Why some leave
Sherry W. posted this over on Amy's blog in a comment box; I think it's worth repeating:
Here’s the deal. Everything in the Christian life isn’t about the intellect and content. Catechesis is only one part of the whole. Catechesis is not formation. Formation enables a man or woman to integrate his or her lived faith, intellect, feelings, relationship, and work into a whole life devoted to Christ.
For many people, relationship is the center of the universe - the center of their relationship with God, all meaning, all purpose - the point of everything! That’s where they start in any spiritual journey as well.
So they simply can’t survive on the combination of an impersonal formal liturgy and a non-existant community life. They leave for places where people actually know their name and notice when they show up.
Some people need to experience the healing and transforming *power* of God in their lives. Their marriage is failing, or their child is an addict, or they struggle with depression or a life-threatening disease, or are about to become homeless. They need to see God heal or transform their heart, or give them hope, or experience being actually cared about and for by a Christian community. They need to see something really different about Christians in order to trust them. They need to see - not just beautiful liturgical symbols of grace, but evidence of that grace really transforming a real human being’s life.
Transforming spiritual experience is not the same as being “touchy-feely”. Most of the post-V2 pablum that I’ve encountered is so emotionally bland, gutless, passionless and powerless as to be embarrassing. It has neither wit or wisdom to recommend it and usually leaves people’s lives untouched. Only the most repressed ecclesial bureaucrat could imagine that it would be gripping.
Transforming spiritual experience is St Paul (not exactly a passionless man) saying “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” with a complete human and lived integrity that others recognize immediately. Here is a man who has *lived* it to the depths, with his whole being - and is speaking from a existential depth that is utterly compelling.
Some people (and many cultures) are simply exuberant and openly emotional by nature. They process by emoting. They connect by emoting. They relate to God by emoting. They can’t worship without emotion and without contact with the feelings of others. They may give more reserved people hives, but they are part of the body of Christ too. There has to be room for them too in our worship, in our community, in our vision of what it means to be Catholic. Or they will go to places where there is room.
If you’d like to explore some other kinds of options when it comes to reaching out to the unchurched, Catholic or not, - check this out: http://siena.org/seminar/brochure.pdf.
posted by the other Sherry @ 10:59 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Except for this gratuitous comment: "Transforming spiritual experience is not the same as being “touchy-feely”. Most of the post-V2 pablum that I’ve encountered is so emotionally bland, gutless, passionless and powerless as to be embarrassing."
I would agree.
What you describe as post-V2 pablum has more in common with pre-conciliar pablum: pious sentiments telling people to "offer it up" without any background to the meaning of sacrifice, the reticence about engaging Scripture, and the like.
What is part of the post-conciliar experience is what we do with the Adult Formation Team in my parish. In between meetings, we send a weekly e-mail to initiate a discussion on the USCCB document Our Hearts Are Burning Within Us. We check the sense of how we're doing ourselves, with parishioners, and in formation offerings of all kinds: prayer, culture, education, and the like.
I look forward to the day when we can get the snarky commentary behind us and begin ao work together in an authentic way to spread the Gospel.
Todd
Todd,
Pre-Vatican II Catholics knew all about the theology of suffering and linked it with that of Jesus. Every time someone said a Rosary, they realized and appreciated the suffering of Jesus and when they sinned, they also realized that they added to His suffering.
Janice
Todd:
I do keep forgetting that most readers around St. Blog's keep interpreting everything I write in "liberal/conservative categories. But you do need to know I don't think that way and that wasn't what I meant. And my reference to post-V2 is about time frame. I've only been a Catholic 20 years. It's all I know but I do have a remarkably broad experience of the on-the-ground realities - especially over the past 10 years.
What I meant by gutless etc. was something I have noticed which is endemic in parishes around the country -regardless of where they fall on the spectrum. I am painting with a broad brush and of course, there are many exception - but they truly are exceptions.
1) An exceedingly low level of expectation as to what lay people may be called upon to do by God. (And must I assure my readers that I am not talking about ordination but about the vast, hugely demanding and sophisticated task of evangelizing post modern people and structures?)
Really a general lack of magnanimity, imagination and vision in this area.
2) A focus upon keeping people happy, not making waves, and therefore not challenging people to became whom God has created them to be and to answer the call he has created them for. Pastors, parish associates, lay leaders, it doesn't matter what you do or where you are on the spectrum- very few people in parish leadership take parishioners seriously enough to risk tell them something they don't want to hear. But this is an essential part of facilitating formation and genuine discernment.
3) A lack of serious formation for apostolic mission (Understood in terms as broad as the whole world) rather than simply intro-ecclesial service. Again, this operates across the spectrum.
4) A wide-spread assumption that lay people can't handle content and that serious content is for clergy or religious or the "professionals" (which would include you and me) Again, across the spectrum although what is covered and what is skipped often does vary according to what part of the spectrum you identify with. I work with both ends of the spectrum and know from rueful experience that one person's essential content is another "who are you bothering their heads with this hoary/outdated/dangerous/liberal/conservative stuff?"(pick one)
Our answer: Its the teaching of the Church and it is directly connected to the office and mission of the laity.
5) So much of what we do offer is cool, cerebral, take in or leave it and incredibly bland- when in fact, the lives of real men and women hang in the balance. I'd like to see some passion, some sense of what is at stake in our formation. This isn't "enrichment" for the already comfortable and pious. God's purposes and his intention that you and I, in some small but real way, would be the agents of those purposes, hang in the balance.
That what I meant. It had nothing to do with the culture war categories.
Oh and one more thing:
An awful lot of what is offered is simply very badly done - disorganized, grey, badly taught, completely abstract, etc.
I know that our offering are far from perfect but 10 years of rave reviews have taught me the truth of something the man who oversaw my graduate internship and my first stumbling attempts at gifts discernment told me.
"Anything you can do is better than what is being done,."
It's not that we're so brilliant. It is that the standard offerings in the parish are at such a low level that a energetic, passionate, polished, well-organized, funny, challenging, theologically solid presentation really stands outs.
Thanks for the reply, Sherry. I would agree with you. I also suspect that (and this is what I hear from my oldest parishioners) the quality of offerings didn't drop after Vatican II; it just wasn't all that high to begin with. From what I see and hear, your five points were equally applicable to the 50's and prior, and that there never was a golden age of Catholic formation.
Now, I would say the culture of ethnic parishes was stronger before the suburban diaspora--but that's totally different from substantive comtent.
Thanks for the work you do and for your web site. It's alwys an interesting read here.
Todd
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