Diocese of Lexington Evangelization Commision
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The End of Clericalization

8/9/2013

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Like the stunned crowd gathered below the papal balcony, my initial reaction to Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio’s election as Pope Francis, was “Who?” And while the early weeks of papacy are giving us a clearer image of his leadership, we can also surmise some things from his ministry in Argentina before his election to the Chair of Peter.

   Consider an interview he gave in July 2011, especially his response when asked about the laity in his country: “There are lay people who actually live their faith seriously, they believe that Jesus is alive and hope in the resurrection, but meanwhile they’re not sitting around scratching their bellies, as Chileans say, but working, expecting the Lord to come and preparing the way.”

   Reading between the lines, I suppose he also means that there are at least some lay people who actually are “sitting around scratching their bellies.” Ouch.

  The Cardinal continued, “There is a problem…the temptation to clericalism. Priests tend to clericalize the laity. And the laity, not all but many, ask us on their knees to clericalize them because it is more comfortable to be an altar boy than to truly live out the lay vocation.”

   We’re all familiar with “clericalism,” in practice if not in terminology, which can consist of a neglect of the particular dignity and vocation of the laity within the Church, and an unhealthy emphasis on ordination as a status of superiority rather than service.

   But what does clericalism mean in this context, this idea of priests tending to “clericalize the laity,” and per the laity’s request! The Cardinal’s comments suggest is that there is a danger in believing that the only true ministry of the Church occurs at the altar, and that our dignity as laity consists exclusively in helping the ordained priest in his priestly service.  

   The Cardinal explains, “The lay person is a lay person and has to live like a lay person with the strength of baptism, which renders him capable of being leaven of God’s love in society itself …carrying the cross like we all do. The lay person’s cross, not the priest’s cross. Let the priest carry the priest’s cross. God gave him shoulder enough to bear it.”

   A few columns ago, I pointed out that the Catechism, in describing the common priesthood (laity) and the ministerial priesthood, states, “the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians.”  As I noted, we often view the situation in reverse, thinking the laity exists to serve the ordained. But the source of confusion is not who you think.  In fact, despite the kvetching and priest-bashing common among Catholics, this form of clericalism is fostered more by laity than by priests, either because we like the safety of being altar servers only, or because it’s easier to do nothing.

    I’m convinced that the new evangelization—the fresh and bold proclamation of the good news of Christ’s redeeming love—will be accomplished primarily through laity who embrace their baptismal mission and ministry in the secular world, doing ministry not within the walls of the Church but out in the world, among people who would never think to walk into an RCIA class.

    Consider the work of the Catholic Action Center here in Lexington, begun by lay people who embraced the vision of the Catholic Worker movement. Or consider Ruah Woods (see ruahwoods.org), a lay teaching apostolate in the Cincinnati area dedicated to promoting Blessed John Paul II’s Theology of the Body within all age groups. Their ministry was initiated and funded entirely by lay persons who saw a need and stepped up to fulfill it. While the ministry has the blessing of the Archbishop, it requires no diocesan staff or funding.

     When we as laity see a direct ministry need through our own particular eyes, rather than wait upon our pastors to act (they’re already carrying their own demanding cross), and rather than wait on a diocesan initiative (where staff and resources are limited), we must step up to the task; not as lone rangers, but in cooperation with others we might gather. And while we must seek the blessing and guidance of our pastor and Bishop, we should not depend upon their assistance.

    Only when we prefer our baptismal mission to belly-scratching will the power of the new evangelization be released. The time is now—are we ready? 


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Evangelization: Our Mutual Mission

1/18/2013

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   When I was a Methodist pastor, a frustrated elderly parishioner, Mrs. Smith, said to me one Sunday, “I’ve visited Sue Jones in the nursing home three times this month and she said that no one from the church has been to see her.” I paused before replying, hoping the irony of her words would be apparent once she heard it out loud. No such luck.

   Now I’d been a pastor long enough to read the code and understand what she meant; she was frustrated that I, the pastor, hadn’t been to see Mrs. Jones. This, by the way, is why folks in pastoral ministry often live with the perpetual feeling that they are letting somebody down.

   It’s interesting that in a United Methodist setting, with no sacrament of Holy Orders, the pastor’s representative role is still irreplaceable. How much more so, then, in Catholicism, in which the priest is an alter Christus by virtue of his ordination?

   And yet, we the laity also serve a crucial role in caring for each other within the Body of Christ. If we forget this, we become consumers who view the Church as a detached institution that exists to provide us goods and services, rather than to see the Church as a living mission to the world in which we are all working members, organically united and necessarily involved. 

    Thus—if you missed the irony—my Methodist parishioner’s complaint was self-refuting. If she had been to see Mrs. Jones three times in the nursing home, the church had visited her!

    Now translate this concept into another area of ministry—evangelization. The root “eu-angelos” is Greek for “good news,” and so the word “evangelization” refers to announcing and embodying the good news of Christ’s victorious, transforming, and inviting love to the world.

    And this task is primarily ours as laity. As Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium puts it:“[T]he laity go forth as powerful proclaimers of a faith in things to be hoped for, when they courageously join to their profession of faith a life springing from faith. This evangelization…takes on a specific quality and a special force in that it is carried out in the ordinary surroundings of the world.”

    Yet we wait for our pastor to initiate a parish evangelization program, as if it is his task alone. In a role reversal, we imagine we’re spectators cheering on our priests in the battlefield for souls, when actually we’re meant for the battlefield, and our pastors are, in a manner of speaking, our sergeants, medics, and chaplains. Don’t take my word for it, check the Catechism: “The ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood (note: that’s you and me, via our baptism). It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians” (¶1547).

    And where is this battlefield? It’s where we live, work, and play, or as the Council says, “the ordinary surroundings of the world.” And our weapons are love, service and prayer. Thus, our success is not judged by our comportment at Mass, where we show our best faces, but in how we embody love and integrity daily in our work, friendships, families, and all those we meet. 

    I’m not sure we get this, since we more often lament the damage to Catholicism by wayward priests than we do our own hypocrisies that obscure the good news of Christ and his Church. 

    In the gospel reading for January 4th, taken from John 1, John the Baptist directs two of his disciples toward Jesus as the “Lamb of God,” who then ask Jesus where he is staying. Jesus’ response of “Come and see” invites them to spend a day with him—to see in Jesus’ordinary moments the confirmation of the Baptist’s claim.  “Come and see” is also St. John’s literary invitation to read the rest of his gospel, to see for ourselves this Word made flesh.     
 
    But the “Come and see” phrase goes further; it asks every person baptized into Christ whether others see Jesus alive in us. For example, when photojournalist Linda Schaefer once accompanied Blessed Mother Teresa in her work, she titled her pictorial essay, Come and See, an indication that seeing the saint in her daily work confirmed the authenticity of her witness.

   What about us? If we understand our role as evangelizers, we will humbly seek God’s grace—and no one needs it more than me--as we ask ourselves, “If I said ‘Come and see?’ to a non-believer, inviting him to see my daily life, unfiltered from waking to bed, would he be more likely or less so to believe our Lord is real?”After all, wherever we go, there the Church will be.
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"The Church Does not Exist for Her Own Sake"

6/14/2012

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  As we seek to re-engage inactive Catholics, we should heed Pope  Benedict’s recent homily on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, in a Mass  concelebrated by 22 new Cardinals: “The Church does not exist for her own sake,  she is not the point of arrival, but she has to point upwards, beyond herself,  to the realms above.”
     
For the new Cardinals, receiving the red biretta would be a heady  experience, not to mention concelebrating with the Pope around Bernini’s Altar  of the Chair. And yet the Holy Father reminded them that their new attire is  about responsibility, not privilege; service rather than power. The red, in  fact, signifies their willingness to love their brothers and sisters unto death. 
      
His words are also a gentle reminder to all Catholics that simply being  Catholic—i.e. just being a card carrying member—is not an end in itself. What do  I mean? 
     
Consider that every faith tradition has its own particular pitfalls. For  many Protestants, who view the church as an exclusively invisible reality, a  nebulous unity of all people who love Jesus, the temptation is to view the  church as expendable. That’s why the video, “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus,” has become a Youtube sensation.

Catholics, on the other hand, know that the Church is both visible and  invisible; yet our temptation is to focus on the institution alone and forget  that the Church exists to lead people to Jesus Christ. The visible aspects of  the Church are indispensable, because we are material beings who experience the  divine life of grace through our bodies (and thus, our senses). But the Church  we see, smell, touch, and taste exists to make visible the invisible mystery of  God. 

The Pope points this out, declaring that “The Church herself is like a  window, the place where God draws near to us.” It helps, of course, that above  Bernini’s Altar of the Chair is a stunning alabaster window that irresistibly  attracts the eye with, as the Holy Father describes it, the “light that comes  from above, without which (the world) would be uninhabitable.” 
      
Without the transcendent reality, Bernini’s sculpture is just a piece of  furniture. And let’s be honest, far too many Catholics grow up seeing the  sculpture but never the light behind it. 

They do the right things, the visible actions that we  Catholics do, but they never experience in personal terms the invisible reality  of Christ’s love in their lives. And so they drift, with the majority of  Catholics leaving the Church not in anger but in apathy. 

Some become  disillusioned with Catholicism, but find an evangelical congregation that talks
openly and convincingly about Jesus and the difference he makes in your life.  They have a personal experience of faith, and they believe everything in their  Catholic past was empty ritual.“I went to the Catholic Church my whole life,”  they attest, “But I never knew Jesus or heard the gospel.” We could rightly  quibble that they saw Jesus and heard the gospel in every Mass they attended,  but perception is reality; not objective reality, of course, but subjective.
Others become disillusioned with Christianity in general, and feel the gnawing  emptiness of a life without faith. 

Meanwhile, we who practice the faith might feel a certain indifference to  these inactive Catholics, knowing that we have found the fullness of faith and  losing little sleep over those who used to sit around us. Or if we are concerned  for them, we sometimes are more motivated to simply get them back to the  Catholic Church, as if merely “being a Catholic” is an end in itself.     
      
Yet as the Pope reminds us, occupying a pew is not the goal. Rather, the  Catholic Church is the sacrament of salvation, the most complete expression of  the Christian life and the path most conducive to union with Jesus Christ. The  Church exists not to perpetuate the institution, but so that people in every generation might know Jesus Christ and the abundant life he gives.

So in the task of reaching out to inactive Catholics, we might ask ourselves two questions. First of all, why are we inviting persons back in the first  place—just to be Catholic or to know Jesus Christ? And secondly, when they come  back, what kind of parish will they be finding; one in which Jesus is moving in  the lives of the people, laity and clergy alike, or one with beautiful  furnishings but no compelling vision of the light shining through? 



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    Mike Allen is the Director of Family Life and Evangelization for the DIocese of Lexington.

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