Sensus Fidelium…. Quid est?
- Sat 2nd May 2009, 9:46 pm
The whole confirmation fight and the question of communion for new Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius got me thinking about something that has at least in the United States been broadly ignored – the sensus fidelium. While it’s true that the bishops have a responsibility to govern, teach and preserve, they also have a responsibility to listen to the sensus fidelium, which is typically translated as “sense of the faithful”, because that’s a major area where the Holy Spirit speaks.
The problem is that the term sensus fidelium is much stronger than how we typically take it. In Latin, the term sensus is a participle, or verbal adjective, of the verb sentire. Sentire can mean not only to feel, but to have an opinion about something or someone and in the broader sense, public opinion. In this case the opinion to be had is about the governance of the church and what should happen or how a doctrine should be implemented. This has been sorely lacking in the American Church. For example, Secretary Sebelius as governor of Kansas and her bishop, Joseph Nauman each had the goal of reducing if not ending abortion, but they disagreed on methodology. The bishop wanted recriminalization of abortion whereas the governor preferred a more grass roots approach – one that would work better in the United States for cultural reasons.
In light of this kind of conflict, the question is what is the sensus fidelium and how is it determined? If it is indeed a form of public opinion, then how do we measure it? Bishops and the curia (from the Latin couira meaning gathering of men – usually old ones) probably are not going to be prone to paying attention to public opinion polls of the faithful and yet the way they do it by selecting their own people to form it is problematic as well. This is because it has led to the perception that the bishops and larger church are out of touch with what the spirit is saying in the modern world. Then again, when you’re trying to sense the public opinion of more than just the United States, it gets a lot more complicated. Sure we in the US may think its okay for Secretary Sebelius to receive communion, but others in other parts of the church may not – hence the tension. Even within the United States, measuring this is going to be an issue because of the different opinions out there all validly formed by faith informed by reason – the crux of Catholic moral theology. In spite of all of this, the question “sensus fidelium… quid est?” remains and is likely to remain for sometime, as pinning down the intentions of the Holy Spirit, expressed via this faithful public opinion is extremely hard to do.
