St. Catherine's charism of exhortation

from Disputations:

These days, St. Catherine of Siena (as she is generally known) is widely invoked as an example of a layperson boldly giving bishops, cardinals, and even popes an earful of advice when they prove unable or unwilling to do what they ought to do. But, with the list of things bishops ought to do seemingly growing with each passing week, what sort of example is St. Catherine really, and what can the Catholic laity today learn from her?

St. Catherine was born into a large and prosperous Sienese family in 1347. She had her first reported vision of Jesus when she was six, and a year later she vowed herself to Jesus alone. This led, once she reached marriageable age, to years of struggle with her family, during which they treated her as a scullery maid in her own house. St. Catherine persevered, and eventually her father told the family to let her live as she wished.

After this, she spent several years doing little more than praying in a small, bare room in her family’s bustling house. At last, when she was twenty, she felt called to emerge from her cell and engage the world around her in service to the sick and the poor.

News of her sanctity, her wisdom, and not least her miracles quickly spread. She was also a dedicated letter writer; nearly four hundred of her letters survive. Though there were many who thought St. Catherine a fake at best, her fame grew to the point that, in 1375, she was invited to Florence to help negotiate an end to the politically and economically based hostilities between the city and the Papal States.

For seventy years, the popes had been living in Avignon rather than Rome, a fact St. Catherine was sure contributed to the stubbornness of the Florentines and the more general unrest throughout Italy. The Florentines suggested Catherine herself travel to Avignon as an intermediary, a suggestion she took up.

She met Gregory XI in the summer of 1376. During an audience with the pope a few days after her arrival, she informed him, “The truth is, even before I left my native city I was more conscious of the evil odor of the sins committed in the Roman Curia than were the persons themselves who were committing them; yes, and who continue to commit them daily.”

At these stunning words from an unlettered young woman, the Pope fell silent. Bl. Raymond of Capua, who served as St. Catherine’s interpreter for this meeting (she did not speak Latin), later wrote, “I was careful to imprint on my memory that striking picture of her as, radiating authority, she spoke to the Pope in such terms face to face.”

Within months, St. Catherine has persuaded to Pope to return to Rome. The disputed election of Pope Urban VI in the conclave following Gregory’s death in 1378, however, led to the Great Western Schism which was to divide the Church for decades. St. Catherine threw herself into Urban’s cause, writing stern letters to cardinals who supported the anti-pope: “You are flowers who shed no perfume, but stench that makes the whole world reek.”

To the autocratic Pope, meanwhile, she wrote, “I know that your holiness wants helpers who will really help you -- but you have to be patient enough to listen to them.”

These are just the sort of things many conservative Catholics would like to tell the American bishops, or even the pope. Still, there are several factors from Catherine’s own life that argue against a wholesale adoption of her methods.

To begin with, it was the inarguable holiness of her life that allowed her to radiate authority. When she told the Pope, “The honor of God compels me to speak bluntly,” she had already spent more than a dozen of her twenty-nine years wholly committed to discerning and following the will of God. This gave her advice, even her scolding, a contemplative foundation few today would claim for themselves.

Then too, there is the teaching she gave in her book The Dialogue, where she portrays God as saying: “I wish the laity to hold [priests] in due reverence, not for their own sakes… but for Mine, by reason of the authority I have given them… This reverence should never diminish in the case of priests whose virtue grows weak, any more than in the case of those virtuous ones...” This will not sit well with those Catholics who think reverence for bishops whose virtue has grown weak is itself a major contributor to the difficulties facing the Church.

Finally, there’s the practical matter that St. Catherine’s advice, however wise it may have been, was often resisted or ignored by those to whom she gave it. Pope Gregory XI’s return to Rome was a crucial step in the path that led to forty years of schism, and the schismatic cardinals could not have felt closer to Urban VI after being labeled “stench” by one of his most outspoken supporters.

But if St. Catherine’s life doesn’t provide carte blanche to excoriate bishops, it does suggest a basis for appropriate lay criticism of the bishops.

Catherinian scholar Sr. Suzanne Noffke, OP, has identified the cornerstone of St. Catherine’s sense of ecclesial obedience as an obedience to Christ, one therefore shared by bishops and laity alike, an obedience to which each member of the Church may legitimately call each other.

“There seem to have been only two ultimate questions for Catherine in matters of practical discernment,” Noffke writes. “’Is it true?’ and ‘Is it loving?’”

No doubt St. Catherine’s life of profound contemplation gave her clearer insight into what is true than most Catholics today have. Yet any Catholic might be reminded of his primary duty of obedience to Christ, Who (Catholics believe) is Truth, before and above all other duties.

The harder standard for today’s letter-writing layman may well be making sure his letters are written in love. There is much that is unlovable where the Church encounters the world, but truth separated from love would have been unthinkable for St. Catherine.

How is the letter writer sure he is acting out of love? By “remaining in the cell of self-knowledge… because knowledge must precede love,” St. Catherine teaches, “and only when [the soul] has attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the truth.”

Certainly some things to which a bishop might be exhorted don’t require three years of prayer to discern. But anyone who calls upon St. Catherine of Siena as his model in advising or instructing the American bishops should be aware of the risks involved. He just might find himself called upon him to change, too. Saints are funny that way.