In section II of Pope Francis’ Let Us Dream: The Path To A Better Future, we ended last time in considering his concern for the voices and gifts of women. (See August Community Connections.) Remember, he is building a point of view that provides the wisdom for some important ‘Choosing.’ Get ready. Francis is building up the qualities that equip us to tackle synodality. This is where he is going. Synodality is the focus of the whole end of section II.
So, what is the bridge? The pope’s concern about the vital role women must play is but lead-in to two ideas that speak to the heart of the evening news: fraternity vs. individualism, and what he calls the “isolated conscience.” Fraternity is “the sense of belonging to each other and to the whole of humanity…(It) is the capacity to come together and work together against a shared horizon of possibility…It’s a unity that allows people to serve as a body despite differences…preserves and respects plurality, inviting all to contribute from their distinctiveness, as a community of brothers and sisters concerned for each other. (68)
Then Pope Francis tackles the major obstacle to this fraternity: the isolated conscience. Pointing first to the Church, Francis describes the person of isolated conscience as one in the grips of “a bad-spirit temptation to withdraw spiritually from the body to which I belong, closing us in on our own interests and viewpoints by means of suspicion and supposition…(turning) us…into beleaguered, complaining selves who disdain others, believing that we alone know the truth.” Whether revolutionary or restorationist, what marks these ideologies is rigidity. (69) When I’m asked to step out and become part of something bigger, suspicion supplies reasons to hold back, justifying this by my pointing out the faults of others. I become a master of criticism, a charitable openness to the other is replaced by clinging to the supposed superiority of one’s own ideas. (71)
The antidote, says Francis, is self-accusation…admitting I am a sinner in need of great mercy. This can prevent polarization, the downward spiral of accusation and counteraccusation.
But engage with conflict and disagreement we must, in ways that keep us from descending into polarization. We do this by allowing for new thinking that goes beyond division. We need the art of civic dialogue that weaves together a different view on a higher plane.
Referring to Romano Guardini, Francis challenges us to consider that the pulling apart of differences in tension really all coexist within a larger unity. The spirit of conflict turns contrapositions into contradictions, demanding we choose: thus polarization. Mediocre thinking allows this, taking us away from the possibility of a greater reality. Likewise, we can deny the tension in the two poles of a contraposition. Let be. The result is relativism…the unreal position that anything goes. Deep stuff, but it is going on before our eyes in the evening news. It is with these keen observations that Francis approaches synodality where we will join him next time.
