Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Catholics Have Difficulty Understanding One Another Because There Are not Many Places Left Where They Can Listen to One Another"

Father Joseph Komonchak at Commonweal:

The author maintains that Catholics have difficulty understanding one another because there are not many places left where they can listen to one another.

The author in question is Yann Raison du Cleuziou, who recently published a book entitled Qui sont les cathos aujourd’hui? Father Komonchak summarizes the commentary of Dominique Greiner, editor of the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, about the book. As Greiner reports, this new study of the current configuration of French Catholicism finds that "structures where Catholics of different tendencies could engage in debate have disappeared" from the Catholic church in France.

Or, as I said two days ago, people want to talk. They want to talk together. Catholic people are hungry for dialogue spaces in which they can engage in rich, wide-ranging conversation about issues of importance to those of us who are Catholic, or interested in matters Catholic.

And as I also observed, "God knows, [such dialogue] has not been hosted by our own institutions for a long time now." They seem to be moving in the opposite direction, towards more strictly controlled conversations that rule people in or out on the basis of arbitrary criteria that are seldom disclosed to the public. And more's the pity, when the hunger for free and wide-ranging discussion of Catholic issues is so pronounced among Catholic people — along with a hunger to include the voices of Catholics who have for too long now been shoved to the margins and not permitted to speak.