As to the effectiveness of the language of Church teaching (“the language we speak is not communicating”), some distinctions need to be made. Communication is ineffective when the words are not understood by the listener. Communication is effective when the words are understood, even if the listener rejects the truth of the message. As regards the moral doctrine of the Church, the problem for many today is not unintelligibility, i.e, they cannot figure out what the Church teaches. Rather, that doctrine is understood quite well – and rejected.
That is not a failure to communicate, but rather a successful imparting of unwelcome knowledge. The Church’s mission is to call sinners to repentance, which starts with proclaiming the truths of the Gospel, however contrary they are to the lifestyle choices of those who hear that proclamation. Our absolute certainty in the truth of the Church’s doctrine and our belief in the efficacy of Divine grace teach us that the anger or sadness produced in a person being challenged to live according to God’s plan is salutary – and in many ways necessary.
(source: The Catholic Thing)
You’re right that the problem is not, or not much, verbal confusion. But this does not mean the problem is explained without remainder by recalcitrant will. That would be shading into voluntarism.
We have verbally stated our view but we have failed to make it plausible. In the Bible, verbal statement of doctrine is depicted as an activity that takes place primarily within the faith community, and verbal apologetics is depicted as a response to sincere inquiry by people who are making their way toward the faith community. Our response to the world outside is not primarily verbal but active; the good works (note: works) of the church are repeatedly described as silencing, shaming or confounding the wicked.
Of course verbal proclamation and active love cannot be separated, for it is by verbal proclamation that active love comes to know itself for what it is, and thus discover new opportunities for application. But that, again, is a reflective (inward) movement rather than an engaged (outward) one.
Before we despair of leading the world in our direction, might we first try more seriously the primary means scripture has appointed for that task?
I agree with everything you say here. These words and yours are simply different “moves” from different moments in an important conversation. You’re quite right about that–what struck me was the juxtaposition from my morning reading that I suggested by appending the image of the attempt to burn an Argentinian cathedral down to these words from the synodal conversation.
And I would take the primary means to be “the foolishness of preaching” in the context of “go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you.”
Which, as far as I can see, keeps us right on the theme of proclaiming the whole truth, even to recalcitrant ears–whether they be the ears of Chorazin and Bethsaida, or the less-culpable ears of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And when we have renewed our commitment to that, I would then insert the exhortation of Jude about the various manners of rescuing people, according to the urgency of their need and the severity of their danger, and the whole of the Pastoral Epistles on the means of building that tradition.
I was with you here until the last paragraph; you seem to suggest a two-step movement in which we renew our commitment to preaching the whole truth first, and only after we have reached some arbitrary point of satisfaction on that score do we turn to loving our neighbors. I think it is not a small point to say that we must do it all at once.
“Renewed commitment,” not achieved. All at once is the only way there is.