Faith Does Not Live by Answers Alone
Last week, the Rev. Raymond de Souza, the Catholic priest and conservative commentator, argued in a Wall Street Journal column titled “Do Catholics Need Questions? No, Answers” that the church is devoting too much time and energy to asking questions. The solution to the issues facing the modern church, he said, is to treat spiritual matters with certainty.
“Questions deserve answers. The Gospel provides them. The church is to preach them,” de Souza wrote.
The occasion for de Souza’s column was a gathering in Rome last month where nearly 500 cardinals, bishops, priests, nuns and Catholic laypeople, at the behest of Pope Francis, wrestled with a spate of controversial theological questions: Should priests be allowed to marry? Should women be allowed to become deacons? And what should we do with all of these LGBTQ Catholics who keep stubbornly populating the pews?
The conversations were the heart of the Synod on Synodality, a three-year process of theological discussion that began with a survey of people in churches and dioceses in 2021 and will conclude with another gathering in Rome next fall.
Many voices in the church have welcomed the chance to address such consequential questions and applaud the slow, intentional process of communal discernment. Conservative Catholics, on the other hand, see the synod as further proof that, in de Souza’s words, “confidence and clarity have dissipated in Rome in recent years,” and say the church should be in the business of providing answers rather than asking questions.
As Cardinal Timothy Dolan told de Souza, “No man will give his life for a question mark; he will for an exclamation point.”
As a Protestant, I have no stake in this family feud. But like my Roman Catholic cousins, I’m concerned by the notion that theological questions are to be avoided, much less feared. The Christian tradition has historically held that questions are holy, curiosity is sacred, discernment is wisdom and doubting a necessary component, without which faith itself is impossible.