4th Sunday of Easter A - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2011

I noticed on the news recently that the Victorian Police Commissioner is in the process of sacking his deputy.  The head of the Australian Defence Forces has also been in damage control mode over a few contentious issues.  Also in the news, and more relevant to us as Catholics, has been the Pope’s sacking of the Bishop of Toowoomba, Bishop Bill Morris.

Tonight’s Gospel is to be heard against the backdrop of Jesus’ critique of the Shepherds, the leaders, of Israel - particularly, of the chief priests and the other members of the Jewish Sanhedrin.

All of these instances contain issues of possessing and exercising authority, power and control: Who has it? What is it for? How is it best applied? And how and why can it go wrong?

In discussing the Church at the Second Vatican Council, the Pope and the bishops assembled there spoke of the Church, firstly, as the People of God - a rather beautiful and evocative description of the Church.  Only after having teased that out did they address the question of the Church as institution - with its various roles and procedures and rules.

Whenever you get a grouping of people, you need a certain organisation if there is not to be chaos.  We need our institutions, our governments, and the myriad in-between groups that make up society -  some necessary, some voluntary.  They all have their various constitutions and office bearers and way of operating.

Institutions are made up of human beings, so they are subject to all the usual foibles of humanity.  But something else can happen in institutions and to those with special roles and authority.  Among other things, they can tend to be self-perpetuating.  They can look after their own interests and be highly protective.  When criticised, they easily become defensive and self-justifying.

Institutions have the frightening capacity to blind their members to reality.  [A president of a powerful country can confuse national interest with the common good; and can even declare, with apparent conviction, that justice has been done when such is not necessarily the case at all.]  Good people in positions of authority can do terrible things in good faith.  And everyone of the membership, even those at the bottom, can so easily be complicit through their unquestioning loyalty or their unwillingness to make their views known. The higher the position in the institution, and the greater the authority, the greater the pressures, and the greater the potential, to get things wrong.  Look at the corruption and injustice attributed of late to the once powerful leaders of so many Arab and African nations.

Given that potential to get things wrong, it is important that institutions and their members have ways of reviewing performance and of self-criticism.  It can be helpful to have procedures of assessment - even of external assessment.  Particularly in cultures like ours, where structures of transparency and  accountability are taken more or less for granted, many members of the Church would feel more comfortable if the Church were also to take these procedures on board.

Of recent years, as my reading has made me more sensitive to the ways that institutions operate, and to the inevitable institutional pressures on those in positions of authority, especially in the Church, I have begun to be more alert to the passage in the Eucharistic Prayer, the Third one, where we pray: Strengthen in faith and love your pilgrim Church on earth, your servant, Pope Benedict, our bishop, Peter, and all the bishops, with the clergy and the entire people your Son has gained for you. After all, the Church has only one purpose, as Jesus reminded us in the Gospel today:  I have come so that they may have life and have it more abundantly.