More Thoughts on Pope Francis and A Bridge Too Far

Empty Pews: the Challenge 

of a Post-Christian world 

I mentioned in my last posting that the failure of the Church to introduce and insist on a single theological model, the neo-Patristic model that underlies the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council, has led to the development of a Church within the Church, each Body having a distinct and unique—though not contradictory—understanding of our Catholic identity and heritage as it is found in the doctrines and praxis of the faith.  While the vast majority of the Church has accepted—though very often passively—the neo-Patristic model, there is a significant number of Catholics who, rooted in the neo-Scholastic model that predominated in Catholic seminaries in the four centuries before Vatican II—and in the century immediately before the Council was given an official status—are distrustful of the orthodoxy of those Catholics who do accept the Conciliar vision of the Church.  The two models provide some very different—though not incompatible—understandings of the key mysteria of our faith including the nature and mission of the Church, the nature of the Mass, the Sacramental nature of the Holy Eucharist, the nature of the priesthood, the nature of Divine Revelation, and other key dogmatic questions.

A reader brought up a very interesting factor that complicates the tension significantly and to which I need to give serious consideration.  According to this reader the Council attempted to consolidate its theological positions and move beyond the modernist crisis that had challenged it in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  You may recall that I had written that Leo XIII endorsed the Neo-Scholastic philosophical and theological systems because they seemed at the time to provide the best answers to the challenges of “modernism.”  Modernist thinkers took a rational and scientific critique of religious doctrines and even of the Bible itself, often looking at the Biblical texts and the historic dogmas of the Christian faith in the context of their historical development and not considering any supernatural influence of “Revelation.”   This method was responsible for the emergence of liberal Protestantism which Catholics usually looked on as vulnerable to a certain theological softness on the key issues of our faith.  In fact it was the proponents of the Nouvelle Theologie who believed and demonstrated that a return to the Biblical and Patristic fundamentals, rooted in a rigorous scholarly and historical analysis, provided the best defense against modernism.  Neo-Scholastic thought proved to be too much an intellectual closed circuit to answer credibly the modernist objections to historic Christianity and it was for this reason that the Church began under Pius XII to move away from Neo-Scholasticism and embrace the theological insights of the Patristic and Biblical Scholars.  By the time the bishops gathered under John XXIII for the Second Vatican Council, the Neo-Scholastic faction would lose out to the Neo-Patristic figures such as Congar, Daniélou, von Balthasar, de Lubac and others. (It should be noted that the young Josef Ratzinger was a junior member of this set.)  Let me say at this time that there were brilliant Neo-Scholastics, or more precisely neo-Thomists, who had influence at the Council especially Étienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain and the Council was not a rout of the Neo-Scholastics but rather a retreat from Neo-Scholasticism into a more historical use of the Ancient Christian Fathers to reshape the doctrines of the faith in a way consistent with the Church before the Schism of 1054 which divided Eastern and Western Christianity. The Eastern half of the Church had always retained the Fathers as the basis of theological discussion and this conciliar turn of methodologies opened up the common language for dialogue. 

But to the point that my Anonymous reader made, the battles that empowered the Church to move beyond the modernist crisis were too little and too late.  Modernism is long past and we are confronted with the Postmodern.  I look around in Church on Sunday morning, and the millenials are conspicuous by their absence.  Five hundred people at Mass and probably less than a dozen between the ages of 20 and 30.  Yeah, yeah, I know—previous generations were light on Mass attendance at this age but came back when they had kids.  But this has a different feel to it.  The parish I go to: a thousand families.  One wedding on the books for 2015.  35 baptisms in 2014 as opposed to 64 funerals.  This is not an aging community; the public schools are filled to overflowing and the names are Italian and Irish and Polish.  Where are they???  And speaking of Irish and Polish and Italian: I read the Death Notices in the local paper religiously.  Why is there a “celebration of her life” for Deirdre O’Connell at the Harp and Bard and not as Mass at Saint Mary’s?  And the corresponding question goes too for Rafaela Esposito  and Stan Mikulski.   Hey, these folks were Mass goers.  Their spouses who pre-deceased them had a Church funeral.  But their kids—they are in this new generation that is suspicious of organized religion or, at least, indifferent to it.  So indifferent to it that they can’t even face a funeral Mass for a parent who was a practicing Catholic.  What is the problem that we need to address?

When Pope John Paul died I was living in Rome and was hired by several news outlets as a technical advisor, and in some cases as a commentator.  Four million people came to Rome for the funeral. 85% of them were under 35.  I went up and down the Via della Conciliazione with a microphone and a cameraman. “Why did you come to Rome?”  Person after Person: “he was my Pope.”  “I loved him.”  “He made me proud to be a Catholic.”  “Looking at him was like seeing God.”  Ok.  “Do you agree with him about birth control?”  “No, of course not.”    “Do you agree with him about homosexuality?” “No, of course not.”  “Do you agree with him about sex outside of marriage?”  “He said something about sex outside of marriage?”  .  “Do you agree with him about in vitro fertilization?” “No.”   “Do you agree that women cannot be priests?” “Of course not.”

The only area where there was large agreement—though not total consensus, was abortion.  To be very frank, I think if most Catholics, at least Catholics in the developed world, understood Francis’ entire outlook, he would not be nearly as popular as he is.  Like it or not, we live in an age in which people are not interested in theological points and in which they want to make their own decisions based on their own—and I dread to say it—feelings.  We are in a time of great subjectivity where people make all sorts of decisions with a minimum amount of research or thinking things through.  And in this world, despite the charm and popularity of a Pope Francis, people are not going to find the experience of Church, of regular worship in a normal parish community, in any way significant. 

I need more input and I need more reflection before I can say much more about this situation but I think my reader is dead right on to something.  I like the Neo-Patristic approach to Church that is written in the Decrees of Vatican II, but then I am of considerable years and see the world differently than most of the people among whom I live and work.  This much though I think I do know.  Pope Francis has not changed much in terms of rules or doctrines but that is not the interest of the 20 and 30 somethings.  He has made some remarkable progress in changing the perception of the Church from a rigid and doctrinaire institution to a bunch of people who are open, inquisitive, and respectful of differences. That may not be the long-term answer, and it is not bringing people back into the pews, but in the short term it is staunching the growing alienation many people had been feeling from the Church of their youth.  I don’t  know that Pope Francis can turn things around, but the course we were on was only headed for greater disasters. 

The Neo-Scholastic Church is predicated on the predominance of a Christian culture to which there is a universal, or all but universal, consensus.  It has a certain number of unchallenged first principles which must be accepted if it is to serve as the foundation for the theological constructs of a Christian world.  There was a predominant Christian culture at the time of Saint Thomas.  Though its unity was shaken by the Reformations of the 16^th century there was still a Christian culture that defined Western Civilization until the Enlightenment.  In fact, this Christian culture remained—or at least its illusion remained—right up through Dwight Eisenhower and Leave It To Beaver.  In the last fifty years we have seen our Christian society become a post-Christian society.  In this post-modern age in which we live there are a plethora of answers to every question; an excess of values for every decision.  Somehow Christendom vanished.  We are back at step one.  The challenge is a New Evangelization.  I think our Catholic heritage, both in its Neo-Scholastic and Neo-Patristic expressions, has much to contribute to the discussions of today’s world.  I think that the Christian Gospel has the Truth and has it more completely than any other system of belief including the non-belief of atheism. But like Paul on the Areopagus, we will have to argue the Message convincingly to our contemporary world.  And we will have to do it in contemporary language and with contemporary argument.  

Monkeys in Space and Empty Pews in Church

I went on a road trip today (Sunday) and as I set out from my home to the highway, I drove past five, six, seven churches—United Methodist, Eastern Orthodox, Reformed, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian.  Nine o’clock Sunday morning and there was not one car in any parking lot.  I am sure that by 10 30 or 11 it was a different story but there is no doubt that Church attendance is on the decline.  It would not have been that way twenty years ago.  In our parish, one of the priests said that there are two less masses and about a thousand people a Sunday less than when he was stationed here thirty-five years ago. Sure, demographics play a part. Families are smaller.  The ethnic pool is more varied with more Asians and others from non-Christian cultures.  In fact, we see the occasional mosque opening—something that we didn’t see thirty years ago.  And yes, south of the Mason-Dixon there are new parishes opening up with large churches to hold an expanding Catholic population of transplanted North-easterners and Mid-westerners.  But when the dust settles there are still fewer and fewer people attending Church now than a generation ago.

And as my observations of late-opening parking lots this past Sunday would indicate, this is not just a Catholic problem.  While Bible Churches and fundamentalist groups are growing, the liberal denominations are shrinking.  The Episcopal Church, despite an influx of converts from Catholicism and other denominations, has shrunk from 4 million members a generation ago to 2.5 million today.  What is the problem?  Is it, as some allege, the vapidity of liberal Christianity?  Or is it something else?

Neo-trad Catholics have blamed the decline in Mass attendance on the Second Vatican Council and the move away from the old Latin liturgy, but the even more severed falloff  of mainline Protestant Churches belies any attempt to pin the problem to anything within Catholicism itself.  And the Catholic Church has not drunk the “liberal Kool-Aide” of same-sex marriage, ordination of women, abortion rights, and other causes that have caused dissention and defection among the liberal denominations.   If anything, we have lost more members because of our intransience than of any alleged accommodation to the liberal agenda.

Of course not all those who have stopped going to mass regularly have stopped going to Church. While many Catholics have often found new homes in Episcopalian or Lutheran Churches because of  issues of divorce and remarriage or for reasons of acceptance of same-sex marriage and families,  most ex-Catholics who still go to Church have joined Bible Churches or Pentecostal Congregations on the other end of the social spectrum.  Of course, even more former Mass-goers seem just to prefer having Sunday mornings to themselves to read the paper, do brunch, play golf, or just sleep in.

In all the arguing about the reasons for the fall off in church I think we are failing to acknowledge that our cosmology has taken a serious hit.  Those of us on the shady side of Medicare (how I never dreamed that day would come), still remember a heaven above and a hell below.  God dwelt in that heaven.  The Devil lived in that subterranean hell.  One died and one went up to heaven or down to hell.  It was not quite clear where purgatory was, but as it was only a temporary arrangement we could live with the ambiguity.    Today, of course, without much thought such a tiered universe has completely disappeared from the human immagination.  Long before Sputnik or Alan Shepherd and Freedom-7, we knew the vast infinity of space but it was only when people started to pierce it that the boundless vacuum of the universe began to sink into our consciousness.  And when it did, it left God homeless.   It seems embarrassingly naïve to us now to admit that we bought into the picture of Trito-Isaiah who has God declare: “The Heavens are my throne; the earth is my footstool.”   And indeed we may not have put it quite that way, but we did have a place for God and we don’t anymore.  Five hundred years ago, a helio-centric cosmos threatened Christian orthodoxy but now the situation is far more disturbing.  It was bad enough that Copernicus told us that we were not the center of being, but that we were a planet orbiting the sun; now our earth has been reduced to a mere neutron orbiting an atomic nucleus—one of trillions and trillions in a measureless universe.  Such immensity makes us totally irrelevant to a Deity that could not possibly—in our imagination at least—be any more aware of us than we are aware of whatever subatomic particles comprise that neutron that orbits the atom that is one of the trillions that make up the “h” key on our keyboard. 

On the other hand, there are those for whom God, dispossessed of his home in the heavens, has taken up residence in the human soul.  I am not sure what word to use.  I have chosen soul, but I could equally have chosen psyche or even heart.   I would prefer heart, in fact, but don’t want to confuse that to which I am referring as merely the emotions.  I mean that center of consciousness which has access to the emotions, but also consists of the intellect and of the will.  So let’s say soul.  I am not quite sure exactly what the human soul is.  It is a metaphysical category rather than a subject of the physical sciences, and so I mean it simply as our self-conscious being. 

The idea of God dwelling in the soul (or heart, or psyche) is not anything new.  Long before the space program began shooting monkeys and then humans into space, people like Augustine of Hippo and Teresa of Avila wrote of the human heart (or soul) as God’s dwelling place.  You find it in the psalms.  You find it in the Christian scriptures.  Among my favorite spiritual writers, an early twentieth-century French nun, Elizabeth of the Trinity, wrote eloquently of heaven being within the human heart.  She builds her theology on Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle.

The Mass, as it was celebrated before the Second Vatican Council, reflected the cosmology of a God in Heaven above.  The theology, built on the scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages—Saints Anselm and Thomas Aquinas in particular—saw a priest, who was a sacramental representation of Christ the High Priest, offering the propitiatory sacrifice of the Cross to God the Father above on behalf of the People gathered below.  An anthropologist could explain how the ritual of the Mass reflected this cosmology and theology.  The people knelt silently—hopefully attentively—beyond the railings that marked the sacred space that only the priest and his assistants (all males) could enter, ascending anywhere from three to ten stairs to do so.  At the top of the stairs, the priest standing (others kneeling) and with the faithful gathered behind him, approached the earthly altar which was a sort of “stargate” that opened into a world beyond and there made a sacrifice of Christ mystically (i.e. sacramentally) re-presented (that is, made present again) in his Body and Blood by bread and wine.  It was a making-present-once-again of the one Sacrifice of Calvary and it was done with the aim of winning forgiveness of our sins.  It really is a lovely conception and when carried out with full ceremony (which was quite rare) is an exquisitely beautiful ritual.  But it sacramentally represents a cosmology that has disappeared.  This tiered universe with God looking down from the clouds above has gone the way of Zeus on Mount Olympus or Woden in Valhalla. 

Now to be fair, the old liturgy could also be a contemplative experience.  The operative word here is “could.”  For most it was a quasi-magical ritual.  The right person (the priest) had to say the right words (the prescribed text) in the right way (in Latin)with the right gestures (the rubrics).  If anything was off, the ritual was “invalid.”  Similarly many of the laity had their self-imposed prescribed prayers and rituals.  They said the rosary or worked their way through a stack of novena booklets preparing themselves for Holy Communion.  There was a huge disconnect between what happened at the altar and what the average person in the pews was doing until the moment of intersection when the person approached the communion rail and received the Holy Communion that had been offered on the altar.  Then the individual went back to his prayers and the priest to his ritual.  But for some, the quiet and the aesthetics of the church building, or if the full ritual was used,  the choir and a full set of sacred ministers, could still their souls into an interior quiet of genuine contemplative prayer.  But even this was a bit complicated as some confused an appreciation of the aesthetics of the Liturgy with supernatural prayer.  The aesthetics could, and often did, emotionally sweep a person into a sort of sweetness that was easily confused for some allegedly spiritual grace.     

One of my favorite operas is Puccini’s Tosca, probably because I lived for a good number of years in the area bordered by Sant’Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese, and the Castel Sant’Angelo: the sites of Acts I, II, and III of the work.  And Act I concludes with a magnificent scene of a religious procession with the Blessed Sacrament carried in a monstrance by a richly vested prelate and assisted by equally gorgeously garbed clergy beneath a tall canopy carried on poles by lace bedecked acolytes.  There are multiple thuribles sending clouds of incense into the air as the stage is filled with scores of singers chanting a melody reminiscent of the Pange Lingua.  It’s wonderful. It’s mystical.  It carries you away.  And the host in the monstrance is, of course, a dud, probably a cardboard cutout.  Supernatural grace and aesthetic appreciation can find themselves in a shared experience, but feelings of religious transport are no sure sign of grace.  The only sure sign of grace is an increase in charity.  I wish I could say that I find that increase in all those who prefer the old rituals.  I wish I could say that I find it in all those who prefer the new liturgy. 

The problem with the new rites is that they side-step the challenge of a collapsed cosmology and never address the issue of where to find God.  Just as the pre-conciliar rites are built on a medieval scholastic idea of the priest offering a propitiatory sacrifice for the forgiveness of the sins of the people, the novus ordo is based on the patristic understanding of Christ, in his Body the Church, announcing the Evangelion of the Kingdom of God and proclaiming the Death and Resurrection of the Lord until he comes again.  The focus is not on the priest alone but on the assembly which is Christ present in his Body the Church. The various members of the assembly have, as members of Christ’s Body, their diverse ministries.  The priest sacramentally represents Christ, the Head of the Body, in the dual ministries of Announcing the Word and Breaking the Bread.  By Breaking the Bread I mean, of course, not simply the distribution of the Eucharist but the entire Eucharistic Action of offering the Great Thanksgiving in which re-present the One Eternal Sacrifice of Christ.  But the emphasis is Christ and Christ in his Body, the Church.  Where is God (the Father) in all this?  That is never really cleared up—at least not in the ritual itself.  And it is hard to make this liturgy a contemplative experience.  In the first place, I am not sure that the Mass is meant to be a contemplative experience, but at least as it is structured now, we are all rather busy being Christ to one another.   There are readings to be read and responsories to be sung and processions to be processed and all within 60 minutes.  I have seen the liturgy prayed, really prayed, but almost exclusively in monastic settings and not always there.  Cistercians tend to do it well, but then they don’t seem to have much else to do.  I envy them for that.  But in the average parish, the Mass tends to be just one thing after another.  Entrance rite.  Penitential Rite. Gloria. Opening Prayer. First reading. And so on.  Maybe we sprinkle a little silence here and there, but it often becomes just as mechanical as the old ritual but without the magic.  Without the bad magic, but also without the good. 

I don’t think the answer is a reform of the ritual.  This isn’t that the ritual doesn’t need some reform, but that all the liturgical tinkering in the world isn’t going to solve the problem.  The problem is where is God?  Ok, we got Jesus in his Word, in his Sacramental Body and Blood, and in his Body the Church.  That is good.  But Jesus is meant to bring us to the Father. 

We Catholics have a very rich tradition of spirituality and it is for the most part untapped.  O we do the piety thing but I am not speaking of piety, but of spirituality.  We have to recover our spiritual heritage and start making it accessible to our people.  Richard Rohr writes

….  Much of the Western world has given up on the church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home. [i]

Our Catholic faith has long known that God dwells in the human heart.  I think for worship to make sense to people, we need to recover that awareness and provide the introduction to the spiritual life that allows the liturgy to be that “stargate” that opens us to a Mystery that is already at the center of our own souls. 

---

[i] Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 26

More on the Church's Need for a New Reformation

A Buddhist monk and a Catholic

Religious Sister stand together in

St. Peter's Square during the

Beatification of Mother Teresa

Another indication of an urgent need for Reform in the Church is the critical hemorrhaging of members.  The rapidly changing demographics as vast numbers of Americans move from the North East and Midwest to the South and South West as well as the huge influx of Catholic Immigrants from Latin America and the Pacific Rim has created a sort of shell-game that give the impression in some parts of the country that Church population is somewhat stable.  And indeed, because of the immigration the numbers are holding, unlike for Mainline Protestant Churches.  Even in the North East and Midwest, there is room for self-deception as complacent officials attribute the empty churches to the suburbanization of the Catholic Population and the decrease in family size from the post-war years where Catholic parents often had six or more children.  And, again, there is some truth to this.  But I am a great reader of death notices and when I find a McLaughlin or a Catanzarro or a Kowalski being buried from “Pine Ridge Bible Church” or having their “Celebration of Life” at McGinty’s Tavern and Bowling Alley –and I am finding a lot of these obituaries today—I realize that something has changed.   Several weeks back I did a series of entries on why people come (or don’t come) to Mass.  When people meet a priest at a social event they no longer feel any embarrassment or discomfiture at the subject of no longer being Catholic.  When I was growing up, admittedly in the Pre-Vatican II years, you heard “once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”  And that was true. It was impossible to ever truly leave the Church.  O you might go somewhere else, especially if there was a divorce and remarriage issue, but you always trailed your Catholicism with you.  No longer.  I once marveled at how Protestants could be Congregationalists until they moved to a town where the Methodists church was closer and they became Methodists.  “Abide with Me” lent itself to playing musical chairs much better than “Panis Angelicus,” but no longer.  Today you find Catholics sliding comfortably into a wide variety of other churches, other religions, and no religion at all. 
    Several years ago I met a fellow on a retreat.  He had been in his younger years, long ago, a member of the Society of Jesus—a Jesuit—though he left before ordination, married, and raised a family.  He and his wife are devout and faithful Catholics.  During the Cold War he served as United States Ambassador to one of the Soviet Satellite States of Eastern Europe where his wife and he were driven each Sunday  in the Ambassador’s car, flags flying, to Mass at the Cathedral in public witness of his personal faith and the American commitment to Freedom of Religion.  He regularly called on the capital’s Archbishop or sent the Archbishop gifts of food, firewood, and other necessities the regime made it difficult for the prelate to obtain as a sign to the government that nothing untoward should happen to the Archbishop or it would be noticed by the American Embassy.  The evening I was a guest at their home, we were joined by their daughter, a Buddhist nun.  This woman, raised a Catholic in the most devout of homes, is no flake.  To the contrary.  Not only is she a known and reputable Buddhist Scholar, but a practicing and well respected physician who, among other clients, is the physician for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in her city.  I have since arranged for her to speak on a number of panels with Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic scholars on the subjects of spirituality and peacemaking.   I have never discussed with her the subject of why she found her spiritual home in Buddhism, but I am reminded of Richard Rohr’s quote: Much of the Western world has given up on the Church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home.  (Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 26)  By no means do I want to compare Buddhism to empty husks--to the contrary--I am well read in Buddhism and appreciate its great wisdom and depth, for the most part quite compatible with our Christian faith and practice.  But the lack of appreciation among Catholics for our own profound mystical tradition and practice has left a hunger for many that drives them to look elsewhere for what is at home in locked cupboards.       I deeply appreciate Pope Benedict’s call to a New Evangelism, but it is in vain until we, as a Church, have a deep and soul-searching inner Reformation, individually and collectively.  After all, how can those who have not yet believed the Gospel be its heralds? 

History in the Making: Mass attendance--The Reasons Why People Come to Mass (or don't)

Sunday Mass in a vibrant Catholic Parish

The final point I want to make about the reasons for people attending Mass—or drifting away from mass—depends in great part on the personality of the clergy.  We may argue that it should not make a difference, we come to Church to worship God not because of Father So-and-so.  But the single most common reason that Catholics will give as to why they no longer attend church depends on their interaction with a particular priest.   Some priest at some time said something cruel, or failed to be present at a key pastoral moment, or did something offputting in the liturgy or in some other way gave scandal or offense. 
     I have used the parish where I regularly attend mass as an example of an active and vibrant congregation.  Approximately three thousand people attend one of eight weekend liturgies, some coming from as far away as fifty miles, because they find something in this particular parish.  I have already mentioned the sense of community, the quality of the liturgy and the preaching, the sense of mission, but a significant number of people feel drawn by the priests here in the parish.  There are two priests assigned to the parish—the pastor and the parochial vicar.  The Parochial Vicar is a native Spanish speaker, his English is weak, and most of his work is with the Hispanic community in the Parish.  We recently, within the last two months, have had a change of pastors and are just coming to know our new pastor.  He is not a total stranger: far from it.  His family lives in the parish and he himself has “filled in” various weekends over the years when we needed some auxiliary help.  There is a third priest who lives in the rectory while pursuing a graduate degree and who helps out.  And there are two religious order priests who help out as needed. 
      We have been fortunate in the personalities of each of these priests.  Each one is a very unique person with different gifts and talents but they have certain common denominators.  First they are all good preachers—not necessarily great preachers, but good preachers.  One of them is quite outspoken but handles disagreement well—he always says  “I don’t want you to agree with me; I just want you to think!”  Each of them brings his spirituality to bear in his homilies and they all, each in his own way, is candid about his own faults and failings.  None of them talk down to us.  We find something worth grasping and taking home in their homilies.  Secondly, they are all reverent in their celebration—again each in a somewhat different style.  Some are a bit more formal than others; others perhaps warmer in their style.  But they are all prayerful.
       And they are friendly.  They have time for parishioners.  They stand outside church after mass to greet people.  If someone wants to talk—or needs to talk—they make themselves available.  If there is a social they come—and the religious priests don’t live on campus and have to come some distance—but they are generous with their time.  Most parishioners call the various priests “Father” but they each seem comfortable when they are addressed by their given name.  One of the religious priests is quite humorous and makes everyone laugh whether in a one-to-one conversation or when speaking with a group.  They all bring a sense of joy in their priesthood and are an advertisement for vocations. 
      Too often I hear about other situations where priests are very remote from their parishioners and are not available to them except in sacramental roles.   The priest pontificates both at the altar—mistaking pomp for reverence—and in the pulpit, declaiming about things of which he knows little or nothing.  Many priests presume to tell their parishioners how to think or for whom to vote as if we were incapable of making good moral decisions on our own.  Few priests seem to know much about the life of the laity.  They speak in ideals as if  they had a congregation of Ozzie and Harrietts (that dates me) or the Cleavers.  Some speak about complex medical or psychological issues as if all wisdom lie digested in their bellies. 
       One of the real weaknesses today in the Church is the effeminacy of so many of the clergy.  Some priests argue that men are put off by the presence of so many women in the sanctuary as lectors, Eucharistic ministers, servers, etc.  I don’t think so.   But many men are made uncomfortable by the effeminate vesture and mannerisms of the priest saying mass.  This is not to say that vestments are somewhat “drag” but lace and pompoms and fussiness don’t lend themselves to the Sunday afternoon beer and football crowd.  Priests should be simply and with dignity vested, but avoid the self-aggrandizement of  decking themselves out conspicuously ornate robes.  Similarly they should walk like a man and not mince around the altar like a ballerina with a weak ankle.  There was a guide-book some years ago to teach priests good manners and handsome mannerisms at the altar and it was entitled Strong, Loving, and Wise.  These many years later that is still what we are looking for in our priests. 

History in the Making: More Reasons Why Catholics Do (or Don't) Attend Mass

Mass is the center of a Catholic Community
but its Mission is what gives it authenticity

The next point to bring up in people attending mass regularly is that a sense of mission binds them to a particular worshipping community.  When I asked people in the parish where I attend mass why they come to mass they told me that the primary reason is that they experience a sense of community with this particular parish, but as the conversations unfolded I realized that it is not only a sense of belonging or an emotional sense of being “home” or “among family,” but that they are anchored into this parish because of their involvement in the parish’s sense of mission.  This particular community has over one hundred ministries ranging from providing luncheons after funerals to preparing parents of children who are to be baptized; from developing senior citizen housing and day care to signing for the hearing impaired during mass.  There are teams for adult education, bible study, faith formation as well as for caring for the vestments, organizing Religious Education, and serving pancake breakfasts between the masses once a month. There is a foodbank for those who need help feeding their families.  There is choir, altar servers, ministers of hospitality, wedding coordinators, the bereavement team, and countless other ways to be involved.  There is Little Rock Bible Study, Lay Spirituality groups, Just Faith, Cursillo and other groups.  Every year the parish has a huge festival with ethnic foods, music, entertainment, amusements for the children, garden shop, white elephant, and other activities.  The festival recruits hundreds of parishioners for all the organization, and revenues all go to parish outreach programs. In addition the parish tithes its income for various outreach programs in the area.   All this goes to build an incredible sense of community and that draws parishioners to Mass because they feel invested in the parish and its mission.  Frankly, I have been to places with better liturgy and better preaching, but I have not seen places with  a stronger sense of community-in-mission.  As a result the parish draws people from 72 different zip codes, some people driving over fifty miles on Sunday to come to Mass. 

This sense of Mission in this parish is something that was developed and is still maintained by the laity.  The pastor is free for celebrating Mass, preparing his homilies, hearing confessions, and being available for the pastoral needs of his parishioners because he trusts the laity to take responsibility for the mission of the parish.  While there is only the pastor and the parochial vicar for the Hispanic Community and no other priests, the parish staff includes over a dozen full-time lay ministers for youth, religious education, social concerns, liturgy/music, adult faith formation, etc.  In addition there is a full time administrator who looks after the finances and maintenance issues.  In many ways it is an ideal ecclesial community and a healthy parish draws healthy parishioners.   Granted its emphasis on social concerns and the “Social Gospel” has caused some people to go to more “traditional” parishes, those who choose this particular church make a choice and that  choice is precisely what gives people a sense of investment and belonging that draws them to fuller participation.  This is not an easy place to “just go to Mass;” go to Mass and you will want to become more and more invested in the community.  

My experience is that this is the sort of parish that was envisioned in the Reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  It is an active community whose mission finds its purpose in the Word of God and its strength in the Eucharist and whose Eucharistic Celebrations not only empower its members for service but are themselves enriched by the experience of the parishioners sharing in the mission of Jesus.  While many of the other parishes around have sufficient Masses for their needs, as well as Holy Hours, Benediction, Rosaries, and Novenas they lack the spiritual vitality of this parish because they limit the expression of their faith to devotional practices (and have reduced the Mass to the level of a “super-devotion”) instead of providing the opportunity for their members to lead lives of discipleship.  My only fear is that as the Second Vatican Council is stripped from the memory of today’s Catholics and replaced by a reconstruction of the preconciliar American Immigrant Catholicism the Catholic Church in our country will lose not only its energy but what credibility it still has as a harbinger of the Gospel.   

History in the Making: Why Mass Attendance is Falling 3

Sunday Mass at a Mission Station in Kenya
An Appreciation of the Preached Word

Well, we have looked at two reasons that draw people to Mass—a sense of community and well prepared liturgies.  Today let’s look at a third reason why people come to Mass—or, more likely, one of the key reasons why those who have stopped attending Mass regularly, have stopped.  And that is good preaching or the lack thereof. 

I mentioned in the previous two entries that I have spoken to countless parishioners at the parish where I most regularly worship.  (Given the frequency of my travel, I can’t say that I am there for Mass every Sunday.)  This parish draws people, between thirty-five hundred and four thousand, from a wide radius—some from over forty miles away—to one or another of its eight Sunday Masses, while many other parishes in our metropolitan areas have only three or four masses a weekend, and none of them full.  The most common reply I received in asking people why they attend Mass is that they find a sense of community in this particular parish.  The second most common reply was that they find the liturgies spiritually enriching.  The third reason—the one we will look at today—is that they find the homilies deepen their faith. 

There are four priests regularly associated with the parish—the pastor, a Spanish speaking associate who ministers almost exclusively to the Hispanic Community, and two regular weekend “rent-a-priests.”  One of the weekenders does do some adult education in the parish and occasionally helps out with funerals or weddings as needed.  There are several other priests who occasionally fill in when needed, but none are there enough that I could comment on their preaching style.  As I mentioned in the last posting, each of the regulars has a very distinct style and all three are appreciated.  There are some common denominators among them.

Each of them seems to know the difference between preaching and teaching.  One of the weekenders is a seminary professor, but even he doesn’t mix preaching and teaching.  Teaching is informational.  Preaching is motivational.  The homily is not the time to explain doctrines unless it is also clearly explained what relevance that doctrinal presentation has to do with the way we live our lives in the everyday world.  (The professor is particularly good on this.)  We do not need Father to show-off in the pulpit about how much he knows.  We need to have practical guidance for living our Christian faith in the everyday world.

None of these preachers presume that we are stupid.  This particular parish is well-to-do and highly educated.  It contains a fair number of military and retired military, State Department, Government employees, lawyers, health-care professionals, and a cadre of Internationals who live in our area.  The priests are all well-read, informed and articulate.  They neither talk “above our heads” or “down” to us.  In conversation they respect our experience in our various fields and show a willingness to learn from the experience of parishioners.  They don’t tell us how to think or act, but supply us with philosophical, theological, and magisterial information to help us form enlightened opinions and determine moral courses of action on our own as thinking adults.  They listen respectfully to our comments on their homilies and do not become angry when we disagree with them.    They do not pretend to have expertise in areas about which they know little or nothing.

Each of these men speaks clearly and with sufficient volume.  (One might be somewhat hard of hearing as I think he is actually too loud and seems unaware of it himself.)

They are all prepared when they come into the pulpit.  Their homilies do not wander and they do not try to cover every subject under the sun.  One of the priests tends to preach about fifteen minutes, but frankly most people would not care if he went even longer as he is well spoken, thought-provoking, and is blessed with a wonderful voice.  The other two, equally fine speakers, rarely preach more than ten to twelve minutes.   

While each of them has certain topics or approaches to which they seem to return with some regularity, none of them “has only one string on his violin.”  Homilies almost always draw their point from the scripture readings of the day and each preacher speaks on a wide variety of subjects over the course of the liturgical year.  One of the preachers has a strong tendency towards “peace and justice” topics, another on spirituality and prayer, and a third on what might be called “every day discipleship;” you can’t say that any one of them is a single issue preacher. 

Finally, I think each of the three seems to be a man of spiritual depth and prayer as their homilies reflect a deep personal commitment to Christ and his Gospel.  They don’t talk theory but speak from their own experience—and not their experience as priests so much as their common experience with their listeners, as disciples of Jesus.  This brings up the final point—one I had not thought of until I was writing this.  They preach the Gospel.   They show respect to the Church, but they don’t preach Catholicism per se; they preach the Message of Jesus.  A Baptist or an Episcopalian sitting in the pews would find as much to take home with them as the most devout Catholic.   Christ is the center of their message. 

Now as I have written in other entries, my speaking engagements take me into Protestant as well as Catholic circles and I have asked former Catholics why they have left the Church and probably the single most common answer I have received is that the preaching has driven them out.  Some complain that the preaching wasn’t “bible based.”  They complain that the Catechism is quote, the pope is quoted, some saint or other is quoted, but never the scripture.  Other say that all they ever heard was about money or abortion or gay marriage and while they might agree on abortion or same-sex unions, and while they know that the Church needs money (and they are giving more to their new Church than they ever gave as Catholics) the preaching just was not giving them what they needed to live on.  “It was the same message every Sunday” is a frequent complaint.  “You know, I know more about life than that guy in the pulpit and he was always trying to tell me how to think”…”or how to vote”…”or how to raise my children.”  

I would like to say that the Catholic Church has come a long way since Vatican II, at least as regards preaching.  It was pretty bad in the “old days.”  Many priests rarely preached, and none ever preached between Memorial Day and Labor Day.  The “sermon” was a frill—and usually an unwanted one at that—at Mass.  I’d like to say that we have come a long way, but I think it would be more honest to say that those priests and deacons who do preach well have come a long way, but as a Church we are still failing to preach the Word effectively in most situations.    

History in the Making: Reflections on Declining Mass Attendance 1

Last Saturday evening I went to mass at a Church in the Hyde Park section of Chicago.  It is a beautiful old Church, probably built about ninety years ago and well maintained.  It has been adapted minimally to the requirements of the current liturgy which is to say that an altar facing the people has been installed but otherwise the original plan has been maintained—and appropriately so as much of the art and interior decoration is of a superior quality and the overall affect of the architectural layout is just short of breathtaking.  The liturgy itself was somewhat bland but carefully prepared.  Other than the exceptional quality of the pipe organ and its playing there was nothing to recommend it.  The hymns were well chosen for the feast but quite staid.  The readers read well enough but without a sense of proclamation.  The presider was kindly but I though lacked a sense of gravitas.  I don’t think the priest should be particularly formal, much less pompous, but I do think there is a proper decorum in his words and the way he carries himself, but then this is the Midwest and he may have been sufficiently decorous by those standards.  As a homilist—well, he preached three fine homilies, one after the other.  He seems to be naturally well-spoken but was obviously unprepared, and for such an important feast!   I don’t mean to be negative; I think I am being quite objective.  What was startling, at the least, was that there were less than a hundred people at the Saturday evening mass.  I was told Sunday morning was better but there are only three masses on the weekend in this particular parish which is in a high-density neighborhood in a very populous city.  I had heard about the declining number of mass going Catholics but this brought it home.  It has not been my previous experience

I would like to contrast that with the parish where I usually worship on Sunday mornings (and occasionally on a Saturday evening).  This parish is a suburban parish in a well-to do neighborhood in a medium sized east coast metropolitan area.  There are two Saturday evening masses—one in English, one in Spanish.  There are four English language and one Spanish language mass on Sunday mornings and early afternoon. There is yet another English language mass on Sunday evening.  I would estimate there to be three thousand worshippers at the English language masses, and perhaps eight hundred to a thousand at the two Spanish language masses.  The liturgies are well prepared but not particularly creative.  The readers—at least at the English language masses (I can’t comment on the Spanish language masses) proclaim well.  The music as the Spanish language masses is enthusiastic and sound wonderful; at the English language masses I think the music isn’t bad but could be much better.  To its enhancement, however, various parishioners often bring a variety of instruments—trumpet, violin, guitar, flute, cello—and play with the pianist/organist.  They have a decent organ and I think they could use it more often to the overall betterment of the liturgy.   The building itself is late twentieth century.  It is aesthetically harmonious but without particular charm.  The preaching is consistently good, the various priests who preside there each having his own style, but all well thought of by the parishioners.  I have been asking parishioners why they attend mass there.  (Parishioners come from a wide area—some coming from forty miles away on a Sunday.)   

The strongest response, by far, is that there is a strong sense of community.  People say that they feel invested in the relationships that center around the parish.  They know one another, are concerned about one another, and feel that they belong to one another.  I have noticed that when there is a funeral many parishioners become involved in the various ministries—serving the mass in the various ministries, visiting the family to ascertain their needs at the time, helping with whatever luncheon or reception the family wants after the mass. Coffee and donut socials or pancake breakfasts (provided monthly by the Knights of Columbus) draw a good crowd.  People come early and stay afterwards as well as participate in a variety of activities through the week.  They seem to be able to tell the difference between “Going to Church” and “going to Mass” and while they are faithful to mass, they see the Mass, not as Church but as the Church at prayer.  They know that going to Church is much more than attending Mass.  In our next entry we will look at four other reasons why this Church is filled when so many other Catholic churches are emptying.