SPE Spotlight Extra
Reality Enters the Room
Editor’s Note: In the Ministry Colloqium, part of the Conversatio project at St. John’s Seminary/School of Theology, teams from four parishes gather three times over two years to consult with seminary faculty and each other about issues in their parishes. Before the first session, each team prepares a narrative identifying and describing their parish’s particular problem. The following is the narrative submitted by the Ministry Colloquium team at St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton parish in Green Bay, Wis. To find out what happened later, read this month’s SPE Spotlight, The Place Where Miracles Happen
We sat around the table and eyeballed each other—all five of us, each searching the faces of the others. The answer, although somewhere, was slippery and aloof. Each face was intense and focused, yet betrayed an inner sense of forlorn confusion. The puzzle hovered smoke-like in the air, so close we winced at its ashen taste in our mouths. At times it seemed to irritate our eyes. Yet we couldn’t get our arms around it. We couldn’t hold it in our hands or turn it over to ponder its shadowy twists.
Outside the lingering gray winter had blurred the distinction between black and white. The sky, the pavement, the dormant oaks, even the occasional patch of grass fighting off the persistent pall of winter was a Lenten gray. It was Lent in our church, Lent in our parish, Lent in our neighborhood. Inside, it was Lent in our hearts and Lent in the gray matter of our brains, the grayish fibers of our corpus callosums.
What was the problem? Each of us considered its dimensions and characteristics from a slightly different perspective. Each of us saw a particular face, but none could see its wholeness. Oh, the tangible evidence was plentiful. It had taunted us through a variety of not-so-subtle manifestations. Declining Mass attendance. Disengaged parishioners. A very minimal, perhaps even paltry, participation in parish events and activities. It could be seen in the blank stares of parish members as they looked across the table at one another, not knowing each other’s names and, sadly, not caring. It could be heard in the passionless recitations of some Confirmation candidates uttering hollow, empty words they did not understand or took no interest in. It could be felt in the absence of liturgical ministers who may or may not show up for their scheduled ministries, who felt no obligation to contact a sub if they would be absent, and who would not be bothered to attend ministry training sessions.
They want to have their children baptized, but they don’t want to participate in the faith. They want to receive Communion, but they don’t want to participate in community. They want to be married in the Church, but they don’t want the Church in their marriage. They want redemption, but they don’t want to admit their brokenness. And they want their children raised and educated in and by the Church, but they don’t want to participate or educate themselves. So it goes.
We sat and looked at each other. We analyzed the symptoms. We ate donuts and licked the glaze from our fingers. We refilled our coffee. One of us, claiming to be too young to drink coffee, opened another Mountain Dew. Why? We wondered are our parishioners becoming increasingly disengaged? Or are they? One among us—a wise, maturing priestly sort—observed that our parishioners are not disengaged with their money. Bring forth a need and the ink runs across their checkbooks as thick as the campy metaphors in this story. They’re generous and giving wherever a need presents itself. Why are they so willing to give of their wealth but not of their time or of their selves? And even then, why are they so willing to give to a need but so reticent to acknowledge a need to give? A paradox was before us. They’ll find life in giving, but they won’t embrace a life of giving.
As we sat and absorbed the wandering conversation, the truth about our parish penetrated the gray fog like a March rain. Our parish model had been handed down from a different time and place. We had inherited it from a culture in which people sought a sense of community and fellowship with their neighbors from a time when geography was a defining characteristic of self-identification. But today we live in a different time, a new place. Communities are still formed but not by virtue of shared experience. Rather they are based on shared interests. Our parishioners belong to youth sports communities, work communities, country club communities, virtual chat communities, investment communities and on-line fantasy football communities. No longer bounded by geography, they seek community only with others who are, in many ways, like themselves—just like themselves.
Is the notion of Church as community growing obsolete? Is the concept of shared stewardship becoming arcane? We paused and collectively swallowed hard. We wanted to be spiritual, we really did, but Empirical Reality had entered the room and stood at the head of our table, its guns drawn and its menacing eyes cowering beneath the brim of its sinister black hat. With nervous trepidation we invited it to have a seat. We listened while it told us that many of our parishioners barely enter into community within their immediate families much less with their neighbors, how Catholicism had become ancillary in their lives, no longer a source of self definition. It spoke with a seemingly disembodied, distant voice, claiming these people, our own parishioners, as its followers. They are realists, pragmatists coping in a busy and chaotic world. We are idealists. Sure, people in this culture want to stay tethered to the ideology of Catholic Christianity, but, hey, it’s not like they want it to run their lives.
We began our counter arguments. But Eucharist… But pain in life… But the Gospel… But the children… But the call of Baptism, Confirmation and Reconciliation… Before we could continue, this Empirical Reality stood up and waved us off. With a slight shrug of its shoulder and in the same distant voice, it told us it really wasn’t interested. Anything we have to say is irrelevant. Then it turned and walked out.
Again the five of us sat and eyeballed one another. Each, without speaking, picked up a cup and washed the taste from our mouths. Now what? How do we start anew? The problem had been articulated. How do we build a parish model that fosters integrative faith growth in this culture of individualism?
Steve Meyer is president and executive creative director for the Karma Group Inc., a marketing and brand development firm in Green Bay, Wis., and a deacon at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish. Read more about him and a street ministry he started with a friend.
