This is a hard time to be alive in the Church today. We’ve spent a lot of time, money and resources over the years trying to figure out why people are so disaffected or disengaged with the faith. Yet, like our healthcare philosophy in this country, we keep focusing on symptoms instead of identifying and treating the source of a lot of our problems. The reality is that many of the problems that the Church as a community, and as an institution, faces is because of us.
We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves what role we play in contributing to the persistent malaise that lingers in the air. It’s easy to complain and walk away in disgust, dismay or disappointment when we encounter the struggles that our faith is facing at the present time. Yet, a lot of what we are facing today is because of our own unwillingness to step up, live sacrificially and serve fully.
The Hand’s-off Approach Doesn’t Work
We’re learning the hard way that it isn’t enough to just show up on Sundays and go through the motions. Being content with tossing some money in the offering plate and saying a few prayers once a week isn’t how the Body of Christ thrives. This hands-off, let-other-people-handle-things mentality that permeates the air doesn’t work.
We tried to get away with it for a while, but now that we’re experiencing the fruits of these choices, what do we do? We complain, we question our faith, and we wrestle the temptation to walk away.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, we produce what the Church gives back to humanity. In an ideal world, that symbiotic relationship would nourish and invigorate the lifeblood of Christ through us all. In the real world, the heart of Jesus struggles to pump what little blood is left to flow through the body.
We’re on life-support, and it’s our own fault. What’s happening today a testament to our tendency to allow garbage in, recycle it, and then send the same garbage right back out into the world.
We’ve been numbed into accepting the antics of some of our brothers and sisters in Christ with a shrug of the shoulders. We’ve allowed clericalism, careerism and opportunism to become entrenched into our ministerial DNA. This causes us to accept and normalize being stifled, confined and limited with respect to how freely we can serve, and be served, within the hyper-compartmentalized world of the institutional Church.
The Status-quo Won’t Solve the Problem
We decided to place great value on maintaining the status-quo and appearances in order to nourish the false comfort of having permanence in an impermanent world. If the best we can do as communities of Christ, and His presence working through us, involves bingo games, carnivals and raffles, then we have a problem. Those things are all well-and-good, but they don’t resolve the disconnect between what people really hunger and thirst for and what the Church in this country actually produces.
I run into people in ministry all the time who scratch their heads and wonder why people aren’t participating in the life of the Church. But, when you talk about the reasons and what’s necessary to fix the problem, they tend to default to defending the Church and all the good it does.
The limited and superficial reach we are collectively-experiencing nowadays is nothing to be proud of.
This idea that we should be grateful for what we have, or that something is better than nothing is not enough. The world is a mess, our communities are a mess and our parishes are dying from the inside out.
Yet, a big reason for this is because we just threw our hands in the air and gave up. We gave up- the laity, the faithful, the ones who are responsible for doing 98% of the work of Jesus in the world.
It’s our own disconnect from the Church, and each other as a Christian community, that is contributing to everyone’s collective suffering. The Church doesn’t do or offer enough, in part because there aren’t enough people to do these things. To make things worse, influential roles in ministry are being filled by many who know little about Jesus in the first place. They’re the last people who should be there, yet here we are, because we’re not stepping up.
Turn the Blame-Game into a Call to Faithfulness
This isn’t about liberal vs conservative, traditional vs progressive. This is about fidelity, about living the gospel and serving and nurturing Christ’s body properly. We’re not doing that, and the Church is suffering and starving as a result.
We’ve been angered, hurt and disappointed long enough that we stopped putting our heart and soul into serving. Yes, a big part of this involves being sidelined by powers-that-be who resist attempts to renew the Church. However, if we are truly honest with ourselves, another big part of the problem is that we’re just lazy, apathetic and lack the courage and conviction to do the right thing.
It’s easier to blame the bad things the Church does instead of owning up to our own unwillingness to answer God’s call in our lives. It is what it is, so why pretend otherwise? I mean, who are we fooling? We’re certainly not fooling Jesus.
Sadly, when we fall into that trap, we’re not only depriving ourselves of being used by God, but we’re also depriving others of receiving God’s grace through us. God prefers to work through the hands and feet of us, and our fellow humans here on earth.
More and more people suffer when fewer hands and feet are available to go where God desires them to go, to do what God wants them to do.
What Are We Leaving for the Next Generation?
We’ve been dragged through a lot of struggles for more than a generation now. Those of you who are coming up in the Church today are getting the worst of it, and for that I’m sorry. You’re inheriting a Church that is a shell of what it was, and a shadow of what it can become.
Those of us who were around during some of these crises could have done more, and we should have fought more. We should have been more selfless with our time and our talent so that you could be brought up in a healthy, thriving Christian community that is a true representation of God on earth.
Instead we produced an overwhelmingly-divided, unfaithful, heartless, listless circus that is, in no small part, a consequence of our collective laziness, arrogance and indifference.
One example of this goes back to when people stopped entering religious life en-masse. Our fearless leaders had to create a profession of lay people to fill those gaps. A lot of good came out of that- teachers replaced sisters and brothers, laypeople went to seminary and began serving in ministerial positions, and they brought considerable life and perspective into the Church that was desperately needed.
Unfortunately, it also created a minefield of confusion and disunity that remains unchecked today. Much of this comes from the influence, education and training that students receive in Catholic Universities that have questionable Catholic foundations to begin with.
As fewer, stable Catholics participate in the life of the Church and the faith, that influence is being replaced by many with agendas and career goals instead of a solid commitment to the gospel and the Christian life. After being trained and formed in this climate, they end up serving in a Church that is already adrift in uncertainty.
This is a terrible feedback loop that will only contribute to our head-long race to the bottom.
As long as the faithful, mature, and capable Catholics out there are not willing to give sacrificially to encourage, empower and equip the next generation of leaders, things are going to get exponentially-worse. Worse for the Church, worse for the world, and worse for us.
This is why it’s important for youth, young adults and mentors to muster the courage and fortitude to do what we didn’t. Investigate your faith. Ask the hard questions, grow in holiness by building relationships with other stable, strong Catholics and prepare yourself to be a saint in a Church that is oozing with sinfulness. Find and cleave to faithful priests and leaders who have the heart of Christ, and avoid getting too-close to those who don’t.
There’s still time to turn this thing around before we reach a tipping-point, but we must act quickly and with purpose.
The Faith Needs You
Renewal comes when we intentionally live and serve with conviction and courage while allowing ourselves to be filled with the special grace that God freely gives to us if we just ask. The Church desperately needs good, faithful and authentic mentors, teachers, healers, servants and leaders. It’s up to each one of us to step up, say yes and then allow the Holy Spirit to make it happen through us.
This can only work if we are willing to make an effort to take responsibility for our own faith, education and commitment to holiness. We can’t rely on a lot of parishes or schools to adequately feed us right now. But we can prepare ourselves to feed and form others when they show up later.
At the end of the day, it’s up to us to come together, learn from one another and fill the Church with the resources that it needs to thrive. This is a generation-long process, but man, what a gift to give. Don’t be afraid to answer your call to courageously live and serve in love. Remember that light always conquers darkness, and the more light we bring, the faster that darkness will go away.
This is a difficult time to step up, stand up and show up. More than likely, you’ll have minimal support at first. Expect to face many barriers and obstacles, and prepare to have much of what’s on your heart fall on deaf ears. But, the reality is that if we don’t take up this cross, then who will?
Remember how there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for our friends (Jn 15:13). I am asking a lot. I’m asking for you to have faith. I’m asking you to have courage. I’m asking us to find ways to connect, to grow, to unite and to work together to gather lost souls and inject the Church with new life.
The Church is worth fighting for, and the fight needs you.