As we look to the future, we must embrace both stability and flexibility

The famous Round Table of King Arthur is said to be circular to show that no knight was of a higher rank than his fellows. When we look at photos of the Synod on Synodality, we see a number of small round tables with people dressed in a variety of styles, many off which indicate a definite rank in the hierarchy of the Church. As with Arthur’s Round Table, the form of these tables may indicate a desire on the part of the Synod organisers to inculcate a sense of equality, in this case, an equality flowing from their shared baptismal graces.

There may also be another explanation: you really can’t have a tug of war around a circular table, for it is difficult to take sides while sitting at a table that has no sides. Taking sides is an innate part of politics: right vs left, progressive vs conservative, rich vs poor, those in power at the moment vs those who want to take possession of the power. Such a continual tug of war is an ongoing reality in the political world.

Yet Pope Francis has insisted that such opposing struggles have no place in the Catholic Church. There is no Catholic left or right. True, there is a tension in the Church, the tension of differing viewpoints, but this is totally different from the tenseness of power struggles.

I think that it was Henri de Lubac who remarked that one group of Catholics sees the Church in the light of the past, while another group sees her in the light of the future. It’s an intriguing observation and it opens up some reflections that I think can be helpful in present discussion.

The Catholic Church has a 2,000 year past, and those years have been full of events and discussions and confrontations. To look at the Church in the light of her past is to contemplate a vast tapestry of human endeavours and desires and failings and achievements. There is much to study and to learn from the Church’s history

At the same time, the Catholic Church is made for the future. The Catholic Church is the embryo of the Kingdom of God that will only be fully established at the end of time and the Second Coming of Christ. To look at the Church in the light of her future is to see dimly in a mirror but with the certainty that her fulfillment is foreshadowed in her past and present and that this foreshadowing is beyond “what eye has seen or ear heard, or the human heart conceived”. (1 Cor. 2,9)

Of course, to have a valid understanding of the Church one must see her with a stereoscopic vision, seeing her in her past, in her present and in her future. Only then will one see her in an adequate perspective. Still, it is normal that people will be drawn to one or the other outlook, for it seems to me that the two groups correspond to two different ways of thinking.

The past is made up of actual facts. What has happened is concrete and unchangeable. The interpretation of the facts can vary, new facts can become known, but in spite of all the time machines that may exist, it is not possible to go back and change what happened. One can ponder on what would have been the outcome of Waterloo if Blucher had been delayed a few more hours, or what French history would be if Louis XVII and Marie Antoinette had been successful in their Flight to Varennes, but such musings are fantasy and not reality.

Certain people are at home with facts. This is an excellent thing. It has been said that facts are the building blocks of the truth. Someone who is comfortable and at home dealing with facts is a gift to society. These people are the lawyers, the scientists, the financiers of a culture. They give a stable framework to society, a framework on which a future can be built.

Other people find facts too confining. They need space for their minds and imaginations to fly. These are the artists, the dreamers, the adventurers and explorers of the mind. They are the ones who expand our visions of present cultures and societies to open up undreamt-of possibilities for the future. Life would be stifling indeed without these free spirits who widen our horizons with their visions.

A culture needs both kinds of thinking: the framework of facts to give stability and the framework of imagination to allow for expansion. A mature person will be able to balance the two ways of thinking. He or she will have a flexible stability that builds on known reality with the suppleness that is open to growth.

This flexible stability is needed in any society, but it is essential in the Church. Without the flexibility needed to cooperate with the graces God sends, we cannot grow. Without the stability that is rooted in the faith as it has been handed down from the beginning, we will grow in disconnected ways. We will then come to resemble an unpruned vine with sucker branches that spring out in every possible direction and which bear no fruit.

Each of us is capable of falling into either extreme: into an unchanging stability or into an ungoverned flexibility. These attitudes cannot be reduced to any specific ideas. It is not possible to apply to attitudes any political or cultural positions. In fact it has been found that people with politically extreme positions share a similar mindset that is different from the mindset found with people of a moderate outlook. Those on the right are similar to those on the left. There is a rigidity in the extremist attitude that is distinct from their ideas. A volatile mindset, on the other hand, reacts easily to changing situations and can quickly contradict itself. Again, this is not determined by the specific ideas or proposals.

As the saying goes, “virtue lies in the middle between two goods” and this is certainly true in religion. A volatile mind can be “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine.” (Eph. 4, 14) This is hardly a good state for coming “to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” (Eph. 4, 13)

On the other hand, a person whose mindset lacks flexibility will be well rooted in some aspects of the faith but will be unable to grow because rigidity resists change and “to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” (St. John Henry Newman, “An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine”)

It is an axiom of the spiritual life that one either grows spiritually, or one shrinks. There is no standing still. “Let this, in sum, be the conclusion: that we strive always to advance. And if we don't advance, let us walk with great fear. … Love is never idle, and a failure to grow would be a very bad sign.” (Int. Cast., V, 4, 10)

To grow spiritually, one must be rooted in the good soil of the faith, and one must be flexible enough to accept the changes that bring one to perfection. Of the two extremes, both are spiritually dangerous for the individual, but rigidity is also dangerous for others. A volatile person, always changing views and ideas, will attract few followers, and these will not last long. On the other hand, a rigid system of faith is very attractive: it has stability, and people nowadays long for stability, it avoids the fine nuances that one finds among moderate thinkers, and it claims an impressive lineage, for it rests on certain aspects of the Church’s past. However, it does not allow for the mystery of what we are called to be, for “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” (1 Jn 3, 2) Those who are attracted by the stability of rigidity need the courage of hope to grow beyond it. They need to lift up their eyes and see what lies beyond time, for it is there that we are called to go.

Both extremes are dangerous. Volatility is dangerous to oneself, and rigidity is dangerous to oneself and to others. It is not easy to be both stable in our beliefs and flexible in living them out. Yet this is what we must be if we are to be true members of the Church. We hold the past, the present and the future in Jesus Christ, “yesterday, today and forever, … for what we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (Heb. 13, 8 & 1 Jn 3, 2-3)