and animals. These things are not what I need to do as a Christian. I therefore as Paul put it “buffet my body daily” and make myself choose to be a Christian that sets a good (ok, better) example, I choose to intermingle with people so that I may bring others to Christ. I pray daily for humility to accept His Word, His instruction and to do His Will with joy and meekness. I believe others should be praying for this as well. That would end a lot of this petty bickering, self important (Vatican leaks, Female Priest, contraception promoting) issues, IMHO. I pray we all can become more like our Saviour everyday.
Beautifully said, Valorie!
Good for you Valorie but if you look at Matthew 25 it is clear we are going to be judged on what we have actually done for those in need – not on the number of prayers we have said, etc.
Graham — The Soul of the Apostolate, written by the late 19th century Cistertian abbot Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858 – 1935) and read by one of the popes around that time, makes the exact opposite point: all good works must first be undergirded by prayer. The real battle is at the spiritual level: we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood, but with the principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).
I trust the Holy Spirit is hovering and feverishly flapping her wings. Short of that, we’re in trouble.
Wow!!!!!! What a Powerful and Article. A+
What an excellent article with excellent advise.
We as a church need to listen and talk and think outside the box.