Main Feature
Who Can Read the Signs of the Times?
Richard Shields, PhD, Toronto
Volume 29 Issue 7, 8 & 9 | Posted: September 26, 2015
The Second Vatican Council introduced an expression into the Catholic vocabulary as disappointing as it was promising: the signs of the times. The Council taught that in carrying out God’s work of salvation in the world “the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.”
Who is the Church? Who interprets the signs of the times? The question is not rhetorical. In order to be a tangible reality that clearly makes the Kingdom of God manifest, the Church must be identifiable.
The Second Vatican Council introduced an expression into the Catholic vocabulary as disappointing as it was promising: the signs of the times. The Council taught that in carrying out God’s work of salvation in the world “the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.”
Who is the Church? Who interprets the signs of the times? The question is not rhetorical. In order to be a tangible reality that clearly makes the Kingdom of God manifest, the Church must be identifiable.
Globally, the Church is often imagined as an organic community. Symbolized perhaps by the Pope, along with a tradition of beliefs and practices, this “Church” is not necessarily experienced in any particular place by particular people. In North America the “Catholic Church” is ordinarily taken to mean the dioceses, parishes, schools, and other organizations that bear the name “Catholic”.
Theologically, of course, the Church's presence is not limited to these publicly recognizable groups. Still, the burden of responsibility for reading the signs of the times must be visible in their activities. If interpreting the signs of the times is not restricted to either Bishops or theologians then it has to be going on our dioceses, parishes, and other communities.
Where is it consciously taking place? This question is both legitimate and necessary. Yet, when asked to name the persons or communities who are actually engaged in the process of scrutinizing and interpreting the “signs of the times,” one might very well draw a blank.
What makes the question urgent is that, according to the theology of Vatican II, the authenticity of Christian discipleship and the credibility of the Church’s mission are tied to our ability—collectively and individually—to participate in “God’s presence and purpose in the happenings, needs and desires in which this People has a part along with other men of our age.” With this observation, the Council fathers moved the Church’s attention from the “religious” concerns of the Church to the existential concerns of humanity.
What did the Council understand by “the signs of the times”? The Council was speaking of a call or summons to the Church to not only pay attention to the promise and despair in the lives of individuals, but especially to ponder the larger, even global shifts in the context of their lives. On one level reading the signs of the times involves contextualizing pastoral practice and reaching out to those who are hurting. But on a larger horizon, it demands a political-evangelical approach to what is happening in the world. When we talk about the signs of the times, we are inquiring into the presence and purpose of God emerging in epochal societal and global developments that—negatively or positively—expose the deepest needs and expectations of the human spirit.
Today we are experiencing times of excruciating distress and despair. We are daily assaulted by reports of inhumanity that expose the depths of evil and threaten hope. ISIL, Boko Haram, Crimea, unprecedented homelessness, forced migration and refugee settlements, environmental destruction—any of these human events seems too large to comprehend. More difficult still is the ability be able to decipher in them the “presence and purpose” of God in the world.
The desire to help, to stop the carnage and destruction is boxed in by our distance from both the suffering and the forces that are its source. Our deepest human and humanizing desires are left without the means to fulfill them. These feelings reinforce a sense of powerlessness and even a fatalism that too often leads to, in Pope Francis’ words, “a globalisation of indifference.” Geo-economic politics and the reduction of conflict to questions of punitive economic and military strategies, make us ask with the Pope whether “there are people in today’s world who are really concerned about generating processes of people-building, as opposed to obtaining immediate results which yield easy, quick short-term political gains, but do not enhance human fullness.”
Who can find meaning in what is happening, let alone discover God’s purpose and plan in the brutality of terrorism? Who can uncover God’s presence in the disdain for human life and the seemingly endless power struggles that make entire nations ungovernable? If what is happening in our world calls the Church’s belief in the loving presence and saving activity of God in the world into question, then it clearly summons the Church to respond. This is something it can only do through concrete actions that show that “this community [the Church] realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.” (Pope Francis)Moralizing judgments, a discourse that sets the Church outside or apart from the secular world is simply not enough.
Within the present ecclesiastical structure, however, any prayerful, Gospel infused interpretation of the signs of the times remains out of the reach of most Catholics. Confronted by the conflicts that embody ruthless disdain for human dignity and destroy any possibility of meaningful life, Catholics feel great pain and compassion, but remain for the most part baffled and disoriented. It doesn’t fit in with their traditional understanding of “parish” or what they have been taught about God’s relation to the world.
But does the Church today—dioceses, religious communities, parishes and Catholics organizations—have the ability to read the signs of the rimes or is it mostly illiterate in this respect? Does the Church have the forums and processes for paying attention to what is happening in the world?
To read the signs of the times requires going beyond what immediately strikes the observer—the kind of opinions and analyses that flow from the “talking heads” of all-news media, but there are few accepted criteria for interpreting what we see.
The “signs of the times” transcend what we think of as the Church’s social justice teachings. They are too big for the traditional “see-judge-act” triad of Catholic action. In order to read the signs of the times the Church needs not a new methodology, but a transforming consciousness of what being Church-in-the-world requires.
It would be easy if this essay could end with a “tool box” for reading the signs of the times. Instead, it ends with a question. Is the Church in North America simply committed to serving a niche function in society—meeting the “religious needs” of its members or attempting to be the moral conscience of the nation? Are we even ready to take up the task, to set out on the movement from illiteracy to being able to read? Or will we choose to ignore the Vatican II’s conviction that “faith throws a new light on everything, manifests God’s design for man’s total vocation, and thus directs the mind to solutions which are fully human.”
Richard Shields, PhD, Toronto