(1) Go Out, (2) Listen, (3) Proclaim the Truth Charitably
On Pope Francis' message for World Communications Day 2023
We are coming in a couple weeks to the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’ election. It was, as surely we all recall, an extraordinary time: the first resignation of a pope in centuries, the first Pope from Latin America, the first Pope to take the name Francis, etc.
We’ve also been treated in the last month or so to a variety of critical takes on Francis from members of the hierarchy, including the revelation that Cardinal Pell had authored a highly critical memo, the publication of Archbishop Gänswein’s memoir, and Cardinal Müller’s book that criticizes, among other things, the Synod on Synodality.
Amid all these topics, and the many headlines and podcasts they generated, Pope Francis also released his most recent message for World Communications Day…which was immediately overlooked by basically everyone. To be honest, they get overlooked almost every year, regardless of who is Pope. It’s gotten to the point that I wonder if they’re written just for me and maybe seven other people.
To give a bit of history: World Communications Day was established after the conclusion of Vatican II by Paul VI, who released the first message in May 1967. The genesis of the day comes from Inter Mirifica, the Vatican II decree on the Means of Social Communication. Of all the texts of the council, Inter Mirifica is the only one that calls for establishing an annual day of reflection on the subject of that text.
Maybe it’s fitting that the annual World Communications Day messages get overlooked, given that they come from what is probably the most consistently overlooked text of Vatican II.
On the other hand, I think looking at Francis’ most recent statements can provide some insight into his thinking on the forthcoming Synod on Synodality, which is itself one of the subjects about which Francis’ supporters and detractors clash.
As I’ve written elsewhere, Francis’ WCD messages tend to focus on underlying themes in social communications rather than on the technologies themselves. Recurring concerns for him have been unity and division in communications, the necessary virtues for healthy communications, and the role of listening. His most recent message, on speaking the truth with charity, is in line with these concerns, but also builds quite deliberately on the messages from 2021 (going out to encounter others) and 2022 (listening attentively and charitably to what those others say).
In fact, I would argue that these three messages should be read as a deliberate triptych by Francis to describe the method or procedure of the upcoming Synod on Synodality.
The first message in this triptych is from 2021, titled “‘Come and See’ (Jn 1:46): Communicating by Encountering People Where and as They Are.” It takes its title from the call to the disciples in John chapter 1, in particular where Nathanael is told about Jesus by Philip. Philip, the fourth person to follow Jesus in John (after Andrew, John, and Peter), finds Nathanael and tells him about Jesus. Nathanael, skeptical, famously asks “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip, perhaps a bit cheekily, responds “Come and see.”
Francis reads this story as a model for “all authentic human communication,” saying
it is necessary to move beyond the complacent attitude that we ‘already know’ certain things. Instead, we need to go and see them for ourselves, to spend time with people, to listen to their stories and to confront reality, which always in some way surprises us.
Once Nathanael heard Philip say that the one they had been seeking was from Nazareth, Nathanael already knew everything he needed to know. His complacency is such that, despite Philip’s provocation, Nathanael remains sedentary, only being moved to respond after Jesus approaches him.
The bulk of the 2021 WCD message then focuses on communication born out of being physically present to events and persons. He recognizes no one can be around for everything, and that digital communications tools render a valuable service. However, he also expresses concern that the availability of tools renders people increasingly disinterested in direct, physical encounter: “Unless we open ourselves to this kind of encounter, we remain mere spectators, for all the technical innovations that enable us to feel immersed in a larger and more immediate reality.”
This insight recalls, among others, the work of Sherry Turkle in Alone Together, where she recognizes the increasing discomfort of younger people with in person conversations and interactions precisely because they have become so accustomed to mediating their interpersonal lives through devices.
In this message, then, Francis emphasizes his past phrase of a “culture of encounter” and his challenge to all Catholics to go to the peripheries. It recalls also what he said after his election to the papacy and has often said when selecting cardinals. The idea of “come and see” as part of communication is about going out to meet others where they are. He closes the message with a prayer, the third paragraph of which says:
Teach us to go where no one else will go,
to take the time needed to understand,
to pay attention to the essentials,
not to be distracted by the superfluous,
to distinguish deceptive appearances from the truth.
The second part of the triptych is his 2022 message, “Listening with the ear of the heart.” I wrote about this message last year for the Church Life Journal at the McGrath Institute at Notre Dame, so I’ll just briefly summarize here. This message builds on the “come and see” text by highlighting the role of listening in communications.
Even more than in the 2021 message, Francis emphasizes the scriptural warrants for the necessity of listening. Early on he highlights the Shema prayer from Deuteronomy 6:4, which opens with “Hear, O Israel.” He describes God as the one who both speaks the Word and who “inclines his ear” to listen to humanity. The failure to listen, to God and to our fellow humans, is seen as a fundamental source for human sin.
As such, we must attend “to whom we listen, to what we listen, and to how we listen” if we are to communicate authentically. Francis then draws on a classic insight of Ignatian spirituality, claiming that becoming better listeners requires us to learn how to listen to the deep needs “inscribed in each person’s inmost being.” It is here that people can listen to the voice of God calling them to what they are meant to be.
He then turns his attention to listening to others. Good communication benefits from listening to a “symphony of voices,” and being open to “the truth, even if only a fragment of truth, in the person we are listening to.” Francis is not suggesting that whatever anyone else says is necessarily good or true, but rather that listening to others affords opportunities to discern the good and the true in community. The “symphony” image recurs as he talks about the church, now embarking on a “synodal process,” that seeks to discern “the harmony of the whole that the Holy Spirit composes.”
Finally, this year’s message, “Speaking with the heart: ‘The truth in love’ (Eph 4:15),” closes out this triptych on authentic communications. In this text, Francis sees the step that follows (1) going out and (2) listening as (3) proclaiming the truth. He recognizes the contemporary challenges of polarization, incivility, and exploitation, but asserts that the response to all these challenges is, in its deepest meaning, cordiality. By this, he does not mean simple politeness, but quite literally something “of the heart.”
In this respect, he refers to doctor of the church St. Francis de Sales, who saw a deep link between communication and charity. Pope Francis notes his famous phrase cor ad cor loquitur, “heart speaks to heart,” that discloses how authentic communication involves the meeting of people in their inmost being.
The invocation of St. Francis de Sales is fitting, given that WCD messages have usually been released on his feast day since the papacy of John Paul II. In a general audience in 2011, Benedict XVI described him as
an apostle, preacher, writer, man of action and of prayer dedicated to implanting the ideals of the Council of Trent; he was involved in controversial issues dialogue with the Protestants, experiencing increasingly, over and above the necessary theological confrontation, the effectiveness of personal relationship and of charity; he was charged with diplomatic missions in Europe and with social duties of mediation and reconciliation.
It is perhaps in this vein that Pope Francis would say “We should not be afraid of proclaiming the truth, even if it is at times uncomfortable, but of doing so without charity, without heart.” The conclusion of the process of (1) going out and (2) listening is (3) proclaiming the truth charitably.
In its 2018 text on “synodality,” the International Theological Commission writes that
synodality is the specific modus vivendi et operandi of the Church, the People of God, which reveals and gives substance to her being as communion when all her members journey together, gather in assembly and take an active part in her evangelising mission.
The text recognizes the importance of consulting the whole of the church (68), even as it also notes that consulting everyone does not give everyone a deliberative say in what ultimately is decided (69).
In light of this, I think we can read this triptych of WCD messages as laying out Francis’ intended method for the Synod on Synodality: (1) go out, (2) listen, and (3) proclaim the truth charitably. This is the approach for “journeying together” and seeking to discern what the Holy Spirit is leading the church to in the world.
Thus at the beginning of 2023, the case can plausibly be made that the “going out” phase was made of the various efforts by dioceses, parishes, universities, and other Catholic groups to meet with anyone who was interested to hear about their desires for and concerns about the church. There were surveys, listening sessions, prayer meetings, and more.
These efforts fed into the “listening phase,” which seems to be ongoing as the various local reports were collated during the “diocesan phase” and now the “continental phase.” The reports produced by these will represent, for better or for worse, the “voice” of those to whom the church “went out” in 2021 and 2022.
The final phase, “proclaiming the truth charitably,” will come with the meeting of the Synod in Rome in October 2023, and whatever subsequent text and implementation that comes from that.
In light of this, my own read of public discourse around the synod is that concerns about it tend to fall into one of two buckets. One is a concern about the method of the synod. In particular, some fear that the consultative dimension of synodality, the “listening” part, will trend towards something like democratic voting or following public opinion. To take that further, this might then lead the Church to simply accommodate itself to the times, whatever they may be.
To be honest, I don’t see the evidence that this is what Pope Francis intends by synodality (but let me know in the comments where I’m wrong). It seems much closer to the “see judge act” method familiar in Catholic Social Teaching, although in this case the “going out” and “listening” are part of “see” and the “proclaiming the truth” covers the other two.
Alternatively, one might think of the pastoral letters from the US bishops in the 1980s, Challenge of Peace and Economic Justice for All, both of which included consultation with experts, comments from the wider public, and ongoing revisions before the final texts were produced. There was opposition to both those letters (as well as to a planned pastoral letter on women that was ultimately rejected), and some of that substantive opposition was reflected in the final texts. I’m not as certain that there was opposition to the process at the time, but it is telling that this process has not subsequently been followed by the USCCB for any significant topics (John Allen indicated that the failure of the pastoral letter on women led to the end of this practice for national bishops conferences).
The second concern I see is about substance. Regardless of the underlying method of the synod, there is both hope and dread that the synod might lead to substantive changes in particular teachings of the church. This is most evident around topics that are often flashpoints for Catholic public discourse, especially the ordination of women and Church teaching on LGBTQ persons. Some hope that the consultative process will reveal the direction of the Holy Spirit in liberalizing on some of these issues; others fear that the consultative process will ignore the direction of the Holy Spirit to sustain current Catholic teaching on some of these issues.
This concern is more understandable, I think, in part because what I mostly expect is that little to nothing will change substantively as a result of the synod, especially on the hot button issues that we in the US often focus on. What will be the reaction if that is the case? Will those who place significant hope in the synod see it as a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”? Will those who dismiss the synod have further grounds to do so, if it only confirms substantively what had already been the case?
It perhaps simply points back to a longstanding tension many have seen in how to think about Francis’ papacy, now approaching ten years old: how does one think about the distinction between “style” and “substance” with him? His many significant and symbolic gestures (choosing to live at Santa Marta instead of the papal apartments, footwashing at the detention center, kissing the feet of the leaders of South Sudan, etc.) have not been accompanied by significant changes in Catholic teaching (on abortion, his consistency with John Paul II and Benedict XVI on economics and Catholic Social Teaching). His way of being with those on the margins of church is arguably less condemnatory than past popes, and this is not nothing, but it seems more a difference in style or tone than anything else.
Put another way, Francis is perhaps trailblazing with respect to the (1) going out and (2) listening parts of this method compared to past popes. When it comes to (3) proclaiming the truth charitably, how much of the ultimate response to the Synod will be driven by what is contained in the “truth” part versus how that is done “charitably”?
Perhaps the Synod on Synodality will prove me wrong, and perhaps especially the ecclesiologists have a better grip on how Francis’ understanding of the Church presents something not only stylistically different but also substantively. But to close, just as a hint of continuity, I note a passage from Francis’ 2023 WCD message and one from John XXIII’s Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, from the opening of Vatican II:
Francis:
I dream of an ecclesial communication that knows how to let itself be guided by the Holy Spirit, gentle and at the same time, prophetic, that knows how to find new ways and means for the wonderful proclamation it is called to deliver in the third millennium.
John XXIII:
That is why it can be said that heaven and earth are uniting in the celebration of the Council. The saints of heaven are here to protect our work; the faithful are here to continue to pour out their prayers to God; all of you are here so that, readily obeying the heavenly inspirations of the Holy Spirit, you may eagerly set to work so that your efforts will appropriately respond to the desires and needs of the various peoples. For this to happen requires of you a serene peace of mind, fraternal harmony, moderation in your proposals, dignity in your discussions, wisdom in all your deliberations. God grant that your effort and your work, towards which are turned not only the eyes of the peoples but also the hopes of the whole world, may abundantly fulfill the common expectations.
Hi Steve! Thanks for this reflection on the Pope’s message for World Communications Day and how it can help us think about the Synod. You asked about critiques of the “going out” and “listening” stages of the synodal process, and I think that a particularly detailed and critical review of the methodology comes from Mark Regnerus: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/01/86704/. His concern seems to be that the way in which the effort at both the data collection stage and the synthesis stage is open to shaping that introduces the biases of those leading the process - in other words, that Cardinal Hollerich and his fellow successors to the St. Gallen mafia will hear what they want to hear (a critique their ideological predecessors voiced of synods under John Paul II and Benedict XVI). I also think it’s interesting that your concern is that only a change in tone, and not in doctrine, could emerge from the Synod. Given its topic, Synodality, seems to be more about the practices of the church and not the various doctrinal issues that some of our more radical prelates wish to change, it seems to me that such an outcome would be a feature, not a bug, and that synods lend themselves better to examination of pastoral strategies and Church discipline than to doctrinal matters anyway.