In this chapter, originally published as chapter four of my From a Parish Base, I have combined a working paper for the 1996 National Conference of Priests with part of a short written reflection requested as possible background reading for a study session for members of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
As in Jesus’ day, the life-giving wisdom of good laws continues to be at the service of pastoral ministry today. However, even good laws need to be handled well. What better law than the Sabbath – yet even that was open to abuse. Much of the art of pastoral ministry lies in interpreting good laws in such a way that they are life-giving for those for whom they are made. That is where the virtue of pastoral sensitivity comes in. Pastoral sensitivity is a mindset rather than a set of rules of practice. The good pastoral minster is rather like the good artist. He or she needs to know the basic skills of the trade and the rules of thumb to be followed. However, more than that is needed. Like Jesus, the Good Pastor, a pastoral minister’s main concern must be the needs of those to whom he or she ministers. Each of these people is a unique human person, situated at this unrepeatable moment in his or her personal story. What is good pastoral care for one person need not necessarily be so for another. Something similar is also true for communities. Each Christian community has its own distinct character.
A resolution passed by the 1995 National Conference of Priests spoke of ‘the growing gap between the official regulations of the Church and the demands of pastoral practice.’ Such a gap is almost inevitable. After all, the philosophy of law embraced by the Church down through the centuries has always recognised that laws, because of their universality, have at best only general validity (‘ut in pluribus’, as Aquinas puts it, following Aristotle). That means that pastoral ministers need to develop the ability to discern when the good purposes of any law would be vitiated by keeping to the strict letter of the law in a particular instance. The traditional name for this is ‘epikeia’. Aquinas insists that it is a virtue. It is part of the general virtue of justice. It is not an anarchic way of evading the law. In fact, its aim is to make sure that the deepest purpose of the law is achieved. This deepest purpose will always be the pastoral good of persons in some form or other. That explains the wise dictum taught to priests in the seminary, ‘salus animarum suprema lex’ (the salvation of souls is the law to trump all laws). In the light of the National Conference of Priests’ resolution ‘epikeia’ could perhaps be called ‘the gap virtue’. It is a virtue which is particularly important for all engaged in pastoral ministry. Moreover, it becomes increasingly important, the greater the gap grows between the official regulations of the Church and the legitimate demands of wise pastoral practice.
It is sometimes suggested that, for the sake of the common good, laws should always be strictly observed. In fact, our tradition says the very opposite. The good of individual persons is an essential component of the common good. Hence, it is the common good itself which calls for the virtue of ‘epikeia’. Perhaps Jesus was making a similar point in his pastoral story about the shepherd leaving the ninety nine and going to search for the lost sheep.
This gap virtue is needed right across the board in pastoral ministry. To explore what it might mean in practice, it might be helpful to look at one specific sphere of pastoral ministry, namely liturgy. Like all other Church laws, liturgical laws and rubrics need to be interpreted in a way which is pastorally beneficial to the people of God.
According to Vatican II ‘the full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit’ (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, no. 14). That is where the common good lies in the area of liturgy. The Liturgy Constitution and subsequent documents lay down liturgical regulations spelling out how this is to be achieved in practice. However, these regulations remain subservient to this fundamental principle spelt out in no. 14. That is even true of the Constitution’s general norm no. 22, $3: ‘Absolutely no other person, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.’ That is a wise and important regulation. Priests, badly instructed in the liturgy, can cause havoc, hindering the full and active participation of a congregation. Wisely, only a few lines after stating its basic principle, the Constitution insists that it is ‘vitally necessary’ that a high priority should be given to the liturgical instruction of the clergy. This is because a major part of the pastoral ministry of priests is to foster the full and active participation of the congregation in the liturgy.
However, liturgical instruction is essential but not sufficient. Complying with liturgical regulations does not guarantee good liturgy. Participation must not be simply a matter of ensuring that people are given the opportunity to take on active roles in a liturgical celebration. People must feel that liturgy touches their down-to-earth everyday experience at its inner core and gives expression to its deepest meaning. If, at times, this can only or best be achieved through creative and imaginative adaptation within the overall structure of the liturgy, that kind of flexibility is completely faithful to the fundamental principle of good liturgy. Priests who take such steps to facilitate the possibility of that depth of participation are merely exercising the gap virtue in their liturgical ministry. Of course, this would be impossible without a feel for the life-situations of the people in the congregation. That means that those responsible for the liturgy need to be closely in touch with the everyday lives of people. Elite liturgical teams, however well-intentioned and liturgically literate, can wreck havoc in a parish if they are not in tune with the reality of the lives of people in the congregation. It goes without saying that what is needed to achieve full and active participation will vary according to people’s pastoral needs.
It might help to offer some specific examples from my own earlier pastoral ministry in inner-city Liverpool. Life in Vauxhall is hard for most people. The negative effects of multiple deprivation over many generations are all too obvious. That is why pastoral practice has to take people where they are. Only in this way could it help them believe they are loved by God precisely ‘where they are’. In the eyes of God they are precious people, not just statistics in a table of social deprivation. It is belief in their own dignity which provides the springboard for further growth. This belief in themselves is strengthened by their experience of being able to improve some of the social conditions affecting their lives. Sound pastoral practice must consolidate that experience. Therefore, the main thrust of pastoral ministry in such a situation is to help people feel that everything that they experience as good in their lives is accepted, affirmed and celebrated in the presence of God.
The priests in the area are not in the business of judgement and condemnation. Where their people are at is different from a middle-class parish. Though most of them are not regular churchgoers, in no way should they be labelled as ‘non-practising Catholics’. They really do ‘practise’ their faith in the Gospel sense of struggling to do their best to live lives of justice and love, often in situations where the odds can seem stacked against them. It would be appalling pastoral practice for a priest to contradict or undermine this belief and pride in their Catholic identity. Hence, the message they hear in the liturgy should not be a disheartening ‘no’ condemning them where they are presently at in their lives. Rather it needs to be a resounding ‘yes’, accepting them where they are at but also encouraging them to believe that they are capable of even greater things. They need to be empowered to hear the Gospel as ‘Good News’ in their lives. If the liturgy is, as the Liturgy Constitution insists, a ‘primary and indispensable source’ from which they derive the true Christian spirit of this Good News, then doing whatever is needed to help them to participate fully and actively in the Eucharist is a serious responsibility on those who serve as pastoral ministers in the community.
Against that background, I believe that my fellow priests and I were exercising the gap virtue (and, at the same time, respecting the fundamental principle of liturgy) when we held general absolution services in Advent and Lent or incorporated a short penitential rite with general absolution in any Funeral Mass where there was a fair number of ‘non-regular churchgoers’ from the local community in the congregation. Sometimes we used our own Eucharistic prayers which fitted in with the Sunday readings or the particular feast being celebrated or special occasions in the lives of those sharing in the Eucharist. With couples cohabiting, or in a second marriage after divorce, or who habitually missed Sunday Mass, we normally raised no objections to their having their children baptised. And when, in the strange ways of God’s providence, they were drawn to come to the Eucharist we were happy if they felt at peace in their conscience to come forward to receive Communion.
These are not offered as examples of recommended pastoral practice which others ought to adopt. Different local situations require different pastoral solutions. For some these examples may be very unacceptable. In fact, whether any or all of these practices can be adequately justified in pastoral theology is not the point. The point is that ‘the demands of pastoral practice’ must always come first if we are to minister pastorally after the model of Christ himself. The old dictum, salus animarum supreme lex, could be translated as ‘where there is a gap between the official regulations of the Church and the demands of pastoral care, the latter must always take priority.’
Of course, obedience has a place in pastoral ministry. Pastoral ministers are not commissioned ‘to do their own thing’. But obedience (ob-audire) is about listening. Listening to people’s deepest needs and discerning how best to respond to them is one of the main ways a pastoral minister hears and obeys the voice of God. Whatever else the call to holiness in pastoral ministry is about, it is certainly about that. Holiness and pastoral life cannot be put in separate compartments.
How does this kind of pastoral practice fit in with a pastoral minister’s duty to live in communion with the local bishop and with the wider Church? Is it not bound to provoke a reaction from the bishop? The impression is sometimes given that the ‘communion’ bishops should be concerned about is a ‘troublefree’ kind of communion, namely, making sure that nothing is done to rock the boat or provoke criticism from the Vatican. Wanting to be sympathetic towards the kind of ‘divergent’ pastoral practices mentioned above, a bishop who feels constrained by his concern for that ‘trouble-free’ kind of communion might feel that the best support he could give would be to turn a blind eye to what is happening at parish level. Clearly, that kind of ‘I would rather not know what you are doing’ stance is far preferable to outright prohibition. Nevertheless, it is not entirely satisfactory from the point of view of pastoral theology.
After all, the pastoral practices mentioned above and those similar to them are actually about living and deepening communion at local level. It is that positive communion of life that a bishop, as pastor, is primarily called to serve. Provided the practices in question are solidly based in sound pastoral theology (and that assessment would need a sensitive appreciation of the locality and its people), they are precisely the kind of thing bishops should be encouraging in their role as servants of communion. The main focus of a bishop as servant of communion should not be on seeing that the letter of the law is observed. It should be on seeing that the deepest Gospel values (of which laws are servants, not masters) are being honoured in pastoral practice.