To overcome polarization in the Church, Carlo Lancellotti (National Catholic Register Nov. 5, 2022), recalls the focus of Monsignor Lorenzo Giussani, his mentor, on the Event of Christ as the heart and center of our faith. This is, of course, the legacy of Vatican II, the dual papacy and the most influential, promising Catholic school of theology of the last half century. Rightly, he centralizes the Incarnation and sees ecclesial ideologies of the right and left as too often abstractions, detachments from the concrete, fleshly, incarnate, crucified and risen Jesus.
Carlo, friend, a gifted mathematician, is blessed with an extraordinary theological intuition, nurtured by his life within Communion and Liberation. His translation and explanation of the Italian Del Noce are major contributions. Carlo is a brilliant. But this essay left me uneasy.
Everything he writes here is insightful and pertinent: the polarization is scandalous, the source of unity is the person and event of Jesus Christ, we too often gather into opposing theological camps. Amen to all of that! This admonition is especially salutary for those like myself who are strongly compelled to engage in argument over truth. The call for unity, from Jesus and throughout the New Testament, is fundamental. The way there is two-fold: love of God, in Jesus; and love of my brother and sister, in Jesus. But I would add a third: fidelity to Truth.
And this is the problem with the essay: the goal itself, of overcoming polarization. This disunity and conflict is unavoidable. It will be with us until the Parousia. Ending it is like eliminating warfare, suffering, hunger, adultery, sin. Culture war, in ever new configurations, is a permanent structure of human, historical existence.
Jesus himself said he did not come to bring peace, but the sword. Balthasar is very clear: the event of Christ intensified the warfare between the light and the darkness. Life after Christ, even within the Church, is not the progressive triumph of the light. It is no a contagion of peace. It is the intensification of the conflict between two kingdoms. History is not progress, evolution, reconciliation...it is the drama of war.
My own experience is that engagement with the Person of Jesus impelled me directly into the war over truth. Carlo would be the first to admit that from this encounter gushes objective dogma, morality and practice that constitute our Church. Fidelity for us is to Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Light. This engages us in unavoidable polarization. The war over truth is with us, within history, all the time, everywhere.
The ambition to overcome polarization and reconcile is misguided. It is like the political compulsion to appease Putin, Iran or China. Peace is not possible. War is unavoidable. But we must wage it in the Holy Spirit: humble, courageous, certain, confident, clear, luminous. Our final aim is neither victory nor peace, but to witness, as martyrs, to the Truth.
The point here is not to contradict Carlo, but to note that surrender to Christ urges us in two directions: sometimes to reconciliation and collaboration, and at other times into deeper combat.
This is important because it is, I suggest, exemplary of a broader current in Communion and Liberation and the Church. Clearly, their charism includes an openness of mind, a welcome of the best in the world, a freedom from fear and defensiveness, a Renaissance (Italian) sophistication, serenity and confidence of spirit...all this out of a deep engagement with the person of Christ within the Church and her rich Tradition. But there is a dark side: a reluctance to engage in intellectual combat, an irenic propensity to please and appease, an aversion to Culture War.
The remarkable New York Encounter every winter in Manhattan is exemplary. It is hospitable to cosmopolitan, sophisticated, largely secular New York City. I cannot imagine another expression of authentic Catholicism so appealing to a sensitive, searching modern soul. I attend every year, invite others, including those distant from the Church, and I enjoy it immensely. But part of this charm is the avoidance of confrontation. Some examples follow.
In the 2020 conference, papal biographer Austin Ivereigh spoke. "Hagiographer" might be a more appropriate term. He is a huge admirer of Pope Francis. On the face of it, this seems fine: Francis is our Pope. And he is attractive in many ways to a Manhattan cosmopolitanism. But the problem is: from a Catholic perspective there are issues with this papacy. But it is unthinkable that criticism of Francis would be entertained in the way, for example, of a respectable interchange or debate. This is regrettable.
In the 2021 conference, after George Floyd's tragic death, there was a panel on racism. The participants were extremely impressive: intelligent, refined, modulated, radiant with gospel values of forgiveness and reconciliation. They narrated, in sincerity and authenticity, personal experiences of racial hatred. Quite moving! A clear, uncontested consensus: our society today suffers systematic racism. I myself was, very happily, participant on a panel that followed that. But I remembered thinking: in this ambience, it would be unthinkable to express my own conviction that the continued suffering of American blacks is not due to current systems of racism but more complex cultural-class dynamics that flow from past injustices but not from contemporary practices of anti-black bigotry. Such a view would be respective of their real suffering but questioning of their interpretation. It would need to be cancelled.
In the past 2022 conference, Francis Collins spoke and was welcomed with unmitigated enthusiasm. He is an important, impressive, admirable and historic personage. But there are serious questions about his leadership through the COVID epidemic. Outside the conference hall, demonstrators quietly distributed pamphlets critical of decisions he shared in. It would have been helpful to hear those within the hall and receive his own response...respectfully, calmly of course. But the feel-good mood in the hall could hardly tolerate such.
The New York Encounter is so good at what it does that I offer criticism with hesitation. Would I really want it to change to entertain such controversy? Maybe not. It would lose some of the kinetic positivity it simply radiates. And so I retain a strong appreciation for The Encounter, Communion and Liberation and Carlo, one of its finest intellects.
In an earlier blog essay I identified an extreme negativity within the Neocatechumenal Way towards the broader society and Church. CL moves in the opposite direction: embracive of what is best, it seems to ignore the worst. The two renewal movements contrast sharply in several ways. They share, however, a certain monotony of thought; an aversion to vigorous disagreement. This is more surprising in the case of CL which is more highbrow, attractive to the educated and sophisticated, and centers its share life in the "school of community" which is an open, candid sharing of each others experiences and reflections.
Perhaps we benefit in the Church with both tendencies. Happily, we find in other groups (Communio, First Things, (more low brow) EWTN a willingness to engage the world in uncensored, critical candor. The Neos with their "Christ against the world" and CL with its "Christ within the world" (to borrow from Richard Niebuhr) both enrich the "big table" that is Catholicism. But the compulsion to accommodate and appease is currently strong and troubling in the Church.
Pope Francis has been inconsistent, but clearly withdrawn from a confrontational engagement with a West now depleted by the sexual, cultural revolution. His two predecessors achieved a marvelous balance of affirmation and confrontation. A people-pleasing, beta-male legacy in our American Church of Bernadine-McCarrick continues in Cupich, Gregory, and McEnerny. Neither victory nor reconciliation is our destiny. Our task is to witness to the Truth: in communion with the Incarnate Christ...in all humility, clarity, vigor, charity, certainty, courage, serenity and hope.
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