Listening

 

The main theme of the current “synod on synodality” at the Vatican, which just wrapped up its 2023 session, is listening: it seeks “a Church of sisters and brothers in Christ who listen to one another and who, in so doing, are gradually transformed by the Spirit.”

But this is fundamentally backward. 

The point of a church is not to listen to one another; that’s a social club. One does not need a church to have a chat with a neighbour. Mainstream Protestant denominations have gone down this road, and it leads to irrelevance, then extinction.

And if this is what the seeker wants, why be Catholic? Lots of other churches will offer exactly the same: agreeing with your opinions and endorsing your wants, whatever they might be.

One needs a church to listen to God, and learn what God wants. The revelation we have been given in the gospels, in the Bible, and in the apostolic tradition. Some may have special expertise in this: we listen to them. Just as, if we are ill, we do not discuss it with our neighbours; we go to a doctor.

Granted, we should also listen to the Spirit, as the synod documents aver. 

But that does not mean listening to anyone. That means the prophets, who are, literally, “inspired,” channeling the Holy Spirit. You find them, too, in the Bible, the deposit of faith.

Might that include prophets alive and speaking today? 

Sure; any great artist is also “inspired,” and at least some will be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Martin Luther King Jr., or Gandhi, also probably counted as modern-day prophets. However, such prophets do not lay down new doctrine or alter morals; God would not have concealed truths from us until now. The prophet’s job is to call on us to repent, and to adhere to the established doctrine. Already in the Old Testament, that was their function.

There are, of course, false prophets—those who claim to be inspired, but for ulterior motives. The gospel warns us of this, repeatedly. 

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits."

I take “good fruits” to mean beauty; the alternative explanation that it means “good deeds” is inconsistent with what Jesus says soon after this, that one must do one’s good deeds in secret.

Accordingly, no doubt the Church, and certainly the individual believer, must respect and attend to the message of great art, of Shakespeare, say, or Dante, or Dostoyevsky; or the beauty of King’s rhetoric. God raises such prophets as the times demand

But one does not listen to the Spirit by breaking into small groups, as the synod proposes. Just the reverse; the artist always works alone. He is out in the desert eating locusts. He needs solitude, precisely to drown out all other voices.

The very voices the synod wants us to listen to instead.