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CHURCH AND MINISTRY: ENVISAGING POSSIBILITIES
Con
Casey
(NOTES
from a presentation to the Irish Provincial Chapter 2000)
- Handing on the faith
- New possibilities
in Ministry
- Images of Church and Society
- How do we envisage
the boundary-lines
- Conclusion
should
we dare a comprehensive re-think?
 When
we think of handing on the faith we tend to think of catechetics
and when we think of catechetics we tend to think of school.
Our thought is shaped by the contemporary arrangements in
Church life. It is easy to forget that these arrangements
are very recent.
It is only quite recently that handing on
the faith has become almost exclusively a task undertaken
by the catechetical learning in Catholic schools.
In my up-bringing my parents played a more
active role. I remember my father teaching me the catechism,
‘examining my catechism’ as he would have called it. His pleasure
in the task: the questions ‘who mad the world? And the lapidary
answers God made the world.
Not many parents today have that enjoyment.
The idiom of catechetics has changed in their life-time, and
confidence and enjoyment of passing on one’s wisdom to another
generation is low. The result is the almost exclusive emphasis
on Catholic schools in this arena. And it is a strategy that
is not working. And at the very time when consumerist capitalism
is energetically at work disruption the transmission of all
sorts of continuities and traditions. Supplant traditional
desires and hopes with hopes and desires that can be manipulated
for profit. [Young people rare in Church is, is of course,
one out-come of this failed strategy.] So we have a major
challenge.
I came across a thoughtful piece by Nicholas
Lash in a recent Tablet
‘A few weeks ago, I attended a parish
discussion group. Reflecting on developments since the Second
Vatican Council we felt unanimously that the Catholic Church
was failing as an educational project. This was not a criticism
of Catholic schools but an instinctive recognition of the
need for a fundamental change of pastoral strategy. The recovery
of an older vision, according to which the following of Christ
is best understood as a lifelong process of adult education,
will require such a revolution of imagination, such a fundamental
redistribution of personal and financial resources, such a
comprehensive rethinking of the ways in which we learn, teach
and preach, that no single generation could accomplish it.
But we can make a start…’
Tablet 15 April 2000
It so happened that 5 days later on April
20th of this year Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles issued
a pastoral letter on ministry. (though the letter is actually
written by Cardinal Mahony and The Priests of the Archdiocese…)
In it he imagined a parish of the future, the year 2005 in
the letter. This parish has made a start,
On St Luke’s ‘one of the hopes of the
pastor and his staff is that parents will take greater responsibility
for the religious education of their children, fostering more
home-based catechesis and fewer parish-centred programmes
of religious education. All on the staff are aware that this
will call for a change in thinking on the part of a great
number of the parents, as well as an increase in their willingness
to be educated for the purpose of educating their children
in the faith’. There is a link between adult formation in
faith and the development of family based passing on of faith.
[Brisbane] Returning to Cardinal Mahony’s imaginary parish
this linkage has led to: ‘On Wednesday evenings there are
classes in adult faith formation, taught by one of the seminarians
for the archdiocese who is in residence at another parish
in the cluster to which St. Leo’s belongs. A new group has
emerged in the parish, and meets on Thursday evenings. Aware
of the diverse religious groups within the parish boundaries,
this group is seeking ways to engage in ecumenical and interreligious
dialogue as an expression of commitment to a new evangelisation’.
1. There cannot be real adult education in
faith unless you begin to explore the questions that adults
ask and these include questions of an ecumenical kind and
questions about interreligious dialogue.
2. Talking about this issue is vain unless
one heeds Lash’s point that it will require ‘such a comprehensive
rethinking of the ways in which we learn, teach and preach,
that no single generation could accomplish it.’
3. Might it mean, for instance, laying aside
one Sunday each month when a programme of Scripture study
or faith discussion would take the place of the Eucharistic
celebration? Or a similar move before the major liturgical
seasons or feasts?
what
now are the truly strategic issues?
 The
kind of comprehensive rethinking that is thus indicated will
surely not come to fruition unless there is a re-shaping of
the supporting structure for the Church’s life, and this brings
us to consider structures of ministry. One of the signs of
hope in the decades since Vatican II has been across all the
continents a broadly based and shared ministry has been awakened.
We see with greater clarity that the Church is endowed with
many gifts and ministries and offices. It is a development
for which the institutional and theoretical framework was
ill-prepared.
There has been much positive development.
* Emphasising baptism as the foundation sacrament
leading to shared responsibility and consultation has inspired
new structures at all levels.
* There has been a steady development of
new roles and ministries open to laypeople, for instance as
reader and Eucharistic minister.
My argument here is that two further steps
are now critically important.
a. ‘Lay ecclesial ministry’.
There is a need to differentiate and develop a unique vocation
which might be called
‘Lay ecclesial ministry’. It needs to be
distinguished from voluntary ministry(itself most important)
ministry in the very broad sense in which we now use the word
(CORI spoke of the ‘ministry of advocacy) and given its own
easily recognised place in ecclesial geography.
‘Lay ecclesial ministry’ is a call to service
in the name of the Church. It does not describe one kind of
service or work, but refers to the ministries of committed
person, women and men, married or single, which are exercised
in a stable, public, recognised and authorised way. This is
Church ministry in the strict and formal sense. It emerges
from a personal call, requires appropriate formation, and
in undertaken with both the support and the authorisation
of competent Church authority. Lay ecclesial ministries serve
in such capacities as Pastoral Associate (in Cardinal Mahoney’’
imagined parish of 2005 the lay pastoral associate is a married
women with two children), Director of Religious Education,
Youth/Young Adult Minister, or Co-ordinator of Liturgy.
While this may not be an entirely unknown
form of ministry, it is not yet much represented in the demographics
of the Irish Church. There are very few people who would recognise
themselves as ‘lay ecclesial ministers’. There is a need for
active promotion, rituals of ritual acknowledgement, and changes
in our imagination of Church, and as well as some theoretical
readjustment that is in the texts books of ministry.
[A model suggested by Kenan Osborne …]
b. Collaborative ministry.
The second issue needing support and promotion is collaborative
ministry. It is worth remarking again that not everything
that happens in the Church is collaborative ministry. There
may be parishes with strong lay involvement but little genuine
collaboration. There may be great advances in opening liturgical
roles to laypeople, but without any change in parish structures
or wider consultation in decision-making. Collaborative ministry
does not happen just because people work together or co-operate
in some way. It is a gradual and mutual evolution of new patterns,
new attitudes and new self-understanding, which will not happen
by accident. It must be chosen and consciously pursued from
conviction, patterns of praying together, planning together,
and reflecting on Scripture.
All this in turn affects the manner of constructing
the self-identity of ordained priest. Our understanding of
ordained priesthood has changed and is still changing. By
sacramental ordination, the priest signifies the unity, apostolicity
and catholicity of the Church, or the People of God. A priest
acts not as on his own right but in the name of Christ, and
hence is to be thought of as a sign of ecclesial communion.
What
does it mean to be Church in this society? Can we internalise
a new image of where we are in our society’s scheme of things?
What would that image be?
 Most
of us, I suggest, have internalised an image of the place
of the Church in society that is now quite dysfunctional.
Basically we felt at home in our place. Church and society
fitted together. The Church was like the cement in our society:
it held it together. Its festivals chronicled our history.
All this is now severely disrupted. We are trying to find
our way, but we should be warned to take due care. At a time
like this it is wise to recall that we have a rich heritage.
We have many images to call upon, to play with, not just one.
I’d like to briefly review 3 such images.
a. Down the centuries some Christians have found strength
by thinking of the Church as an alternative to society,
(society which is still subject to the powers of evil), a
vale of tears. In this life we have to change ourselves and
act justly. But that is a very different matter from trying
to bring about a just world order. It is an illusion to suppose
we could do any such thing.(and perhaps sinful vanity) This
view has had a ‘bad press’ in recent times. Nonetheless it
has had interesting and respectable supporters – e.g. the
early monastic movement. What it does offer is a proper scepticism
about the finality of any human achievement.
b. A more current ‘theology’ is to think of the Church
as Social Pioneer. We are not at home in society – Rather
we are ahead of society, modelling the future, if only by
our advocacy. The rallying cry is ‘prophetic witness’. The
task of the Christian (especially the religious it seems),
is to transform the world, and to do so in the direction of
the kind of society envisaged by the Gospels. The problem
with this is that the Gospels do envisage some model of society.
Jesus had neither a social project, nor a political programme.
It is true that Jesus embodied God’s indiscriminate welcome,
particularly in the table-fellowship with outsiders: on the
unjust and the just alike, God sends his blessing of rain.
But the Cross of Jesus shows us that God’s kingdom comes,
not as an achievement of any kind, but as a gift. The Cross
does show that the God’s ‘kingdom’ endures beyond the force
of those societal structures that rejected and crucified Jesus,
it prevails over them: but it is another matter altogether
to suggest that any kind of activity will transform societal
forces so that they will embody ‘kingdom’. Even though we
may criticise this ‘prophetic’ model Church as social pioneer
- we should remember that it captures important elements of
the story of Church: today’s state schools, hospitals, universities
are all descendants of Church pioneered projects. So does
this mean that the only authentic Christian witness is some
kind of distancing from the world, some kind of ‘monastic’
witness?
c. An ancient way of imaging Church may be of assistance.
In a very ancient concept the Church is thought of primarily
as a kind of school, a pedagogy in which slowly, partially
and imperfectly we learn the future destiny of humankind,
‘our life is hidden with Christ in God’. Because of this pedagogy
the Church acts as challenge to society, and to all forms
of human association including nation, state and family, pressing
them to remain open to a future and as yet mysterious destiny.
The Church exists at an angle to all forms of human association
(nation, family, state). But it does not, on that account,
ignore those forms. Loyalty is to be given to them to the
extent that they equip their members for life in the Body,
(in the kingdom). With Augustine we can rightly speak of the
city of God as rejoicing in and as making use of secular peace
and flourishing to the extent that these nurture (quite unconsciously,
it may be) the vision of God’s commonwealth. We have even
more to say about what it means not to co-operate with a secular
order that is systematically crushing its own or others. Church
does not either affirm or deny ‘the nation’ in the abstract:
it asks whether or not people living with this or that culture,
are capable of seeing it as a thread in a larger tapestry.
The Church neither affirms nor denies ‘the global market’:
it asks, what level of mutual care, what kind of humanity
is fostered there, and what scepticism about claims to absolute
security or absolute sovereignty?
Who
is in? Who is out?
 This
follows on from the previous section. Once we seemed to know
clearly where the boundary line was drawn. More or less Church
and society coincided. In the future the Church will be a
minority or thereabouts. It needs to reflect on boundaries.
Should the Church think of herself as a club
– those who do not keep the rules are outside the lines of
demarcation. This issue crops up in difficult pastoral questions
about baptism, about the policy of Catholic schools, for instance.
Are refugees of different religion in or out? We must first
say that the Church should never fall into the trap of seeing
herself as a kind of club with lines of demarcation separating
those outside. She only seems to have boundaries to those
who seek to be outside her and so set up demarcation lines.
There are no boundaries to the Church, she just is the human
race moving towards the kingdom.
This local church speaks of a people called
together into common life, communion with God; this chosen
people, called by God, is the human race, and this fundamental
fact of our narrative is the foundational concept of the Church
as missionary. The Church is called to tell the story in orthodoxy
and orthopraxis. The story is the story of God’s love for
humankind: every human being has a role there.
We would expect to see a Church constantly
chafing at its historical limits, drawn towards the universality
of communion it celebrates in the Eucharist. It has a very
specific responsibility to those disenfranchised from community,
to those who have no power over the conditions of their lives….
There is one other boundary I would like
to point in the direction of. The Church is the sacrament
of God’s salvation, of God’s indiscriminate welcome. Salvation
means healing. But what is it that needs healing, to be made
whole, complete, secure? As Christians considering ‘salvation’
we should have in mind no group more restricted than the human
race. The range of reference of the ‘we’ we use, as Christians,
must, however, be as comprehensive in memory as in hope.
‘Among the more important lessons being
learnt at the present time is that even ‘all of humankind’
is too small an answer to the question: ‘What does God’s love
heal, make safe, bring to fulfilment in his peace?’ ‘Everything’
would be a better answer. Out of nothing, God makes everything,
and what God’s love makes, that same love heals. We may be
better placed to understand this than our predecessors were,
because the whole system of the world has irreversibly become
one single fact …home or burial ground'. N. Lash, Beginning
and End of Religion’, 258
The early Christian communities exhibit a
profound puzzlement about their boundaries (about issues of
purity and separation). This is no surprise. It assuredly
reflects the memory of Jesus who, in his own words and actions,
generated immense confusion on this subject. Jesus sharply
challenged the available models of distinctiveness and ‘cleaniness’.
His point is that there is no theological excuse restricting
the offer of grace. God’s welcome is indiscriminate. There
is no clear social, ethnic or ritual prescription limiting
the possible scope of the redeemed community. The significance
of Jesus was ‘learned’ and re-learned’ over and again by the
early communities in connection with the problems they face
in grasping their distinctive identity as communities over
against Judaism and the world of Hellenistic cults – problems
to do with limits and relations to the ‘outside’. In recognising
these problems as theological the Church admitted that the
task of relating its present social reality to the events
of Jesus life, death and resurrection was basic to its self-understanding.
The constant re-learning of Jesus’ significance
has to do with an honest awakening of the strain and tension
and conflict presently experienced in the Church - baptismal
policy, divorced faithful … Any puzzlement over ‘what the
Church is meant to be’ is the operation of God as ‘Spirit’
insofar as it keep the Church engaged in the exploration of
what its foundational events in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus signify.
Lumen
Genitum 26
This is not a branch Church, the head-office being in Rome.
This is the Church with which the Church in Rome holds communion.
How can this be so? We see how at the Eucharist. This community
is formed out of a tradition of orthodoxy and orthopraxis
sourced in the presence of Jesus. Orthodoxy is presented in
the liturgy of the Word, a tradition of reading and commenting
on Scripture. Orthopraxis is dramatised in the liturgy of
the Eucharistic table. Here the indiscriminate welcome that
God embodied in Jesus becomes the force constituting the reality
of this community. At this point our attention is drawn particularly
to the ministry of the ordained priest. The priest is present
as representative, rather than as an individual in his won
right. He represents precisely those continuities sourced
in Jesus. His ministry in the Eucharist dramatises and makes
real the fact that Christ is the head of the body that is
the Church. We see how this is Church in the everyday baptismal
priesthood of mothers and fathers and neighbours. We see its
reality in the ‘lay ecclesial ministry’. We see its reality
in the lives of religious. Many religious today experience
a declining membership. But our ecclesial reality is no less,
not diminished. Take heart from the words of the short-story
writer Stuart MacLean: “We may not be big, but we are small”.
(quoted in a recent Tablet).
**StarWheel
Mandalas by Aya at www.starwheels.com
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