As I See It

by Fr. Vin

Where We Go from Here - III

Jesus said to the Twelve,
“Fear no one.”

-- Today’s Gospel [Matthew, 10:26]

I was reading an article the other day about the high rate of knee injuries in young women who play sports.  Interestingly, the article said that the injuries seemed to be caused by weakness – but not in the legs.  It was the muscles in the “core” of the body that were weak and put the players’ knees at risk.  This is a good image for health and strength in the church as well.

Churches often spend a lot of time (and energy and money) paying attention to their “wobbly knees”: people who have stopped coming, or don’t seem committed, or are dissatisfied.  The evidence shows that that’s a mistake: the problems with the congregation may show themselves with people drifting away, or young people not being interested, or people voicing dissatisfaction – but the true issues are “at the core.”  (I was having lunch once with a very respected theologian who posed the question this way: “Suppose all the TV networks gave us a free day to publicize the church and invite people back.  What would we invite them back to? Why would they want to stay?”)  Sometimes it’s not clear at the very center what our church stands for, what it means to be a committed member, and why it’s worthwhile to belong.  What would you say that we stand for?

Most of you reading this are only doing so because you do belong, in one way or another – something here does matter to you.  But – especially if you’re a parent or grandparent who’s tried, without much success, to invite or persuade your children or grandchildren to practice the faith – you may be aware that you can’t convincingly say what matters and why.  This is a sign of that weakness at the core: Why should a young person choose Mass on a Sunday morning over soccer?  Even if you have what you think is a good answer for that, do you have any sense that the other people in church would give a similar answer?  Do we send a clear message?  A unified one?  A convincing one?

Last week I wrote about our priorities, and the choice we have to make between investing in what we’ve been doing so far or shifting our energies toward building for the future.  That means that we have to pay attention not primarily to the “weak knees” of our parish (although we can’t neglect them totally), but rather to the “strength of the core” – to the engagement of parishioners in our mission, our reason for existing and being together.

Part of that attention is the survey that’s in today’s Bulletin and that we’re going to take at Mass next weekend. If we’re going to say clearly what we’re about, we have to agree on what our message is.  We have to know what’s expected of us and what we can expect of one another.  People who don’t know what’s expected aren’t likely to be able to say very convincingly what it means to be a parishioner or even to be a Catholic.

(To avoid misunderstanding: We don’t “make up for ourselves” who a follower of Jesus is; we don’t vote on how to be a disciple; this isn’t the point of this exercise.  It’s to start a conversation about how to be a disciple today and what we can call on one another to live up to.  That’s gotten fuzzy over the past decades, and we need to get more clear about it.  This is a first step in getting more clear.)

I encourage you to read over the survey questions.  Think about what you expect of yourself, and would like to be able to expect of others.  You can fill the survey in at home and bring it to Mass next weekend, or wait ‘til Mass and we’ll have a copy for you to fill out there.   But do take some time to think about what it means to be a member of our Catholic church – where are the boundaries – not of Jesus’ love, which is boundless, but of membership?  How can we say convincingly who we are if we don’t know who “we” are?  More next week; until then, peace.