Discernment Through Dialogue
A look at Pope Francis’ theology of contraposition and overflow
This is part II of a two-part series from the archives. Thank you so much for your patience this week while I recover from illness. I hope you enjoy this piece, originally written for MSPCatholic in June 2021.
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Pope Francis’ vision of dialogue
Pope Francis has a pretty unique philosophy of dialogue, a fruit of his study of the theology of Romano Guardini as well as his many years of active ministry. A very broad summary would go something like this: when people of different opinions and even religious beliefs come together, as long as they are open to one another and sincerely desire what is best for everyone, God can do something new and unexpected in the process. I’ll be breaking it down a bit more in what follows.
But before we do that, two preliminary remarks.
First, Pope Francis acknowledges that the conflicts going on in our culture, in our families, in our institutions - you know, the ones we argue over, get heated over, sometimes cry over - are real conflicts. They matter. The hot-button political issues of our day (think: marriage, sexuality, the environment, religious freedom, etc.) have to do with our most foundational convictions about God, the human person, and creation itself. These are no small peanuts; we are dealing with the heart of what it means to be human.
It is therefore naive to pretend that these issues don’t matter, that “agree to disagree” is a manageable long-term solution, that we can live well together while operating out of fundamentally opposed worldviews. Rather, we need to start by calling a spade a spade, and openly acknowledging the chasm that stands between the Christian and the secular ideas of family, or education, or suffering (to name a few) and how those competing ideas will necessarily interact with each other in the public square. Only once we have faced the true challenge before us can we constructively address it.
Second, even though Pope Francis’s ideas are challenging, they should in no way be taken to mean that good should dialogue with evil. Evil ideas, such as abortion, racism, or communism, are excluded from dialogue because they are violations of the very universal moral truths that lie at the heart of dialogue. Pope Francis calls these universal moral truths “human values” where he writes, “It amazes me when I hear people talk of ‘non-negotiable values.’ All true values, human values, are non-negotiable… If it is of value, it has a value that cannot be negotiated” (Let Us Dream, p. 52). This rules out the idea that dialogue somehow leads to moral compromise. Where evil is concerned, Pope Francis is clear: there can be no compromise.
Opposites Interact
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