Berkley Center

In the United States today, Robert Talisse shows, extreme political and cultural polarization undermines civility and corrupts relationships both between and within opposing partisan groups. The democratic ideal—“self-government among equals, amid persistent political disagreement,” and a corresponding ethic of citizenship, erode as partisanship saturates everyday life, and citizens are increasingly isolated in sharply-opposing, self-reinforcing life-worlds. Non- politicized spaces and encounters that reveal public life as “the enduring association of the different” are disappearing. The upshot: “loss of a common world,” and the erosion of people’s political power. 

Amidst divisions that “have undermined civility and the basic proposition that we can learn from a dialogue with those with whom we disagree,” Robert McElroy intimates a significant calling for U.S. Catholics: to become “synodal citizens” who subvert depolarization by practicing Francis’s synodal virtues of encounter, listening, and forthright speaking.

For Francis, the art of encounter—Jesus’ relationship style—entails meeting others with respect, attention, and compassion. “Encountering faces, meeting eyes,” personalizing others and their circumstances—encounter nurtures solidarity, and in turn, willingness to endure discomfort and risk for neighbors’ sakes.

Listening is the soul of authentic encounter. Jesus listens unhurriedly, attentively, “with his heart.” “People feel that they are being heard, not judged.” This frees them to speak their truth. Returning to McElroy, “Listening is the respect we owe to others in recognition of their equal dignity.”

Honest and forthright speech enables genuine exchanges of ideas and beliefs that can become the basis for building interpersonal and social solidarity. We have to talk with one another, Arendt insists, “in order to embrace fully the plurality of human existence. And in talking and judging we build the connections that reimagine the common world and give meaning to justice.”

Francis limns three additional qualities for aspiring synodal citizens to cultivate: 

Befriending Difference and Conflict. Synodal citizenship “calls for the ability to recognize other people’s right to be themselves and to be different.” It also requires tolerating “persistent disagreement,” for conflict is “an endemic aspect of human experience.” Journeying-together, then, requires facing and grappling with conflict with humility, and with “social love.”

Risking Surprise and Change. The “experience of encounter changes us; frequently, it opens up new and unexpected possibilities.” Entering into dialogue, “we allow ourselves to be challenged, to advance on a journey. And in the end, we are no longer the same; we are changed.”

Prizing Patient Process. Refusing to force short-term results, synodal citizens will take time to encounter others in their humanity and differences, to listen and speak, wrangle and reflect; creating space and building connections for reimagining a common world, and for birthing the power to enact it.