May 12, 2012                             Des O’Donnell                     desomi@eircom.net               Previous articles by Des

                                Desmond O’Donnell is an Oblate priest and a registered psychologist in Dublin         

                              GOOD NEWS IN THE CHURCH TODAY  

A new expression of Church is emerging, and it is good news.  Blinkered viewing and time-warped thinking could lead us to see only present and local difficulties in the Church. Until very recently, and perhaps still in the minds of many, the Church was measured by numbers attending Mass. At the moment the Church is being measured only by the serious failures of some priests and bishops.  

Limited looking and number-counting can also see only lower Eucharist attendance, more marriage breakdowns, less marriages in church buildings, the lost contraception issue, the rare desire for auricular Confession, the lower numbers in the seminary, our first Communion ‘pantomimes’ and Confirmation often becoming ‘the last sacrament’.  

But one needs to look more deeply to see that the Church is undergoing a great renewal, the seeds of which are already sprouting. I am not referring to numerical growth or to increasing priestly vocations in Africa .  It is predictable that these signs of apparent development will gradually disappear as modernity and material progress move into those countries.  And if Poland gives you hope, it's important to recognise that just 15% attend Mass in Warsaw, that priestly vocations are down by one third and Religious life entrants are one third of what they were ten years ago in that country. In Paris and in Madrid , just 4% attend Sunday Mass. But numbers are not an indication of real Church growth or decline.  

A SMALLER CHURCH  

In 1997 Pope Benedict as Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote, ‘I foresee that as a Church we will become small, that one day we will become a church which will comprise a minority in society……… The image of salt of the earth and light of the world suggest that we have a representative role in society. Salt of the earth presupposes that not the whole earth is salt. In an age in which Christianity is smaller and more reduced, we can bring this more conscious Christianity to a new vitality.’*     

Of course Karl Rahner said much the same many years before. The signs of this ‘new vitality’ are many. I believe that there is clear evidence to show that the Church is in much better shape than it has been for hundreds of years.  It is being purified – laundered, if you like. It is being renewed – made new – well below the surface. The world is testing us for credibility, not for doctrine, and it is leading us back to the Gospel. The Church is going nowhere; it is coming. Here I offer some indicators of that good news.  

A HUMBLER CHURCH  

All useful change - education and growth - begins with fruitful confusion. A certainty among leaders that we have it all or know it all means that stagnation has set in. What G.K. Chesterton called ‘the blinding clarity of the madman’ is not lifegiving. Fifty years ago, much church leadership acted as if it knew everything about almost everything, as if it was above the human condition, and that it had a hot line to heaven.  

People over forty can recall when their lives were governed in intimate detail by laws coming from a church almost paralysed by - another Chestertonian phrase - ‘an encyclical cyclone of uniformity’. In my early days of priestly ministry, rather than proclaiming Jesus Christ as good news, I gave people detailed formulas to help them reach Heaven. Passive and sometimes blind obedience were demanded in great detail by a church leadership which seemed to claim certainty in very insignificant matters. As a young priest I left the seminary with readymade answers to the complexity of people’s lives without even knowing the questions coming from the stressful reality of lay life.  The Church was in danger of becoming so heavenly that it was no earthly good.  

Today, a good number of bishops and nearly all priests are much closer to people’s lives; church leaders are becoming more ready to travel with people than ahead of them or above them. It is my hope that very soon, with my brother priests I will be listening to lay speakers in parish churches linking us with real life and encouraging us to journey with them. Sadly there are a few recently ordained authoritarian young priests who think that they have more answers than priests have had for a long time. But, we can thank God that most bishops, priests and lay believers are today coming closer together, finding and sometimes fumbling their way through the questions avalanching over our common humanity in the modern world.  

We are all struggling with new challenges to our faith, leading us to conscientiously examine church teaching rather that accepting it without question. Most modern believers are inclined to accept Tennyson’s observation that ‘there is more faith in honest doubt than in half our creeds’. Together we are slowly recognising that we are not all weak humans trying to be spiritual, but deeply spiritual persons trying to be human in the dehumanizing culture of consumerism. James Joyce could hardly write today that ‘there is no philosophy more abhorrent to my church as a human being’.  

There is a growing recognition that the church is not a tidy exclusive club but an untidy caravan of covered wagons, made up of the marginalized, the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed, with saints and sinners at all levels. As Pope Benedict said in his Introduction of Christianity, ‘we are together tasting the saltwater of doubt in an ocean of uncertainty’   The scriptures call it Exodus.  This is realistic good news.  

A REPENTING CHURCH  

The last fifteen years have seen the revelation of the church’s sinfulness in the clerical abuse of children, and in its being allowed to continue. Even though the revelation of this criminality was not a willing in-house discovery nor admitted easily, it has at last been acknowledged, accepted and apologised for.  But shocking as it is, this is only one manifestation of the church’s sinfulness. Measured against the Sermon on the Mount, the Church is much more sinful despite the presence of really holy people within it.  

In 2001 Pope John Paul 11 listed some of the deeper failures and sins of the church, and he asked pardon for them.  No one can recall any Pope ever having done this before.  Then in his first encyclical God is Love, Pope Benedict acknowledged that ‘Church leadership was slow to realise that the just ordering of society needed to be approached in a new way’. These are indicators that the Church is slowly accepting the much quoted but often neglected phrase - Ecclesia semper reformanda (The church is always in need of being reformed).  

This good news is gradually leading to a more compassionate and therefore more Christlike Church which will be less likely to say that it is holy without explaining this claim more fully. And if there were ever an independent commission on how the Church carries out its mission or on its use of power, status and money, we would have to be more repentant still. This more open admission that our sinful Church is in need of God’s continual saving love, is good news.  

A MORE CHRIST-CENTRED CHURCH  

In the past, much of Irish Catholicism was centred on religious behaviour. We were faithful about what we called our obligations. We ‘got’ baptised, ‘received’ Holy Communion’, ‘went to’ Confession, ‘attended’ Mass and we ‘said’ our prayers. Our personal examination of conscience was often a shallow list rather than a deep look at how our relationship with God was growing. In recent years, those whose Mass-going was socially pressured and whose prayers were merely an obligation fulfilled, or a formula carried out, have are ceasing both activities. This dropout will continue. They are probably those described by sociologist Grace Davies as ‘people who belonged without believing’.  

In his recent farewell homily, Cardinal Daneels said, ‘Have we in fact returned to the first days of Christianity, when there was but a handful of Christians in a pagan and indifferent world ? What to do ? Let us start by developing in ourselves a consciousness of our Christian identity. Let us set our eyes on Jesus’  

Authentic believers are now moving towards a deeper faith built on a personal relationship with Christ and towards authentic prayer rather than merely saying prayers. Retreat days and preached novenas are now centred on growth in friendship with God through real prayer, rather than around examination of conscience on moral behaviour. There is a growing recognition that the essence of the Church is in the hearts of believers who have an authentic relationship with God expressed primarily in real prayer.  

Priests now recognise that ‘saying’ the Office may not be real prayer. Many also prefer to have a private or directed retreat rather than enjoying the camaraderie of communal retreats. They know that without a prayer life, even the busy priest could become no more than a celibate social worker. Henri Nouwen reminds us that ‘service is an expression of the search for God and not just of the desire to bring about social change’. Yes, there is a growing hunger in believers for genuine prayer in the modern Church, and this is good news.  

In 1939 Carl Jung wrote ‘The churches are too concerned with bolstering themselves as mass movements and are insufficiently attentive to their real task of helping the individual achieve a metanoia – a rebirth of the Spirit, Deo concedente’. The Church is gradually making this accusation less valid today  

A CHURCH OF MUTUAL ENCOURAGEMENT  

Most of us can remember the time when Religious communities were the only communities of faith in the Church. Now there is a growing movement to recognise and to live out Jesus’ promise that he is present when ‘two or three are gathered’ in his name. There is a move away from the God-and-me spirituality.  

One of the most frequently used words to describe the presence of the church in the New Testament is the word-group, paraklesis (noun) or parakeleo (verb). This word-group which appears over a hundred times means to comfort, to encourage and to exhort one another. Over the past forty years there has been a remarkable growth of small communities, organized internationally, like San Ejidio and Foculare. There are  also small spontaneous parish groups who gather regularly to pray together and to encourage one another in their experience of God.  

For those who measure church by numbers, it is worth recalling that Jesus did not say ‘where two or three hundred are gathered in my name…..’.  These small gospel groups are one of the best signs of good news in an emerging new Church.  

MORE ADULT FAITH EDUCATION  

Until about forty years ago, the word theology – the study of God’s revelation - was rarely on the lips of Irish laypeople.  It described a subject which priests studied, and it was a static body of blindly accepted knowledge. When my age group was in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, there were almost 700 students studying for priesthood, and every Religious community had its own seminary. Now there are about 80 students in Maynooth and St. Mary’s University College , Belfast .  All other Irish seminaries are empty of men preparing for priesthood.  

However, the good news is that most of these seminaries now have dynamic adult theological education programmes frequented entirely by lay people. I can think of seven in Dublin . Each other diocese also has at least one adult education centre and the Dominicans offer a course in theology, available by post. In the past, only priests contributed articles to religious periodicals. Now articles written by theologically literate lay people are very inspiring good news for us priests. And we need it. 

A MORE SCRIPTURAL CHURCH  

Not so long ago it would have been difficult to find a copy of the New Testament in Catholic homes. The three Sunday readings from the Bible were read in our churches on Sundays without preparation, pause or commentary, and the inserted psalm did not draw much response from the pews.  

Now, lay readers are being trained to proclaim the word which they have prayed over beforehand, rather than reading it without involvement. Vatican 11 described theirs as ‘an exalted ministry.’ Most of our monthly periodicals have a section offering helpful commentaries on the Sunday readings, and priests generally base their homilies on the readings rather than on exhortations about moral obligations.  

Now too, many lay people take their daily prayer from the Scriptures, as sales of The Lifegiving Word Prayerbook show, and there are courses on use of the Bible available for those who have time to attend them. Lectio Divina groups are flourishing. This is all good news about the Good News, and it will continue to deepen the central faith-experience of the Church from which moral behaviour flows.  

A MORE BALANCED CHURCH  

The Chinese have a saying that women hold up half the sky. On numbers alone, it is clear that they hold up much more than half of the Church.  If women were absent from Mass on Sunday mornings, we priests would be talking to a few men and a microphone.  

Yet, in many ways the real history of grace, and so of the Church, was written by mothers who introduced their children to God. Think too of the influence of women teachers especially in primary schools.  This vital encounter with the feminine in God through women was not allowed to continue into adulthood in our churches.  

However here is good news – ‘The faithful community expects the enriching intervention of women not only in the family but in all areas of life, in spirituality, in theological thinking, in the life of the community, in missionary vocations, in consultative bodies and in pastoral ministries’. It may not read like a papal pronouncement but it was spoken by Pope John Paul 11 at Antwerp in May 1985.  

Women theologians in books and articles are gradually helping to implement this desire of the Pope. And this woman-movement is not just a matter of priestly ordination.  It is much deeper in its call for the infusion of feminine spirituality to the life of every adult Catholic. I often think that if I had heard a woman’s experience of God every second Sunday morning since I was a child, I would now know God twice as well.    

OPPOSITION TO SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE  

For a long time, Popes and some bishops have spoken indirectly to defend the marginalized. In more recent years, notably Pope John Paul 11 and our present Pope have spoken unambiguously, and they encourage us to speak out and to act on behalf of the poor among us and in the developing world. This is more than an appeal to give money to the needy. Their words condemn injustice in any form. We have recently read the Pope’s condemnation of systemic injustice in the Irish church. Because of this more recent naming of systemic injustice anywhere, the Church is losing ‘friends’ rapidly - friends it should never have had.  

Pioneered by a priest and nun, Social Justice Ireland is active nationally promoting justice and peace education in this country. It makes a constant contribution to our economic welfare as it helps to prepare and to criticise the annual budget. This new social awareness in the Church is a long way from Pope Pius V1 who after the French revolution wrote about ‘the monstrous notion of the rights of man’      

DEEPER INVOLVEMENT WITH THE MARGINALISED  

For as long as any of us can remember, every parish has had a dedicated group caring for the materially poor – the S. V. de P. Society. But in recent years, as well as its door to door time-giving visits, it now offers a skilled critique of the government’s  annual budget. We also have The Capucian Centre, Peter McVerry, Sister Stanislaus and their lay partners involved very actively with those on the margin of Irish society and in challenging their oppressors and earlier Church failures.  The social outreach of San Ejidio in many countries is massive.  

If Jesus’ words, ‘by their fruits you shall know them’ are a real measure of faith, the growing hands-on social involvement by groups of believers is visible good news about the emerging Church. Contributions to Trocaire are a very effective expression of concern for international justice and peace. The new Church is becoming more and more as Jesus asked his followers to be – ‘good news for the poor’    

INCREASING LAY MINISTRY  

In the past, most lay ministry was limited to cleaning the church, collecting the money, fixing the flowers or altar service by children.  There was a complete neglect of all the lay ministries which flourished in the early Church.  

Now at last, many ministries such as eucharistic ministry, bereavement ministry, music ministry, catechetical ministry and parish welcome ministry are being recognised as integral parts of parish life. This promising thrust has a long way to go but there is progress in most parishes. At the same time the voluntary service of professional people such as architects or finance experts are being used in many parishes in belated recognition that priests are not competent in many important matters. It is now church law that there is a Finance Committee in every parish. The entirely lay-run Irish Catholic newspaper stimulates creative and critical thinking in the Church each week.  

At the same time, in many places, laypeople are being helped to recognise that their primary ministry is to carry out the vocation of their own lives in their families or in their work. Young parents have little time for other ministries today. People who serve on Parish Councils are exceedingly generous to have accepted their demanding ministry.   

Can we hope and pray for that major step towards making our Church a real community – lay involvement in discernment and decision-making at all levels.  

MORE  HONEST  ECUMENISM  

In the past there were Catholics and Protestants, and rarely ‘the twain did meet’ in any religious activity. One might say that there was opposition and confrontation more than dialogue and cooperation.  

Now Christian Churches are cooperating in prayer, in social involvement and in other ways short of sharing common Eucharist. The Irish School of Ecumenics, although initially discouraged by an Archbishop, is now thriving.  Many of our parishes cooperate with their other local Christian communities in interfaith programmes during Lent and other seasons. The growing unity is enabling the Churches to become still more good news for the world.  

For the past eight years, I have been responsible for interviewing all Church of Ireland candidates for ministry in Dublin diocese, and I have given many retreats and talks to the clergy of Church of Ireland dioceses here and in Scotland.  

The lay leaders in the RCIA programme are growing in their own faith and sharing it deeply. Many say that they are rediscovering what Cardinal Newman wrote, that ‘the really capital thing is not to prepare converts for the Church but to prepare the church for converts’.   

DIALOGUE  WITH  NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS  

At the age of twenty six, I joined the hundreds of priests who went annually to predominantly non-christian countries, with the vague hope of converting people to our faith. We did this with a great lack of sensitivity for other faiths.  

When I worked in Rome in the ‘80s, I recall a Vatican visitor to our General Administration telling us that the Catholic Church had become aware of the need to inculturate the Church with deep respect for the way of life and faith-expressions of local people. He ventured the opinion that perhaps we could have much to learn from listening and dialogue. Even though there were no women on his team, it was clear that our ecclesial arrogance was melting.  

Now there is a permanent respectful dialogue taking place between ourselves and all major non-christian religions.  This is based on the knowledge that God is present in all people, and consequently that we never bring God to any people for the first time.  

As General Councillor for my Congregation, I spent 12 years travelling throughout Asia . When I discovered that 57% of the world lives there and that – apart from the Philippines – Catholics are 1% of the population, it was a revelation. My hope that many of these deeply religious Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems might become Catholics without our respectful listening and dialogue now shames me.  I realised that we had been transporting our faith to a foreign culture, rather than transplanting it and allowing it to grow in God’s time. It seemed that we were not just aiming to become the salt of the earth but attempting to turn the entire world into salt.  

Side by side with the use of local prayer forms and liturgical expressions in our Asian and African churches, a respectful dialogue and cooperation with other faiths is now taking place in most of those countries. This is good news for the world and for the Church.    

A MORE LITURGICAL CHURCH  

Many of us can recall when the priest said Mass with his back to the people and when reading a missal or saying the Rosary was the extent of lay involvement.  

Thank God we have all lived to hear the Mass in our spoken language with an opportunity to participate intelligently rather than to observe reverently. Likewise, we are invited to take an active part in the ceremony of Baptism, to celebrate the sacrament of Reconciliation in communal acts of forgiveness, and to delight in more joyful celebrations of friends’ weddings. Catholic funerals have become much more meaningful too. These new ways of celebrating our great liturgical moments have become much more life-giving than they were in the past.  The sacraments are now becoming - as they were originally meant to be – festival moments of God’s visible entry into our world and into our lives. This is surely good news.    

END TO CLERICALISM  AND  ELITISM  

All cultures and subcultures tend to have upstairs-downstairs distinctions.  Privileged classes can emerge in all groups and it has happened, even in the Church which Jesus said must resist any tendency to choose high places or to seek being served. When I was ordained in 1953, I immediately received status from and power over laypeople, most of whom were older, wiser and closer to God than I. Yet I do remember one of our seminary teachers smiling as he warned us not to call our grannies ‘my child.’ All this is slowly changing as we priests relate more equally with laypeople and are more comfortable with being addressed by our baptismal names. Many bishops are equally ready for this change, even if some have a distance to go.  

Before making my vows as an Oblate, I was told, as every young woman in convents was told, that I was entering ‘a higher way of life’ than my brothers or sisters who had married.  Nuns, Brothers and priests no longer believe this, and many of us are uncomfortable with the word religious used to describe our way of life, knowing as we do that all life is religious.  Our status is no higher than that of all whose status  comes from our common baptism. As Father Ratzinger said a long time ago, ‘There is no higher call than being a Christian.’ We now know that priestly power is power to serve and to inspire, not to command or to stand above others.  Perhaps this is good news more for priests than for every member of the Church.  

A SUFFERING CHURCH  

Pope John Paul 11 said that the 20^th century will be remembered as ‘the century of martyrs.’ We all remember the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero and of the six brave Jesuits with their two housekeepers in Salvador . Yet, it is forgotten that a few hundred  laypeople were martyred there just for teaching catechism.  Overall, there have been more martyrs in the Church over the last thirty years than in the previous three hundred. This is surely good news for the Church, one sign of which Jesus said would be, ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you’.  This martyrdom continues anywhere - including Ireland - that people suffer because they live their faith or because they uphold human rights.  

EMERGING QUESTIONS  

The Church’s record in education and in caring for the sick when these needs were much neglected, is impressive.  Through dedicated work and financial sacrifice, congregations of Sisters, Brothers and priests have built up and maintained our schools. Our hospitals likewise have been built up to what they are today on the foundations of faith-filled self-sacrificing Sisters.   

These services go on now, mostly in the hands of dedicated, even if not believing women and men. Questions are surfacing which ask if bishops or religious congregations should not gradually relinquish the minimal involvement and the diminishing control they now have in or over schools and especially hospitals. The money and effort being put into either of these works by church leaders might be more usefully spent on direct evangelization in a few schools for children of believing parents and on adult education of people who want to grow in faith. Many Catholic thinkers wonder if our present education system is actually succeeding in faith development. Much evidence shows the contrary. And just what a Catholic hospital gives which is not available in a secular hospital with Catholic chaplains is not clear. Useful questions are being asked about these matters, and moves to leave some so-called Catholic schools and hospitals are already on the way. Good news.  

These are all signs that the Church is changing and becoming more like the Church of Christ – not merely an institution with an impressive governing elite but a rich leaven of believers in the mass. If you are young, it may be difficult to see the progress, because you did not live in the past. And if you are older, it is difficult to accept that you may not live to see the full fruits of these deep movements. And finally, it is fairly obvious that these great movements are advancing despite opposition, sometimes from high places. But this new Church is coming. We are each a part of it, or rather we are this new Church if it is already present in our believing hearts.

*  In the same book-interview, Cardinal. Ratzinger said:

“Maybe we are facing a new and different epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterised more by the mustard seed, where it will be exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that lets God in”