REFLECTION
Francis: Just a
change of tone?
Martí
Colom
Quite
often the tone of a message says more than its actual content. Sometimes, in
fact, the tone is the message, almost
above its substance.
Therefore,
to focus our attention on the tone with which we communicate with one another
is never a superfluous exercise, and it does not mean that we are avoiding the
substantive issues. We must always pay attention to the tone, because using the
wrong one can ruin an exchange of information, just as hitting the right tone to
express an opinion can enable the articulation of the most difficult messages,
even messages that might generate opposition in their recipients.
In
fact, as receivers, we first capture
the tone, rather than the substance, of what we hear, and at the end of the communicative
exchange we remember the tone even
more than its substance, because it is the tone that has touched our
emotions, and has largely determined our reaction, either positive or
negative, acceptance or rejection.
The
emotions experienced while we hear or read a message tend to have a greater impact
on us than the purely intellectual stimulus caused by the ideas raised, and
usually stay with us longer. In the end, therefore, the content of what was
said can be diluted or even lost and forgotten between this reception of the
tone that occurs before the
assimilation of the message and the memory of the tone that lingers in our
memory after its reception.
Furthermore,
the tone is also fundamentally inseparable from the substance, and so we find
that there are tones that prevent certain ideas from being properly expressed.
A nervous tone will not serve to accompany a call to serenity, an aggressive
and haughty tone can hardly convey an empathic message, an anguished tone will be
useless in order to transmit hope, and an exhortation to peace cannot be
delivered in a resentful tone. Similarly, it will be very difficult to use a
jovial tone to convey a reproach or an antagonistic tone to effect
reconciliation, a disgruntled tone to convey joy or a comical tone to
talk about violence. There are tones that, quite simply, hinder the process of
transmitting what needs to be communicated.
The
tone we use will be especially important when attempting to share ideas and
considerations about faith and spirituality, because these are realities where the
subjectivity and the personal experience of the speaker have much relevance,
while at the same time are topics which touch an intimate dimension of those receiving
the message.
All
this may help us understand what is happening around Pope Francis. Some
critics, speaking from their desire to see significant reforms in the Church,
and perhaps out of frustration with what they perceive as the absence of such
reforms, censure the pope for changing only
the tone of the ecclesiastical discourse. What they mean is that they recognize
a novelty in Francis' style, and they admit that his speeches and writings have
lost the severe, moralizing, haughty and even arrogant accent that often
characterized the magisterium until recently. However, they believe that this does not change anything, because
they do not observe any transformation in the substance of what the Pope says.
It is the same lyrics with different music, some have said: the melody is now more
modern, but we have heard the words before.
These
critics forget that—as we mentioned earlier—a
change in tone is already a change of substance. It seems to us that
Francis knows quite well what he is doing: if gentleness, humility, and
simplicity become the new tone with which the Church expresses herself and
makes her voice heard in the world, it will be quite difficult to keep
communicating certain ideas, or at least they will have to be profoundly
rethought. His non-authoritarian tone—and his emphasis on the need to dialogue
with everyone—not only offers a new face of the Church, with a decisive emphasis
on mercy, understanding, and joy: his new tone actually calls into question a
more rigorous, “black and white”, narrow and inflexible interpretation of the
truths of our faith.
If
it is true that the tone is already part of the message, then the conclusion is
that Francis is indeed saying new things. Using a new tone, he opens the door
to new content, very aware, we dare to suggest, that the inevitable consequence
of his change of tone is the discovery of a new light that necessarily impacts
the living of the faith.
Obviously,
something else (perhaps the most relevant point of this brief reflection) needs
to be added: that using the style of tenderness and choosing the tone and the language
of mercy, Francis is simply recovering Jesus’ own tone. The “new” style of this
pope is nothing but a return to what is more typical of the Gospel; a return to
the voice that again and again encouraged people to stand up, to discover that their
own faith had saved them. It is the voice that told the woman, “Neither do I
condemn you” and the disciples, “I call you friends.” The “new” style of
Francis is simply a return to, as well as an open door into, the more authentic
core of the Christian message, something that maybe the magisterium had
forgotten for quite some time by fostering an abstract, grave, defensive and often
irritated tone to talk about the things of God.
