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. 

Roots of the Reformation XII: Clericalism—The Paving Stones of the Road to Reformation

Cardinal Dulles suggested that the Servant Model of Church
is the model for the next millenium.  Here a Franciscan friar
speaks with one of the homeless people near St. Francis
Church in New York City. St. Francis Friary was the home of
Father Mychal  Judge, OFM, the NYFD chaplain, the first
registered death of the 9/11 tragedy

 Clericalism leads to-and in turn falls victim to—one of the great Catholic heresies which is to confuse the Church with its Lord.  This is complicated by the Catholic tendency to limit, at least in practical understanding, the Church to its Institutional manifestation.  When Catholics say “The Church…” they tend to mean the hierarchical institution which externally governs the Church, but the Church itself is a far more complex, indeed mysterious, phenomenon.  When I say mysterious, I don’t mean puzzling but rather sacred, indeed numinous, reality.  The late Avery Dulles in his 1974 book  Models of the Church spoke of five key models by which the Church can be understood.  The first on he mentioned—and which he thought was grossly overused—is the institutional model.   This is the model in which am emphasis is place on hierarchy, magisterium, canon law, juridical authority, etc.  Oh, and clericalism!  How could I forget.  And it is this institutional model that most people mean when they talk about “the Church.”

Cardinal Dulles wrote that the Church is not only, or even fundamentally, an institution but it also has a sacramental character.  That is to say that the Church is a visible representation of the Invisible (to the human eye) Master who himself is the fundamental sacrament of God.  In other words, Jesus, the Church’s Lord, is himself the visible representation of the Invisible God and the Church, as the visible representation (re-presentation) of Christ, is a sign and means of God’s Grace in the world.  Moreover, the Church is also kerygmatic—that is to say the Church has a Divinely ordered mission to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the ongoing message of its Founder and Lord.  Dulles also calls the Church a communio—a covenantal bonding of the faithful into the One Body of Christ.  The Church is truly the physical Body of the Risen Christ—as truly (though obviously in a different mode) as is the Eucharist the physical Body of the Risen Christ.  Indeed the Catholic Tradition as found in Saint Augustine witnesses to the intrinsic unity between the Eucharistic Body and the Ecclesial Body of the Lord.  As Christ is one, the Eucharistic Body and the Ecclesial Body are one and the same, and it can be said that in certain respects each derives its authenticity as the Body of the Lord from the other.  Finally, the Church—and according to Dulles this may be the key model of Church for the next millennium—is Servant. 

  

Cardinal Burke, center, one of the prelates who represent 
the Institutional Model of Church.  Cardinal Burke has not
lately been seen speaking with the homeless outside
Gamarelli's--the Rome tailor shop specializing in retro
prelatial garb. 

Many people, especially those who hold positions of pompous power (Cardinals Burke, Pell, Castrillon Hoyos, and others who like parading around the world in cappae magnae) or even those who have powerless pomp (monsignors, the pezzi grossi of the Vatican Bureaucracy, members of the Institute of Christ the Sovereign Priest) are having difficulty letting go of the institutional model and embracing the servant model.  Can’t say I blame them; washing the feet of disciples is dirty work; it’s much more fun to be bundled up in silk and fur, though I don’t think of that as a “guy thing.”  But the Servant Model is the model that can restore credibility to a Church that has squandered its moral leadership in these last three decades.   Ah, but the gift of hope tells us that someday soon (and very soon) the Gospel will prevail once more over Gamarelli’s catalogue. (Gamarelli is the “tailor to the popes” and papal wanna-be’s.  See blog entry of March 28^th 2011 for photo of Gamarelli’s window.)   But this is the problem with clericalism –it derives its energy from the institution of the Church and the power the institution has rather than deriving its authority from the Gospel and the authority the Gospel confers. 

It is frightening how much of the negative energy that “former Catholics” have towards the Church is rooted in clericalism.  I first noticed this about thirty years ago in Ireland where my relatives—all (at the time) Church-going Catholics—spoke venomously of their Parish Priest because of what they perceived to be (and I think correctly) his abuse of power.  The power of an Irish Parish Priest was something to be contended with even thirty years ago—he had veto over the public school teachers and administrators as well as many other decisions that technically pertained to local government.  Over the years the antagonism toward the clergy in general seems only to have increased.  This is not to say that many individual priests are not very popular with their parishioners.  Those priests who mix easily with the people, sit in the pub, go to the cattle shows, and visit the homes of the parishioners without expecting the best china and fancy tea cakes are well liked.  Let a priest put on airs, however, and the most devout Irish Catholics become passive aggressive in ways only the Irish can; while many more avoid confrontation and simply walk away from the Church and decided that  a “long lie” in bed on Sunday morning will do them as well as a sermon. 

The anti-clericialism in the United States manifests itself differently but is growing even faster.  The main reason that we have so few vocations today is due, primarily I believe, to the fact that the priesthood is no longer a respectable profession.  This is not due only to the sex-abuse crisis; in fact I believe there are other even deeper roots of the decline in respect for priests today.  Compared to the parishioners, the priest is no longer better educated—and indeed in suburban or wealthy city parishes, is often less educated than most of the people in the pews.  When he speaks, the priest speaks more of what he learned from books than what he has learned from life—his own and his parishioners.  He often seems hopelessly out of touch, indeed at times from another planet.  Poor preaching, that is to say, irrelevant prattling from the pulpit, is probably the number one reason Mass attendance is falling in the United States.  It is absolutely embarrassing to listen when a priest makes a fool of himself speaking of things about which he knows nothing or when he expects his educated parishioners believe pious stories of saints who fly through the air, hosts that bleed, or decapitated bishops who continue to preach as they carry their head to the cemetery.  Legends and myths have their place, but it is not in the pulpit.  On the other hand when there is sound scriptural preaching that reinforces doctrine and can be related to everyday life, people find a comfort and credibility in their pastors. 

The key to good pastoral personality, like the key to all deep spirituality, is self-knowledge.  By self-knowledge I mean that one, cleric or lay, needs to know oneself not for one’s role or for whatever sacraments one has received but to know oneself in the unfathomable sea of sin and grace.   One has to strip away all pretense, all external trappings, all peripheral roles and deal with one’s own self naked in God’s eyes and naked in one’s own.  One has to see all the warts and wrinkles and cellulite and discern who we might have been had it not been for our sinfulness, who we truly are, and who we might be yet in the sight of God and by his grace.  And there is nothing more foreign to the clerical psyche as the courage it takes to abandon—totally abandon—role and be naked for who one is and nothing more in the sight of God and one’s own sight.  This is why diocesan priests so rarely make good spiritual directors for the spiritual life does not begin until one has so confronted one’s truest self and has been sufficiently humbled to throw oneself on the Divine Mercy, pleading for grace.  Once you have done that you find it very difficult to piously parade around in birettas and surplices that look like they come from Victoria’s Secret.   Once you have stood naked before God and in your own eyes, you need not title, no robe, no ring or fancy hat.  You know who you are and you can be who God wants you to be for others.  How rich a Church we would be if more of our clergy did that and fewer were seduced by rank and privilege.