From Fear to Freedom – Michael Gill – The Human Face

I am a cradle Catholic, now (2023) seventy-six. I was married to Kathy for almost 50 years; she died in 2020. We have three daughters and seven grandchildren. I have practiced as a lawyer in a private law firm, as well as participating in many community and corporate roles.

I am now very much focused on the reform of the Catholic Church, particularly under the leadership of Pope Francis. I read extensively on theological and other issues and am closely following the work of the Synod on Synodality.

The phrase “Do not be afraid” appears in the Bible 365 times. That’s a daily reminder from God to live every day being fearless. Yet I carry from my early Catholic childhood, strong recollections and experiences of guilt and sin and repentance and hell and confession, and of course fear.  One need only reflect on all the crazy rules about the receipt of the Eucharist to understand that one needed to be perfect already before one had an entitlement to food for the journey. In the 50s and the early 60s, Sunday sermons were often of the fire- and- brimstone variety…. not to mention the annual Mission visit by the Redemptorists. Where was hope? Where was love? Compassion? Mercy? So much more of the Jesus message was not mentioned, let alone emphasised.

Then came Pope John the Good and Vat II. “One lives in hope and disappointment,” as my PP in Mortlake observed many years later.

Since the Second Vatican Council, practising Catholics have lived with the frustration of an unfulfilled promise and witnessed a Church increasingly losing touch with society generally, and specifically with an ever-growing number of Catholics who can no longer fully participate because of a disbelief in many of its words and behaviour.  Expressed another way, the Church has lost relevance with and to the people of God and, as a result, has deserted its mission and its people.  It would be wrong to state that 90% of Catholics have left the Church. Even to say it doesn’t make sense. The Church has ceased to fulfil the pastoral call of Jesus Christ.  80% of Australian Catholics had stopped practising (whatever that might mean) before the exposure of the sexual abuse of minors and the cover-up by bishops and others.

Then came the Pastoral Council in Australia, the Catholic lay reform groups. Then the Synod on Synodality. But mostly the hope engendered by 10 years of Francis the pastor pope. The reform groups and others who are clinging on see the work of the Francis period and what it offers as an opportunity to be heard. Now comes a time of risk; yes, hope emerges. What happens?

Reality must be acknowledged. The laity, the people of God, must speak truth to power. Tenderly and with love. It is what Jesus Christ expects of us in the fulfillment of his (our) mission.

FOR ME, THERE IS ONLY ONE PLACE TO START: The People of God

It is with God’s people, not the Catholic Church. My God is with his people first and foremost.  The mission we have been given by Jesus Christ is to be of and with his people. If we are not with his people, we are not on mission. Especially when the organised Church so often seems incapable, we must be.

Today the Church has many doctrines and dogmas and rules; it has Canon Law, it has discipline, it has a huge bureaucracy and much clericalism. For many people those things simply interfere with the development of their personal relationship with Jesus Christ which, after all, is our principal calling.  We can’t really allow those things to stand in the way of authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. They cannot be an excuse. And they will not prevail against God’s mission. And those things often obscure or are inconsistent with the traditions of the Church, a topic receiving increasing attention today.

Timing

For me, time is important: it is at the core of how I see my mission and the role of the Church in it The Church may need to move slowly, but I cannot afford to and for more reasons than my age. 

Let’s never forget this from Pope Benedict XVI:

“Over the Pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else — if necessary, even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. Conscience confronts [the individual] with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official Church.”

Read that again. Joseph Ratzinger wrote that in 1968. 

And Pope Francis in AMORIS LAETITIA wrote that the Church is “called to form consciences, not replace them.”

The world (including the People of God) exists in real time. We need each other’s companionship, our compassion and mercy, our listening, our understanding, to be beneficiaries of all the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us, existing in the here and now. That is reality.

 In the opportunity and context of the Francis inspiration, I can’t be completely or principally distracted by the rules and doctrines, etc, of the Catholic Church where they impede my mission, my calling, my conscience. Being very clear, much of this is of great benefit to and supports my mission. I don’t want to undervalue that. And millions of Catholics on mission everywhere live authentic lives. And I am proud of and receive much courage and encouragement from my Church and its history.

However, in what Pope Francis describes as a “Change of Era,” we must start with the assumption that significant (vast) change in the Church organisation and teaching is necessary, and where we are today needs much reform. On many occasions Pope Francis and other leaders have said as much. I did not need to hear that. The laity have been experiencing this enormous change in faith for many decades. We are also aware from the reality of our so-called secular lives that in so many other ways we are confronting a change of era; there is hardly any part of our lives that is free of that experience. 

For me it is obvious that our starting point is not with thousands of pages of closely typed doctrine; it can’t be. That suffocates and discourages.  We are called to start with an honest and open and joyful encounter with the people of God in their current circumstances

• Where are they today?

• What are their needs?

• Where is their faith absent or letting them down?

• What is hurting or frustrating or denying them peace of mind and a feeling of self-worth?

To experience those encounters is, invariably, to experience joy. And with all that, we have many other challenges, like unfairness within society, like climate change. 

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis has spoken of interconnectedness and alerted us (for the first time, for many people) to the challenging interconnection between the denial of resources and rights to most of God’s people on the one hand and the damage being done to our common home on the other.

With my focus on God’s people today, I go back to first principles and, for myself, identify our Trinity as the Creator God, the Jesus Christ who gives us his example of life, and the Holy Spirit who invests us with the unique gifts we need to play our role in that great creation. The teachings of the Church add much warmth and beauty to these images and explain a great deal; some of them also confuse because they are out of step.

My God is, first and foremost, a God of love. Pope Francis frequently speaks of mercy and compassion, which is entirely consistent with the God that I know. The God I now recognise is not the angry, condemning entity of my childhood. Not the one with the book of my sins or the whip for my back or the sackcloth shirt.

To work with the people of God, using my gifts, I need to be able to show God’s love and compassion and mercy. I need the gifts to accompany and to listen, and to do that in whatever way I am best gifted to do. For God’s people today, many of the roles and rules of the past are no longer relevant, because today’s society is very different. That difference receives more examination in what might be called secular works about philosophy or social science than I see in theology. The rate of change of society is enormous and, as a result, society is struggling to understand itself.  That is not surprising because so many of us who make up society are equally struggling to understand ourselves. The young are not spared.

A secular world largely devoid of a belief in a loving God provides inadequate answers (or no answer at all) to most of the important and confronting questions.The answers that were asserted 50 or 60 years ago are now seen as questionable at best, as certainly in the past — and nothing has replaced them except  confusion, uncertainty, pain and illness.

The Remaking

Let’s never forget that Jesus Christ was both an activist and an advocate of change, quick and on a grand scale. He was and remains a change of era.  He was active among and with his people, and he attended to their needs, physical and spiritual interconnected.  And so often in scripture he established his relevance and trustworthiness by commencing with an immediate physical need. Thence came spiritual conversion. We must never forget this sequence or try to rush it or short circuit it. We must be patient; we must listen, we must establish trust and relationship and, most of all, we must allow for the Holy Spirit. Unlike our God, we don’t have a ready supply of instant miracles to win people over.

For myself, Jesus Christ is indeed the way from which the institutional Church has strayed. It has been distracted by the laws, much the same as were the priests and pharisees of old. Something as significant as a change of era will require a fundamental remaking, a refounding of an institution, a re-conversion of God’s people. That’s the call of Francis to a synodal Church. People with open hearts and minds, walking together and listening.

For me, the starting point is myself. 

Until my eyes are open, and I am willing to see what now needs to be done for the Common Go(o)d, it’s unlikely that I will be of much good to anyone, including myself.  It’s highly unlikely that a modern, relevant Jesus Christ Church can be created until a significant number of the people of God have remade themselves. Individual remaking must of necessity precede the remaking of the institution. There’s nothing new in that. That’s simply talking about the faith of the people of God. That’s the only faith that an authentic Church can embrace. So, my faith must be informed by where God’s people now are. I can’t bring Jesus Christ to them until I have a much better idea of the person that I need to be. I can then authentically and usefully accompany others.

The most important reality for me at this time and place is the suffering within God’s people and God’s creation. Where are all those people who claim to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ accompanying his people with mercy and care? The poor, the disadvantaged, etc, don’t have the luxury of time. Their needs are now.  And if I feel that their needs are, to any extent at all, being frustrated by Church teaching or, indeed, if Church teaching is to some extent or completely the cause of their distressed state, then I must act consistent with my belief in the primacy of the teachings and example of Jesus Christ

What I am expressing is a hope that one day the Church may catch up.  At the same time, I see it as part of my obligation to help the Church catch up. That is why I participated in the Plenary Council and am participating in the Synodality Synod.  It is why I believe that the pace of change within the Church is unlikely ever to match where the people of God are at and where I must be. It is why I now see myself as an 80/20 Catholic: 80% Jesus Christ relationship; 20% in relationship with the organised Church.

And if you are wondering, I am a great fan of Pope Francis. or me he is the miracle I never expected to see.