Hope and Truth-telling: A Response to Aristotle Papanikolaou

Abstract

This article is a revised version of the paper given at the Anthropology of Hope conference in Prague, May 2023, in response to Professor Aristotle Papanikolaou’s presentation on ‘Hope and Truth-telling’. The first part responds briefly to the affective nature of truth-telling which was presented, and queries the use of martyrial language. The second part looks at three sites on hope and truth-telling in the contemporary Catholic Church: (i) responding to the abuse crisis; (ii) ecumenical relationships, through the lens of ‘Receptive Ecumenism’; and, (iii) communal discernment, taking note of the current movement of synodality. A proposal is made to consider structures of (or structural) virtue as well as structural (or structures of) sin.