Card. Pell: The Church as Mother and Teacher
Catholic Herald
This is the full version of an intervention delivered in briefer form to the general assembly of the Synod of Bishops on October 14 by Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy of the Holy See.
Paragraph 69 [of the Instrumentum Laboris] speaks of the Church as a tender mother and a clear teacher.
Every mother loves her children and feels their suffering. If we cannot feel the suffering of others, our hearts are dead or dying. But a good mother does not give her unhappy or wayward children everything they think they need; and she works to prevent her other, healthy children from repeating the mistakes of the wounded. Too much sugar is bad for the health.
We bishops are gathered as successors of the apostles; as priests, prophets, and leaders to lead in prayer and worship; to teach, warn and rule in service. While we teach with and under the successor of Peter, we are not delegates of the Pope – hence the Holy Father’s encouragement of open discussion.
We are wounded healers, but we also practice preventive medicine and strive to preserve ourselves and our people in holiness, in spiritual health. We are interpreters of the great mystery of God’s love and forgiveness, and our first episcopal task as teaching bishops is not to be theologians, but to teach, explain, and defend the apostolic tradition of faith and morals. Young adults need to be shown that our defense of lifelong marriage is sincere and serious.
We stand under the Word of God as its servants and protectors. As Cardinal Erdő pointed out so well [in his introductory address on the first working day of the Synod], we have no power to change the central teachings of the New Testament or the essential teachings of popes and councils. We are not like Moses, and while we are the successors of the apostles, we are not their equals. We can contribute to the genuine development of doctrine, as we read in Vincent of Lérins recently in the prayer of the Church. But we have no power to change or diminish the Word of God, much less to refashion it according to prevailing insights, or relativize the objective truths of Catholic faith and morals as passing expressions in some Hegelian flux.
Too many have lost confidence in Jesus’s doctrines and doubt or deny that mercy is found in his hard moral teachings. The crucified Jesus was not afraid to confront society, and he was crucified for his pains, teaching his followers that life is a moral struggle that requires sacrifices, and his followers cannot always take the easy options. He did not tell the adulterous woman to continue in her good work, but to repent and sin no more. The Prodigal Son acknowledged his sins before he returned home.
While we have many theologians, we have one faith and one set of official doctrine. We have seven sacraments but many different devotions and paraliturgies. The Ten Commandments are not like an examination where only six out of ten need to be attempted. The prohibition of adultery still continues today, although less drastically protected than it was in the first centuries when. like murder and idolatry, it often meant exclusion from the worshipping community.
Groups of bishops do have the authority to teach, explain, and even develop doctrine; but not even a council with and under a pope can change essential Catholic moral teachings sanctioned by Scripture and the Magisterium. It is for reasons such as these that the Holy Father has said that “doctrine cannot be touched.”
Catholic unity around the apostolic tradition of faith and morals is a mystery and a blessing, to be valued and defended by prayer, teaching and sacramental discipline. In this way God’s unfathomable and infinite mercy will continue to be available to believers.
Healing Cultures Corrupted by Fear
An abbreviated form of the following intervention was given in the Synod general assembly earlier this week by Bishop Borys Gudziak of the Eparchy of St Volodymyr in Paris, which serves Byzantine Ukrainians in France, Benelux and Switzerland. Bishops Gudziak’s description of the particular challenges facing marriage and the family in post-communist and communist societies was a gentle but important corrective to what some perceived as the (western) Eurocentrism of the Synod’s working document, and a call for pastoral solidarity across the old Cold War battle lines. XR2
Allow me to bring to your attention a challenge hardly recognised in the international discussion about family. This challenge is like radiation. It has no smell, no taste; it cannot be measured or counted. Yet it mutates our spiritual chromosomes and affects close to two billion persons who are the victims or heirs of modern totalitarianism, from Albania and Estonia to China and Vietnam. This challenge is the undermining of trust caused by fear. It is a broad, social, post-traumatic shock.
If you live in fear you cannot love. You cannot have good families if people cannot trust each other. Created in the image and likeness of a Triune personal God, we are created to be in personal relationships modeled on the Holy Trinity, in which openness to the other – mutual trust, willingness to be vulnerable and committed to self-sacrifice – is a pre-condition.
Let us start with the Word of God, the point of departure for our existence, our life, our salvation. The Biblical understanding of “trust” is for us a guide, an inspiration. In both the Old and New Testament, faith and trust are deeply connected. Trust is an essential part of the definition of faith. In Hebrew the word “faith” (אֱמוּנָה emunah) has the same root as the word “Amen” (by which we say “yes” to God) and means faithfulness, firmness, steadfastness, trustworthiness, fidelity in relationship to a person. It is not an abstract belief. It is relationship. The New Testament Greek word ἡ πίστις (pistis) means faith, belief, trust, confidence; fidelity, faithfulness. This word is used to refer to the faithfulness of Jesus to the Father, even unto death on the Cross.
Faith based on trust is the foundation of the life of the Church and the life of the family. We need to trust each other in the Church, in the family, and also in this Synod.
Nations and cultures that endured or endure totalitarianism, particularly Soviet-style communism, carry particular anthropological scars. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Balts, Central European Slavs, East Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Moldovans, Albanians, Chinese, Cubans, Vietnamese, North Koreans – in their country and in their emigré communities – were or still are ruled by a system of violence and fear and are handicapped by it, and are sometimes even crippled by this reflexive fear.
Totalitarian regimes systematically terrorised their populations, driving them into submission and seeking to establish maximum, if not total, control over actions, words, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. Thoroughly invasive methodologies were used to undermine the spiritual foundations and social fabric of societies. The security services systematically engaged in moral blackmail. Using detailed, intimate personal information collected by surveillance and through denunciations made by secret collaborators, the security services held hostage as many citizens as possible directly. Indirectly, they held hostage all of their respective societies and virtually every person. At the heart of the effort was a basic undermining of interpersonal trust, the cement of all human relations, including family relations. If trust is destroyed, the person becomes disconnected, isolated, incapable of engagement and lasting commitment, and, most importantly for the system, becomes more easily manipulated.
In the past century, through war, genocides, exiles, executions, famines etc., totalitarian regimes killed approximately 150 million people, driving fear deep into the DNA of surviving and descendant populations. Hiding behind masks and facades, disengaging, and suspecting the other became a natural reflex of self- preservation. The longer the totalitarianism lasted, the deeper the fear was implanted, becoming in the end a lifestyle, a characteristic of culture, communication, relationships. The fear is skin deep. Just scratch the surface and it appears. In the words of the Psalmist: “Trembling seized them there, anguish, like a woman’s labour” (Psalm 48:7).
The Soviet system had the opportunity to instil this almost genetic fear over three full generations.
Let me explain with a story that every person over 35 years old today heard during their childhood in the Soviet Union. It’s the legend (probably not true) of Pavlik Morozov – lionised by Soviet propaganda as a hero and a martyr. As a 13-year old boy, Pavlik denounced his father (and some neighbours) to the authorities for “forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the State (in Soviet legal parlance – an “enemy of the people” could be anyone)” and was in turn killed by his family, “his uncle, grandfather, grandmother, and a cousin.” The story of Pavlik Morozov became a foundational myth of Soviet pedagogy. He became a model for the Soviet children encouraged to follow his example – in every Soviet city there was a street named after Pavlik Morozov.
Totalitarian ideology undermines the very essence of human coexistence – you cannot trust anyone even your own family, even your children, your parents. The party indicates whom you are to love and trust, the party’s interests are above personal and family ones. God-given dignity and freedom are negated. The Christian understanding and experience of family is deconstructed. This fear and suspicion tragically embodied the words of the prophet Micah: “Put no faith in a friend, do not trust a companion; with her who lies in your embrace watch what you say” (Micah 7:5).
The pilgrimage from post-totalitarian fear to Biblical trust and lifelong faithfulness is a difficult one for many Christians, sometimes excruciatingly so. It is not possible without grace. It is a challenge for the Church called to speak to two billion victims and descendants of totalitarian ideology. To call disciples to walk this journey, the Church needs to understand their brokenness and show willingness to walk patiently with them in love and mercy. The Church in the contemporary world is called to trust fully in the Triune God, who makes Himself vulnerable to us, and to create places, structures, policies, and relationships of trust, fidelity and faithfulness that evoke and promote mutual openness and trust. Our vocation is to announce the victory of Christ over death, fear and sin with confidence and joy. This is especially true when poverty, forced migration, homelessness, virtuality and the violence of war threaten and undermine trust, as today in Ukraine, the Middle East, and so many places in the world. Facing these threats, we are called to proclaim “what is the surpassing greatness of his [God’s] power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:19-21).
Catholic Herald
Paragraph 69 [of the Instrumentum Laboris] speaks of the Church as a tender mother and a clear teacher.
Every mother loves her children and feels their suffering. If we cannot feel the suffering of others, our hearts are dead or dying. But a good mother does not give her unhappy or wayward children everything they think they need; and she works to prevent her other, healthy children from repeating the mistakes of the wounded. Too much sugar is bad for the health.
We bishops are gathered as successors of the apostles; as priests, prophets, and leaders to lead in prayer and worship; to teach, warn and rule in service. While we teach with and under the successor of Peter, we are not delegates of the Pope – hence the Holy Father’s encouragement of open discussion.
We are wounded healers, but we also practice preventive medicine and strive to preserve ourselves and our people in holiness, in spiritual health. We are interpreters of the great mystery of God’s love and forgiveness, and our first episcopal task as teaching bishops is not to be theologians, but to teach, explain, and defend the apostolic tradition of faith and morals. Young adults need to be shown that our defense of lifelong marriage is sincere and serious.
We stand under the Word of God as its servants and protectors. As Cardinal Erdő pointed out so well [in his introductory address on the first working day of the Synod], we have no power to change the central teachings of the New Testament or the essential teachings of popes and councils. We are not like Moses, and while we are the successors of the apostles, we are not their equals. We can contribute to the genuine development of doctrine, as we read in Vincent of Lérins recently in the prayer of the Church. But we have no power to change or diminish the Word of God, much less to refashion it according to prevailing insights, or relativize the objective truths of Catholic faith and morals as passing expressions in some Hegelian flux.
Too many have lost confidence in Jesus’s doctrines and doubt or deny that mercy is found in his hard moral teachings. The crucified Jesus was not afraid to confront society, and he was crucified for his pains, teaching his followers that life is a moral struggle that requires sacrifices, and his followers cannot always take the easy options. He did not tell the adulterous woman to continue in her good work, but to repent and sin no more. The Prodigal Son acknowledged his sins before he returned home.
While we have many theologians, we have one faith and one set of official doctrine. We have seven sacraments but many different devotions and paraliturgies. The Ten Commandments are not like an examination where only six out of ten need to be attempted. The prohibition of adultery still continues today, although less drastically protected than it was in the first centuries when. like murder and idolatry, it often meant exclusion from the worshipping community.
Groups of bishops do have the authority to teach, explain, and even develop doctrine; but not even a council with and under a pope can change essential Catholic moral teachings sanctioned by Scripture and the Magisterium. It is for reasons such as these that the Holy Father has said that “doctrine cannot be touched.”
Catholic unity around the apostolic tradition of faith and morals is a mystery and a blessing, to be valued and defended by prayer, teaching and sacramental discipline. In this way God’s unfathomable and infinite mercy will continue to be available to believers.
Healing Cultures Corrupted by Fear
An abbreviated form of the following intervention was given in the Synod general assembly earlier this week by Bishop Borys Gudziak of the Eparchy of St Volodymyr in Paris, which serves Byzantine Ukrainians in France, Benelux and Switzerland. Bishops Gudziak’s description of the particular challenges facing marriage and the family in post-communist and communist societies was a gentle but important corrective to what some perceived as the (western) Eurocentrism of the Synod’s working document, and a call for pastoral solidarity across the old Cold War battle lines. XR2
Allow me to bring to your attention a challenge hardly recognised in the international discussion about family. This challenge is like radiation. It has no smell, no taste; it cannot be measured or counted. Yet it mutates our spiritual chromosomes and affects close to two billion persons who are the victims or heirs of modern totalitarianism, from Albania and Estonia to China and Vietnam. This challenge is the undermining of trust caused by fear. It is a broad, social, post-traumatic shock.
If you live in fear you cannot love. You cannot have good families if people cannot trust each other. Created in the image and likeness of a Triune personal God, we are created to be in personal relationships modeled on the Holy Trinity, in which openness to the other – mutual trust, willingness to be vulnerable and committed to self-sacrifice – is a pre-condition.
Let us start with the Word of God, the point of departure for our existence, our life, our salvation. The Biblical understanding of “trust” is for us a guide, an inspiration. In both the Old and New Testament, faith and trust are deeply connected. Trust is an essential part of the definition of faith. In Hebrew the word “faith” (אֱמוּנָה emunah) has the same root as the word “Amen” (by which we say “yes” to God) and means faithfulness, firmness, steadfastness, trustworthiness, fidelity in relationship to a person. It is not an abstract belief. It is relationship. The New Testament Greek word ἡ πίστις (pistis) means faith, belief, trust, confidence; fidelity, faithfulness. This word is used to refer to the faithfulness of Jesus to the Father, even unto death on the Cross.
Faith based on trust is the foundation of the life of the Church and the life of the family. We need to trust each other in the Church, in the family, and also in this Synod.
Nations and cultures that endured or endure totalitarianism, particularly Soviet-style communism, carry particular anthropological scars. Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, Balts, Central European Slavs, East Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Moldovans, Albanians, Chinese, Cubans, Vietnamese, North Koreans – in their country and in their emigré communities – were or still are ruled by a system of violence and fear and are handicapped by it, and are sometimes even crippled by this reflexive fear.
Totalitarian regimes systematically terrorised their populations, driving them into submission and seeking to establish maximum, if not total, control over actions, words, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. Thoroughly invasive methodologies were used to undermine the spiritual foundations and social fabric of societies. The security services systematically engaged in moral blackmail. Using detailed, intimate personal information collected by surveillance and through denunciations made by secret collaborators, the security services held hostage as many citizens as possible directly. Indirectly, they held hostage all of their respective societies and virtually every person. At the heart of the effort was a basic undermining of interpersonal trust, the cement of all human relations, including family relations. If trust is destroyed, the person becomes disconnected, isolated, incapable of engagement and lasting commitment, and, most importantly for the system, becomes more easily manipulated.
In the past century, through war, genocides, exiles, executions, famines etc., totalitarian regimes killed approximately 150 million people, driving fear deep into the DNA of surviving and descendant populations. Hiding behind masks and facades, disengaging, and suspecting the other became a natural reflex of self- preservation. The longer the totalitarianism lasted, the deeper the fear was implanted, becoming in the end a lifestyle, a characteristic of culture, communication, relationships. The fear is skin deep. Just scratch the surface and it appears. In the words of the Psalmist: “Trembling seized them there, anguish, like a woman’s labour” (Psalm 48:7).
The Soviet system had the opportunity to instil this almost genetic fear over three full generations.
Let me explain with a story that every person over 35 years old today heard during their childhood in the Soviet Union. It’s the legend (probably not true) of Pavlik Morozov – lionised by Soviet propaganda as a hero and a martyr. As a 13-year old boy, Pavlik denounced his father (and some neighbours) to the authorities for “forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the State (in Soviet legal parlance – an “enemy of the people” could be anyone)” and was in turn killed by his family, “his uncle, grandfather, grandmother, and a cousin.” The story of Pavlik Morozov became a foundational myth of Soviet pedagogy. He became a model for the Soviet children encouraged to follow his example – in every Soviet city there was a street named after Pavlik Morozov.
Totalitarian ideology undermines the very essence of human coexistence – you cannot trust anyone even your own family, even your children, your parents. The party indicates whom you are to love and trust, the party’s interests are above personal and family ones. God-given dignity and freedom are negated. The Christian understanding and experience of family is deconstructed. This fear and suspicion tragically embodied the words of the prophet Micah: “Put no faith in a friend, do not trust a companion; with her who lies in your embrace watch what you say” (Micah 7:5).
The pilgrimage from post-totalitarian fear to Biblical trust and lifelong faithfulness is a difficult one for many Christians, sometimes excruciatingly so. It is not possible without grace. It is a challenge for the Church called to speak to two billion victims and descendants of totalitarian ideology. To call disciples to walk this journey, the Church needs to understand their brokenness and show willingness to walk patiently with them in love and mercy. The Church in the contemporary world is called to trust fully in the Triune God, who makes Himself vulnerable to us, and to create places, structures, policies, and relationships of trust, fidelity and faithfulness that evoke and promote mutual openness and trust. Our vocation is to announce the victory of Christ over death, fear and sin with confidence and joy. This is especially true when poverty, forced migration, homelessness, virtuality and the violence of war threaten and undermine trust, as today in Ukraine, the Middle East, and so many places in the world. Facing these threats, we are called to proclaim “what is the surpassing greatness of his [God’s] power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:19-21).
Catholic Herald
