TOWARD A BRAINY CHURCH : Not top-down but back-and-forth.

Conservatives in the church buttress their theological arguments for a centralized authority at the top of a hierarchy by relying on current assumptions about rational organization. As you go higher in organized institutional ranks, more power is accorded to impose decisions that overrule lower ones. Information and conflicting opinions may travel up a hierarchy to the top, but decisions and orders come down through the appropriate channels of command. Armies, navies, courts, and corporations run tight, efficient ships, so why shouldn't the church be organized in the same way? (The going model used to include feudalism and the divine right of kings, but today the international corporation is crowned.) One body must have one head, a family requires a husband-father, a unified institution must be commanded by one authority at the top, if we are to avoid chaos, incoherence, or heresy.

Yet another model of rational decision making is emerging that challenges the assumption that dominance hierarchies are necessary for unity. While it may be true that even in the domains of language syntax, mathematical algorithms, and computer programs, rational hierarchies and decision rules operate, this does not seem to be the way the human brain is organized. The brain in its ability to achieve unified consciousness is undoubtedly the apex of human rationality. And, according to Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman, the brain is not a computer with a hierarchical computer program culminating in an executive processor. There is "no unique, computer-like central processor" with the ability to coordinate different areas (see Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination, Basic Books). No little man or (papal?) homunculus sits at the top of a hierarchy receiving all the incoming messages and executing unilateral decisions downward. Edelman maintains that a dynamic core of the brain produces our unique unitary human consciousness through the operation of a dynamic and massively parallel process of circuitry. An incredibly complex, amazingly fast back-and-forth communication process enters and reenters between the parts of the system to achieve unity.

Edelman offers the explanatory analogy of a string quartet "in which each player responds by improvisation to ideas and cues of his or her own, as well as to all kinds of sensory cues in the environment." But since each player is connected by myriad fine threads or pathways of communication to all the other players, their actions and movements are conveyed back and forth from one to the other with lightning rapidity. These interacting signals influence and mutually regulate the players' actions. This constant circular mutual communication leads to a correlation of the players' notes so that coherent and integrated music emerges. No conductor, no boss, no hierarchical algorithms of instruction exist, but the mutual inter-communication of independent parts produces integrated harmony and unity, richer than each unit acting alone could ever produce.

Does this image of unity arising from equality and rich diversity sound familiar? Saint Paul used the human body as an analogy for the unity of the church. He describes the way the body's organs, such as hands and feet, act together; but for Paul there were still lower and higher organs. If we were to use an analogy drawn from the brain we could claim that it is possible for truly independent and equal entities to operate in their own unique ways, but through mutual communication to achieve a coherent unity without dominance. Individual unique Christian units, be they persons or churches, keep their independence, but through dynamic intercommunion and mutual influence, spontaneously interact to achieve unity. Coherence in the kingdom need not be dependent upon ascending hierarchies, exercising ever more executive control and exacting ever more subordination. A more vital way to achieve unity would consist of constant communication and mutual receptivity of all to all in the system. (As they say in information-processing talk, a system finally relaxes into equilibrium.) A theology of the church, and visions of Christian unity based upon the Trinitarian nature of Father, Son, and the all-pervasive power of the Holy Spirit, could be buttressed by pointing to the way rational human consciousness emerges and functions.

The brain, of course, depends upon nearly instantaneous dynamic back-and-forth communication of information. What would it take for the churches to match such speedy communication between independent units? In the past it took months, if not years, for a papal legate to travel over the Alps to deliver authoritative Roman decisions. Now, I understand, the newest oath of fidelity demanded by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith can come by fax. The jet plane also makes it possible to summon dissident bishops and theologians to Rome for reprimands. Such unilateral exercises of central authority are neither fast enough nor mutually open enough to follow the brain's pattern of dynamic back-and-forth communication. To get the quartet to make beautiful music in harmony, signals have to flow freely within the system. For church unity to equal humankind's unifying consciousness, we need signals that communicate without impediments and obstacles. Jesus told his disciples that authority in his kingdom would not be exercised in the domineering way that power was exercised in the world. Just because armies, empires, chimpanzee troops, and computers operate through top-down hierarchies of control, the church need not. Old wineskins are hard pressed to hold new wine.