Consensus of the Faithful
Updated: Aug 9
by Fr. David M. Knight
August 8, 2024
Thursday of the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Dominic, Priest
Lectionary 410
Jer 31:31-34/Mt 16:13-23
Jeremiah 31:31-34 is so beautiful that it invites silent absorption more than commentary. But for a focus in prayer:
“I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts!” What a difference it makes if we look for the living law of God inside of us, in our hearts, instead of accepting it engraved in tablets of stone handed down to us by a chosen mediator who talks with God alone on an unapproachable mountain.
The God we know, who has made himself known to us, lives in us, and we in him, in the intimate communion of one shared life. One shared mind. One shared heart. One shared will and desire. We surrender, not to the cold letter of his law, but to the warmth of his will burning within us. When we say, “Thy will be done!” we say it, as Jesus did in Gethsemane, to the God we know as “Father!”
“No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me.” Jesus rephrased this as: “They shall all be taught by God.”
This does not mean we are not taught by one another, but that we never listen to others as if we were not taught by God ourselves. Jesus said, “Do not be called “teacher,” for you have one Teacher, and you are all students.” We listen to teachers in the Church, from pope to parishioners, as to fellow students explaining words, we have all heard from the Teacher. We listen for harmony. The “consensus of the faithful” is the union of all voices in the Church singing in harmony. It is just as important that the pope listen to parishioners as that they do to the pope. (John 6:45; Matthew 23:8-12. See also Isaiah 54:13 and 1Thessalonians 4:9.)
St. Ignatius of Antioch urges us “to do all things with a divine harmony.” The clergy should be “fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp” so that “being harmonious in love... you may sing with one voice.” St. Irenaeus adds: “Every church must be in harmony with the tradition which that Church founded at Rome by Peter and Paul received from the apostles.” (Ignatius: To the Magnesians, ch. 4. Irenaeus: Against Heresies Bk. III, 3.)
It is important to notice that those singing in harmony are, by definition, not all singing the same note. Harmony is precisely not uniformity. It is unity with diversity. It is not harmony just to recite faithfully the words of pope or even the Catechism. Harmony demands each one’s particular insight. Those who interpret the letter of Church teaching just as rigidly and blindly as they interpret the letter of the law are called “doctrinal Pharisees.”
In Matthew 16:13-23, when Jesus asks the disciples (plural “you”) “Who do you say that I am?” Peter, true to character, takes it upon himself to answer without consulting the others. This was fine, because, since Peter was not the official spokesman of the group, he was just giving his personal opinion. And it was a good one. In fact, it is almost the only time Peter opens his mouth in the Gospels without putting his foot in it.
But then Peter made a mistake. He had received the “keys of the Kingdom.” And, whatever he thought that meant, we know he was made pope and head of the “college of bishops,” the Twelve. But in his first pronouncement as pope, he still did not consult the others. In response to Jesus’ prediction of his passion and death, Peter “began to rebuke him: ‘God forbid, Lord! This must not happen to you.’” His first act as pope was to deny the truth and try to lead Jesus and the Church astray!
Jesus made it clear this was not an “infallible” statement! He called Peter a devil: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Even in his position as “head of the Church,” Peter was speaking, not for “building up” but for “tearing down” the Church. He should have consulted first! (See 2Corinthians 3:10. In the First Vatican Council this text was quoted often to make the point that an improper use of power is “contrary to the truth of the papal function.”)
Those who feel it is disloyal to criticize the pope should remember that the first to do so was Jesus, and the second St. Paul. Several bishops, priests and theologians are doing it with unquestionable loyalty today. The real disloyalty is to betray the Church and all of her children by standing silently by when power is being used not for “building up” but for “tearing down.”
Saint Pope John Paul II pointed out that abuses we blame on the “system” are really:
the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins… of those who cause or support evil or who exploit it; of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference; of those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world [or the Church] and also of those who sidestep the effort and sacrifice required.... The real responsibility, then, lies with individuals.
His reason for writing is to
appeal to the consciences of all, so that each may shoulder his or her responsibility seriously and courageously in order to change those disastrous conditions and intolerable situations. (See Exhortation after the Synod on Reconciliation, 1984, no. 16. Archbishop Quinn says that in John Paul’s encyclical Ut Unum Sint, in which he invites criticism of his government, “For the first time it is the pope himself who raises and legitimizes the question of reform and change in the papal office.”
Saint Pope John Paul II is saying we sin if we fail to say what we see!
Initiative: Listen to your heart. Then say with love what you hear.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
Comments