In the world of discourse and debate, a lot of attention is rightly paid to the truth. What is often overlooked is how persuasion interacts with the truth. What is the truth, if nobody is convinced? It does not cease being true, but it loses much of its power.
I thought of this in light of two recent events, one involving the Catholic Church and the other involving the elections in the United States.
On the religious front, Inside the Vatican’s Robert Moynihan revealed in an interview that an Eastern Orthodox individual he knows was crucial in helping to persuade Pope Francis not to ban the Latin Mass. This episode differs soundly from the conventional wisdom about both the Latin Mass and Eastern Orthodoxy. The conventional wisdom holds that the Orthodox and traditionalist Catholics are like oil and water: traditionalism representing the kind of triumphalism and Latin excess that causes any Orthodox to recoil. To the traditionalist, the Orthodox are “schismatics” who are to be treated like everyone else outside of communion with the Catholic Church.
While containing certain elements of truth, the conventional wisdom is stale. The last decade has involved an attempted rapprochement in both traditionalist and Eastern Catholic/Orthodox circles. Both have a love of traditional liturgy, and traditionalists have at least become more receptive to a more decentralized papacy, for obvious reasons. While these kinds of connections might appear strange to the outsider, these connections are regular, even if occurring mostly behind the scenes. Both sides persuaded each other, and now it appears that a Russian Orthodox, acting on this rapprochement, was able to persuade the Pope against taking further action. (Given leaders have historically been heavily influenced by whoever the last individual in the room is, perhaps this story shouldn’t be that surprising.)
This can be contrasted with the general problems Pope Francis has faced in implementing Traditionis custodes. His first attempt at implementation failed so spectacularly, the laws governing it had to be tightened. Even after this, compliance has been spotty at best, often approaching malicious compliance. (Where the letter of the law is followed and not any further.) The Pope and his allies lack strong connections to those bishops and local traditionalists who could be natural allies. This leaves us in a position where the Pope has supreme and immediate jurisdiction on paper only.
On the political front, Donald J. Trump was re-elected, significantly expanding his previously believed ceiling of 47% by making noticeable gains with non-white voters, specifically Latinos and black men. One way he did it was by releasing two strong ads highlighting Kamala Harris’ fringe position on gender issues as part of a larger argument that she was an outsider to your community who couldn’t be trusted. The conventional wisdom held that this would not influence any votes and was a sign of a desperate campaign. Both ads were subsequently related as two of the most effective ads this entire campaign cycle in persuading voters that Harris (and Democrats at large) were dangerously out of touch, and, alongside economic concerns, this belief propelled Republicans to victory. Republicans used this concern to help persuade those voters outside their tent to consider doing the unthinkable: voting for Trump. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign’s attempt at voter outreach ran into trouble in that they were tarred as an outsider.
I think both the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party are suffering from a crisis of persuasion more than anything else. You can change policy and discipline with the stroke of a pen, yet it takes work and the power of persuasion to not only have those changes take root, but to convince people you have their best interests at heart. When you lack the power to persuade, you do worse than simply failing to persuade others. You begin to persuade yourself what you are doing is right, fundamentally blinding you from seeing the wider reality.
In the political realm, Kamala Harris spent less time trying to explain her position on transgenderism, and more time on talking about how if she lost the election, democracy would cease to exist, a position that frequently polled low among issues of importance by voters. Instead of building connections to communities she was struggling to reach, she relied on celebrity endorsements nobody cared about—or, worse, celebrity politicians like Liz Cheney who actively revolted voters, including within her own party. While this was happening, the campaign (and its supporters) became increasingly convinced of victory, badly misreading the writing on the wall that was spelling their defeat.
On the religious front, the Catholic Church just concluded the “Synod on Synodality”, a culmination of at least the last six years of Francis’ pontificate. Called to bring about a re-imagining of the way Catholicism exercises authority in the 21st century, the synod ended up being a Seinfeld Synod: a synod attended by nobody, where nothing was discussed, leading to a document read by nobody.
During this synod, barely any time was focused on something widely viewed as one of the biggest obstacles to the Church effectively using authority: the sex abuse scandals. Not only have the scandals seriously damaged the Church’s credibility, a new sex abuse scandal erupted during the synodal proceedings. Pope Francis used a formula under which the Synod’s findings were declared “magisterial” but since not much was said, it made little impact and most Catholic have forgotten or lost interest in its existence.
Indeed, defenders like Cardinal Cupich of Chicago are left with the eternal hope that one day, years down the line, people will realize it is important. Meanwhile, the hierarchy find itself increasingly out of alignment with their flocks, and the Pope continues to struggle to connect with a Church in Africa that is increasingly confident of its own rising power in shaping the agenda of the future—an agenda likely to be quite different from what Francis would have wanted or sought.
I think the answer to this situation need not be limited to where on the ideological divide we find ourselves. We Catholics who enjoy this state of misfortune for the institutional Church and a political party should take heed lest we fail to learn these lessons when we have our own moment in the sun. We should instead look upon this as a cautionary tale: evangelization cannot work without persuasion.
It is not enough—though it is true in a basic sense—to say that “The Church does not impose, she proposes.” That proposition must come in a way that its target understands, and we must be constantly introspective if we are persuading others. Otherwise, we are merely flattering our own delusions of grandeur.
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Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned (Mk 16:16). Those who hear the word of God must believe because the word is morally, and intelligibly definitive.
As such, it is coercive. We cannot justifiably reject pure good, pure love. And as such, “evangelization cannot work without persuasion” (Tierney). Nevertheless, we propose these truths to others rather than insisting on forcibly removing the right to freely decide. Persuasion then requires introspection and conscientious respect of another’s own conscientious need to make a free decision. Tierney discusses that fine line well.
Trump won due to inflation and illegal immigration. Biden botched these two issues and Harris paid for it. I doubt that this trans business had much effect.
I would suggest that the economy and immigration bolstered Trump’s core constituencies were as Kamala’s swing further to the left alienated voters that would have otherwise voted for her. These are not so much voters that Trump won over as much as voters that Kamala lost to vote against her (rather thsn a 3rd Party or sitting out the election.
Harris own PAC and independent analysis had those two ads as the most effective of the cycle. Among swing voters it was even more potent than immigration. Recent analysis of union members voting for Trump revealed “social issues ” as a major reason why. They were recognized as crucial to the losses of Brown and Moreno.
Failure has many fathers here, but 9 figures were spent on them. Its clear the campaign and their allies believed they were effective.
Perhaps we’re missing something here. Evangelism is totally dependent on the working of the Holy Spirit. We can’t persuade anyone on our own. Many fundamentalists learn formulas in order to “lead someone to Christ” . The idea is to get them “on their knees “ and repeat certain words in order to be “born again”. After this Is done you are saved forever and you can go on with life converting others. No- we don’t need to learn to be evangelists, we need to learn how to live for Christ. It is our life, not our words that bring people to the Lord. The words we use must be a product of a holy life. We must “walk the walk before we talk the talk”. Holiness and purity are contagious and attract. They are the lights shining in the darkness, the water that quenches thirst. Evangelism is not what we say, but what we are. I realize that many people “came to Christ” as a result of a crusade such as the great evangelist, Billy Graham, but it was not Billy that brought them to the Lord, it was the Holy Spirit, and Billy was the first to admit that. Jesus is the Word and God alone through the Holy Spirit brings people to Himself. We are only reflectors that he occasionally uses to beam his light to dispel the darkness.
The Holy Spirit is not self-authenticating. In the end, even things which are attractive and contagious still need connections to grow and cultivate them, because otherwise you just get “oh that’s attractive” and then you move on. There’s more than just being reflectors. Otherwise we’d all be interchangable parts, cogs in the machine. Which we aren’t.
We are human beings made in the image of God, each with certain characteristics and traits to use to further His Glory.
A discerning reflection, dear Brother Jaques. Thank you!
“Jesus is The Word and God alone through The Holy Spirit brings people to Himself.”
According to Gerhard Cardinal Muller, abrogation of that eternal truth is being propagated today, among the highest Catholic Church authorities; and even far worse:
They are reversing uncontestable, obvious Gospel truths so as to serve their socio-political agenda. Effectively, they are shamelessly marketing calculated sins against GOD’s Holy Spirit (The Spirit of Truth). Made frighteningly clear in the Cardinal’s ‘First Things’ article:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/11/the-seven-sins-against-the-holy-spirit-a-synodal-tragedy
‘Caveat emptor!’ – as true Catholics, let us be wise in what we buy into . . .
May GOD have mercy and give The Mind of Christ against error to every Catholic, both cleric & lay.
(Harris lost at the ballot because she bet on eclectic, rainbow-coalition politics with the accretion of transgenderism and unrestricted abortion.)
But, WHY is it, really, that “persuasion” doesn’t work anymore? Let’s take the gorilla-size case of post-Christian modernity versus pre-modern Islam. The West has abandoned a clear understanding of both a Self-disclosing God and the internal Natural Law. Whereas, Islam imposes a totally inscrutable Allah, while Muslims still sense an inborn orientation toward God. An orientation which, however, is vastly deformed when accessed through the lens of the package-deal Qur’an.
Deeper than unlikely persuasion, then, what does ST. PAUL mean when he writes of non-Christians: “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law” (Romans, 2:14)? AND, what does the Islamic HADITH mean: “There is not a child that he or she is born upon this fitrah, this original state of the knowledge of God. And his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Zoroastrian . . . and if they are Muslims, Muslim.”
Deformed as it is, the self-understanding of Islam is as the MEMORY or restoration of an original “religion” prior to history…The eclectic Qur’an borrows from the Pentateuch and the Gospels, and is believed to be the very essence of God outside of time—“the word made book” displacing the incarnate Christ within history: “the Word made flesh.” (The symmetrical comparison is this, and not superficially between the two scriptures.)
Instead of Christian coherence, then, between divinely revealed faith and viable human reason—which is the PRECONDITION for reasoned “persuasion”—we have inscrutable Allah and fideistic Islamic “abrogation” of past truth by equally arbitrary future truths. Early Islam of the Mecca period (internal jihad) exists alongside the paradigm-shift and contradictory Medina period of ongoing external jihad.
About more coherent “memory,” this from the sidelined POPE BENEDICT:
“…something like an original memory of the good and the true (they are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the image and likeness of God, toward the divine…This anamnesis of the origin [!], which results from the god-like constitution of our being, is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is …an inner sense [!], a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself [!], hears its echo from within [!]. The possibility for and right to mission rest on this anamnesis of the Creator, which is identical to the ground of our existence. The gospel…must be proclaimed to the pagans [and eclectic Muslims?], because they themselves are yearning for it in the hidden recesses of their souls” (“Conscience and Truth,” reprinted in “On Conscience: Two Essays by Joseph Ratzinger,” Ignatius, 2007).
SUMMARY: About dialogue and “persuasion,” this doesn’t work anymore because the prerequisite inner sense is suffocated by rationalizations—by either fideistic Islam or secularist Relativism; and (some say) even by eclectic and paradigm-shift Synodality?
Thanks Peter, that’s a great addition to the article!
The emphasis should be on the need to avoid further scandals. For instance, the Catholic school system here in the U.S. A. Is so expensive that the poor are left in the public schools. “A preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic schools, otherwise we do not practice what we preach.
The first purpose of a Catholic School should be the production of informed Catholics. If all they are is a superficial exercise in religiosity where the distinguishing attribute is a higher college acceptance rate or more economically prosperous graduates-they are failures that need to be shut down.
Both private and public schools are too expensive/costs.
The average health insurance premium for a family of four is about 24k yr. This is not sustainable for anyone.
“On the religious front, Inside the Vatican’s Robert Moynihan revealed in an interview that an Eastern Orthodox individual he knows was crucial in helping to persuade Pope Francis not to ban the Latin Mass.”
The author can’t imagine just what a disturbing revelation it is that ANYBODY has to convince Francis not to ban a Mass.
And oh goody, he’s not banning it outright and instead merely frustrating it.
Or I just decided to write it from a different perspective? You can go to One Peter Five, Crisis, or a thousand other places if you want the same beat recycled. I don’t disagree, its just if I’m gonna write, its going to be from a position that’s not already covered (and often covered better) by someone else.
We’re a big tent