Public opinion in the Church. A communicative and ecclesiological reflection

Abstract

The first part of this paper presents the Church before the court of public opinion through a synthesis of the findings of research about media coverage of the Catholic Church in the last 20 years. Public opinion exists within the Church, although it is not called this because the Church is not a political or a democratic community. However, since it is a communion, it necessarily requires communication. All communication brings with it debate, which in the case of the Church is a kind of singular ‘public opinion.’ This is manifested in diverse ways depending on the issue concerned. In this study, I have chosen a threefold division of public opinion within the Church for analytical purposes, for in reality the different aspects occur together. First, when the matter is concerned with the demands of the faith, ‘public opinion’ is called sensus fidelium and behaves – or should behave – as one would expect in regards to dogma or doctrine and its demands for communion in the faith. Second, when it is concerned with questions of the government, which affect the good of the communion, the hierarchical principal rules – or should rule –, that is to say the demands of communion. Third, when public opinion is concerned with contingent questions, we are – or we ought to be – in the area of free debate and opinion, in the area of disagreement, which supposes and requires both freedom and plurality. Developing this central idea is the objective of the second and third part of the article, after having presented synthetically the teachings about the subject of the Catholic Church and of the popes from Pius XII to John Paul II, and especially of pope Francis. In the third part, these ideas are applied to the cases of the sex abuse scandal, which are in the course of being resolved since the measures of Benedict XIV. The underlying thesis is that the problem was a practical ecclesiological error, not merely an error in communication. The study concludes with five recommendations for those in charge of ecclesiastical communication.