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August 13, 2021

Why don't they listen?

A tale of two bishops, a tale of two mentalities
Why don’t they listen?

The tales which follow really happened. Only the names are fictitious. We start with the story of Bishop Matthew.

He's holding a meeting of his priests' council. (I am present as an observer.)

Bishop Matthew is seated at a table, his shiny cuff links in evidence.

A tape recorder makes sure the word-for-word dialogue can be retrieved later if needed to clear up misunderstandings. Early in the meeting a vote is taken. The issue unimportant. The important point is the tally: 24 ayes, 17 nays, 8 abstentions.

The motion is passed.

Later in the meeting, after other items have been dealt with, one of the priests raises his hand with a question: "I have a concern about the decision we seem to have made earlier. What do our by-laws say about what constitutes passage of a motion? Do they require only a majority of those voting, or do they require a majority of all present? If it's the latter, then the motion received less than a majority and it fails."

As chair of the meeting Bishop Matthew responds: "That's a good point. Does anyone have a copy of our by-laws?"

It turns out, interestingly, that no one actually knows what the by-laws require. And there is no copy available. This is a dilemma.

The bishop comes up with a Solomonic solution.

"When I return to the chancery I will check the by-laws. If they say we need only a majority of those voting, we will have made a decision; if they require a majority of all present, the motion will be tabled the next meeting."

The italics are mine. It's interesting: a book will determine whether or not a group of human agents has made a decision (which presumably is a collective commitment to take action). His words remain etched in my mind after many years.

Our second tale involves Bishop Luke.

He has recently formed a diocesan pastoral council and has asked me to lead some training of its members.

We are exploring their role as a council and their relation to him as the ordinary.

Bishop Luke doesn't sit up front at a table. He is in the circle like everyone else.

When I divide the body into pairs for some sharing of personal stories, he shares his faith journey with the partner assigned to him.

Later, after some input on their role as council, one of the participants asks, "Bishop, we are being asked to share responsibility with you by offering our counsel on important matters. Are you going to hold the power of veto over our recommendations?"

(These council members are people committed to the good of the church, but his question indicates some skepticism: they were not interested in being used as a rubber stamp for what the bishop intended to do in any case.)

Bishop Luke responds: "Let me answer in this way: if Rome asks me whether I retain the power to be the final decider, of course I have to say yes. I will always bear the final responsibility for any decision wemake as a council. But I believe that we will always be able to reach a choice that we can all support. So I don't want to hear the word 'veto' any more."

And over the course of four years the body made many substantial decisions collegially. The bishop retained his authority as the one bearing ultimate responsibility for the decisions. 'Veto' was never mentioned again.

What's going on here?

I have reflected on these two different experiences and many similar ones over my years as a process facilitator at many levels of church life, parochial, diocesan, and national.

Gradually an insight has been taking shape in my mind. I believe it explains the differences between the two bishops' approaches. And it suggests the difficult task ahead of us.

It may help at the outset to name some things that are not going on here.

1) Though they have very different approaches, neither of these bishops is carrying out his office in bad faith.

They are both honorable churchmen, sincere in their intention to do what is best for the church.

That one has even to raise the possibility of bad faith is a sad commentary on our present climate of mistrust and even vitriolic personal attack.

When assessments of performance by imperfect human officials slide quickly into charges of willful abuse of their office, we are all wounded. T

he issue in our two tales is not 'malice vs. virtue', and it is a disservice to cast it in those terms.

2) Neither Matthew nor Luke is cavalier about the authority of canon law, much less dismissive of it.

Both know that the church, like every other organization, needs accepted norms that govern its decisions.

If the issue is not between faithfulness and bad faith, neither is it one of 'obedience vs. disregard of authority.' Both bishops are obedient.

They differ, not on the legitimacy of laws, but on the place to be assigned to legal processes themselves in the life and growth of the community of those baptized into the life of Jesus.

Insisting on the moral integrity of each bishop does not, however, mean that their two approaches are equally laudable, or even equally consonant with the Gospel.

Two mind-sets

In each of the two stories the specific choice at stake was undoubtedly consequential for the participants.

Things like clear standards for determining the mind of a council (in the case of Bishop Matthew's presbyteral council), or clear expectations about the role and limits of a consultative body (in that of Bishop Luke), are not trivial matters.

It turns out, though, that those two content concerns are less important than what is revealed by the different approaches each bishop took to the situation at hand.

Their behavior reveals two fundamentally incompatible mind-sets at work.

The issue does not lie in the content, the substance, of canon law, or the procedures established to insure its valid application to particular instances.

It lies in the human spirit.

The difference between Matthew and Luke lies in the attitude each brings to the difficult human process of negotiating differences and making human choices.

I speak of differing attitudes, of differing mind-sets, of something that resides at the level of the human spirit.

Another word in vogue might call them different sensibilities.

Such expressions call for further delineation, lest they lose their analytic potential and become an excuse for moralizing.

How do the two different mentalities manifest themselves? What behavioral indicators point to their presence?

Mentalities based on different priorities

When Bishop Matthew is faced with the question of whether his council had made a decision, his immediate, instinctive response was to seek an abstract legal standard that will address the situation and resolve the dilemma.

He doesn't ask the question of the human dynamics at work.

For him, a decision is not a human commitment to take action.

Instead, the act of human decision-making has been identified with a quantitative indicator of its possible presence.

And further, even that fallible indicator is totally disconnected from the human spirits of those who are voting: it has to be retrieved from a tome on a shelf.

I suggest that we characterize this as a "canonical mentality."

(It should be noted that it implies no negative judgment of canonists. They provide an important service to our church. The term applies to a mental or spiritual orientation, not to an occupation.)

The canonical mentality privileges pre-defined structural clarity over human relationship.

Issues among flesh-and-blood human beings, which are really issues of human relationship, are dealt with as if they were before all else matters of legal adjudication.

The question at stake in the meeting he was leading was: are the priests on his council genuinely committing themselves to a particular course of action, or not?

But his basic orientation transmutes that real question and makes it one of numerical validation: what number represents a decision?

Bishop Luke's approach, on the other hand, represents a polar opposite.

He was challenged on a question that seems, on the surface, to be about the law: what is the standing of the advice being offered by a consultative body if a veto always threatens to nullify its effect?

Coming from a totally different mentality than his brother bishop, Luke's instinct is to recognize that the human concern being raised is more significant than the legalities at stake.

He acknowledges the questioner's very appropriate desire for genuine engagement and collaboration.

If he were simply to re-affirm that canon law assigns him veto power over any advice from the council, he would be bypassing the human concern underlying the question.

So he addresses that basic concern head-on. His response says, in effect: "we will respect canon law, of course, but this is the way we will relate to each other." I would propose that we call this a "relational mentality."

The difference between the two mentalities is one of attitudinal priority.

The relational mentality addresses first what is taking place in the human dynamics of the situation.

If those are not addressed, if the needs and concerns of the participants in the situation are left unsettled (or worse, conflicted), all the legal correctness in the world will be useless.

For those of a canonical mentality, on the other hand, issues of humanly satisfying interactions, of genuine empowerment and mutual respect, are, at best, an after thought, a distraction.

Structural order is offered as the response to issues that are not structural but relational.

Canons get 'translated' into attitudes that negate their intent

Paradoxically, the canonical mentality itself frequently subverts the original intent of the canons themselves.

Take the term 'advisory,' for example.

When a council, whether at the level of the parish or a diocese or the nation, is said to be 'advisory' or 'consultative,' the clear intent of the law is that people who are being asked to serve on such a body will be accorded a new form of empowerment.

Their concerns and ideas are to be received with a seriousness not available in the same way to those among the faithful who were not so selected.

One would reasonably conclude that such an empowerment creates a corresponding new obligation in the leader: the pastor or bishop or body of bishops. Sadly, that is often not the case.

Instead, by a subtle (or not so subtle) process, leaders with the canonical mentality transmute the language of 'advisory' or 'consultative' into 'merelyadvisory' or 'merely consultative.'

That translation then becomes, in effect, "I don't have to bother with what they are saying—it's merely advisory." The deeper intention of the law is subverted.

This mentality then produces a pernicious system-wide effect. It becomes a matter of pulling teeth to get members even to consider serving on a council.

The comment is heard all too often: "Why bother? He (or they) already have their minds made up. I care for our church. But it's not worth my time; I don't want to be treated like a rubber stamp."

That appropriately reasonable response then gives rise to the self-serving comment often heard on the lips of leaders: "Councils are a waste of time. My people don't want to invest themselves for the good of the community."

What's really going on?

It doesn't take much analysis to understand why insecure office-holders adopt the canonical mentality. It shields them from the messiness of genuine human engagement.

Living out of a relational mentality is not easy. It requires personal vulnerability.

When a collection of individuals engages in the search for common ground, for shared commitment to courses of action that inherently carry risk and cost, differences of perspective quickly surface.

Which is a nice way of speaking of passions and prejudices and pent-up frustrations and long-held hopes, or perhaps even buried-but-still-simmering hurts over perceived wrongs that took place decades ago.

In short, the whole package of human differences, the stuff that characterizes us as distinct persons.

It is common in courses on leadership to exhort office-holders to listen.

All too often the canonical mentality translates that into 'paying attention to what is being said.'

Vulnerability is quite another matter. Its very derivation involves allowing oneself to be wounded, to be invaded or occupied by ideas or emotions that may be quite disturbing.

It is the direct antithesis of the self-protectiveness embodied in the canonical mentality.

To 'stay at the table' with someone passionately committed to a different proposal, much less a dramatically different priority of values, is very demanding.

Just ask any married couple.

In a genuinely relational interaction I may find myself having to challenge long-held convictions about important matters.

If I step out of my safe place to meet the other, the experience of unsuredness can be quite unsettling.

The very process of engaging in a genuinely human exchange—even if I come out of it more firmly convinced of my position—will change me, willy-nilly.

Bishop Luke was able to enter into relation with the people on his council because he was grounded in the conviction that they would always be able to find common ground, but that conviction was stretched as they wrestled with actual decisions. Vulnerability is costly.

Matthew's canonical mentality, on the other hand, forestalls uncomfortable tensions in the present moment, to be sure.

But the avoidance of relational connection has the effect of eventually generating distrust and even cynicism about the possibility of sharing responsibility as peers. When the 'leader' has all the answers from the start, why bother?

A New Testament perspective

The present malaise over a church lost in the thicket of canonical niceties—and make no mistake, it is widespread—did not arise yesterday.

The Gospel of Matthew places on the lips of Jesus an ordered protocol for dealing with tensions within the Christian community. Some steps must be taken before recourse to others.


Granted, the immediate context of the passage is one of fraternal correction rather than one of collective decision-making.

But that fact should not distract us from the deeper principle that is being exemplified.

The first step toward the resolution of situations involving interpersonal tension is to engage the party with whom I am not at peace.

Recourse to third parties, much less to norms expressing a prior collective judgment of the ecclesial community, comes into play only after the effort at relational engagement has broken down.

Before all other distinctions in church polity we are sisters and brothers, peers in our baptismal dignity. Our common dignity as baptized members of Jesus demands of us untiring effort at remaining open to change.

That such a relational mentality was more than a pious ideal among the early followers of Jesus is clear from the behavior of Paul. "When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face." (Gal 2:11).

He fully accepts the 'canonical' status of Peter and James as accredited leaders in the church.

He submits the assessment of his ministry to their judgment, to be sure, but only after he has accused them directly of hypocrisy, referring to them bitingly as "so-called pillars" whose high reputation meant nothing to him.

His language is scarcely imaginable to us in a church that has come to identify charity with politeness, but it is the language of relationship: of caring and conviction and honesty—and vulnerability.

Of course the most powerful model, in this as in everything, is Jesus. He comes not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

To that end he does not hesitate to call the keepers of the tradition whited sepulchers. But only because he empathizes with the people they are called to serve.

George Wilson is a Jesuit priest and retired ecclesiologist who lives in Baltimore, Md.

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