Eucharist of CHA 2019 Governance Symposium – Manly, 26 August 2019
To be given the liturgy of the day at a particular event such as this Conference, and to have its prescribed readings proclaimed, can represent both a challenge and a possibility. The Gospel proclaimed in today’s liturgy (Matthew 23: 13-22) is perhaps not quite the one that with the freedom of choice we might have selected for a Conference on healthcare. And yet in a curious way it does, in fact, address the matrix through which Catholic healthcare operates, the framework of mission to which we are committed and about which the Governance Symposium attends in such an era of change.
In his strident attack in the Gospel, Jesus confronts an attitude of heart and mind that Pope Francis more recently terms, ‘spiritual worldliness’.[1] This is not a term perhaps, we, ourselves, might use with familiarity. Yet, it is a phrase deeply associated with Francis’ concern for what he terms, ‘indifference’ an attitude he suggests has now taken on global proportions. As he urges, “The world is in need of concrete signs of solidarity, especially in face of the temptation to indifference, and it requires individuals capable of opposing with their life individualism, thinking only of oneself, and being indifferent to brothers in need.”[2] And so, as he explains, “those who have fallen into this worldliness look on from above and afar, they reject the prophecy of their brothers and sisters, they discredit those who raise questions, they constantly point out the mistakes of others and they are obsessed by appearances. Their hearts are open only to the limited horizon of their own immanence and interests . . .”[3]
Francis is not backwards in suggesting various indicators of this attitude he terms “worldliness”. He proposes it as something insidious in the Church and it reaches especially those of us with responsibility for governance and administration, lurking as it does, as he suggests, “behind a fascination with social and political gain, or pride in [our] ability to manage practical affairs, or an obsession with programmes of self-help and self-realization. It can also translate into a concern to be seen, into a social life full of appearances, meetings, dinners and receptions. It can also lead to a business mentality, caught up with management, statistics, plans and evaluations whose principal beneficiary is not God’s people but the Church as an institution.”[4]
All of this is problematic because, as Francis notes, “The mark of Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen, is not present; closed and elite groups are formed, and no effort is made to go forth and seek out those who are distant or the immense multitudes who thirst for Christ. Evangelical fervour is replaced by the empty pleasure of complacency and self-indulgence.”[5] And the antidote to this malaise? As Francis proposes, “This stifling worldliness can only be healed by breathing in the pure air of the Holy Spirit who frees us from self-centredness cloaked in an outward religiosity bereft of God. Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the Gospel!”[6]Our corporate conscience must always, therefore, be goaded by the clarity of mission. And this mission is, for Francis, clear: it is “to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.”[7] As he teaches elsewhere,
“Our faith, ‘calls us out of our house’, to visit the sick, the prisoner and to those who mourn. It makes us able to laugh with those who laugh and rejoice with our neighbours who rejoice. Like Mary, we want to be a Church who serves, who leaves home and goes forth, who goes forth from her chapels, her sacristies, in order to accompany life, to sustain hope, to be a sign of unity. Like Mary, Mother of Charity, we want to be a Church who goes forth to build bridges, to break down walls, to sow seeds of reconciliation. Like Mary, we want to be a Church who can accompany all those ‘pregnant’ situations of our people, committed to life, to culture, to society, not washing our hands but rather walking with our brothers and sisters. Altogether, serving, helping.”[8]
All of this for Francis is summed up in the project of mercy – the bridge between indifference and involvement. It is a complex project for Francis. It, “takes the person into one’s care, listens to them attentively, approaches the situation with respect and truth, and accompanies them on the journey of reconciliation.”[9] Therefore, mercy always moves to encounter. This, then, is not just seeing but looking, not just hearing but listening, not just passing people by but stopping with them.[10]It is the way of ‘attention’. It must be the guiding principle of Catholic healthcare, the manifestation of which all our planning must be subject.
For Francis, mercy is never simply a personal enterprise, it is fundamentally social. As he teaches, “Now we have to “act”, not only with gestures, but by projects and structures, by creating a culture of mercy.”[11]
“We are part of a fragmented culture, a throwaway culture. A culture tainted by the exclusion of everything that might threaten the interests of a few. A culture that is leaving by the roadside the faces of the elderly, children, ethnic minorities seen as a threat. A culture that little by little promotes the comfort of a few and increases the suffering of many others. A culture that is incapable of accompanying the young in their dreams but sedates them with promises of ethereal happiness and hides the living memory of their elders . . .
All of us are aware, all of us know that we live in a society that is hurting; no one doubts this. We live in a society that is bleeding, and the price of its wounds normally ends up being paid by the most vulnerable. But it is precisely to this society, to this culture, that the Lord sends us. He sends us and urges us to bring the balm of “his” presence. He sends us with one program alone: to treat one another with mercy.”[12]
Let us, therefore, never cease in our agency of mercy, unafraid to be agents of change in this “change of era.”[13]
[1]Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, “The Joy of the Gospel,” Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World, (24 November 2013), nn. 93-97.
[2]Pope Francis, Homily to participants in the Jubilee of Volunteers and Agents of Mercy, held 2-4 September 2016, Rome.
[3]Evangelii Gaudium, n. 97.
[4]Evangelii Gaudium, n. 95.
[5]Evangelii Gaudium, n.95.
[6]Evangelii Gaudium, n. 97.
[7]http://www.catholic.com/blog/jimmy-akin/the-4-minute-speech-that-got-pope-francis-elected
[8]Pope Francis, Address at Shrine of El Cobre, Cuba, 23 September 2015.
[9]Pope Francis, Address to the Parish Priests of the Diocese of Rome, 6 March 2014.
[10]Pope Francis, Morning Meditation in the Chapel of Domus Sanctae Marthae, 13 September 2016.
[11]Pope Francis, 30 June 2016.
[12]Pope Francis, Message for the Occasion of the Jubilee Celebration for the Americas, 29 August 2016.
[13]Pope Francis, Address to the Decennial National Conference of the Italian Church, Florence, 10 November 2015.
