So a tremendous speaker started a discussion with teachers at the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools on the relevance of the Church. The great speaker was Leah Perrault. The great occasion was the start of the school year. The great group of people were my new colleagues - a great gathering of professionals, among which I only recognize a few faces.
But the discussion itself is what struck me by its... relevance. What is the point of Church? It's one of those fundamental questions our community of believers is not super comfortable with.
Another question, for example, was presented by Bishop Bolen, to whom it occurred while he was on retreat with Trappists - a likely context for the Spirit to work in a notable way. His question was "Why do I believe?" and his general response to even the thought of the question was discomfort. He, a bishop, felt that he would struggle to articulate a compelling and comprehensive answer. I feel that way too. So he brought it back for a big campaign for all believers to form their answer - their own answer, true to their heart's experience, and yet intelligible to those who live outside a community of faith, who don't share our language with which we speak of spiritual things. #ibelievebecause
So, I don't see a crisis in either of these questions - I don't look around at hundreds of fellow parishioners and think that they think Church is pointless, nor do I posit that a billion+ Catholics have no reason to believe.
I'm reminded of the Jesuit Superior General's comments shortly after he took up his post. He had conversed with the global Jesuit community, and as the conversation wrapped up, he offered this reflection, paraphrased: the Jesuits themselves were not in existential crisis - the Society of Jesus was in fact made up of men who were alive with hope, faith and love for their God, their work, their place in the divine plan. But, the sjSG went on, "we aren't doing a very good job of translating our joy to be understandable to other people," or something like that. In the specific instance, we could say, then, that a decline in Jesuit vocations was not an indication that the life of Jesuit priesthood was desolate, but that it was a consolation they were struggling to share.
In these questions, it is the missionary spirit, the call to evangelization, the mandate to make disciples of all nations, that confronts us - and our discomfort with the questions is exactly the same discomfort that this call creates in us.
Yet in my heart, and perhaps in Leah's, Bishop Don's and others', we are beginning to realize that not having an answer to these questions - that is, not speaking an answer to these questions - is not a life-giving or even neutral experience. As my first-hand knowledge of God's love grows, failing to put words to it cramps my heart in the same way any momentous experience - say the birth or death of a child, for example - must needs be put into words in order for me to be whole, to be healed, to be complete.
In this way, my failing to attend to evangelization is actually a repression of my self-expression!
(HA! Take that individualistic-modern-west! The only thing worse than "shoving your religion down someone else's throat" [ie evangelization] is self-repression!")
