This week marks my first anniversary back in the warm embrace of Holy Mother Church as a full-time, active participant in the faith. Sadly, it will probably be my last, barring some kind of miracle.
Before you dismiss this as a complaint for the sake of complaining, please allow me to relate my experience and share the bizarre circus of the soul that sums up my involvement with the institution of the Church so far.
I don’t even know where to begin.
I was so optimistic when I came back, and my future seemed bright. I paid for my sins, did my time, moved on, and I was home- among my people, where I belonged. Or, at least I thought.
Instead, I was ignored, passed around like a hot potato, placated, pandered and manipulated. I was rejected, told to temper my expectations and accept that the gossip, infighting and dysfunction I experienced was just part of the package.
I chose to live the Gospel in order to demonstrate how it is still relevant and valid. I understand that part of that involves a degree of suffering and being rejected by my own people, in my own town. However, I had no idea how broken our broken system really is. Living through that experience has taken its toll on me physically and spiritually, and it has devastated me economically.
I walked with priests who are in no condition to be in active ministry. Some are drunks, others abusive manipulators, a couple were so lost they were considering leaving ministry altogether. I ran into a formator who allows seminarians the freedom to do things seminarians shouldn’t be doing, because “we’re living in the modern world.” I met a priest who does parish missions who doesn’t believe what he says, but he enjoys the money. I walked among a gaggle of lay ministers who are trying to eliminate Jesus from the Christian equation altogether, from within the Catholic Church.
My biggest takeaway from this year is that few who actually work for the Church know, understand or have any interest in living the heart of the gospel. They certainly did everything they could to avoid helping me to do that, and they actively put up barriers that prevented me from growing.
Instead of being fed, mentored, trained and encouraged, I was abandoned and ridiculed. I lost 50lbs and a year’s worth of peace thanks to my encounters with shepherds who intentionally lead people astray. I had to get my spiritual nourishment on YouTube because I was starving from the lack of food in our faith communities.
My time spent in these circles left me more lost, hungry, isolated and confused than I was before I came back.
I also spent a lot of time listening. I listened to people who show up for Mass. I listened to people who left the Church, and I listened to people who are seeking God. I also tried to encourage others to draw closer to the faith and the Church. Yet, every single thing they are concerned with, hurt from, or complain about is true and valid.
Why would I evangelize people into this environment, especially those who had the courage to shed this nonsense from their lives in the first place?
Inasmuch as Catholics are drooling for people to grace the doorsteps of their parishes again, or longing for the joy of the good-ol-days, they have a funny way of showing it around here.
It took months for anyone to welcome me back. Most people in ministry completely ignored me despite the fact that I’ve been in ministry for years. No one found it worth their time to help me to get my footing and figure out how to prepare to live out the call that God gave me. I have yet to develop any solid, honest friendship with any Catholic, let alone find mentors who have the time or interest to feed me either.
For comparison, I’ve never experienced this in any protestant or non-Christian community I was a part of.
For all the claims the Catholic Church makes for itself, it lacks love. It breaks my heart to accept how Catholics in this corner of the Christian universe represent the source of most of my life-long pain and suffering. Many still take pleasure in perpetuating this.
—–
In all fairness, I knew that I was coming back to a Church in the midst of an unprecedented crisis. I knew that I was coming back in a cold, hard and corrupt city that is undergoing profound sociocultural change. I knew that the Church was deeply divided.
I expected to come back and spend some time in prayer and discernment before getting to work, because time is short. Yet, people literally ran from me when I needed help getting started.
I have skills and gifts that can bless a lot of people. I’m not being conceited, just realistic. Yet, I can’t get any help from people who serve in similar capacities to save my life. They’re just too insecure, clicky or territorial to think past themselves.
Here are just a few examples:
I needed someone to help me to proofread a music setting for Mass that I wrote and notated in order to publish it. Not one Catholic musician in “ministry” offered to help. I’m a prolific writer, but not one Catholic would help me to polish my craft so I could write about God. I’m called to be an evangelist, but not one Catholic was willing to help me to train and prepare for that. I hoped to be studying theology by now so I could relate the faith to folks in meaningful ways, but people strung me along with empty promises while deadlines passed.
One guy strung me along for months, teasing me about some kind of short-term paid internship while watching me starve. Meanwhile, he, and his entire ministerial team, abandoned their flock when they needed to be ministered to the most.
One day, I took a pair of sisters to a Mass at a random parish before their flight home, and we were greeted by a priest who was too-drunk to hand out communion. I had to jump in and help. It was awesome to be able to do that, but an abomination that it needed to happen.
A divorced and re-married gay campus ministry director at a Catholic university was my first point of contact when I returned to the Church. He tried to evangelize me out of the Church while attempting to entice me away from sound biblical teaching. When I refused, I was marginalized. He mocks the faith and is supported by the people who run this university. Yet, I try to live the faith and I’m rejected. I don’t get it. I’m too-liberal for the conservatives and too-conservative for the liberals in this goofy town.
Meanwhile, my last week at my former parish involved helping to load up items to bring to a food pantry. A few days later, I ran out of food, and money for food.
I reached out to my deacon’s wife for help and she accused me of looking for a handout. As a side note, the reason I found myself in that position in the first place was because I had to take a week off of work to prepare for a once-in-a-decade job opportunity in ministry that she turned me onto.
The icing on the cake of the past year was how an opportunity to repair a statue of Mary, as a sign of unity and reconciliation in a divided community, led me down a rabbit hole to nowhere. That rabbit hole was intentional.
If we can’t get together to make make Mary beautiful on a warm, summer weekend, how are we going to unite and tackle the real problems the Church is facing today?
We need a major attitude adjustment or the Church here as we know it is going to collapse. In my humble opinion, this is a foregone conclusion already. Yet, I’m not willing to abandon hope for reasons that pass all understanding.
However, I’m about to shake the dust off of my feet and move on. That’s also part of the Gospel. Frankly, what I see within the life of the Church today is not that different from what was going on when Jesus graced the earth with his presence.
—–
The Church is going to have to actually work for her future if it wants to to enjoy stability and growth. It’s going to have to live what it believes. The sacraments are not enough.
However, this can’t happen as long as we are hell-bent on doubling down on repeating the same mistakes that got us into this mess to begin with. Take a look at all the closures, mergers and adventures in downsizing- all we are doing is restructuring to conserve resources. We’re not addressing the root causes of the problem, and we’re certainly not building any kind of framework that supports sustainable growth.
It’s impossible to inject new life into dead churches by combining them without having a framework in place to shepherd parishes into a growth-oriented future. Without a fundamental attitude adjustment and a revolutionary re-think about our approach to ministry and Christian living, we’re cooked.
Some will read this and immediately default to how God is in control, and whatever comes from this is God’s will. So, it’s okay for the Church to shrink. Frankly, this is little more than a weak excuse to avoid the need to repent and tackle this problem head on.
God is not pleased with our acceptance of a smaller, ineffectual Church either.
Perhaps this downward spiral could be offset if we had stable and spiritually mature laity in place to steer people to Jesus in the absence of priests and religious. However, the exact opposite is happening. We’re replacing them with people who have questionable beliefs and attitudes toward the faith to begin with, and their influence is spreading like wildfire.
They exploit the antics of the hierarchy and combine that with warm-and-fuzzy inclusivity and social justice. Warm-and-fuzzies are great, as long as they’re placed within the context of holiness through repentance and self-denial for the sake of love. Yet, the exact opposite is happening. We’re teaching generations of Christians that we can continue to live in sin, normalize it, and then say it’s okay because God loves us anyway.
These seeds are planted in many of our seminaries and then carried into the mainstream by our chaplains, principals, teachers, catechists, music directors, spiritual directors and pastoral associates.
How can the faith be modeled, one that is intended to be experiential, if people who are in charge of propagating it at the micro level don’t want to walk with Jesus to begin with? For the few in place who do, most of them don’t understand the faith enough to relate it to others properly either.
To make matters worse, they marginalize those who want to do just that. This is a feedback loop that is going to devastate the heart and soul of the Mystical Body if we’re not careful.
I’m not talking about politics or liberal vs conservative either.
Frankly, I’m tired of listening to the clanging cymbals on both sides. They don’t have the love of God in their hearts, and it shows. It’s also blatantly-obvious to the 95% of Catholics who stay home on Sundays, but nobody pays attention to them because nobody can be bothered to meet them where they’re at.
Don’t you get it? People aren’t stupid. They smell bullshit from a mile a way. So does Jesus.
—–
As it stands today, the world of Catholicism in the West seems to be divided into two camps: Those who want to protect the institution, and those who oppose anything related to it. Both camps suck all of the oxygen out of the room, and both sides forget to model the love of Jesus.
You can see this play out on our phones- just go on social media.
How many videos, tweets, posts or podcasts actually reflect the abundant life that we’re supposed to collectively-enjoy as the Body of Christ? Where is all the content that shows Catholics living their life to the fullest? The little that does make its way out there is such a white-bread, cornfed media abomination that bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever.
Instead, all we hear is what to believe or what we’re told to believe is wrong.
For all the teasing we lob against our protestant and evangelical cousins, the evangelicals are the only Christian demographic that is growing, and we can learn a lot from them. Frankly, their growth stems from our losses.
Let’s not forget that baptism, the Eucharist, and the laying on of hands joins Christians outside of time and space. Our cousins are just as connected to heaven as we are. Catholics may lay claim to having the fullness of Christ, and we might think that we’re better, but they believe in the resurrection too, and they are no less-Christian than what the arrogance of the Catholic Church gives them credit for.
Why would I want to evangelize and invite someone into this mess? I don’t think I can, at least not in any part of the Church I’ve encountered thus far. Lead me to a parish or community that actually does this, and I’ll be there in the morning. Until then, I’m not sure that I want to be part of this mess anymore either.
Frankly, I’d rather send seekers to the evangelicals. Despite some of their flaws, they do a remarkably good job of being receptive to the Holy Spirit and behaving accordingly. The Holy Spirit does wondrous things through them, and it shows. The Catholic Church can’t stand firm on the mountain of right, regarding questionable theology at best, if they aren’t willing to back any of that up with the living, breathing love of Jesus.
God only puts up with that nonsense for so long- just look at what happened with the reformation. Yet, the Catholic Church is hell-bent on continuing down this very same trajectory because of their collective arrogance and pride, and it shows to everyone except the die-hards who drank the kool-aid and those who are chosen to perpetuate the satanic side of the institution.
We focus so much on our traditions, primacy and “correctness”, and this has little value to the souls who want to encounter God in meaningful ways during the normal course of their lives.
Where are the mentors? Where are miracle-believers? Where are those who inspire, who lead by example? Where are the friends and companions that represent the glue of the joyous and full social fabric of the Christian life that is so absent among Catholics? Where are those who show us how to navigate the realities of the world in which we live in 99% of the time?
It’s funny- evangelicals spend as little time as possible in Church because their focus is actively and openly living their faith in the real world. Catholics do a great job of maintaining and guiding people through the historical structure of the Church, but we fail miserably with respect to engaging people in the real world in meaningful ways.
We say we do, but we don’t. If we did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Remember, we can’t fake it- The Gospel of Matthew reminds us that we are known by our fruits (Mt 7:16). What we’ve been producing, for a very long time now, is inedible to folks who see right through the theatrics of our faith.
The real-world connectivity that Christian souls naturally seek is strong among evangelicals. Maybe that’s one reason they’re growing by leaps and bounds- in large part due to the influx of Catholics who were starved out of their own spiritual homes.
God only knows I’m about to put Catholicism in the rear view mirror of my own life too. I’m tired of the hypocrisy, the apathy, the slavery to ritual and celebrations, the justification of institutional sin because “it is what it is”, and the downright phoniness of it all.
I’ve spent the past year listening to people, praying with them, asking questions and just being present. A lot of people who show up for Mass are just as lost and miserable as those who stay home, they just don’t know what else to do.
They stare at the Eucharist looking for hope or answers, but Jesus needs to move through people in order to give that to them. Yet, there aren’t any.
Everyone is underserved by the emptiness that exists between the hierarchy and the laity who are just looking for living, breathing Christians to connect and share life with. There’s no opportunity in that space to operate, and attempts to do something like that either get shut down or ignored.
Can you see how this is a problem?
Making statements, maintaining appearances and keeping things humming along is where we direct most of our energy and resources. Meanwhile, the empty pews, boring homilies, awful music (that speaks to practically no one), superficial phoniness, gossip and overall smuggery of Church life are all a testament to the terrible stage show we put on for everyone on a daily basis.
We’ve evolved as a species. The 95% of Catholics who stay home- they have better things to do. They also have more meaningful encounters with God in their real lives instead of what they find in the fantasyland of their local parish.
—–
I’m called to be an evangelist and an encourager through writing, music and faith-sharing. Yet, I can’t do it without the companionship and support of a community I can walk with. God has equipped me with so much to offer, yet nobody here seems to want anything to do with the skills, heart and soul that I bring to the table.
I suffered for years to learn how to serve. I learned to submit by submitting to some of the most-submissive and disturbed people I ever met. I’ve learned to be generous by accepting kindness from an enemy. I’ve learned how to forgive. I’ve learned how to persevere. I know the voice of my shepherd.
Yet, if my own people, within my own faith community, can’t be bothered, then why should I continue to bother either? I made my peace with my past with respect to my antics with Catholicism. Maybe it’s time to move on and accept that the Church is what it is, and as it stands today, isn’t for me.
I hope I’m wrong. I love the faith, I love being a Catholic. But if there is no place to work, serve and live out my faith in this community, than what am I doing here?
I guess we will find out where all of this leads soon enough.