Prophets and the Periphery

PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN
PAUL PHILIBERT

Last night I attended a lecture by Fr. Paul Philibert, OP, who spoke about Yves Congar’s vision for reform in the Catholic Church. Congar was a French Dominican priest who had enormous influence on the work of renewal both before and during the Second Vatican Council and was especially interested in both ecumenism and the place of the laity in the Church.

Fr. Philibert elaborated on Congar’s four conditions for reform without schism: primacy of charity and pastoral concern, remain in communion with the whole, patience, and return to the principles of Tradition. These points would be helpful guides for change in government or any societal institutions, I thought, and even though Paul’s comments on them captured my attention, the idea that played in my head on the drive home was one that came up again during the Q&A session.

While talking about the need for reformers to remain part of the whole rather than to break away and form a sect or a new entity, Paul identified two elements of the whole that should be constantly interacting: the center and the periphery. The job of the center is to maintain continuity. The job of the periphery is to interact with those it touches and to respond in new ways. The center is by nature conservative and cautious, the periphery innovative and pioneering.

Prophets are on the periphery. They speak the truth, as they know it. They act upon it. They often get in trouble, especially when the center is not functioning in a healthy way. That is nothing new. You can read all about it in the Old Testament, or in today’s newspaper. In the Catholic Church prophets have been met with variety of reactions including house arrest and exile to refusal to allow the “offenders” to publish or teach. The fear of change and desire to maintain power and the status quo can delay acceptance of truth and renewal for hundreds of years. The Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s is a good example of an unhealthy center refusing to admit to and address racism in our country.

In a conversation with a woman in the audience, Paul said that often today the periphery worries too much about the center, trying to convince it of the rightness of their words, trying to make those unwilling to embrace change understand the need for it. The periphery can spend too much time looking inward instead of engaging with the world and challenging issues. The periphery can be just as unhealthy as the center.

“The periphery must move outward, like the expanding galaxy,” Paul said.

Driving home, I wondered those words and thought about those of us on the periphery of the Church, of government institutions, of industry, of social policy. Are we spending too much time looking toward the center instead of looking outward? Are we willing to risk being prophets and truth-tellers?

“Prophets are not patient reformers,” Fr. Philibert said to the chuckling audience.

Patient reformers must be those who fill in the spaces between Prophets on the edge and those in the center. Patient reformers, like Congar, will wait out the exiles and continue to write and think with faith that the center will, in time, understand and accept.

Does the Church have too many “patient reformers?” Does it need more prophets? Does the world?