By Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB
How can we be a constructive part of a renewed Church and not initiators of a new church which would, in the end, be our own creation rather than God’s?
This is the question presented by Plenary Council President and Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB in his paper on the theme of Discernment.
Below is a summary of the Paper. For the full version, go to www.plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au
“At the heart of the Plenary Council, in its preparation stage (presently underway), in its celebration stage (the two formal Assemblies) and its implementation stage (to be undertaken at both the national level and, more importantly at the local level), we find the call to, and challenge of, discernment. Both the call and the challenge are captured very well in the fundamental question of the Plenary Council and in the foundational theme of the Plenary Council.
The fundamental question is this: What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time? The foundational theme is this: Listen to what the Spirit is saying. We are all engaged in the ongoing effort, as the Catholic community in Australia, to seek to answer the question by engaging with what the theme invites us to do. The word “discernment” captures perfectly the task in which we are engaged and to which we are called to continue to commit ourselves.
Discernment is an ongoing process the end of which we have not yet reached. The reflection, submission and eventual publication of the responses, all of which were part of the Listening and Dialogue process, did not represent the end of the process: rather this was an important milestone along the way. The long preparation and eventual publication of the six Discernment papers did not represent the end of the process, but rather another important milestone along the way. The writing of the Instrumentum Laboris and the formation of the agenda will similarly be not the end of the process but yet another important milestone along the way. And certainly the two formal Assemblies, pivotal moments of decision in the Plenary Council journey, will also be a milestone but not the end of the process. The “end” of the process will unfold in each diocese and in each local Catholic community as the fruits of the Council begin to take root and flourish. Just as the Second Vatican Council has not yet finished, for its reception and implementation are still unfolding in the life of the Church, so the Plenary Council will still continue for many years, even decades, to come. Long after the second of the two formal Assemblies is concluded we will still be trying to “listen to what the Spirit is saying” so that we can continue to delve into the depths of the question of what God is asking of us in Australia at this time – and hopefully find some answers to which we can all commit ourselves.
The formation of the central question of the Council – What do you think God is asking of us in Australia at this time? – was itself the fruit of discernment by the Facilitation Team, the Executive Committee, and some members of the Bishops Commission for the Plenary Council. As part of this group I am surprised, and a little embarrassed, that in the first formulation of the question there was no mention of God! Instead we focused on inviting people to share their own hopes or dreams and their own joys and disappointments concerning the Church. It was if we were asking the Catholic community to tell us what they wanted the Church to look like and be like into the future. This is, of course, a reasonable question and it is, in fact, the one which many people answered in their submissions to the Listening and Dialogue stage. There should be no doubt that God speaks to each of us in the depths of our hearts and is revealed to us in the midst of our own life-experience. Equally it is true that what you or I might want for the Church could well be exactly what God wants for the Church. A problem arises however, when we simply presume that what we want and what God wants are the same thing, without really engaging in a profound process of discernment to determine whether the many voices to which we are all attentively listening are revealing or obscuring the voice of the Spirit.
This is why discernment has been, and must continue to be, the fundamental principle which guides us all in our engagement with the Plenary Council. The Facilitation Team and the Executive Committee guiding us towards the formal Assemblies are deeply aware of this and fully committed to it. They are also conscious, as I am, that we in the Church in Australia still have a long way to go as we learn more and more about the practice of discernment – by engaging in it. The bishops, too, are conscious of this. When we travelled to Rome last year for the Ad Limina visit to the Holy See and Pope Francis, we spent a week together making a retreat, led by Brother Ian Cribb SJ, which was focused on the call to discernment. The purpose of the retreat was to help us enter more deeply into this process, without which we risk closing ourselves off to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Within the Catholic Church, with our two thousand years of lived experience of trying to allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, we have a rich tradition of discernment. It takes many forms and has a number of key elements, all of which we will need to bring to bear if our Plenary Council journey is to bear fruit that will last. In shaping the various elements of the preparation for the formal Assemblies, we have relied heavily, though not exclusively, on the Ignatian tradition of “discernment of spirits”. Many of you will have experienced this in your engagement with the Listening and Dialogue and Listening and Discernment processes. The Ignatian tradition offers, among other things, a guide to “spiritual conversations” which we will continue to employ as we continue our journey. Processes of discernment help us to listen carefully to what is going on within us and, as we share this with others, what is also going in within them. Many of us have had to learn the hard way that this requires honesty, humility and openness to each other. It is not easy to let go of long-cherished ideas and convictions, or to have them challenged by the obvious sincerity of people who see things differently from us, but this is what it means to “listen to God by listening to each other”.
This “honesty, humility and openness to each other” will, of course, need to be grounded in and nourished by deep and sustained prayer, both by individuals and by communities. It will be the habit and practice of prayer which will mould our hearts and open our ears to enable us to “tune in” to the voice of God speaking to us in all kinds of ways, some of them most unexpected.
As we move further into the journey of the Plenary Council it is becoming clearer that simply listening to each other, essential though this is, does not exhaust or complete the task and challenge of discernment. The very listening itself must be an act of discernment. The first Letter of Saint John reminds us of this when the author exhorts us to remember that,
it is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust; test them to see if they come from God (1John 4:1).
This “testing” is essential if we are, in fact, going to succeed in “listen(ing) to what the Sprit is saying” in order to come to a deeper understanding of “what ….. God is asking of us in Australia at this time”. Here again the Ignatian tradition can assist us with its insights into the mysterious workings of God in our lives through “consolation” and “desolation”. This involves much more than simply noticing our emotional responses to the matters we are considering: it involves a careful reading, a “discernment”, of those responses. This, it seems to me, is both an art and a “spiritual science”.
What does this “testing” of the spirits involve? What does it look like? How do we go about it?
How do we distinguish what we can do, and perhaps must do, to contribute to the rebuilding and renewing of the Church from what we must not do because it will further weaken the Church? How can we be a constructive part of a renewed Church and not initiators of a new church which would, in the end, be our own creation rather than God’s?
The key lies in a careful consideration of what fidelity to the Lord and the Lord’s will for the Church really looks like.
Before I was ordained as a bishop I taught theology both in Melbourne and at Notre Dame University in Fremantle. In one of my courses I used to speak of what I called a “three-fold fidelity” which was essential for any renewal of the Church. I would like to briefly address this question now.
I used to speak, and indeed still do, of three fundamental fidelities which need to always be in play, much like a juggler needs to keep three balls in the air and not allow one of them to fall to the ground. Those three fidelities are: fidelity to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, made known to us in the Scriptures, and pre-eminently in the four canonical gospels, as those Scriptures are lived and believed in within the community of faith; fidelity to the ongoing presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church over the last two thousand years in fulfilment of the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit would lead the disciples into the fullness of the truth (cf John 16:13); and fidelity to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, and the world, today, speaking to us in the signs of the times (the concrete circumstances of our individual and communal experience) as they are interpreted in the light of the gospel (Gaudium et Spes 4).
A great deal would need to be said about each of these three fidelities and what they imply for the work of the Plenary Council. Such a discussion is beyond the scope of these reflections. However, one or two points can be raised.
Firstly, the search for fidelity to each of the three elements mentioned above is itself a work of discernment. In relation to the interpretation of Scripture we might remember the warning of Shakespeare in “Merchant of Venice”: the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Indeed, in the gospel accounts of the temptations of Jesus the devil does precisely this (cf Matt 4:6). In our Catholic tradition we know that the Scriptures and pre-eminently the New Testament are the Book of the Church. The community of faith existed before the gospels were written and it was the faith of the Church which determined which of the many gospels circulating in the early centuries of the Church’s life were to be accepted as inspired by God.
The Catholic Church is a community of common faith and worship called together by Christ, not a simple gathering of like-minded individuals. It is from within the community of faith, and from the fundamental communion we share, that a true understanding of the scriptures emerges over time.
Because of this it is good from time to time to remind ourselves that the gospels, the word of God, are a written testimony to the Word of God, Jesus Christ, whose body the Church is, with Christ as the Head of that Body (see Colossians 1:18). It is impossible to separate the gospels from the Church, the Body of Christ, to which they give witness. This is why, when speaking of the Scriptures, we must always do so in terms of the way they are lived and believed in within the community of faith. It is also why Gaudium et Spes, in speaking of the signs of the times, indicates that they must always be interpreted in the light of the gospel.
Biblical scholars speak of the scriptures as the “norma normans non normata”, that is, as the norm or rule of life which itself is not to be evaluated by any other external criteria or value system. This, too, is important as we consider what it means to live in fidelity to God’s self-revelation in Jesus as this revelation, expressed in the scriptures, is lived and believed in within the community of faith. In effect it means that every culture (world view) is to be measured against the gospel culture; every moral system is to be evaluated by gospel morality; every understanding of the figure of Jesus is to be measured against the image of Jesus that emerges in the gospel pages; and every image of God is to be measured against the understanding of God presented to us by Jesus.
The Plenary Council, in its preparatory stage, its celebratory stage and its implementation stage, will be a success if we remain faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired Word of God, and to Jesus who, in those very Scriptures, proclaims himself to be our Way, and our Truth and our Life.
For the full version, go to www.plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au
From pages 7 to 9 of Issue 27: Adult Faith Formation in the context of Healing’ of The Record Magazine