Chevalier de la charité

When the bishops gather in Baltimore for their annual plenary, one of the outstanding pieces of business will be deciding how they want to proceed with guidance for Catholics regarding politics. Will our wonderful, roomy, rich tradition of Catholic social thought be brought to bear on the text? Or will it be another trainwreck?

The current document is titled « Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, » and the underlying text was adopted in 2007. It is difficult to object to the text in any particular: The section on poverty is really well done, as is the section on abortion. At the level of policy analysis, it is excellent.

The problem is that by getting into the policy weeds, it became overly long and, despite its title, minimized the role of conscience formation, especially for young people. The detailed, exhaustive iteration of policy in « Faithful Citizenship, » precisely because of its detail, comes off as too paternalistic. It is like an adult at dinner cutting up the meat for their teenage child.

No particular paragraph is « wrong, » but the whole suffers from a core misunderstanding: This kind of document is a good vehicle for recalling Catholic social teaching, not for teaching it in the first place.

In 2011, the bishops reissued the text with a new introductory note that included this fine sentiment: « [‘Faithful Citizenship’] does not offer a voter’s guide, scorecard of issues, or direction on how to vote. It applies Catholic moral principles to a range of important issues and warns against misguided appeals to ‘conscience’ to ignore fundamental moral claims, to reduce Catholic moral concerns to one or two matters, or to justify choices simply to advance partisan, ideological, or personal interests. »

Well said, but the bishops frontloaded all the issues on which they disagreed with the incumbent President Barack Obama, and failed to seize the really exciting opportunity to critique American capitalism — which had imploded in 2008 — by incorporating the insights drawn from Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate.

In 2015, the bishops again punted and kept the same text, albeit with an introductory letter that was obsessed with fighting same-sex marriage. Pope Francis had come to the United States and addressed a joint session of Congress, and he had not felt the need to mention same-sex marriage, but the bishops were fixated on the issue.

In 2019, the bishops punted yet again, this time adding the adjective « preeminent » to describe their concern with the issue of abortion, thus minimizing the role of conscience formation even further. Prioritizing which issues in a particular election, for particular offices, are most important is precisely the kind of prudential judgment that should be left to voters.

Now, it is time for the bishops to start from scratch. Since the underlying text was written, the magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis has given us three encyclicals that have enriched and developed Catholic social teaching: Caritas in Veritate, « Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home » and Fratelli Tutti. Both popes articulate a profoundly Christocentric and biblical focus in their social teaching, with Benedict focusing on the necessity of a theology of grace and Francis retrieving the idea of integral human development.

Just as importantly, the growth of social media has changed the way the church must communicate its teaching, especially for young people. In 2007, Twitter was 1 year old. Four years ago, the bishops decided to produce some videos related to « Faithful Citizenship » but they were dull. I wonder how many people watched them.

The major problem, however, is different. The current document runs to 43 pages of text, with an additional 10 pages of notes. No one reads it. And its exhaustive character suggests the U.S. bishops have done the heavy lifting on conscience formation. The text may claim it « does not offer a voter’s guide … or direction on how to vote » but the specificity of the text, combined with the extensive media coverage of the most outspokenly partisan bishops, belied the claim.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales issued a two-page statement in 2017 in advance of that country’s general election in 2019. The Canadian bishops kept their statement to one page. The U.S. bishops should insist on a similarly short statement for 2024.

The bishops should also craft a single, concise paragraph about the need to protect democracy. That was not on anyone’s radar screen in 2007, but it is now. Catholic social teaching, originally ambivalent about democracy, developed a coherent and compelling defense of democracy, starting with the pontificate of Pius XII, a defense that our country needs to hear.

The final document should self-consciously avoid partisanship as much as possible. In this era of acute societal polarization, the most important two things the bishops can and should do are, first, remind Catholics that our values and beliefs transcend partisan divisions and, second, model the unity among themselves that they wish for the Catholic laity and for the whole society.

I do not wish to minimize the difficulty of those two tasks. But they cannot be solved by adding a new introductory text to a document from 2007. It is time for a new document, one that puts a greater emphasis on forming consciences, incorporates the key teachings of Benedict and Francis, that defends democracy per se, and with a priority on binding the wounds that currently divide our church and our country.

With the Vatican’s Oct. 27 release of the document to guide the next phase of Pope Francis’ innovative new process for the Synod of Bishops, the Catholic Church has shown it has the capacity to listen to its people.

The 45-page synthesis of national and local listening sessions from countries around the world — known as the Working Document for the Continental Stage of the synod — presents an embodied synodality that offers a « path of recognition » for those who have felt invisible or dismissed by their church. Not to overstate the matter, but recognition — being seen and heard — is a small revolution.

Often Vatican documents have a single « women’s paragraph, » one section that pays lip service to one of the most pressing issues in our church. This report, however, weaves narratives from around the world throughout the document, noting the tensions women experience within the church they love, their baptismal equality, and the reality of structures and systems that prevent their full participation in the life of the church.

Of course, a couple of paragraphs are of particular interest. The document calls for further discernment on the near-universal calls for women in governance and decision-making, women’s preaching and « a female diaconate. » The next sentence acknowledges a « diversity of opinions » on women’s priestly ordination, noting some national reports called for it, while others consider it a « closed issue. »

The acknowledgment of global calls for women’s priestly ordination is significant for many reasons.

To start, this is a stark contrast from Francis’ 2013 comments on women’s ordination: « The Church has spoken and says no … that door is closed. »

Now, the church is speaking through the synodal process and saying: This is part of our discernment. The Vatican’s admittance that the teaching on women’s ordination is not a consistently held belief among Catholics reveals a spirit of openness and accountability to the people of God. The very fact that those challenging voices — many of which were filtered out at the local level — broke through means this call is strong and clear.

We at the Women’s Ordination Conference engaged faithfully in the synod process, providing educational resources and spiritual tools, and hosting eight listening sessions ourselves, following the guidance of the synod preparatory documents. We submitted our report to the Vatican directly, and also registered as part of the so-called « Region XVI » with the U.S. bishops’ conference so that our report, spanning voices beyond one diocese, could be included.

Just last week the Region XVI coordinators invited the participants of this special region to a debriefing conversation, where we met in small groups and then in a larger group with three bishops present to share our experiences of synodality. For the Women’s Ordination Conference, the bar is low for what a relationship with the bishops’ conference might look like, but I found this commitment to dialogue and modeling of synodality refreshing.

What I especially appreciated about the conversation among Region XVI organizations was the recognition of the value of national and global organizations, which have a unique freedom or perspective that can go beyond the boundaries of a local diocese or parish. One of the most challenging parts of being a pilgrim on the synodal path is holding and tending to the experiences of those for whom synodality did not happen locally, or more often, for those whose heartbreak is too deep.

Recognition and welcome are the first steps on a journey of recovery from a church whose current structures and policies oppress, silence and punish women.

Just two months ago, I was detained at the Vatican alongside six other women as part of a prayerful witness calling for greater inclusion of women at all levels of the church. Outside the consistory of cardinals convened by Francis in late August, we held red paper parasols with messages including « Sexism is a cardinal sin » and « Ordain women. » We were not only moved out of sight of the prelates walking in, but later held at an Italian police station for some four hours, released pending a criminal investigation.

Now the Vatican is calling us to « enlarge our tent, » as the document says — and naming the sins of sexism, clericalism and exclusion that we have long called the church to repent from. The contrast is jarring, yet filled with promise.

My hope is the church continues to listen to women, particularly those who have discerned calls to ordained ministry. May this « path of recognition » become the revolution of the Holy Spirit our church so desperately needs.