What are we supposed to be doing as a Catholic community in our time and place? At one level, of course, our Catholic Christian project is always the same, and the gospels and Catholic tradition describe it well. At another level, though, each time and place has its own particular project, just as each of us may be said ultimately to have our own particular purpose. Our family lives, personal gifts, careers, and life situations are all different.
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THAT'S THE TYPICAL EXPLANATION for why Catholics stop attending their local parish. Perhaps they stop attending regularly, or go to another Catholic parish, or maybe-more likely than we might admit-they start attending a congregation that is not Catholic.
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The small church is dying in the United States. Protestant megachurches are growing. New and growing Catholic parishes are built to be large and getting bigger, while others consolidate. Why? In part, to benefit from economies of scale and to respond to the diminishment in numbers of priests, parishes are larger and churches are built bigger than before.
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Catholics have more than one way to pray and more than one sacrament. Yet it often seems as if our only prayer is the Mass and our only sacrament is the Eucharist. According to some liturgists, the worship style mainline Protestant churches use was adapted from a form of evening prayer and preaching Catholic churches used in the 15th century. And today we have the Liturgy of the Hours, Taizé prayer, solemn benediction, an increasingly common praise and worship style, and all sorts of other traditions.
But one would hardly know it from the schedule posted at most Catholic parishes: “Mass times.” Mass and Eucharist itself are indeed..
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Preaching is about translation, ministering is about mediating. Yet preachers are seldom translators and ministers seldom mediators. Preachers instead seek to tell, ministers to do. But it is neither exposition nor tasks that matter in the end.
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“Muchos bautizados, pocos evangelizados.” Many are baptized, few are evangelized. That is not simply something that might be said in Spanish-speaking countries, as it often is. It is a challenge faced by the church universal. It also leads us to consider what we might do differently. To what degree have we a misplaced relative overemphasis on baptism compared to our emphasis on evangelization?
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Is reconfiguration moving chairs, adjusting slots—or building new possibilities for relationship? What is it doing more: destroying or creating a life-giving culture? . . .
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Culture sustains Catholicism and our Catholic communities of faith, but not in the way we often think. Culture is not so much about static content—how we think about something—as much as it is about what we do and with whom we do it. Culture is about actions that sustain and enrich networks. Similarly, faith communities are not so much assembled groups of people as they are an interconnection point of many diverse networks.
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It has been said many times that love depends on trust, a trust that is open to risk-taking. In this sense fear is the opposite of love—that which prevents us from loving. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, pastoral actions, even preaching, can carry an undertone or motivation stemming from fear.
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Have we ever really thought about what it means to do theology? On the one hand theology is rightly and justifiably understood as an academic exercise left to those who read, teach, and create big books. On the other, theology must be understood as something all believers must do if our tradition is to remain vital.
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Catholicism changes. The Catholicism of the previous generation is different than that of the one before it—and the one after it. The same is true for individual Catholics: They are different in their Catholicism precisely because Catholicism is a living tradition.
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If, as the ancient principle of “lex orandi, lex credendi” says, the “law of prayer is the law of belief,” then we need to pay attention to the “how” no less than the “what” of prayer. This maxim, after all, suggests that we might not, really, believe that we are universally connected across time and space as the Body of Christ if prayer is individualistic and isolated, or if we pray in a way that connects us with our local community and particular group without breaking through to a larger, more universal experience of human interconnectedness in our prayer.
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Preachers address people who make many different choices and who live their lives in many different ways. There has always been human diversity, of course; in the past, people groups were different one from another, but diversity was not nearly as strong within people groups.
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Even though politicians in general may be often held in low esteem, one's local political representatives may be held in high esteem. While trust in the church as a whole might decline, confidence is one's own pastor or bishop might continue to be high. The observation of a wise Catholic politician—"all politics is local"—could be applied to church life as well. . . .
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When does a person commit to being a Catholic? The answer used to be easy: by being born into a Catholic home. The membrane between Catholic and non-Catholic used to be thick, and above all Catholic culture used to be stronger and richer than it is today. . . .
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How often do we hear people make the claim that they are “spiritual but not religious”? That, of course, is obviously false. To be spiritual one has to be religious. But what about those who are “religious but not spiritual”? That is a much more significant issue.
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Sometimes the word
postmodern is used to describe our times. Sometimes we talk of a
new globalization or an
emerging church. Whatever we call our era, we have the sense that we are on the threshold of something new.
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Pastoral leaders used to envision themselves speaking to families, and that was more often than not correct. Parishes counted the numbers of families who belonged, and donations and participation happened through families.
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