Well, I have been on a long blogging hiatus. Partly was because I was having a really difficult time discerning the diaconate and then likewise thinking that I should perhaps blog under a different banner. I never could figure out what that alternative banner was to be named though. While I dallied, life continued and I neither journaled nor blogged my 'progress'.
So rather than go into a summary of the intervening few years, I think I'll just pick up where we are at. By way of summary, I had some rather technical issues regarding my first application to the diaconate a couple years ago, and they couldn't be resolved in time to join an aspirant class. By complete surprise I learned in March of this year that a new class was forming, but I only had a few days to get in the application, and through frustration I hadn't resolved this issue from a few years ago. So, here I sit, perhaps to follow through with this program again in two years. In the meantime it has been recommended that I get a Spiritual Advisor, and I intend to make a few phone calls about that after Pentecost when Confirmations are over and prospective priests will have a moment to catch a breath.
Monday, May 13, 2013
On Church-Shopping
In his rule, St. Benedict describes one of the decrees of monastic life. The monk "is to promise, before God and his saints to be stable" -- that is, to settle in a place, one place, for life. It is not an assumption we share. The notion of a grown man still living in the house where he was born conjures images of instability, mental and emotional. We imagine Boo Radley, afraid of the world beyond his porch.
Our culture is formed and defined, not by stability of place, but by mobility and choice. The modern American family is often spread over the country. My own relatives live in PA, VA, IL, IN, IO.
Although more powerful in protestant churches, I think the phenomenon of church shopping is a growing experience locally in the Catholic Church. There is a tremendous sense of place and rooted identity in most of our parishes, as well as the idea that 'Priests come, priests go, the community stays put. But I think that younger churchgoers no longer prize stability of place in worship any more than we prize stability of place in the rest of our lives. There is a lot written about leaving one church and finding another, but comparatively little on choosing to stay put, as sticking with an uncomfortable fit is never valued in a consumer culture.
When some parishioners get upset with a certain turn of events in their parish there is a sense of taking our business elsewhere in voting with their feet and checkbooks. But what if, there is no 'perfect fit' in finding a parish?
We learn in our marriages that neither spouse is perfect, and so perfection ceases to be a factor. We set about building households in which people can grow and learn and forgive and be forgiven -- a place where we are known to one another. The only way we can do that in our families is to stay together through the tough times - in one place, in and out of season, weathering the flowering and falling and flowering again of affection. Stability makes community possible.
Likewise, our parishes are communities made of the ecclesiae - the little churches - that are our homes. Stability in the parish is as necessary as stability in the home. Like the home, the parish needs to be a place where brothers and sisters can be formed together, under one roof, sitting at one table, hearing family stories told again and again. But like in the married life, stability in the parish means giving up the hope of perfection.
We all have some grim tales to tell about our parish experiences. Some of them involve over or under or self involved clergy. Some are stories of parishioners who have transformed the act of leaving in a snit into an art form. But there are lot happier tales to tell too. Pastors come and go, the parishioners remain. Sunday after Sunday, when it is only the visible sign of others; faithfulness keeping me holding fast.
Stability allows parish memory. And that is antidote to nostalgia. There was never a golden age when we prayed without ceasing, cared for the poor without complaining and shunned gossip. There was never a time when our priests were all attentive and wise in the confessional, eloquent yet brief at the ambo and saints on the streets. Lay and clergy, they were like us, humans who try -- and fail -- to love God and their neighbors. Parish memory is the antidote to the 'mall syndrome'. The idea that just around the food court and past J.C. Penney's lays the secret of our happiness. Parishioners who leave one failing church to join a parish that appears to be ascending will discover the lead beneath the gold soon enough.
Though I'm sure they're out there, I've never met a long married couple who wished they had divorced. Maybe when John lost his job they say, or during the years when Mary was drinking, because those were bad days. But they knew on some level perhaps too deep for words, that neither they nor their marriage were consumer items to be returned for imperfections. Having come through the fire together -- in part because they came through the fire and the did it together -- they found it wasn't they who made the marriage; it was faithfulness to the marriage that made them; a couple, a household, a family. And in the hard work of fidelity, they too have found something better than customer satisfaction. They have found joy.
Although more powerful in protestant churches, I think the phenomenon of church shopping is a growing experience locally in the Catholic Church. There is a tremendous sense of place and rooted identity in most of our parishes, as well as the idea that 'Priests come, priests go, the community stays put. But I think that younger churchgoers no longer prize stability of place in worship any more than we prize stability of place in the rest of our lives. There is a lot written about leaving one church and finding another, but comparatively little on choosing to stay put, as sticking with an uncomfortable fit is never valued in a consumer culture.
When some parishioners get upset with a certain turn of events in their parish there is a sense of taking our business elsewhere in voting with their feet and checkbooks. But what if, there is no 'perfect fit' in finding a parish?
We learn in our marriages that neither spouse is perfect, and so perfection ceases to be a factor. We set about building households in which people can grow and learn and forgive and be forgiven -- a place where we are known to one another. The only way we can do that in our families is to stay together through the tough times - in one place, in and out of season, weathering the flowering and falling and flowering again of affection. Stability makes community possible.
Likewise, our parishes are communities made of the ecclesiae - the little churches - that are our homes. Stability in the parish is as necessary as stability in the home. Like the home, the parish needs to be a place where brothers and sisters can be formed together, under one roof, sitting at one table, hearing family stories told again and again. But like in the married life, stability in the parish means giving up the hope of perfection.
We all have some grim tales to tell about our parish experiences. Some of them involve over or under or self involved clergy. Some are stories of parishioners who have transformed the act of leaving in a snit into an art form. But there are lot happier tales to tell too. Pastors come and go, the parishioners remain. Sunday after Sunday, when it is only the visible sign of others; faithfulness keeping me holding fast.
Stability allows parish memory. And that is antidote to nostalgia. There was never a golden age when we prayed without ceasing, cared for the poor without complaining and shunned gossip. There was never a time when our priests were all attentive and wise in the confessional, eloquent yet brief at the ambo and saints on the streets. Lay and clergy, they were like us, humans who try -- and fail -- to love God and their neighbors. Parish memory is the antidote to the 'mall syndrome'. The idea that just around the food court and past J.C. Penney's lays the secret of our happiness. Parishioners who leave one failing church to join a parish that appears to be ascending will discover the lead beneath the gold soon enough.
Though I'm sure they're out there, I've never met a long married couple who wished they had divorced. Maybe when John lost his job they say, or during the years when Mary was drinking, because those were bad days. But they knew on some level perhaps too deep for words, that neither they nor their marriage were consumer items to be returned for imperfections. Having come through the fire together -- in part because they came through the fire and the did it together -- they found it wasn't they who made the marriage; it was faithfulness to the marriage that made them; a couple, a household, a family. And in the hard work of fidelity, they too have found something better than customer satisfaction. They have found joy.
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