#341: An “Encore!” for Renewal

As we continue observing the 50th anniversary of Vatican II, I am retrieving a post from the beginning of 2011. The first Baby Boomers began retiring that year, but the challenge they face continues now...

The New Year 2011 marks the beginning of a new phase for my generation. 

I turned 62 last month -- the same age when my father retired.  Thirty years later, he is still going strong, and has now earned more from his pension than he ever did in 39 years on the job at General Electric! 

It wasn't supposed to be that way.  His grandfather's generation never retired at all--they simply died in the saddle.  And while his father retired, he never fully adjusted to being permanently on vacation; he died within a few years, as was typical of his generation, when life expectancy with shorter than today.  My father had no way of knowing  his retirement would last more than 3 decades.

Yet from the start, my father attacked retirement as an active role, performing do-it-yourself projects on his home and property, helping his grown children with their own projects, joining other seniors for community lunches, mall-walking to keep active, and taking his new electronic keyboard to local nursing homes to lead sing-alongs for the "old folks" well into his 80s. 

Those 30 active years reflect a new profile of retired life, when gainful employment gives way to what Marc Freedman has called an "encore career" of other active pursuits.  So retirement has already gone through two phases, shifting from a "permanent vacation until you die" to a second career. 

Now comes the threshold of the third phase.  That's because 2011 is the year when the first “Baby Boomers” (born between 1946 and 1964) turn 65.  The “60s Generation” is in its 60s, and it figures that retirement, like everything else we touched, will never be the same. 

My father, after all, was the exception to the rule.  Not many of his peers lasted 30 years after working, and most did not carve out so many new active roles.  But since the boomers can expect to live to 80 and beyond, long retirements like my father’s will become commonplace. Boomers were the largest generation in US history; now they will become the largest post-employment workforce ever: the population of retired Americans is expected to reach 66 million by 2025. 

It's been called the "longevity revolution," the "third wave," and even "gerontocracy"--the idea that elder baby boomers will be the most powerful shapers of American life, and the first elder generation to dominate a society. 

All of which makes me wonder: how is the Church affected by this? 

Catholic baby boomers, after all, occupy a unique place in recent Church history.  Their parents grew up, got married, and started families in a Catholic Church largely shaped by the immigrant experience, the Council of Trent, and the First Vatican Council.  That Church spoke only Latin and commanded compliance to a complex set of strict rules and regulations; it offered sure advancement for those who entered seminaries and convents, but consigned everyone else to the passive roles “Pray, Pay, and Obey.” It enjoyed an abundance of clergy and religious communities and the massive support of its members, who took their passive role for granted in an age when Church was more about authority than faith and authority was the monopoly of the ordained. 

Baby Boomers were born into that Church.  All of them were baptized in Latin, and most boomers (those born 1946- 1958) received their First Holy Communion in Latin.  But then the work of Vatican II (1962-1965) began to take hold, and the boomers came to maturity in a changing Church.  By the time they settled down to marriage and family, the face of the Church--its liturgy, its sacraments, its devotional life, its public image, its relations with other religions and with the world at large--had all been transformed into something their grandparents could not have recognized and their parents often struggled to embrace. 

Not all boomers embraced that transformed Church either, but most did, and they raised a new generation who (ironically, like their great-grandparents) knew no Church but the one they were born in. 

This made the boomers the threshold generation, with one foot in pre-conciliar Catholicism and another in post-conciliar Catholicism.  By default, they became the custodians of a Church renewal they never chose but only inherited.  That custodianship was radically new in one major respect, compared to previous generations: there were never enough ordained boomers to do the job alone.  So following through on renewal has eventually passed from a generation (the "greatest generation") of aging clergy and religious women and men to a new generation of laypeople. 

And now those laypeople, the boomer custodians of renewal, are themselves feeling their age.  It raises the question: what will happen now to the Church's ongoing renewal? 

In past generations of parish life, of course, Catholics reaching their "golden years" routinely passed the torch of parish leadership to the next generation, usually their own grown children, people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.  But in too many places today, that is simply not happening. The fact is the next generation does not show the emotional attachment to Church that keeps so many boomers active in Catholic life.

  Thus many of my generation wonder how to preserve parish vitality in the years ahead.  Many boomer Catholics are beginning to sense that they are not yet "off the hook," since no one else is available to do the job. Moreover, many boomers believe that the renewal of Vatican II has been hijacked in recent years, and are discouraged and fearful that Catholicism will backslide into a style of Catholic life they've already rejected. 

To me, these feelings frame the next challenge facing Catholic boomers: to enter our retirement years committed to persevere in the great historic task of renewing our church.  We were not renewal’s pioneers, but we may have to be its protectors.

This will require great determination.  Do we believe the work of Vatican II is unfinished?  So be it.  Is the next generation unready to carry renewal’s torch into the future?  So be it.  Has renewal been undermined from within?  So be it.  These are the givens of the challenge we must face.

Columnist (retired!) Ellen Goodman, referring to the place of boomers in American society at large, aptly described the decision facing boomer Catholics:

How will we shape the longevity revolution?  I have the sense that if we don't use this gift of time to open up new possibilities, we may go into a long anxious crouch.  If we aren’t the change agents of aging, we'll be the change resisters...This is a moment to redefine aging...it's not a time to be tired. 

It's true we are arriving at our senior status.  It's true that past generations have taken that as their cue to "retire" from active duty and let the younger generation of clergy and laity take charge of the future.  But times have changed, and anyway our generation has never accepted past ways as a divine mandate.  Rather, we have always regarded inherited routines as something to question and revise. 

If we remain young in spirit, our longstanding desire to make a difference will not flag.  And now that difference may well be this: to become the key players in ensuring that renewal does not die.  Just when others might judge that the renewal promised by Vatican II is either finished (in the sense of completed) or else finished (in the sense of failed), we can be the ones who stand up clapping our hands and call out “Encore!  Encore!” to make renewal live again. 

Indeed, meeting this challenge could mean an encore career for us as Catholics, and could prove to be our biggest contribution of all.  We may not have created renewal, but we can save it.

 Bernard F. Swain PhD 2011

#373: Which Catholic Candidate?

It would be tempting—but wrong—to assume that one VP candidate represents our faith, while the other does not.

Last week’s Catholic media has been full of politics.  Everyone seems to be trying to prove that their Vice-presidential candidate is a better representative of Catholic teaching. We even have some bishops proclaiming that Joe Biden cannot receive communion in their dioceses.

We have known since summer that the presidential race featured two Catholic Vice-presidential candidates.  But only on October 10 did we get to compare and contrast Joe Biden and Paul Ryan face to face on the subject of their Catholic faith.

The Vice-presidential debate was nearly over when moderate Martha Radditz posed this question:

This debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.

Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country...

Although the question focused somewhat narrowly on abortion--almost as though abortion is the only “Catholic” issue--it also offered a useful opening for two broader questions: 1. What difference does Catholic Social Teaching make in their respective political positions?  2.  Which candidate is more consistent and reflecting Catholic social teaching?

It is instructive, but also surprising, to start with the answers the candidates gave Radditz. In fact, both candidates answered “Yes, but…”

Paul Ryan said:

I don't see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life.

Now, you want to ask basically why I'm pro-life? It's not simply because of my Catholic faith. That's a factor, of course. But it's also because of reason and science…Now I believe that life begins at conception.

That's why -- those are the reasons why I'm pro-life.

Joe Biden said:

My religion defines who I am, and I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And has particularly informed my social doctrine. The Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who -- who can't take care of themselves, people who need help. With regard to -- with regard to abortion, I accept my church's position on abortion as a--what we call a de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception in the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life. 

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others…I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that -- women they can't control their body. It's a decision between them and their doctor…I'm not going to interfere with that.

In other words, both candidates were saying, in effect, that Catholic Social Teaching makes no difference in their position on abortion.  Ryan would be pro-life on scientific and medical grounds, even if he were not Catholic.  And Biden chooses not to apply Catholic teaching on abortion to public policy.  So in both cases, their political positions are not different because of their Catholic faith.

Biden did mention Catholic Social Doctrine more broadly, implying that his overall politics better reflect Catholic Social Teaching than Ryan’s politics do.  But the debate ended there. This, of course, begs the question: what if we dig deeper?

CrossCurrents readers know my general take on the relation between Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and our major political parties: CST does not fit into conventional political categories of “liberal” or “conservative.” We cannot expect CST to favor either the Democratic or the Republican platforms.

Consider some major 2012 issues.

“Big Government” or “Small Government”?  The general dividing line between these parties, for example, concerns the size of government: Democrats favor a larger, more “progressive” government, while Republicans favor a smaller, less “intrusive” government.  But CST has no preference in principle.  That’s because CST has no doctrine on the best size for government. 

Rather, the chief principle here is “the common good.” All government must serve the common good as much as possible--and how it does that is a matter of prudential judgment.  Because government is just a means to achieve the end of the common good, it must leave room for other institutions (from families and local communities on up)--but it must also be powerful enough to address social needs that other institutions cannot meet.  In CST, there is no magic formula for this.

Taxes: Up or Down?  Another debated issue in 2012 is taxes. On this, as on government itself, CST does not lay down any grand principle.  It regards taxes as the main source for the funding that government needs to do its job.  If that job is promoting the common good (in collaboration with other institutions), then taxes are good insofar as they enable the common good, and paying taxes is one way that we, as citizens, support the common good. 

Whether any citizen should pay more or less depends on whether such change would enhance or hinder progress toward the common good of all.  This means that raising and lowering taxes is never good or better in principle, but depends on the specific case.

We may debate, then, whether a specific tax hike or tax cut better serves the common good.  But politicians who pledged never to raise taxes (as Ryan has)  are demonizing taxes, contrary to CST, rather than seeing them as a potential instrument for good.

Wealth and Poverty.  We hear a lot in 2012 about the “middle class” and “job creators.” But neither side says much less about the “working class” or the poor.  Yet CST favors attention to the poor as a top priority.  Moreover, CST decries extreme income inequality between classes.  US inequality has grown steadily since 1970, and ranks worst among advanced industrial nations. Yet any attempt to close that gap by redistributing wealth, something CST favors, generally gets labeled “socialism.” In this respect, CST falls to the left even of the Democratic Party.  As Benedict XVI wrote: “we cannot remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.”

Human Rights. The same is true for human rights: As a general rule, the Church’s list of human rights is considerably longer than either US political party, for while Americans tend to think only of civil rights (voting, public access, freedom from discrimination, due process, First Amendment rights), Catholicism also embraces many economic and social rights: education, health care, just wages, labor rights, immigration.  On many such rights, our popes since 1960 have staked out positions well to the left of the Democratic Party. And these positions are not merely nice goals; they are matters of principle.

With all this in mind, I’m not terribly surprised that the debate revealed that, despite their rhetoric, the personal faith of our two Catholic candidates does not make much difference in their politics.  Like most American Catholics, they appear to get their politics from their parties and other secular sources, not from their Church (for example, see http://www.onourshoulders.org/ for Ayn Rand’s influence on Paul Ryan,). And like most Catholics, they reinterpret Catholic Social Teaching to fit their personal politics--or, on inconvenient issues, they ignore it all together.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#367 Ten Ways Catholic Life is Better

Today’s tough times shouldn’t blind us to how much renewal we have already accomplished…

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.

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.

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.

 7. Women’s roles. Even as numbers of women religious fell, women rose to new prominence in our Church.  Nuns headed diocesan departments, became parish pastoral associates, and lay women as well flooded into parish ministries, until today women make up nearly 80% of all parish staffs.  Our grandfathers could never have imagined this transformation of Catholicism’s patriarchy--but maybe our grandmothers dreamt it!

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

#366 Have We Come a Long Way Baby?

Looking back on the renewal of Catholicism after 40 years on the job.

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.

I arrived less than 10 years after the opening of Vatican II, and only 6½ years after its finish.  As you might imagine, parish life was in rapid flux.

  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

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.

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

#363 What is "Real Presence"?

Can our Church make room for virtual community, and reach out and welcome those who live in it?

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics my nephew Jared Connaughton ran sprints and relays for team Canada, but his parents could not make the trip to watch him in person; instead they settled for watching the events on TV.

But August 2012 finds them flying to London to be present for Jared’s performances. “Seeing” him race in Beijing was wonderful, but being with him will be the proud moment any parent dreams of.

The rest of us, of course, will be watching Jared on TV --but if we’re watching during primetime, he and his parents will be sound asleep. London is 5 hours ahead of Boston, after all-- so most Olympic TV is actually on tape, not live. If we want to be surprised by the outcome, we’ll need to avoid any news of it during the day.

This is typical of our age, an age that has almost totally blurred the once-sharp lines between presence and absence, between the real and the imaginary.

Maybe this began in 1895, when Parisians panicked during the first public movie show. Seeing a train arriving head-on toward them, the audience bolted for the exits. (See the original here http://www.schooltube.com/video/bf11a6cb123389d19b53/  ) We now know that “suspension of disbelief” is the key not only to cinema, but also to TV, videos, and streaming tubes online. They are all just images on a flat surface, pure optical illusions--yet we take them for real people, real places, real events.

Of course, even before cinema people suspended disbelief. Greek theatre featured actors wearing masks and allowed violence only off-stage, yet the whole point of Greek tragedy was to evoke “pity and terror” in audiences. Mystery plays and passion plays aimed to evoke Christian devotion. Written fictions from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Dickens evoked an entire imagined world that touched and moved readers.

When photography arrived, people could see themselves and others without the filter of an artist’s impressions: we saw whatever the camera saw.

Then, with cinema, we saw things moving! So movies seemed to be, not an alternate reality, but reality itself, captured and reshaped and requiring no imagination by the viewer. So strong is cinema’s psychic blurring of real and imaginary that, when the Aurora gunman began firing at the midnight showing of “Dark Knight Rising,” many viewers thought it was simply a movie-related gimmick.

Next came radio and telephone, and suddenly the voices of others were in our homes. I’m too young to have witnessed my parents’generation’s awe at hearing FDR’s fireside chats as they sat in their living rooms, but I still recall their astonishment whenever they got a long distance call: “I can’t believe you’re in California! It sounds like you’re right next door!” For millions, the world was suddenly smaller, since absent loved ones were no longer so absent.

Then TV arrived, and overnight the entire world seemed to be right there, before our eyes, in our own homes. US Catholicism, despite its long fear of cinema and the “Legion of Decency” that protected Catholics from sinful images, quickly embraced TV with televised Masses and the theatrical “live” teaching of Bishop Sheen. Thus even Church came into homes.

Nearly 20 years later, cassettes made personal recording possible, and by now videotape and DVDs and flash drives allow us to preserve live action all of all sorts, to keep our pasts present in living moving color. With such technology, those who have left us live on in the images we keep to lessen their absence. (My own voice mail contains a saved message, now four years old, from a pastor who died suddenly the day after he called. Somehow I cannot delete that “live” voice.)

“Reality TV” has also been a cultural phenomenon for more than 20 years now. My youngest son, who does camera work for reality shows, can attest that the appearance of real life is achieved by careful, even tedious manipulation, repetition, and editing of images. And this is not only true of so-called “reality” shows. Talk shows, however live they seem, are generally taped and edited. Local news stations routinely run tape loops that repeat the same “live” newscast hour after hour. And just the other night I heard a dramatic Red Sox victory on radio and then--with the game already ended--I still had time to turn on the TV for the “live” image of the batter hitting the game-winning home run (since the TV broadcast is on 15 second delay)!

Moreover, since 2000 digital technology and the internet have revolutionized all our communications. Cellphones, instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Skype--all these enable us to see and hear anyone anywhere.

Studying in France in 1968 I was almost totally isolated from family and friends, except for the occasional letter. But when my son studied in Barcelona 35 years later, he was handed a cell phone at the airport so he could call home. And now, when I return to my Paris school to meet students, I find them in constant contact with everyone they know that by text, voice, and webcam. The absence I experienced, which so transformed me, is no longer possible. Distance no longer counts.

We see this every day, of course, when people absent themselves from a restaurant table to answer their cellphone, leave a meeting to take a call, or drive along oblivious to the traffic around them as they talk to someone who is not there.

This survey of our era begs the question: What difference does this make for Catholic life and faith?

One clue comes from pressing pastoral question that arose at the dawn of the TV era: “If we watch Mass on TV, do we fulfill our Sunday obligation to attend Mass?” The answer was: no. Walking into Mass fulfilled the obligation even if one merely sat or slept or daydreamed, even if one did not receive communion, even if one left early. But watching on TV--even if one used a missal, followed all the readings, said all the prayers, sat and knelt and stood--watching on TV did not count.

This reflected the long-held notion that the Body of Christ, even though sometimes called a mystical body, is actually composed of people who physically assemble in a real, physical space. “Wherever two or more of you are gathered together, I am with you.”

The Last Supper was a real physical gathering; those who witnessed the crucifixion were really there; the disciples learned of the Resurrection gathered in the upper room, and Pentecost occurred at a similar gathering. Early Christians gathered in homes for worship. The movement to convert Roman basilicas to Christian worship reflected the need for larger gathering spaces. The thousands of churches worldwide, and the great cathedrals and basilica spread over six continents, are not primarily shrines for private devotion. Above all, they are places for assembling the faithful.

Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me,” and Catholics gather to do as he said. Jesus said, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood,” and Catholics proclaim the belief that during Mass Christ becomes really present among us--and we call this our “Communion,” our coming together.

This idea of “real presence,” of course, reflects a simpler time when people were either present or absent. Catholics also believed, however, in a spiritual community that went beyond our physical community: the Communion of Saints who remain present in our hearts and prayers.

But now “presence” means something new. Someone answering a cellphone may seem more present to the caller then to those in the same room. Someone Skyping may feel more present to the person appearing on the screen than to someone two feet away.
The phrase “virtual reality” became commonplace because “real” reality now has a rival--and for millions, especially millions of the next generation, that virtual reality is often “more real” than the other reality. Virtual connections can feel more real. Virtual friends can feel more real. Virtual meeting can feel more real.

If entire future populations will inhabit two realities, if “community” comes to include virtual community, does this mean that as Church we must tell these people that “virtual community does not count”? That virtual connections do not count? That a virtual presence is not a real presence?

As Church, we must resist the temptation to dismiss this cultural phenomenon as irrelevant.

Can we find a way to expand our notion of “Communion” to include a new, third Communion, recognizing that the body of Christ maybe not only the sacramental Communion of faithful gathered to worship, and the spiritual Communion of saints--but also the virtual Communion now made possible by human ingenuity?

In short, can we find a way to make all these Communions part of the reality in which Christ’s real presence can redeem us all?

©Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012