#302: What Will We Offer Now?

EXCERPT:
....Last week I suggested we might create a "new brand" for Catholicism by taking a cue from Vatican Council II. That Council did not legislate a less Euro-centric, more global Catholicism for its own sake. Rather, the Council examined the signs of the times and concluded that the "modern world" (meaning global culture in the post-World War II nuclear age) displays a widening gap between power and wisdom.

The downside of this insight: what if modern power--military, technological, economic, scientific, political--simply runs amok, unrestrained and unprincipled? The prospect was as horrifying as a mushroom cloud, a global depression, an environmental catastrophe, an invasion or a genocide.

The upside: what if the wisdom traditions of the world, like Christianity, were mobilized to harness and guide the world's power, and to ensure that such power always served good hands with just means? So, instead of fearing catastrophe, we humans might hope for a future of global peace and justice.

This bright vision from Vatican II, based on a partnership between power and wisdom, might help us answer the questions "What good is parish--What can we offer now?" Certainly, the abuse of power concerns everyone, and the urgent need for wisdom is no secret or mystery. Just look at BP, the financial crisis, or the debate over government power.

But there are two hurdles to developing a “wisdom” role for parishes.
First, the Catholic hierarchy has squandered all its credibility as models of leadership using wisdom to guide power. On the contrary, the spreading sex-abuse scandal is a scandal precisely because it displays the abuse of power unguided by any wisdom at all.

Second, parish leaders do not typically see themselves in the “wisdom business.” For parish to offer something new, this will have to change--and we must begin by asking ourselves what kind of wisdom parishes could possibly bring to people's lives that is unavailable to them anywhere else?

I have always believed Vatican II was right about power’s urgent need for wisdom. And now I believe such wisdom is precisely what our parishes need to offer in order to survive and grow. But that makes it absolutely critical for us to begin this conversation: What sort of “wisdom business” can parishes engage in? And how?