In this article, Francesco Sisci “heretically” compares two organizational models that seem to be opposites: the Catholic Church and the Chinese Communist Party. Why is this comparison important for the Church, both as an institution and as a community of faith? The Catholic Church is incapable of viewing itself from an outside perspective and never asks how non-members perceive it. By failing to do so, the Church runs a twofold risk. First, it always looks in the mirror, seeing only itself and thinking that everyone sees it as it sees itself. However, this is not the greatest danger. Secondly, the Catholic Church ends up seeing the world in the same mirror in which it sees itself. Therefore, it fails to see the invocations in the world and of the world that it should gather to be faithful not to itself and its institutional organization of faith but to the Gospel of Jesus. Jesus gathers things and stories from the world as it is to make his God present and felt. He takes sides with some because, in this way, he can tell everyone, without exception, what the world God desired should be like (Marcello Neri, professor of Religion and Public Life at the Catholic University of Milan).
The presentation of Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmiero’s book on synodality in the Church, held in Rome, could amount to a neural short-circuit, especially for those arriving with decades of vastly different experiences. Here are some notes, gathered also with the help of Father Marco Bernardoni.
To a layperson, the process of synodality in the Catholic Church and the work of Party building (党建设工作) in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appear similar. Both tend to seek an active, dynamic balance between ideals and organization. The comparison, heretical for both, might perhaps be useful to each in understanding the challenges that lie ahead.
The two have one significant difference at present, which determines the discordant qualities of their respective organizations.
In the Church, there is an organization because the organized want to feel as one in Christ, and because there is a faith-driven enthusiasm that impels the faithful. There is a regulatory pressure, stronger in the past, milder now.
In the Party, on the other hand, there is a vague communist faith, a stronger faith in the State, and greater regulatory pressure. One cannot push too hard on either of these faiths. Too strong a communist faith would impose social reforms and costs on economic development that the Party wishes to avoid. If one started preaching communism too much, one would have to go after wealthy entrepreneurs who, although kept under control, remain the country’s economic engine. If one pushes nationalism too far, one slides into chauvinism and xenophobia, which would provoke A) a popular sentiment against any collaboration with foreign countries, and B) protests that historically end up turning against the government “guilty of having sold out to foreigners.”
Under these conditions, the organizational and coercive tool must become stronger, but this in turn kills enthusiasm and faith, or vice versa, in a vicious circle of contradictions.
For now, it all seems to have found an equilibrium in a “hedgehog” spirit. CCP members, with little ideological faith, have faith that their own survival depends on the survival of the Party itself. Therefore, they support the organization to survive.
However, the moment Party members thought their survival could extend beyond the Party, or rather that they would survive better without the Party, because there is little and contradictory ideological faith, the Party and its organization would collapse.
In General, and Francis
In general, the overarching rule seems to be: the more enthusiasm and faith there is, the less need there is for coercive and organizational structures. Conversely, with less faith, one must rely more on organization and coercion.
All organizations, to function and endure over time and distance, need both elements: organization, more or less coercive, and faith, more or less enthusiastic. The absence of faith, or of a personal stake in maintaining the organization, causes the organization itself to collapse. But conversely, an excess of faith, of enthusiasm without organization, cannot sustain that same faith over time and distance. Over time and distance, faiths differentiate and eventually come into more or less open conflict with one another.
For the Church, there is a faith that has lasted for centuries and has spread to varying degrees throughout the world. The challenge is to maintain and, indeed, animate the faith while preserving the unity of the organization. Before Pope Francis, the Church seemed to have found a static equilibrium: a separation between them and us, between those inside the Church who felt protected and sheltered in its fold, and those outside. A similar process, on a vastly different plane, exists in the CCP today.
But this equilibrium was shaken by two challenges, one internal and one external. The external one was greater: the Church was (and is) substantially absent from Asia, home to 60% of the world’s population and global economic growth. If the Church had not quickly established a presence in Asia, it would have become irrelevant within a few decades. Internally, the sexual abuse scandals shook the very foundations of faith. If faith was not a safe space but a place of betrayal and abuse, then the organization was a deception and had to be abolished.
Pope Francis managed to act by creating a jolt in both directions. But today the challenge seems more complicated. The fire of faith in the Church has been rekindled, but it is certainly not a wildfire in the woods that needs the fire department or organization to keep it under control. It consists of many small flames lit here and there around the world. If they are not brought together, some will go out while others will head off in separate directions. But organizing them too much risks extinguishing everything and ending up worse than before. At least back then, there was the security of the “small, ancient faith”; today, even that is faltering.
Enormous Challenges
The challenges for both the CCP and the Church are enormous.
The CCP needs to renew its faith profoundly, and this can take two possible directions: to close in on itself even more, to wait for the world to rage around it, and hope that external pressure will strengthen internal cohesion. But this, sooner or later in Chinese history, leads to the collapse of internal organization, with a generalized “every man for himself” unless there is an apocalypse from the outside. Alternatively, it must painfully and with enormous risks open up to the outside and rediscover “a faith in the world.”
For the Church, the gamble seems equally twofold but different. To revive faith, one must speak with the faithful, with ordinary people, and this distances it from the general dynamics of the Church and the world.
The world, moreover, has ceased to be an ordered space divided into two, as during the first Cold War, or under a sole America that guaranteed an overall order. The world is drifting towards domination, as Cardinal Pietro Parolin says, from the great power of brute force and not from the force of great spiritual power.
Under these conditions, the Church must choose whether to entrench itself in its tower and preach, unheard, the good of the world, or to promote something different, with a “God helps those who help themselves” approach. The first choice, almost parallel to the Chinese hedgehog, leads to self-consumption, and the Church survives only if there is an apocalypse. The second would have to be entirely invented, also entailing monstrous risks, and, in the Church’s case, it is only right to say it: diabolical ones.
The goals for the two, the Party and the Church, are also different. The Party wants an organization that holds together a country it fears would otherwise break loose and fall apart. But the goal can be achieved otherwise. The Church wants to hold the faithful together and promote peace and justice for all, Catholics and non-Catholics. The two goals do not fully overlap, and, as a result, the Church may sometimes fail to see the world in its true, impassioned nature.
