The Church, whose history has never been peaceful, is living in an era of unquestionable agitation. The insistence of Pope Francis on the need to move away from self-referential schemes, to foster a more missionary Church, a Church that is more sensitive to social injustice, more decentralized, more open to all types of people, with a greater role for women and more attentive to all sorts of excluded and wounded peoples (the famous "field hospital" of which the pope has spoken so often) does not please everyone. Opposition to his reforms, to his gestures, to the direction he has been imprinting on the Catholic world, is organized and (let us be blunt) on the warpath. It is open and tenacious, stronger in some countries than in others—very active in the US and in Italy, for example—led and encouraged by high-ranking leaders of the Church, just as there are powerful ones who are, of course, very supportive of Francis. In some conservative Catholic media one can read daily attacks on the Pope. In response, in other, more progressive media, columnists feel compelled to go out daily in defense of the Bishop of Rome.
The first thing we want to emphasize is that this tension may not be necessarily a bad thing. It highlights the humanity of the Church, its political reality. It removes the mantle of impassivity and otherworldliness with which sometimes we have pretended to dress her (or to disguise her, because tensions have always existed). In the best of cases, it is a tension that can encourage more dialogue at all levels. If cardinals and apostolic delegates openly disagree among themselves, and even with the Pope, why should not we also show our disagreements, those of us who do not wear red birettas: the laity, priests, everyone? Perhaps the frank exposition of our divergences will help us find more paths than the pretense that the Church is calm as oil on a plate.
Secondly, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that perhaps the detractors and defenders of the Pope make the same mistake in focusing the debate on the person of Francis. Personalisms are never good. To flatter my leader because I identify with him can be as childish as to insult him because his message makes me uncomfortable, and to present the conflicts that shake the Church in terms of fidelity or animosity towards the Roman Pontiff distorts the true nature of the crisis. Those who focus the debate on the person of the pope run the risk of turning the problem into a discussion about the particular virtues or defects of Francis, and, consequently, can lose sight of what is really at stake. The underlying themes go far beyond the person that today occupies the chair of Peter in Rome.
What is at stake, of course, is the fidelity of the ecclesial community to the Holy Spirit. Is the Church, as a whole (indeed headed by the Pope) being docile to the Spirit or
resisting the Spirit’s lead? And since there are opposing currents in the Church, the fundamental question is the fidelity of each one of them to the Spirit.
Let us forget about the pope for a moment, so to speak. Let us stop focusing so much on examining every word and every statement of his (something that Francis might appreciate) and let us focus on what, as Christians, we should really care about: Who, in the situation we are living, is being more faithful to the Spirit of Jesus? Who are the ones letting themselves be led, without fear, by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who at Pentecost poured out on the disciples and thus gave birth to the Church?
It is obvious that if we posed this question to the various ideological tendencies within the Church they would all respond: We are. A traditionalist alarmed by the teachings of Francis and a liberal in love with the Pope would assure, with the same fervor and very probably with equal sincerity, "of course we are moved by fidelity to the Spirit!"
Unfortunately, there is still no fidelity-meter that may allow us to evaluate the fidelity of people and groups, as if it were a thermometer to know the temperature. How to respond, then, to the question of our fidelity to the Spirit? How to discover it? We suggest a way to do so.
The Spirit is, without a doubt, selfless, generous and never seeks his own good. Therefore, perhaps one way to examine the fidelity that each one professes to the Spirit would be to ask us the old Latin question that every good reader of mysteries knows well: Cui bono? Who benefits from the controversy? Who is protecting his own interests? Who is defending his position?
And the opposite questions, which in this case would indicate those who are more faithful to the Spirit, by not seeking their own good: Who are the ones taking more risks? Who are the ones placing the needs of people before the needs of the institution? And who are, in fact, creating more headaches for themselves?
It would not seem that those entrenched in rigid positions risk much or lose anything by preaching that the solution to the problems that affect the Church is to stop any possibility of reform and to return to the rigid models of yesterday.
On the other hand, what seems quite obvious is that those who, starting with the pope, dream about a Church which goes forth—"a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets"[1]—are in fact risking a lot. They risk their positions of privilege and the placidity that would come from not posing uncomfortable questions, or from looking to the other side in order to avoid having to face the faults of the institution itself. Their efforts to rid the Church of authoritarian automatisms and to strip her of outdated clericalisms are indeed making their lives very complicated.
The "Cui Bono" test, in summary, leaves us with very few doubts as to who is attempting to follow the Spirit’s lead.
[1] Pope Francis. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 49
As it was reported by the media throughout the world, from the 6th to the 10th of this month of September, the Pope made his expected apostolic visit to Colombia. It was five very intense days. Intense and exhausting, in the first place, no doubt, for Francis himself, who was in Bogotá, Villavicencio, Medellín and Cartagena presiding at huge gatherings (in each of these cities, those attending the events surpassed all the organizers’ projections), celebrating the Eucharist and having an endless number of meetings: with representatives of the Colombian government, with the youth, with victims of the armed conflict, with religious, with bishops, with people who crowded the streets through which he passed and with those who spontaneously concentrated around of the Apostolic Nunciature of Bogotá, where he stayed. It was also an intense visit for all those who followed it closely: the days were very rich in gestures, in moving moments, in strong messages that deeply touched the country.
Francis had said that he would go to Colombia when the government and the guerrilla would have signed the peace agreement that ends more than 50 years of armed conflict. He has fulfilled his promise, making of his trip an invitation to the reconciliation of all those whom war and violence have confronted for so long.
One reflects now on the pope's visit and realizes that he has left us a universal message: that is, a message that goes beyond the Colombian situation, that transcends it, and that we all can apply to ourselves, whether we are in Colombia or not, if we are concerned about conflicts and violence, if we long for paths to peace and reconciliation. Francis, in his clear and transparent language, has invited us not to be spectators in the construction of peace: “When the victims overcome the understandable temptation of revenge, they become the most credible protagonists of peace-building processes. It is necessary that some are willing to take the first step in this direction” (Homily in Villavicencio, September 8). Again and again, the pope has insisted that we should not resist reconciliation, that we should not be afraid “to ask forgiveness and to offer forgiveness”: “It is time to deactivate all hatred” (Prayer for National Reconciliation, Villavicencio, September 8).
In a world where so many quickly gravitate towards resentment and revenge, and where conflicts, real or imagined, tend to become entrenched, this recommendation (“it is time to deactivate all hatred”) seems essential to us. Essential, in spite of its difficulties. Francis knows how to make his invitation sound as achievable (because it truly is!), the very same invitation that, in somebody else’s mouth, would seem like a fantasy or an empty plea. Deactivate hatred. Forgive. Why not? The gentleness that emanates from the Pope, with his simplicity and lavish smile, enables him to communicate, without offending anyone, a message that in the mouth of another would seem too harsh, and it would most likely be rejected.
A taxi driver from Bogotá expressed this same thought very frankly, and with a certain astonishment, the afternoon of the Sunday when the Pope had finished his visit and had just embarked on his flight to return to Rome. “If someone else told me the things he says, I would not want to hear him. But this old guy has a way of correcting you that makes you pay attention. When I saw on TV that he went into the plane to fly away, I burst into tears.” Francis’ visit to Colombia could not be better summarized.
Martí Colom
Quite often the tone of a message says more than its actual content. Sometimes, in fact, the tone is the message, almost above its substance.
Therefore, to focus our attention on the tone with which we communicate with one another is never a superfluous exercise, and it does not mean that we are avoiding the substantive issues. We must always pay attention to the tone, because using the wrong one can ruin an exchange of information, just as hitting the right tone to express an opinion can enable the articulation of the most difficult messages, even messages that might generate opposition in their recipients.
In fact, as receivers, we first capture the tone, rather than the substance, of what we hear, and at the end of the communicative exchange we remember the tone even more than its substance, because it is the tone that has touched our emotions, and has largely determined our reaction, either positive or negative, acceptance or rejection.
The emotions experienced while we hear or read a message tend to have a greater impact on us than the purely intellectual stimulus caused by the ideas raised, and usually stay with us longer. In the end, therefore, the content of what was said can be diluted or even lost and forgotten between this reception of the tone that occurs before the assimilation of the message and the memory of the tone that lingers in our memory after its reception.
Furthermore, the tone is also fundamentally inseparable from the substance, and so we find that there are tones that prevent certain ideas from being properly expressed. A nervous tone will not serve to accompany a call to serenity, an aggressive and haughty tone can hardly convey an empathic message, an anguished tone will be useless in order to transmit hope, and an exhortation to peace cannot be delivered in a resentful tone. Similarly, it will be very difficult to use a jovial tone to convey a reproach or an antagonistic tone to effect reconciliation, a disgruntled tone to convey joy or a comical tone to talk about violence. There are tones that, quite simply, hinder the process of transmitting what needs to be communicated.
The tone we use will be especially important when attempting to share ideas and considerations about faith and spirituality, because these are realities where the subjectivity and the personal experience of the speaker have much relevance, while at the same time are topics which touch an intimate dimension of those receiving the message.
All this may help us understand what is happening around Pope Francis. Some critics, speaking from their desire to see significant reforms in the Church, and perhaps out of frustration with what they perceive as the absence of such reforms, censure the pope for changing only the tone of the ecclesiastical discourse. What they mean is that they recognize a novelty in Francis' style, and they admit that his speeches and writings have lost the severe, moralizing, haughty and even arrogant accent that often characterized the magisterium until recently. However, they believe that this does not change anything, because they do not observe any transformation in the substance of what the Pope says. It is the same lyrics with different music, some have said: the melody is now more modern, but we have heard the words before.
These critics forget that—as we mentioned earlier—a change in tone is already a change of substance. It seems to us that Francis knows quite well what he is doing: if gentleness, humility, and simplicity become the new tone with which the Church expresses herself and makes her voice heard in the world, it will be quite difficult to keep communicating certain ideas, or at least they will have to be profoundly rethought. His non-authoritarian tone—and his emphasis on the need to dialogue with everyone—not only offers a new face of the Church, with a decisive emphasis on mercy, understanding, and joy: his new tone actually calls into question a more rigorous, “black and white”, narrow and inflexible interpretation of the truths of our faith.
If it is true that the tone is already part of the message, then the conclusion is that Francis is indeed saying new things. Using a new tone, he opens the door to new content, very aware, we dare to suggest, that the inevitable consequence of his change of tone is the discovery of a new light that necessarily impacts the living of the faith.
Obviously, something else (perhaps the most relevant point of this brief reflection) needs to be added: that using the style of tenderness and choosing the tone and the language of mercy, Francis is simply recovering Jesus’ own tone. The “new” style of this pope is nothing but a return to what is more typical of the Gospel; a return to the voice that again and again encouraged people to stand up, to discover that their own faith had saved them. It is the voice that told the woman, “Neither do I condemn you” and the disciples, “I call you friends.” The “new” style of Francis is simply a return to, as well as an open door into, the more authentic core of the Christian message, something that maybe the magisterium had forgotten for quite some time by fostering an abstract, grave, defensive and often irritated tone to talk about the things of God.
