Newspaper Page Text
September 4,1980
PAGE 5
The Parish Is Still Vital
BY FATHER PHILIP J. MURNION
“The parish is dead.”
“The parish is no longer an adequate
structure for the church.”
Such comments are heard from time to
time. When people claim the parish is
suffering a terminal disease, they are usually
concerned that fixed local structures like
parishes do not fit well into a world where
people move so often.
Some people feel large parishes are too
anonymous for members to feel any
relationship to each other. Others are
impatient with the compromises necessary
among people who differ greatly.
Nonetheless, the parish will undoubtedly
continue to be the normal way most persons
live as members of the church.
-- The local parish remains the place
where people celebrate the sacraments that
mark the sacredness of critical moments in
their lives.
-- In the parish Christians celebrate their
faith, hear the story of Jesus and come face
to face with the compromises and bad
choices in their lives.
-- In the parish people contact the
mystery of God, the sacred center of their
lives that continues even when their
realization of this wavers.
This does not deny that parishes may
need reform. But what other form is likely
to ensure that the message and life of Christ
is brought to all people or that when we
gather as church, some of the variety of
people who constitute the People of God are
present?
There are, of course, other means by
which people try to better understand and
live their Christianity. In the charismatic
renewal, for example, people have
rediscovered the depths of their faith and
learned to express it.
Marriage Encounter has helped many
couples review the love that is the basis of
their union. The Cursillo movement has been
important to many people. And some
Catholics have found their way to a parish
other than their own where they feel the
preaching is particularly engaging and the
celebration of Sunday Mass especially
inspiring.
Nonetheless, parishes -- especially
territorial parishes -- are the most consistent
way in which the ministry of the church
reaches out to all people. Responsible for
the life of the church in a particular area, the
parish reaches out to:
-- halfhearted and wholehearted
Catholics;
-- families and those who don’t feel part
of any group;
-- the faithful and the alienated.
Through the parish, the ministry of the
church touches the faith of people, their
attempts to create families, their
relationships as neighbors, concerns of
health, education, housing and welfare that
condition their attempts to live human lives.
I do not mean to paint a rosy picture but
to point out some features in a parish
blueprint. Obviously, problems exist, but I
think this is not so much because the parish
does badly what it once did well, but
because the parish must do things differently
today to respond to altered conditions of
life.
Is the preaching today worse than a
generation ago? I doubt it. Instead, it is
more likely that the preacher cannot assume
people today are predisposed to accept what
he says. Also, he competes today with so
many influences on people’s values.
Is the liturgy celebrated more poorly than
in the past? I doubt it. Do you remember
the 15-minute Masses for the dead?
Even laments that the quality of today’s
music does not compare with the glories of
Gregorian chant are somewhat disingenuous.
After all, chant was little heard in most
services. “You Are Close to My Heart,
Dearest Jesus”and “Good Night, Sweet
Jesus” were far more prevalent.
The parish faces considerable challenges.
All the gifts present among its people are
needed to meet the challenges.
It is heartening to discover the many
creative efforts to develop parish
community. It is heartening to see the
growing desire to pull all parish parts
together in renewal.
This is occurring in small and large
parishes, in rural, urban and suburban
parishes. The initiatives are vital for the
church, For, in such parishes it is possible to
resist elitism, to resist the temptation to let
the church simply endorse social trends
toward individualism and secularism.
We still need movements that focus on
particular aspects of Christian life. But the
parish remains the most important form for
church life today.
Discussion
Points And Questions
1. Having read Father Philip Mumion’s article, discuss one reason
why some people feel the parish is no longer adequate for people in a
mobile society.
2. Why does Father Mumion feel the parish is still vital for
Christians?
3. What is the central symbolism of the eucharistic liturgy, according
to Father John O’Callaghan? What problem can this pose for many
Catholics today?
4. How can the word of God speak to human hunger? Do you find
this an apt comparison? Why?
5. What does Father John Castelot mean by saying that St. Paul is
both bicultural and bilingual? How does this affect Paul’s epistles?
6. How do St. Paul’s letters reveal his personality? What sort of a
man was Paul, according to Father Castelot?
THE PARISH REMAINS and will undoubtedly continue sacraments that mark the sacred ness of critical moments in
as the normal way most people live as members of the our lives. (NC Photo by Mimi Forsyth)
church. It is still in the local parish that we celebrate the
St. Paul: This Fascinating Man
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
St. Paul wrote the letters which tell us so
much about the early formation of
Christianity, a formation for which he was
so signally responsible.
Far from being cold, abstract theological
treaties, his letters are warm, vibrant, even
passionate responses to the challenge of the
Good News. Since they are so deeply
personal, the astoundingly rich personality
of their author has to be kept in mind to
appreciate them fully.
If the readings from St. Paul’s letters
leave people puzzled at times, the reason is
not hard to find. Excerpts from anyone’s
writings, wrenched completely from their
contexts, rarely make complete sense.
Sometimes they simply confuse. Hamlet’s
soliloquy, all by itself, is very moving, but it
really means little apart from its setting in
the drama.
There is hardly any type of writing more
personal than a letter and, if only for that
reason, isolated sentences or paragraphs just
dangle in space. Only against the background
of the entire letter do they take on meaning.
Paul’s letters, with the exception of the
one to Philemon, were addressed to
Christian communities. They were quite
personal. They revealed and also were the
products of his personality - and a complex
personality he had. Saul was a Jew by birth,
by religion and by culture.
His given name, Saul, was that of the first
king of Israel, also of the tribe of Benjamin,
and his mother tongue was the language of
his people in the first century, Aramaic.
Evidently trained in strict orthodoxy, Paul
grew up to be an ardent Pharisee.
(Philippians 3:5)
However, he was bom in a city which
rightfully boasted that it was a center of
Greek culture: Tarsus, in the province of
Cilicia, close to the Mediterranean in what is
now southeastern Turkey. As a “citizen
of... no mean city (Acts 21:39), Saul
enjoyed the privileges of Roman citizenship
(Acts 16:37) and reached manhood speaking
not only Aramaic but also very fluent Greek.
If he was immersed in the cultural
heritage of his own people, he also had an
easy familiarity with the best in
Graeco-Roman culture as well. Being
bilingual and bicultural was an important
factor in his personal development.
Not content with the level of religious
education attainable in Tarsus, Saul went to
Jerusalem while still a young man (just how
young is hard to say). He attached himself to
a leading rabbi of the city, Gamaliel, and, as
he puts it, “was educated strictly in the law
of our fathers.” (Acts 22:3)
The young Christian community was
attracting a good deal of attention in
Jerusalem, and when it caught Saul’s
attention it infuriated him. His words, as
reported in Acts, leave no doubt about his
reactions:
“Furthermore I persecuted this new way
to the point of death. I arrested and
imprisoned both men and women.” (Acts
22:4) In addition, he was a more than
willing witness to the stoning of the first
Christian martyr, Stephen. (Acts 7:58)
Bilingual, bicultural, deeply religious,
highly intelligent, pursuing advanced
rabbinic studies - his personality grew. But
the final, most influential ingredient was yet
to be added. He refers to it with amazing
simplicity in his letter to the Galatians:
“But the time came when he who had set
me apart before I was born and called me by
his favor chose to reveal his son to me, that I
might spread among the Gentiles the good
tidings concerning him.” (Galatians 1:15-16)
£>aul, the hater, the persecutor, became
Paul, the lover, the apostle.
CHRISTIANS LIVING AMID
PLENTY when so much of the world
suffers from a shortage of food may
have very real problems with the
Eucharistic bread and wine. Similarly
if the liturgy of the Word is to speak
to human hunger of the spirit, it must
reach ears that have experienced this
hunger. (NC Photo by Paul
DeGruccio)
The Eucharist
Addresses Everyday Life
BY FATHER JOHN J. O’CALLAGHAN, S.J.
Most readers of these words belong to a
culture whose main problem with food and
drink is having too much of it!
That’s surely unique in world history. At
what other time could you have seen a
drugstore aisle filled with nothing but all
kinds of diet-aids!
For Catholics looking for meaningful
involvement in the eucharistic liturgy, where
the central symbolism is of food and drink,
this poses problems.
Christians living in the midst of mass
starvation will have their own problems with
eucharistic bread and wine; our problems
may well revolve around not being hungry
enough.
The diet craze is a product of affluence.
And affluence has a way of spreading from
body to spirit. The affluent are easily
unaware of any hunger, physical or spiritual.
It’s not that they have no hunger. They are
just unaware of it or unable to pinpoint the
vague rumbling in the depths of their hearts.
Christ meant the Eucharist to be true
nourishment for Christian lives. To be that,
the liturgy - particularly the liturgy of the
word in which the scripture readings are
proclaimed - should first help us kindle
hunger. Full bellies reject food.
For the word of God to speak to human
hunger, it must tap human experience. This
is a problem for priest and people. And the
solution for both is the same: to reflect
upon the relevance of God’s word for human
lives.
For example, only honest inquiry into
the life experience of married couples and
prayerful reflection on what he learns here,
helps a priest say anything meaningful about
the grace of the sacrament of matrimony.
Grace is mysterious, admittedly. But we
know it is somehow connected with God’s
loving gift of himself to us. The effects of
that love are within our experience.
The strength a wife finds - surprising
even to herself - to stand up under the strain
of her husband’s stress-related breakdown
and long convalescence; the devotion and
patience shown by a husband whose life’s
companion is reverting to incoherent
childhood as the arteries in her brain harden
-- these are “the grace of the sacrament” as
we experience it! They show what it means,
in life terms, to say that “the two shall
become one.” (Mt. 19:5)
Similarly, only a growing ability to step
back from ceaseless activity and recognize
the clues to God’s call in the everyday will
put flesh on the bones of scripture for those
listening to the Mass readings. We have these
clues, all of us.
The clues aren’t terribly abstruse. They’re
contained in the ordinary events of our lives.
For example:
- You stop to help a stranded motorist at
night and recognize in his eyes as you near
him not gratitude, but terror!
- You offer to open a street-corner
mailbox for someone whose hands are filled
with parcels, only to hear (contrary to fact),
“I can manage, thank you! ”
-- You find yourself buried in a book,
once settled in your seat on a plane,
precisely to forestall attempts at
conversation by the person next to you.
Reflection on these experiences helps us
realize the depth of isolation to which we
are prone (whether from fear or vanity or
selfishness) and the real need we have for the
help Jesus asked of his Father: “That they
may be one, as you, Father, and I are one.
(Jn. 17:21).
Our lives are full of experiences on which
God’s word can shed light. Though scripture
is written from past experience, it is the
word of the living God. God speaks it to us
now.
God’s word is relevant to our life
experience, too. It can awaken and name the
hungers we find in ourselves - for
understanding, trust, strength perseverance
or fidelity; for speaking and being spoken to
honestly, for forgiveness, for hope.
These hungers are what we must bring to
the table of the Eucharist. As we eat that
bread and drink that cup, we do it believing
what Jesus said: “My flesh is food indeed,
and my blood is drink indeed ... He who
eats me will live because of me.” (Jn. 6. 55,
57)
KNOW
YOUR FAITH
(All Articles on this page Copyrighted 1980 by N. C. News Service)
s— J