Is the Church ready to hear the truth?

Permit me to take Jesus’ immortal words, “Ask and you shall receive”, and place them in a different context: the questions that are asked and the answers received in market research.

I worked in this field for many years and we had two important rules: don’t ask a question if you are not ready to hear the answer; and, don’t ask for an answer if you are not willing or able to change anything.

Thus, a bank should not ask its customers what they think of the call centre if they then shelve the results because they are too embarrassing; the hotel should not ask guests about the position of the building since presumably they can’t shift it.

I started thinking about this when I came across a news item about the preparation of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family that the Holy Father has called for October next year. As is usual, Rome has sent out a list of questions to local bishops so that they can draw together the experience of the Church from around the world.

Presumably Pope Francis does not want people to write in and just say what they think Rome wants to hear.

Imagine if a report arrived from some country which said that Catholics completely understood and supported Church teaching on co-habitation, abortion, homosexuality and divorce; that most children lived in happy families with a mother and a father who are married to each other; that the only forms of contraception that Catholics used were natural methods; and that, if there were some rare exception to this model family, priests treated such people with great pastoral sensitivity while at all times adhering to the sacramental laws of exclusion?

How would the Vatican react? Presumably with some scepticism.

Instead I presume that most bishops will put a lot of effort into thinking about the questions and replying to them candidly. The Southern African bishops have even passed the questions on to their priests so as to canvas opinion more widely. If this is done well, a report will be sent that clearly and frankly reflects the reality of family life in this country.

The bishops of England and Wales have gone a step further. They have posted the survey on line (www.surveymonkey.com/s/FamilySynod2014) and asked priests

and people to reply.

If the questions sound a bit strange it is because they have not attempted to translate them from Vatican-speak into ordinary language. Nevertheless, it does not take long to realise that the bishops really are asking about the attitudes that ordinary Catholics have towards all of the usual highly sensitive topics. It will be fascinating to know what they will do with the results.

A few years ago, when the Church in Britain was campaigning against gay marriage, a market research company decided to see if the bishops’ strong views were shared by ordinary Catholics. The results did not help the bishops’ cause.

When I worked for the Catholic development agency CAFOD, I used MORI, one of the most respected polling companies in the world, to conduct a survey about Catholics in Britain. Nobody other than the bishops were shocked to learn that, compared to their fellow citizens, Catholics read the same intemperate newspapers; were just as likely to be divorced; and on average had the same (small) number of children.

Actually, the biggest shock was how few Catholics identified as Irish — only 4% — when at least 50% of the bishops would have known all the words to “Danny Boy”.

The usual response to this subject is that market research has no place in the life of the Church since the Church already knows the truth and is not swayed by public opinion. The cardinal in charge of the synod has said as much already. But even skipping the historic inaccuracies of such a view of Church doctrine, research still has a role to play in the communication of teaching, if not in its formulation.

Next year’s Synod of Bishops is interested in the evangelisation of the family, and the questions seem to appreciate that to do that more effectively the Church needs a sense of the reality of the families they are talking about and to, and an honest view of how effective previous attempts at communicating Church teaching have been.

That is a definite step forwards in terms of self-awareness and honesty, probably thanks to Pope Francis’ long pastoral experience among ordinary people.

In any case, not all areas of Church life are about truth. More often it is about how we do things and whether they achieve their goal — the sermon is not good just because the priest is validly ordained; the music is not appropriate because the pope likes it; the Church organisation is not spending money well just because it is a Church organisation; the new project is not going to be successful just because Sister or Father have lit a candle.

There are many areas of Church life where some consumer surveys could help us to be more impactful and less wasteful. Pope Francis’ Vatican is once again challenging us: Church people and Church organisations should not be so arrogant as to think that we can learn nothing from those on the receiving end of our teaching and preaching.

What would happen if we asked? And how we would we then act on the results?