How can we claim to be a united Catholic Community when we all seem to hold such different political and social views and even theological beliefs?
One of the things I love most about being Catholic is how wide our umbrella of “belonging” is. We differ in a multitude of ways; how we interpret church teaching, understand the role of conscience, discern God’s presence and acting in our unique life experiences. We share a core of unchanging, revealed truths (Dogmas) but our Doctrines develop over time (Read An Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman, free all over the internet).
We don’t believe that God’s revelation is a “once and for all” type thing, but rather is on-going…every minute of every day. Growth in our doctrine & our understanding of the truth most often happen through honest, passionate, and sometimes uncomfortable or even painful dialogue with one another; staying at the table even when the urge to “take our toys and go home” is so enticing. If we are able to humbly admit that we all know so very little about the great mystery that God is (like an ant contemplating astrophysics) we open ourselves to this revelation.
Cardinal Bernardin through his Common Ground Initiative offered these seven PRINCIPLES OF DIALOGUE to guide us in our shared listening…(http://www.catholiccommonground.org/principles-dialogue)
1. We should recognize that no single group or viewpoint in the church has a complete monopoly on the truth. While the bishops & Pope have been endowed by God with the power to preserve the true faith, they exercise their office by taking counsel with one another and with the experience of the whole church, past and present. Solutions to the church's problems will inevitably emerge from a variety of sources.
2. We should not envision ourselves or any one part of the church a saving remnant. No group within the church should judge itself alone to be possessed of enlightenment or spurn the Catholic community, its leaders, or its institutions as unfaithful.
3. We should test all proposals for their pastoral realism and potential impact on individuals as well as for their theological truth.
4. We should presume that those with whom we differ are acting in good faith. They deserve civility, charity, and a good-faith effort to understand their concerns. We should not substitute labels, abstractions, or blanketing terms--"radical feminism," "the hierarchy," "the Vatican"--for living, complicated realities.
5. We should put the best possible construction on differing positions, addressing their strongest points rather than seizing upon the most vulnerable aspects in order to discredit them. We should detect the valid insights and legitimate worries that may underlie even questionable arguments.
6. We should be cautious in ascribing motives. We should not impugn another's love of the church and loyalty to it. We should not rush to interpret disagreements as conflicts of starkly opposing principles rather than as differences in degree or in prudential pastoral judgments about the relevant facts.
7. We should bring the church to engage the realities of contemporary culture, not by simple defiance or by naive acquiescence, but acknowledging, in the fashion of Gaudium et Spes, both our culture's valid achievements and real dangers.
God is easily found in our warm, fuzzy moments but we also need to work hard to recognize and listen for God in the friction between us. We are all like jagged rocks thrown into a burlap bag and furiously shaken for 20 or 30 years (or a couple thousand)….eventually, we become better, “well-rounded” people. This is our collective work and our calling as the People of God.
