A humbler Church

Five months before the election of Pope Francis, two Philippine archbishops preached the gospel of humility before a worldwide assembly of their fellow bishops. Luis Antonio Tagle, the new archbishop of Manila, was the first of the two to “intervene.” He began with a simple image: For “the Church to be the ‘space’ of a faith-encounter with the Lord,” he said, “she must learn anew from Jesus in whom we meet God.” The first lesson: “The Church must learn humility from Jesus. God’s power and might appear in the self-emptying of the Son, in the love that is crucified but truly saves because it is emptied of self for the sake of others.”

Socrates Villegas, the archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan, delivered the same message. “The new evangelization calls for new humility. The Gospel cannot thrive in pride. When pride seeps into the heart of the Church, the Gospel proclamation is harmed.”

John Allen Jr.’s dispatch that day for the National Catholic Reporter was headlined: “An Asian plea for humility at the Synod of Bishops.”

Since his unexpected election, Pope Francis has made the theme and teaching of a humbler Church his own. He has led by startling example, by (to cite just two out of very many possible instances) refusing to live in the papal quarters and riding in the same bus as other cardinals. He has called on all priests to serve as shepherds with “the odor of the sheep.” He has redirected Church attention to the edges, to the periphery of society, where the poor and the powerless, the lost and the least, can be found.

But becoming a humbler Church—that is, a listening Church, attentive to the needs of others, an institution that does not seek to talk down to but to speak with—is a daily and difficult challenge, prone to failure.

Consider, for example, the following curious case.

In the aftermath of the unanimous Supreme Court ruling that declared the controversial Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law (save for eight provisions) “not unconstitutional,” the past and present archbishops of Lingayen-Dagupan took contrasting positions. Or perhaps, more accurately, they displayed contrasting dispositions.

Villegas, now also the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, responded to the news of the ruling in positive terms; he acknowledged the decision, but focused his attention on the provisions that had been stricken out. “It has truly watered down the RH law, and consequently upheld the importance of adhering to an informed religious conscience even among government workers,” he said.

In contrast, Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz saw nothing but the negative. In a TV interview that was simultaneously being tweeted live, Cruz expressed his opinion that the RH Law heralded the “legalization of abortion,” and characterized the Supreme Court, and thus the decision, too, as politically beholden to Malacañang. One ABS-CBN News tweet quoted him as saying: “I am certain, just as the legislative department is under the office of the President, so is the SC under its clutches.”

Here, in the wake of a difficult decision on a roiling controversy, was the perfect opportunity to display the virtue of humility. Villegas succeeded, because he abandoned the absolutist language he had used in 2012, during the run-up to the congressional vote. Cruz failed, because he could not even give the decision its due.

His notion that the Supreme Court was in President Aquino’s clutches is absurd. Indeed, the President’s own appointees to the Court were in the (very small) minority in the skirmishes involving the eight provisions ultimately deemed unconstitutional. If the justices were truly in the clutches of a president who backed the law in full, the law would not have been “watered down.” Cruz’s notion, therefore, is based on an egregious political reading, and violates logic itself.

He can, if he chooses, heed Tagle’s words from the Synod of Bishops. “The seemingly indifferent and aimless societies of our time are earnestly looking for God. The Church’s humility, respectfulness and silence might reveal more clearly the face of God in Jesus. The world takes delight in a simple witness to Jesus—meek and humble of heart.”