Showing posts with label lay ministry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lay ministry. Show all posts
Monday, December 21, 2015
#445: “Ad Multos Annnos !” for Francis —and for HIS Council
The traditional Latin birthday toast “Ad Multos Annos !” (to many years!) had double (or even triple) meaning the last two weeks.
Vatican Council II (1962-1965) finished its work on December 8, 1965. Two weeks ago the 50th anniversary of that historic accomplishment passed quietly. And last week the 79th anniversary of Pope Francis’ December 17 birth also passed without much notice. For me, these two anniversaries are deeply connected.
When Vatican II who opened in 1962, I was a 13 year old high school freshman--and for the next four years the Council shaped life at my Jesuit high school. We prayed daily for the Council’s success. We followed the Council’s progress through John Cogley’s New York Times coverage. We learned the Council’s background and progress in history and religion classes. We attended liturgies where the coming liturgical reforms were explained and demonstrated. We held an annual open “Model Vatican II” complete with all of Vatican II’s working commissions (I always chose to join the “social communications” commission!).
Meanwhile, Jorge Bergoglio (today Pope Francis) was also a student, but in a Jesuit seminary. For both of us, the Church we grew up in was changing before our eyes--and the Church we would work in would be a very different place.
Even during the Council, I had shifted parish roles from altar boy to commentator and lector at Masses. In college I often attended an 11 PM campus Mass where communal participation, folk-style music, and the English language contrasted sharply with the silence of pre-conciliar liturgies. And when I graduated I chose to pursue theological studies, not as a seminarian, but at a secular university. I would later decide against a fulltime academic career to pursue professional lay ministry in parishes--something unheard of before the Council. Forty-plus years later I’m still doing parish work.
Meanwhile Bergoglio was ordained a Jesuit priest and followed the path that led to his election 2013 as the first Jesuit pope.
During our careers, we have both witnessed the euphoria and confusion that Vatican II’s reforms unleashed on Catholic life. We saw the polarization that followed, as extremists campaigned either for the restoration of pre-conciliar Catholicism or for more radical reforms. We watched as church officials diluted and blocked the Council’s historic momentum by reverting to the “business as usual” mode that is the M.O. of all bureaucrats. We both feared that Pope John XXIII’s dream of a missionary Catholicism, actively engaged in modern life as a powerful evangelizing presence, would remain unfulfilled.
But as pope, Francis has seized the opportunity to retrieve John’s vision--and with it, the Council’s promise--with the simplest of strategies. By both his actions and words, he has bypassed 50 years of academic debate about the Council (a debate which unwittingly enabled the bureaucrats’ inertia) by focusing on one simple notion that was the keynote of John’s address on the very day that he opened the Council in October 1962:
We see, in fact, as one age succeeds another, that the opinions of men follow one another and exclude each other. And often errors vanish as quickly as they arise, like fog before the sun. The Church has always opposed these errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She consider that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations…the Catholic Church…desires to show herself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the brethren who are separated from her.
John’s keynote of “mercy” has become the current pope’s key to rescuing Catholic renewal from the bureaucrats. For Francis, in fact, “mercy” lies at the center of the Church’s mission:
Throughout history, some have been tempted to say that the Church is the Church of only the pure and perfectly consistent, and it expels all the rest. This is not true! This is heresy! The Church, which is holy, does not reject sinners; she does not reject us all; she does not reject us because she calls everyone, welcomes them, is open even to those furthest from her; she calls everyone to allow themselves to be enfolded by the mercy, the tenderness, and the forgiveness of the Father…
In short, Francis has made “mercy” a password for retrieving and preserving Vatican II’s vast historical agenda. This single password “mercy” has allowed him to communicate a simple message that hundreds of millions of people have heard. He has made mercy the Church’s litmus test: If we are driven by mercy, we become the Church we are meant to me. But if anything else other than mercy drives Catholic life, then the Church fails its mission.
What could be simpler? And this simplicity has not only made Francis the planet’s most popular leader--it has has also rescued Vatican II from the very edge of history’s dustbin. This old man has brought the Council back to life. In a word, 50 years after the event, Pope Francis has now made Vatican II HIS Council! As he himself said, in language implying a critique of the bureaucrats:
Our goal is not to proselytize but to listen to needs, desires and disappointments, despair, hope. We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace. Vatican II, inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.
For me, that “something” has also meant rescuing my own career from the grim prospect of futility. No one wants to devote an entire life’s work to a losing cause, only to find that one’s finish line is worse than the starting point. Before Francis, I feared the real probability that Catholic life would be worse when I finish my work than it was when I began in 1972. Francis has restored the real possibility that John XXIII’s vision of a merciful Church will finally take root in Catholic hearts.
But birthdays reflect the march of time. Francis and I share the same December 17 birthday, and neither of us has much time left—he even less than I. We hear increasing stories that his enemies plan to undo his work once he exits the world stage. We can only hope that Francis has enough birthdays left to make his rescue mission irreversible.
So now that Francis has made the Council his Council, we have more reason than ever to wish him not only “Happy Birthday” but also “Ad Multos Annos!”
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
#367 Ten Ways Catholic Life is Better
Today’s tough
times shouldn’t blind us to how much renewal we have already accomplished…
2. Liturgy. Gone too are the days of unheard mumbled prayers and
passive people in the pews. Gone are
full pews at Communion time (only 15% of Mass-goers received communion in the
1950s), rosaries at Mass, the “elites” who possessed their own missals and the
skill to navigate among their many multicolored bookmark-ribbons.
Now people come to Mass
for the right reason - - the Eucharist itself.
They participate in its celebration: hearing the readings, responding to
the priest, praying together the Kyrie and Gloria and Psalms and Sanctus and
the Our Father, greeting each other in peace, and coming forward en masse to receive Communion.
Today our sacramental
system, while far from perfect, has been restored to firmer foundations. Baptism makes us members of the Body of
Christ, and its fullest form is the restored Baptism of adult catechumens at
the Easter Vigil. Confirmation now comes
between Baptism and First Communion, or else is conferred on youth old enough
to seriously renew their own baptismal vows.
Funerals are now bright with color, alleluias, the Paschal Candle, and
the hope of Resurrection. And the
Eucharist is once again the center of all, the way we come together as one body. Even Reconciliation, though
underutilized, is now humane rather than mechanical, healing without being
clinical.
4. The Bible. Many of us remember when “Bible” referred
merely to that big coffee table book where families recorded baptisms and
weddings. But few Catholics remember
that we never heard the Old Testament or the letters of Paul at Church. Only the Gospel was read aloud and in
English. Now nearly the entire body of
the Old and New Testaments is proclaimed aloud at Mass over a three year
cycle. And we’ve fairly well
dispensed with the old-time “sermons” on whatever topic crossed Father’s mind,
in favor of genuine homilies that unpack, interpret, and apply the scripture
readings for the congregation.
6. The Workforce. Gone are the days when parishes
were run by a drill-squad of priests, alike in uniforms, training, tasks, and
lifestyle. Now parish leadership
resembles a ball-club: role players with distinct jobs, different training, and
specialized skills. Before my arrival,
the St. Mary’s staff consisted of three priests. Today St. Mary’s lists more than 12 staff
people on its website. Typically, large parish staffs are now loaded with
laypeople. Instead of marching in lockstep, they must work like a team--which
means their diverse gifts build up the Body of Christ, just as St. Paul
described, in a way the old workforce never did.
In these days of
sex-scandal fatigue, declining numbers, fractured fellowship and polarized
politics it is tempting to wallow in discouragement. These are hard times. We long for the “good old days.”
But there is another
view. As I observe my 40th anniversary in parish work (I began at St. Mary’s in Laurel, Maryland in the
summer of 1972) I prefer to think of our present situation as a short-term
stumbling block on the long-term path of Catholic renewal.
As someone who lived
through Vatican II, I see our Church in the light of the Council’s call for a “Second
Pentecost” to give new life and vitality to our ancient tradition.
But while Vatican II’s
four years were my four high school years, my childhood was spent in an earlier
version of Catholicism. So my
perspective filters through a life lived in three parts: (1) a pre-council
childhood, (2) a conciliar adolescence, and (3) a post-council adulthood
spent working in the Church. From this
vantage point, I see many ways the Church now is dramatically better off.
1. Catholic Identity. Gone are the
days when Catholicism shaped our identity mainly by giving us rules to
follow. Nowadays everyone I work with
knows that being “Catholic” means to embrace a personal faith descended from 20
centuries of believers and shared with 100s of millions worldwide. By now Catholics cannot remember the days
when “personal faith” was an alien concept among Catholics. Yes, the “good old days” had its share of
“devout” Catholics--but for most the “Catholic faith” was merely a set of
propositions one accepted and rules one obeyed.
The idea that God is love, and we are to be disciples of His incarnate
Son, too often got lost in the shopping list of Catholic Do’s and Don’ts. Those days are gone, and good riddance.
2. Liturgy. Gone too are the days of unheard mumbled prayers and
passive people in the pews. Gone are
full pews at Communion time (only 15% of Mass-goers received communion in the
1950s), rosaries at Mass, the “elites” who possessed their own missals and the
skill to navigate among their many multicolored bookmark-ribbons.Now people come to Mass
for the right reason - - the Eucharist itself.
They participate in its celebration: hearing the readings, responding to
the priest, praying together the Kyrie and Gloria and Psalms and Sanctus and
the Our Father, greeting each other in peace, and coming forward en masse to receive Communion.
3. Sacramental life. I still remember when Baptism
meant merely “washing original sin from the soul” of babies (and mothers were
excluded), when Confirmation made “soldiers of Christ” of kids too old for
Christian initiation but too young to take any mature responsibility. I remember when funerals were morbid black
reminders of death’s grip and God’s wrath.
I remember when the Eucharist was merely an annual duty-call for most
Catholics.
Today our sacramental
system, while far from perfect, has been restored to firmer foundations. Baptism makes us members of the Body of
Christ, and its fullest form is the restored Baptism of adult catechumens at
the Easter Vigil. Confirmation now comes
between Baptism and First Communion, or else is conferred on youth old enough
to seriously renew their own baptismal vows.
Funerals are now bright with color, alleluias, the Paschal Candle, and
the hope of Resurrection. And the
Eucharist is once again the center of all, the way we come together as one body. Even Reconciliation, though
underutilized, is now humane rather than mechanical, healing without being
clinical.
Moreover Bible study has
become part of many adult education programs and faith-sharing groups, and is
built into every single school-age religious education curriculum. So the Bible is now at the center of
Catholic life in a way unknown to our grandparents.
5. The Laity.
“Laity” means “people,” and the day is long gone when they were content to
“pray, pay, and obey.” For 40 years or more, lay volunteers have assumed
leadership in ministry as lectors, Eucharistic ministers, in baptismal and
marriage preparation, in the RCIA, and as parish councilors and small group
leaders. And since 2005, lay
professionals now make up the majority of parish staffs.
Laypeople are no longer
helpless children in the church, totally dependent on “Father” to care for
them. Such infantile docility enabled
the cover-up of sexual abuse for decades, but Vatican II’s call for an “adult”
laity finally doomed clergy corruption.
The Church of silence is gone for good.
6. The Workforce. Gone are the days when parishes
were run by a drill-squad of priests, alike in uniforms, training, tasks, and
lifestyle. Now parish leadership
resembles a ball-club: role players with distinct jobs, different training, and
specialized skills. Before my arrival,
the St. Mary’s staff consisted of three priests. Today St. Mary’s lists more than 12 staff
people on its website. Typically, large parish staffs are now loaded with
laypeople. Instead of marching in lockstep, they must work like a team--which
means their diverse gifts build up the Body of Christ, just as St. Paul
described, in a way the old workforce never did.
8. Collaboration. John-Paul II said “Collaboration
is the act proper to solidarity,” and our unity as Church today is manifested
by our deep commitment to a collegial approach at all levels. Following the model of Vatican II itself, we
now see Catholic life shaped by gatherings of the US Bishops, diocesan
councils, parish pastoral and finance councils and a myriad of parish
committees and small groups.
I used to joke that
Vatican II gave us lots of documents, lots of changes, and lots of
meetings--and for the last 30 years I’ve made my livelihood going to those
meetings. The Church’s business no longer
follows the Charles Lindbergh “flying solo” model, but instead uses the model Saint Paul
had in mind when he addressed his letters to “My Co-workers.”
9. Ecumenism. Who still remembers the “good old days” when
Catholics were prohibited from any dealings with Protestant churches? As teenagers, my older sisters were even kept
from YWCA dances because the Y was a “Protestant” organization. For my parents, Catholics were “devout” but Protestants
were always “staunch.”
Over the last 40 to 50
years the landscape has completely changed.
We still have differences with our separated Christian brothers and sisters,
but we no longer fear “the other” or shun them.
Indeed, many progressive Catholics now find they share much perspective
with progressive Protestants, just as many conservative Catholics feel allied
to conservative Protestants. Such
conversations across the ecumenical boundaries were unthinkable 50 years ago,
but a commonplace now--and that has revised hope for a future when Christians
will again be united.
10. The End of Quarantine. At all levels,
Catholicism has ditched its old isolationist posture in favor of dialogue with
the outside world. That world remains
toxic in many ways, but rather than hide away from fear of infection our Church
now opts for immunizing its people with a faith strong enough to engage those
of others faiths and even those of no faith.
So our popes travel the world and address the UN, our bishops blog and issue
pastoral letters on public policy and voter education, our schools teach a
broad range of students from different backgrounds, and even our liturgies
embrace facets of contemporary culture (folk music, photography, dance) that enrich our life as Catholics,
living a global faith in the global world.
-----
During my high school
years, as the Council progressed, my father once speculated on the outcome: “What
if priests get just as good at mumbling English as they ever were at mumbling
Latin?” The operative word, of course, was “mumble”--and he was right in part. We still mumble along, trying to perfect
renewal and sometimes stumbling on an obstacle in our path. None of the 10 points above is perfectly realized.
They are works in progress.
But there is no doubting
this: these 10 points have already restored an authentic practice of our ancient
tradition that seemed impossible 50 years ago. They have made us a better
Church.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
#366 Have We Come a Long Way Baby?
Looking back
on the renewal of Catholicism after 40 years on the job.
I was all of 23 ½ years old.
The liturgical renewal of
Vatican II was still under way (no Communion in the hand yet, and most people
still received Communion kneeling at a rail).
Even so, the general tone
of parish life was upbeat. Roe v. Wade
had not yet split Catholics or American politics. The pastor, Tom Sheehan, was committed to making renewal work. We still had enough priests, high attendance, and steady revenues. Catholic
life seemed alive and well and poised for a vibrant future, even if renewal
continued to pose big challenges to church leadership at all levels.
If this were only 10
years later (1982), I would say we have come quite a way. In 1982, Catholicism in general is at a public high point due to the travels of John-Paul II. Liturgical renewal has produced spreading
pockets of good liturgy, participation in singing and liturgical ministries is
up, changes in funerals and weddings and baptisms and confirmation have improved
them all, and we’ve begun to evangelize through the RCIA. Parish councils and staffs are now well
established, and clergy-lay collaboration is becoming the norm for parish
leadership (even if most folks are still learning how to do it).
By 2002 (30 years in)
things have begun to turn sour. The sex-abuse
scandal is breaking wide open, Bernard Law has resigned in disgrace, the priest
shortage is hitting even the largest dioceses, Mass attendance is declining,
parish leadership on all levels is aging as younger Catholics drift (or even
run) away.
Last time I wrote about
the major public anniversary coming in October: the 50th anniversary of the
start of Vatican Council II (see CrossCurrents
#365). But now I want to share my
thoughts about a more personal anniversary.
Forty years ago this summer
I packed my belongings into my “brand-new” used Volkswagen (actually so old it
lacked a gas gauge!) and drove from Boston to Washington, DC bearing my newly-minted
master’s degree. I was starting my contract as the first full-time director of
religious education at Saint Mary of the Mills Parish in Laurel, Maryland--a
parish with a 1200-student CCD program, a grammar school, and an affiliated
high school just across the street.
I was all of 23 ½ years old.
Parish life was already polarized between two
extremes: those opposed to “The Changes” and those frustrated by change’s “slow”
pace. In between were two other groups:
those happy with the renewal they experienced, and those who were either
confused or apathetic and just went along.
The liturgical renewal of
Vatican II was still under way (no Communion in the hand yet, and most people
still received Communion kneeling at a rail).
The idea of a lay person
on the parish payroll performing ministry was still a brand new idea. At that
time the parish staff consisted of 3 priests and me! Parish councils were in
their infancy. Parish staffs were just
beginning to build teamwork.
 |
| Fr. Tom Sheehan |
That was 40 years ago. Since then, I’ve devoted virtually my entire working life
to addressing those challenges of renewal, almost always on the parish level. I’ve worked in the trenches of more than 150
parishes in more than a dozen dioceses.
Naturally enough, reaching my 40th anniversary causes me to pause and
take stock.
I belong, of course, to a
generation that believed “the whole world is watching,” a generation committed
to “making a difference,” a generation determined to “Question Authority” but
convinced that “We Shall Overcome.”
I saw my career
contributing to the reshaping of Catholicism promoted by Vatican II, and I
hoped that the reshaping of Catholic life would also renew American life (that
first year brought not only Roe v. Wade but the Christmas bombing of North
Vietnam and Watergate scandal) in a way conventional politics could not.
So as I look back, as a
child of both the 1960s and Vatican II, I cannot avoid asking myself: “How far have we come?”
If this were only 10
years later (1982), I would say we have come quite a way. In 1982, Catholicism in general is at a public high point due to the travels of John-Paul II. Liturgical renewal has produced spreading
pockets of good liturgy, participation in singing and liturgical ministries is
up, changes in funerals and weddings and baptisms and confirmation have improved
them all, and we’ve begun to evangelize through the RCIA. Parish councils and staffs are now well
established, and clergy-lay collaboration is becoming the norm for parish
leadership (even if most folks are still learning how to do it).
If this were 1992 (that
is, 20 years into my career) I’d say the post-Conciliar reforms are well
established. Whether or not they are
practiced well, they’re now the routine ways people have come to expect. There
is no going back. True, the pressures from secular culture are still chipping
away at the attitudes, values, and lifestyles of Catholics. By now church participation is no longer one
of life’s routine obligations. It has
become an optional leisure activity, and must now compete for our time with the
exploding leisure options around us (cable TV is widespread although email and
the Internet are not yet).
By 2002 (30 years in)
things have begun to turn sour. The sex-abuse
scandal is breaking wide open, Bernard Law has resigned in disgrace, the priest
shortage is hitting even the largest dioceses, Mass attendance is declining,
parish leadership on all levels is aging as younger Catholics drift (or even
run) away.
The last 10 years have
been no easier. In my parish work I now
often encounter widespread discouragement, anxiety, and some anger. For millions of rank and file Catholics, especially
Boomer-age parents of grown, church- alienated children, the current situation
can be depressing. But for someone like
me, whose career is involved, it poses the specter of a professional life-journey
wasted on the wrong path.
After investing 40 years
of my life on the renewal of our Church, I naturally want to say that our
progress proves I have made a sound investment.
But practically speaking, this begs the question: What have we got to show for the last 40 years of renewal in the Catholic
Church?
Friends know me as
chronically critical but eternally optimistic, and despite all signs to the
contrary I persist in believing that we as Church are better off than we were
before my career began (or, at least, better off than before the Council began).
Granting that the last 40
years have brought dramatic growing pains and horrific failures, and granting
that too many of these remain unresolved, still I would argue that the Catholic
Church today is not only dramatically different, but also dramatically better,
than it was 40 or 50 or 60 years ago.
 |
| IRONY: The old-time pictures depict a woman put off a train "somewhere between Baltimore and LAUREL" for smoking! |
Midway between the end of
Vatican II and the beginning of my career, Phillip Morris introduced their new
Virginia Slims cigarettes with the slogan “You’ve
come a long way, baby.” Looking back, it seems either comic or prophetic to
have used a cigarette to celebrate women’s liberation. But the slogan itself perfectly expressed the
sense of accomplishment that follows a successful historic milestone.
Is it still possible, in
2012, to look at the Catholic Church and say “You’ve come a long way baby”?
Next time I will explain why my answer is “yes.”
Next: 10
reasons why Catholicism is better off 40 years later.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2011
Friday, April 23, 2010
#291: A Look In The Mirror
EXCERPT: John Allen, Jr.’s new book The Future Church: How Ten Trends Are Revolutionizing The Catholic Church offers a journalist's wide-ranging analysis of current global tendencies and their impact on 21st century Catholicism. Much of it reflects realities I have witnessed or heard about or even predicted. But reading the chapter on “Trend Five: Expanding Lay Roles” felt like looking into a mirror image, or even a self-portrait.
Allen begins by describing "the spirit of lay activism stirring in today's church" with anecdotes about two women engaged in lay organizations, and notes "no one in officialdom drew up the plans...and their founders didn't ask anyone's permission.” This reflects my own decision to pursue theological studies: arriving at Harvard Divinity School in 1970, I assumed I would be a lone Catholic alien in a historically Protestant school. It turned out we Catholics were the largest group of students there (this remained true into the 21st century) -- and no one knew why. The school had not recruited Catholics, and our Bishops had not sent us. We just started showing up. Our best guess: what was “stirring” was the Holy Spirit.
Allen notes that "lay empowerment" was too often seen to mean laity holding church positions rather than taking their baptismal vocation into the world. But he now sees that trend cutting the other way:
The growth market for lay leadership won't be reformers seeking to alter official structures and teachings, but rather activists willing to take those things for granted, at least for the time being, in order to get on with the business of saving souls and changing the world.
For me, this reflects my own ambition to mobilize laity for activism, not primarily for reform. That was the common thread as I moved from working as a religious education director to running the Lay Ministry Training Institute, to acting as newspaper editor, to entering private practice in church consulting. Although I generally focused on parish life, and although I personally favored reforms in some church teachings and practices such as celibacy and women's ordination, my professional aim was always making parishes more effective in their mission to the world -- parish as change-agent.
Allen claims the future will emphasize what he calls “Pentecostal Catholicism”:
The growing sector of what one might call Pentecostal Catholics means that an increasing number of laity see themselves as commissioned to act as teachers, evangelists, and activists on the basis of charismatic inspiration rather than formal ecclesiastical authorization.
This has certainly been true for me. While I never joined the Catholic Charismatic movement itself (as my parents did), I had to build my own ministry outside of "formal ecclesiastical authorization.” I have been free-lancing now for nearly twenty years, and routinely tell my parish-based clients: "I do not represent any church officials, and I have no authority here except what you give me. I work for you."
When Allen warns that "the more successful a Catholic initiative becomes, the more hierarchy frets about its independence," my alarm bells go off. These days I mildly tell people, "I have two reputations," glossing over troubled waters: getting fired by two pastors and one bishop; being blackballed by diocesan officials; learning that Bernard Law (whom I had never even met) was questioning both pastors and bishops about my loyalty and orthodoxy; twice being summonsed to the Vicar General’s office, at Bernard Law’s behest, for velvet-gloved threats: ("We would hate to have to tell pastors they could not hire you!").
In my twenties, thirties, and forties, such hierarchical "fretting" took its toll on me and my family (not to mention my income), but by now -- especially following Bernard Law’s fall from grace -- I see my battle scars as badges of honor.
There are still days, amid these tough Catholic times, when I wonder what I've accomplished in nearly 40 years of lay activism. But as I look in Allen's mirror, the self I see reflected in it makes this much crystal clear: these years have been lived on a frontier that no past generation of Catholic laity before us ever approached -- and it is, moreover, a frontier we laity continue to open up toward that “Future Church.”
Allen begins by describing "the spirit of lay activism stirring in today's church" with anecdotes about two women engaged in lay organizations, and notes "no one in officialdom drew up the plans...and their founders didn't ask anyone's permission.” This reflects my own decision to pursue theological studies: arriving at Harvard Divinity School in 1970, I assumed I would be a lone Catholic alien in a historically Protestant school. It turned out we Catholics were the largest group of students there (this remained true into the 21st century) -- and no one knew why. The school had not recruited Catholics, and our Bishops had not sent us. We just started showing up. Our best guess: what was “stirring” was the Holy Spirit.
Allen notes that "lay empowerment" was too often seen to mean laity holding church positions rather than taking their baptismal vocation into the world. But he now sees that trend cutting the other way:
The growth market for lay leadership won't be reformers seeking to alter official structures and teachings, but rather activists willing to take those things for granted, at least for the time being, in order to get on with the business of saving souls and changing the world.
For me, this reflects my own ambition to mobilize laity for activism, not primarily for reform. That was the common thread as I moved from working as a religious education director to running the Lay Ministry Training Institute, to acting as newspaper editor, to entering private practice in church consulting. Although I generally focused on parish life, and although I personally favored reforms in some church teachings and practices such as celibacy and women's ordination, my professional aim was always making parishes more effective in their mission to the world -- parish as change-agent.
Allen claims the future will emphasize what he calls “Pentecostal Catholicism”:
The growing sector of what one might call Pentecostal Catholics means that an increasing number of laity see themselves as commissioned to act as teachers, evangelists, and activists on the basis of charismatic inspiration rather than formal ecclesiastical authorization.
This has certainly been true for me. While I never joined the Catholic Charismatic movement itself (as my parents did), I had to build my own ministry outside of "formal ecclesiastical authorization.” I have been free-lancing now for nearly twenty years, and routinely tell my parish-based clients: "I do not represent any church officials, and I have no authority here except what you give me. I work for you."
When Allen warns that "the more successful a Catholic initiative becomes, the more hierarchy frets about its independence," my alarm bells go off. These days I mildly tell people, "I have two reputations," glossing over troubled waters: getting fired by two pastors and one bishop; being blackballed by diocesan officials; learning that Bernard Law (whom I had never even met) was questioning both pastors and bishops about my loyalty and orthodoxy; twice being summonsed to the Vicar General’s office, at Bernard Law’s behest, for velvet-gloved threats: ("We would hate to have to tell pastors they could not hire you!").
In my twenties, thirties, and forties, such hierarchical "fretting" took its toll on me and my family (not to mention my income), but by now -- especially following Bernard Law’s fall from grace -- I see my battle scars as badges of honor.
There are still days, amid these tough Catholic times, when I wonder what I've accomplished in nearly 40 years of lay activism. But as I look in Allen's mirror, the self I see reflected in it makes this much crystal clear: these years have been lived on a frontier that no past generation of Catholic laity before us ever approached -- and it is, moreover, a frontier we laity continue to open up toward that “Future Church.”
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