Yesterday, I ran across this post at Terrence Berres’ The Provincial Emails – about >planning against decline in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. I found the whole thing depressing and frustrating in the way I have found such conversations depressing and frustrating for decades now, being as they often are massive, wasteful, misdirected exercises in Missing the Point. Certainly strategic planning is important for organizations with loads of property, serious personnel issues and financial problems. Certainly. But the issue of institutional “vibrancy,” especially for a Christian organization, doesn’t seem to me to fall in this category. This effort is not unique, just as the problems are not unique. On a smaller scale, anyone who has ever sat through endless gatherings in parish meeting rooms hammering out mission statements and strategies for helping parishioners feel involved…you know how it goes. And you know we always seem to end up asking the wrong questions. Sherry Weddell at the Siena Institute blogs on the matter:
The really startling thing is not that attendance is dropping. The really startling thing is that both the original post and the article in the Catholic Herald talk in vague terms about a crisis of “identity” and “commitment” to the institution.
“If fewer people are coming, we are falling down on our Eucharistic commitment,” Welte said. “Each of us who calls ourselves Catholic must first be critical of ourselves and ask what kind of a member am I and if I am not a good member, can I commit to being one? If I am a so-so member, what can I do to improve? Our whole community is impacted whenever someone doesn’t show up.”
“Our Catholic identity stays with us,” she said. “But when someone dies, will there be a church to provide a Christian burial? There are huge implications here.”
But neither post and article mention Jesus. They never use the word Christ. They never mention God. And that, gentle readers, is our real problem in 21st century America.
snip
The vast majority will not come to us. We will have to seek them out, gain their trust, articulate the kergyma, and challenge them to believe and to follow Christ in communion with his Church. In other words, we will have to be pioneer missionary evangelists in the midst of a “Christian” country. And then we may well see attendance grow, not because of “institutional” loyalty but because a whole new generation is seeking to follow Christ. They will be in our midst with love in their hearts and fire in their eyes.
As you know, I’ve been sort of obsessing about various forms of Protestant evangelicalism/emergent/missional type churches. I continue to fail to be impressed because despite a couple of strengths, as a rule these groups don’t communicate the fullness of faith in Christ, they are rooted in an ethos that puts values like excitement, change, coolness, and a certain kind of “creativity” at the center of their efforts, with the consequence being personality-driven efforts to “attract” folks to listen to “great music” and the vagues sort of Christian message framed mostly in self-help language.
But what they do all, without fail, evince is a missional spirit, a determination to reach out and help others see how this version of faith they offer intersects with life and is the answer to their problems and the voids they feel in their lives.
While Catholic efforts, such as they are, remain mired in concerns about institutional health, numbers, finances and, as an attempted solution, “Catholic identity.”
The answer is not to attempt to simplistically and slavishly imitate the apparent success of these rapidly growing church plants, as tempting as it might be, since they are, indeed, growing, and so much of their growth comes from now-unchurched Catholics. (Which makes sense demographically, as someone once explained it to me, speaking, for example of Willow Creek. Someone from Willow Creek once said that 40% of their church is ex-Catholics. Well, as unfortunate as that might be, in an area in which the population is 40% Catholic, period, that is to be expected.)
Because I don’t think the growth is going to bear lasting fruit, and reading in some of their own literature, you are starting to hear worrisome noises about this, too – concerns about lasting church committment or lifestyle change, concerns about young people, and so on. It’s definitely there. These rapidly-growing places are very “contemporary” in their feel (whatever that means – one person’s contemporary is another person’s “er…lame”), so where does that leave those who grow out of the desire to have worship that’s centered on that type of music and pop culture themes? They seem to be extraordinarly centered on the personalities of the leaders. One “effort” that’s creating some sort of buzz these days is My Naked Pastor – a Florida pastor who’s letting his life be on camera 24/7 for several weeks. That’s exhausting and ultimately a distraction from the Gospel. Not even “ultimately.” The attitude to worship and prayer and ritual can’t sustain or contain much beyond the emotions of the moment. It’s totally dependent on the vigor of the crowd, the charm of the leader, the vibe of the moment. The small groups that are an important part of these efforts can be powerful means of reaching people, but not everyone is into small groups. Thinking, for example, in a Catholic context, that the answer to a parish’s ennui is to divide the whole parish in small groups and force them to meet mid-week and so on, is a mistake, because it forgets the blessed value of diversity and respect for spiritual variety that is the hallmark of Catholicism. Some might see a small group as a marvelous thing; others might run. Fast.
But, as I said, while I think it’s a total mistake for Catholics to say, “Well, it’s working for them…” (because in the long run, I don’t believe it is working, and besides what they are doing is not what Catholics do as Church), the missional attitude, the deep concern for the unchurched and the unbeliever, the welcoming spirit, and the clear proclamation that what we do here is about life – is something to call on because, you know, it’s ours. In our sacraments, in our individual devotion, in the teaching we preserve and pass on, in our works of mercy and discipleship – it is all about life. There is no disconnect, and whoever you are, you need Christ and this is the place – his Body – where he is found. He wants you to be here, and so, it goes without saying, so do we.
Remember what parish boundaries are all about. They are not so much about where you have the responsibility to go to Mass. They are essentially about for whom the pastor (and others) have responsibility. That’s right. The pastor’s responsibility is to share Christ with the parish – which is not just the people who show up on Sundays – it’s every person who lives in those boundaries, Catholic or not. Yeah.
That reality gets sucked up, most of the time, in the other realities of paying the heating bills and keeping the parish school on an even keel, but really, it’s all of a piece. The question, as raised by the Milwaukee effort, is, indeed, “Where is everyone?” But really, think about the past forty years in Catholicism – have planning meetings, chatting about vibrancy and diocesan wide-efforts to make everyone more aware of their Catholic identity actually borne much fruit? Or just more mission statements and information packets collecting dust in a bottom drawer?
Because, see, that’s not the Catholic way, either – the way of evaluating the health and future of the Church via schematics and diagrams and planning packets either. The Catholic way is to imitate the saints, it seems to me. To preach, to teach, to gather the lost, to heal the sick, to be with the poor – to plunge into it. That happens in changing circumstances, and today it happens, in our context, in a religious marketplace with few religious orders, few priests and people who seem on the surface to want everything but what Catholicism offers. With the added challenge of understanding that there is not one single means that answers this challenge – the diversity of new movements, evangelization efforts, religious orders, spiritual devotions and so on within Catholicism has to be respected and nurtured and not flattened out into programs, packets and diagrams that ironically leach out the very vibrancy they are attempting to capture.
Which happens, I usually find, because people are relying on New Things and New Ideas and Exciting Paradigms instead of thinking – just a little bit – about what tradition has to teach us. As the Pope said today:
The preachings of the Chrysostom often took place within the liturgy, the ‘place’ in which the community builds itself with the Word of God and the Eucharist. In the liturgy, the gathered assembly expresses the one Church (Homily 8,7 on the Letter to the Romans) – the same Word addressed everywhere to everyone (Homily 245,2 on the first Letter to the Corinthians), and the Eucharistic Communion becomes a powerful sign of unity (Homily 32,7 on the Gospel of Matthew).
His pastoral plan was clearly within the life of the Church, in which the lay faithful, through Baptism, take on a priestly function that is at once royal and prophetic. To the lay faithful, he says: “Baptism makes you king, priest and prophet” (Homily 3,5 on the second Letter to the Corinthians).
And so the fundamental obligation of mission comes from that, because each is, to some degree, responsible for the salvation of others: “This is the principle of our social life…not to interest ourselves only in ourselves!” O(Homily 9,2 on Genesis). Everything takes place between two poles: the larger Church and the ‘small Church’, the family, in reciprocal relationship.
As you can see, dear brothers and sisters, this lesson from the Chrysostom on the authentically Christian presence of laymen in the family and in society, is more than ever relevant today. Let us pray the Lord to make us more obedient to the teachings of this great master of the faith.
Some thoughts…
“If you marry the spirit of your generation, you will be a widow in the next.” — William Inge, former Dean of St. Paul’s, London
It’s gotta be more about building people than building programs, but that’s harder work. Easier to fill a schedule with programs and quantify what’s being attempted than to work on the quality of people’s devotional lives.
I’m still evangelical, of course, but I agree with so much of what you are saying about the concern for relevance and the contemporary in evangelicalism. It often softens the message and churches often become revolving doors.
I’ve been reading James Turner’s Without God, Without Creed: the Origins of Unbelief in America. It’s about 20 years old or so. His claim is that the churches (he focuses mainly on Reformed churches of various stripes), not religion’s cultured despisers, killed religion in the modern period, precisely by adapting the faith to modernity in both form and content. I see the same thing happening in so much evangelicalism. In both form and content, we look like the culture. It works for a short while, until people realize there’s nothing different or transcendent. Then they fall away or become Catholics.
I think part of the problem — and you’ve hit on it — is a lack of concern for the gospel, broadly speaking. Most homilies, I would bet, and most teaching at Catholic churches, concern(s) bland, vague, moralism. Uninspiring. But what if priests and deacons and bishops(!) took seriously the radical otherness of the gospel? I think Catholicism often looks like mainline liberal protestantism in terms of message and ethos, and that is just spiritual death.
I’ve got to disagree with you about small church communities.
One of the problems with the modern world is too many cultural Catholics figure that they can attend a Mass once a week, or a month or twice a year and they’re done.
I agree that what we should be doing is emulating the saints. To do that you work at it 24/7. Getting people to work at anything 24/7 is not easy. So one way you do that is get them to work at it more.
One way to do small church community is to use the group for scriptural study. So people read the up coming Sunday’s readings before the meeting. You talk about them together. Then when they’re read on Sunday they hear them again. Then (with luck) the presider talks about them in their homily. You’re right that scriptural reading has not been a big part of being a cultural Catholic, which means that for a long time it wasn’t part of being a practicing Catholic either, except among the saints, who we should be emulating.
I’m a catechist and I can tell you, I see many teens who have no prayer life. Their parents have no prayer life. How are these kids going to face college or what comes after High School without a prayer life? I’ll tell you how. They’ll stop going to church and in a decade when their life is empty they’ll start looking for something to fill the void and fall right into one of the evangelical groups.
So then answer, from my point of view as a catechist is to encourage them the build a prayer life. Father can do it from the pulpit. The bishop can do it via articles and letters. But I can tell you if the teens see me and other, older teens, doing it, living their lives in a Christian way and having prayer every day as a given then they follow suite, or at least a lot of them do.
Amy – For the most part I agree with you. My $.02 is very simplistic. “Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize.” (Pope Paul VI, , EN, 14)
When we forget why we have a Church at all, evagelization, we will be draws toward things that get us off track.
This is my simplistic answer. Evangelize, seek holiness and all else will come.
Our “Catholic Identity” = the Body of Christ….which is joined, like any body, to its Head, Benedict XVI, who happens to live almost directly above the exact spot where his Peter was killed 2000 yrs ago. These dots are not difficult to connect.
The way to live out our Catholic Identity is obviously not to follow the road forged by Martin Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII etc etc etc but to follow the road laid out by Jesus when he appointed Peter. Bendict, John Paul & every single preceeding Pope of the 20th century has done an above-average job of mapping that road clearly for us. Our task isn’t to find another path but simply follow their lead and by doing so, follow Christ.
My sympathies to Archbishop Dolan for the folks in his diocese who can’t see this.
One of the good things to come out of the Anglican situation is a renewed sense of mission in the churches who have left TEC. The Anglican Church of the Resurrection here in St. Louis. a church formed when its members withdrew from TEC in 2003, has already planted two other churches in this area and has done more for Anglican Christianity in eastern Missouri in four years than the “official” Anglican presence here, the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, has done in twenty-five. Why? I think it’s because they’re excited about Christ again.
I don’t think Catholics or others need to evangelize exactly like these new churches do. And I don’t think strategic plans and all the rest of it will help much of anything. I do think all of us need to remember what a wonderful Gift we’ve been given. Once we as indivicuals or as churches do that, we’ll evangelize whether we realize we’re doing it or not.
Amy,
As long as “catholic identity” means simply (or even mostly) the things that I do to remain part of the tribe, we are going to get nowhere. Our focus must be, radically and explicitly, upon Christ. What I have found in the parishes that are trying to strengthen the committment of their members is an overwhelming emphasis on the community without a corresponding emphasis on the One in whom we are constituted as a community.
Explicit proclamation of Christ and the riches of grace abundant within His Body are often “hidden” by professional pastoral associates who want to act as gatekeepers for the community (which, to a certain degree they are, as they participate in the Pastor’s Office by delegation), but who also don’t believe that members of the parish are “ready” to handle anything that resembles explicit proclamation of the gospel or of life in Christ.
There are many different ways to foster the growth of disciples within parishes. I don’t often get hung up on what that might look like, as long as parish leadership is following on solid principles of formation. If I had to summarize what qualities or principles that formation activities within a parish should be based on, I’d say the following:
The parish should be a place where people:
• Encounter Christ (many for the first time)—as he is revealed through the Church (Scripture, Sacraments, Church Teaching), through the lives of other Catholics, and through their own lives—so as to build and deepen a personal relationship with God characterized by openness and trust.
• Clearly hear the kerygmatic dimensions of the Gospel (that Christ suffered and died for our sins so that we could be reunited with the One Who Made us for Love) in a way that allows them to relate to it, absorb it, wrestle with it, and, ultimately, make a decision about it in their own life
• Build habits of prayer, scripture study, accountability, and sacramental celebration/reception—along with support and formation in living out lives of discipleship.
• Learn about not only what the Church teaches and why, but also how to apply the richness of that Teaching to their lives and the lives of the world around them—addressing real needs in the community through acts of charity and social justice.
• Receive support and tools for a lifetime of discernment—growing steadily in an understanding of the Church’s mission and how/where they are personally called to participate in that mission
Too often, however, we receive spiritual milk or a gospel of niceness. Postmodern men and women need something more profound. The gravitational pull of cultural Catholicism not only no longer works to keep these men and women as nominal members of our communities, it’s polarity is reversed (to steal a favorite piece of Star Trek technobabble), and it actively repels postmoderns–who are hungering for authenticity.
“As you know, I’ve been sort of obsessing about various forms of Protestant evangelicalism/emergent/missional type churches. I continue to fail to be impressed because despite a couple of strengths, as a rule these groups don’t communicate the fullness of faith in Christ”
Thanks Amy. I know I’m not the only one thinking this way. I see it often in my wife’s pentecostal church. It looks great in many ways and of course there are former Catholics there. But something is missing. We know at the heart of it is the Eucharist. We certainly have our work cut out for us. But the Church always had challenges since day one. We must, and will, keep the faith and trust in the Lord with all our hearts.
1 Corinthians 2:2 seems a good motto for the Catholic Church in the US now
When my wife and I were in RCIA in a very good, orthodox local parish, one of the first sessions included presentations from 4 Catholics as to why they had become Catholic (or reverted). Not one of them ever mentioned Jesus. It was kind of sad.
As to the fallen away from Mass group, the Church must ask them perhaps in focus groups or through letters why they left… rather than telling them or imagining why they left or presuming they are all lazy and watching TV Sunday morning. You’re noting that they end up in other churches means that the lazy diagnosis is not accurate….yet it is out there because it is true of some though it is obviously not true of all. Some may be looking for warmer community and find more of that at the neighborhood diner or at work than they do at the parish. When a Protestant in my extended family died, the entire choir from his church came to the wake and funeral and went out to the grave service; and due to illness, he had not been to church in years. That’s alot of community when a given family needed it badly.
An important topic I have been bothered by for over 20 years. In the early 80s I was involved in Catholic youth groups that were lame and poorly attended. I had friends who went to “Young Life” and other youth groups.
I have been subjected to (as a willing participant) at least 5 versions of “small communities” in 3 different diocese. I have been involved in “Young Adult” ministry in 4 diocese.
How can we get Catholics do ministry and evangelize? Yesterday I asked that question of a former evangelical that I sponsered in RCIA 7 years ago. His answer was “I wish I knew.”
After 20 years in this, I am not even sure I really understand the problem.
I can tell you this, courageous orthodoxy, good preaching, and tradition seems to work BETTER than plans, programs, and using a soft sell.
The best things I have been involved in have been the “charismatic movement” – where an orthodox priest is actively involved, and the Cursillo movement.
John Allen has several times mentioned that Benedict is pushing “Catholic identity” and now it’s part of this post.
I still don’t get what that is. Is it what makes Catholics different from Protestants and Orthodox? Is it what is required to keep membership? Is it how a Catholic sees him/herself? Is it self-identifying as “Catholic” as opposed to “Episcopalian”?
Is it shorthand for something else?
In John Allen’s posts it has a negative flavor to it. In Amy’s post it seems to have a positive feel to it.
I guess I’m a widow of that last generation & so I don’t “get it”.
I know a lot of Caholics and they are frequently quite different from each other. So – is it an attempt to determine the basic core of what is a Catholic and what can be dispensed with?
Are we all talking about the same thing when we talk about Catholic “identity”
Darren:
Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
The Body is there, bruised and abused, but visible, you see (not some invisible set of individuals or gnostic concept).
At least that’s why I came into the Catholic Church this past Easter and I think the same’s true for others, even if unexpressed. Maybe that’s just part of the bruising.
When we have to use the word “vibrant” chances are we’re not. It carries all the appeal of an invitation to a really dull blind date. Vibrant and luminous are both words that make me want to turn and run. If I remember correctly, my parish bulletin used to have a weekly blurb expressing the hope that the reader had a luminous and vibrant experience at Mass.
Vibrancy may came – but not when it is the goal. And the Church is luminous when it is the light of Christ that shines through it.
I came back to this post of Amy’s after reading/skimming the local diocesan newspaper which arrived in today’s mail. So much of the criticisms were born out by the articles in it: Few references to Jesus; muddy theology, implied approval (by publishing straightfaced articles) of Sr. Joan Chistister (sp) and nuns who are pouting about being marginaized because they’ve taken themselves away from the center because they can’t be priests; the youth group experience in the South West on the reservation comparing the sweat lodge experience to the Sacrament of Confirmation….
Oh, and lots of maundering about social justice which all seems to be ‘fork over your money’.
Aaaiiiieee!
I’m surprised we do have priests in the local seminary. *And* the seminary has hosted Sherry’s people for a Called and Gifted presentation. But there’s a lot of rot, clearly.
I’ll do my part with people in the parish when I interact with them to keep Jesus front and center. pray for us all.
I agree that it isn’t all about mission statments and pamphlets, and that you can’t sell what you don’t have, but I think we make a mistake when we totally reject their method of operation. Yes, we need to teach the truth, and to teach it on an adult level–and much more effectively to our kids. Our priests need to learn to preach homilies that can’t always be given down the street to the Protestants or even to the atheistic society of ethical nice folks. We need to show we are serious about who we are and what we believe–but we also have to realize that people come to church for different reasons and leave for different reasons. While we would hope that everyone in church is there because s/he completely believes everything the Church teaches and knows the mass is the only way to give God the glory He is due, that is clearly not the case. Some people come because they are looking for a place to belong–or leave because they feel like strangers despite regular attendance. Some know there is a God and are looking for a way to connect to Him. The liturgy that you or I might find “lame” or over-ritualized or too loud might be one that connects some other person to God. When you look at the people who are most active in your parish, how many of them are active in non-parish spiritual groups–Curisillo, Associates to a religious community, Marriage Encounter, Charistmatic Renewal, Opus Dei and the like–or even private prayer groups? Why do they have to go outside the parish for spiritual fellowship? I could join a dozen mininstries in my parish that do stuff, but there is no parish group that says “come join us, we pray together, learn together and support each other in life’s journey. You can call on us when you have problems, we know your name and your kids’ names and you know ours”. People in crisis often turn to churches, and we do a great job with our social service agencies from a material perspective, but do we offer them Jesus at the same time as we offer them bread? Do we even offer them a ride to church if they need it–or do we let them catch the bus the evangelicals provide? There is a lot the evangelicals do that we could do and probably should do that wouldn’t require compromising our beliefs one bit–only changing our behavior.
Vatican II was a reaffirmation of the call to the personal apostolate of the laity, whether that is writing, raising a family, working with the poor, or evangelizing.
Finding our apostolate and working it, that is the call for most of us.
The evangelical organizations within the Protestant arena are searching for a way to make the partial, whole, and though it may work for awhile, it will not, as you said Amy, work for long.
In a larger Catholic institutional sense, I believe that as we see the majority of the priesthood in this country returning to their clear identity as Catholic priests, looking and acting like Catholic priests, is when the surge will again fill the pews; and with the continuation of the kind of great teaching popes that we have been so fortunate to have these past many years working their pastoral magic on that priesthood, we will someday see that.
Amy, you have so many interesting thoughts about what the church could be. Maybe you could write a work of fiction that includes examples of the kind of church communities you would like to see as part of the story, giving some fictional examples of what the church of your dreams might look like in the world of today.
Or maybe you could write a non-fiction book about places where some aspects of the church of your dreams are being lived out today.
The public imagination is ping-ponging back and forth between the buffoonish excesses of the entertainment-style venues of celebrity Protestant preachers and the horrific excesses of the current Catholic clergy scandals.
We need some clear examples of church well done, close to us in time and place, to rescue our imaginations from all this and re-inspire us.
Elaine T, I’m with you on wondering, in situations like you describe, why in the world there are any seminarians or anyone in the pews. In some dioceses, what’s presented as “catholic identity” could just as easily be absorbed by watching Oprah. But, thanks be to God, “where sin abounds, grace does much more abound” & so the Holy Spirit is abounding in many unexpected corners of the Catholic Church in this country.
Again, when we’re faithful to what the Holy Spirit has taught us for the last 2000 yrs as a Church, we end up creating, usually unwittingly, the “vibrancy” that Ellyn refers to. I always end up thinking of it like a family…when the parents are faithful, in always a fragemented way, the end result is blessed…but faithfulness is our task & goal & blessed (or “vibrancy”) is the fruit.
Amy,
Have you seen the recent First Things article by Dean Curry titled “Evangelical Amnesia”?
I think it is very relevant to this discussion. His basic premise is that evangelical youth have lost their connection with why theology is important, due to the nondenominational and emergent church movements. He believes this loss of a connection to theology is a major cause for concern and that evangelical churches will suffer greatly if they do not turn the tide around and quickly.
I highly recommend it.
When I read the title of the program I knew they were cooked.
Just FYI:
We’ve done a few Called & Gifted workshops in the Milwaukee archdiocese but *not* for the seminary, seminarians, clergy, etc. as we have done in other dioceses.
The Making Disciples schedule for Jun, 2008 is our first venture of that sort on the Milwaukee area and is open to pastoral leaders at any level and, I presume, will attract mostly lay staff or lay leaders with some pastors.
Clarifying my previous comment – I’m not in the Milwaukee diocese, I’m in California.
And the diocesen news did have some good articles, one on new young nuns preferring the habit, and the last issue I read had one on the fact that Catholic priests must be men – that one was responding to some group’s meeting that called for woman priests, the tone was ‘sorry ladies, Not Going to Happen.” It’s not all bad here. We do have priests in the seminaries, even! And people in the pews. And I get the impression there’s more changing for the better under the radar. Perhaps as the old guard dies off, I don’t know. I try to stay out of the local parish and diocesan politics, so I know what I get from chit chat or the paper.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Great post Amy :-)
I spent several years in religious and secular non-profits and when I read these articles about the Church’s “planning for institutional survival,” I want to scream. Peter Drucker pointed out that when an organization’s mission becomes its own survival, the road only leads downhill because you basically have nothing but a bureaucracy and eventually your support will disappear.
Obviously the Church is different because its survival is guaranteed by God (something neither the Ford Foundation nor the American Bible Society could claim). What is not guaranteed by God is the USCCB, the cadres of employees swelling parish offices, or our pet projects. The Gospel and the Sacraments will endure – and if we proclaim those, we will both survive and flourish in ways we now think impossible.
I sat once in a nearly empty Presbyterian church on the Upper West Side in New York. Carved into the organ pipe facade were St. Paul’s words about being resolved to know nothing but Christ Jesus and Him crucified. Oh, that congregation had “outgrown” all that years ago – and what was left? Nothing but a shell waiting for a high bid on the real estate.
Sigh…we just moved to Montana after 4 years in Milwaukee, and my take on the “vibrancy” quotient is that it’s a calculated attempt to provide busy work to those who still are smarting over the “change of command” (It’s been at least five years? hasn’t it? since Dolan took over from Weakland). Liturgical changes that date back to the 1983 were not implemented in most parishes as of our departure in June, with the hilarious effect that when the archbishop showed up for Mass at your parish, everyone DID indeed know the rubrics, although the correct posture, etc. took on the effect of the wave, starting with the deacon who most actively opposed same.
And everyone actually does KNOW the vision at the end of the gospel of Matthew. It’s not the knowing. It’s the living. And the rotten core, Protestant or Catholic, won’t take on any vibrancy, committee or not.
The evidence of Jesus Christ crucified and arisen is still to be found in that archdiocese. There are vibrant individuals who are living the faith in ways that defy the overwhelming mediocrity of the parishes they attend, not to mention the terrible problems that plague many of those neighborhoods, especially in the inner city where I lived.
I’ve lived in several different diocese over the years, and I have met vibrant priests and laity in every single place I’ve lived. Sure, I wish it were more overt, and celebrated by the hierarchy. But because the Archbishop in Milwaukee is faced with the reality of a laity that was trained to revolt against the kind of vibrancy that buys eternal life, it would seem to me that he has plenty of bigger fish to fry, and when the “priest council” suggests they study “vibrancy”, he probably feels it does less harm to just let them keep their committee work going whilst he makes decisions (like closing the seminary and selling the archdiocesan HQ) that are deeply unpopular in that same cohort of folks.
Wow. I guess I am less vibrant than cynical. That’s cause for prayer.