Violence
in the Church
By Camilo Macisse
To speak
of violence in the [hierarchy of the] Church
might seem nonsensical. [In fact], violence has not been exercised in
exceptional, isolated cases, but has been part of the culture of church
authority for ages, a culture which has fallen well-short of the Gospel
way of
exercising authority. These days, the Church no longer employs physical
coercion, but other forms of violence – moral and psychological –
continue, in
an exercise of power that ignores both legitimate diversity in the
Church and
the Gospel insistence on dialogue. One of those forms is centralism,
which
seeks to concentrate decision-making powers in a bureaucracy distant
from the
life of believers in different circumstances. Incapable of accepting
pluralism,
it is a way of treating believers at all levels, from bishops’
conferences to
groups of lay people, as children in need of protection, who must be
disciplined according to short-sighted criteria. Such centralism
results in
large part from distrust and fear. How else to account for the delay of
three or more years in approving translations of
liturgical texts carried
out by experts and unanimously approved by local bishops’ conferences?
Another
form of violence is patriarchal authoritarianism that excludes women
from
participation at all levels of the Church. It is astonishing, for
example, that
contemplative women religious were never consulted during the
preparation of
the document on enclosure, Verbi Sponsa. As in former times,
they are
viewed as children incapable of fidelity to their cloistered identity
without
male supervision.
Another
kind of church violence is a dogmatism that
refuses to admit that, in a pluralist world, it is not possible to
continue to
assume just one religious, cultural and theological standpoint. Failing
to
distinguish between what is essential in Christian faith and its relative theological
expressions, dogmatism
insists on a single theological perspective, that of traditionalism,
which uses
philosophical and cultural assumptions that belong to prior ages. The
tensions
and conflicts in the Church cannot be eliminated by centralist or
dogmatic
violence any more than they can be eliminated by rejecting church
authority and
the fundamental truths of faith and morality. Rather, the need is to
overcome
the neo-conservative mo-del of Christianity
which has gained ground in the Church, and to move towards the
acceptance in
practice of the model of the Church described by Vatican II – a Church
of
communion, a Church defined as the People of God and the sacrament of
the
Kingdom. In this model there must be room for dialogue and
communication, for
unity in diversity, and for a climate of liberty that expresses a
loving
acceptance of others, in turn fostering communion both inside and
outside the
Church. Above all, the Church needs an attitude of dialogue, one that
seeks to
listen and discern the truth in the light of the Gospel, both within
the Church
and in conversation with other Christian
confessions, other religions, and society in general. This is what the
Second
Vatican Council calls for in its pastoral constitution on the Church in
the
modern world, Gaudium et Spes, that speaks of the Church’s
mission to
shed the light of the Gospel on all humanity as “a sign of that
brotherliness
which allows honest dialogue and invigorates it”. The pastoral
constitution
insists that “such a mission requires in the first place that we foster
within
the Church herself mutual esteem, reverence and harmony, through the full recognition of lawful
diversity”; it quotes St. Augustine: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials
liberty, in
all things charity.” This dialogue would serve to counteract the
centralism and
legalism of the Roman Curia, which is creating tensions and conflicts
in an
attempt to impose a rigid uniformity in the name of a false idea of
unity. This
violence must be overcome.
(Camilo
Macisse was president of the Union of
Superiors General and superior general of the Discalced Carmelites;
from a
translation of an article in Testimonio, the magazine of the
Chilean Conference
of Bishops, 11/15/03.)