Newspaper Page Text
October 2,1980
PAGE 5
The Fascination Of Technique
BY FATHER PHILIP J. MURNION
There is a fascination today with
techniques. This, in fact, explains the
booming sales of “how to” books, covering
everything from meditation to making
money.
If one were to pick out a word that
would help distinguish our time from other
periods in history, the word “technique”
would be a candidate. Some of us are
bewildered by all the techniques society has
invented.
There are techniques for counseling
people and for organizing groups. Other
techniques tell how to raise children and
how to develop housing for the elderly.
However, the fascination with techniques
can be fatal, especially if people become the
victims of “how to” procedures. Many
writers have warned that new techniques
must serve the values of people, and not vice
versa.
What has this to do with the parish and
its people?
In recent generations, the church has
sometimes adopted techniques from other
fields.
- Techniques of psychological counseling
were learned by many priests who wished to
improve their counseling of parishioners.
-- Social ministry activists sometimes
adopted the organizing techniques of the
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
When Paul wrote First Corinthians, he
was not in a good mood. He was a harried
pastor with a long list of problems to solve.
To add to Paul’s frustration, he was at the
moment an absentee pastor, busy with
affairs in the church at Ephesus. If the
Corinthian people had the uncanny knack of
misunderstanding him when he was with
them in person, they would probably
misconstrue what he was going to write to
them.
The letter begins just like all letters of
the period: the sender is identified. Paul
gives not just his name, but his
qualifications. He says he was “called by the
will of God to be an apostle,of Christ Jesus”
(1:1).
Some people liked to put Paul down by
disparaging his apostleship. He had never
seen or heard Jesus as the real apostles had;
he was quite simply second-rate.
So, in the brief allusion to his
qualifications at the beginning of the letter,
Paul bluntly stresses the source of his call
and commission. Paul felt he had to take a
back seat to no one, a point to which he is
forced to return more than once in his
letters.
After identifying himself, Paul writes
about the recipients of the letter. He is
writing to the local church (parish) at
Corinth. The word translated as “church”
was an ordinary Greek word meaning
assembly. But this assembly is not just any
old secular gathering. It is the assembly of
God, for reasons which become clear as soon
as Paul describes its constituents. They have,
he says, been “consecrated in Jesus Christ
and called to be a holy people” (1:2).
This is not a casual way of describing the
people. It is a deliberate and pointed
reminder of their Christian identity, of what
they are supposed to be.
The people have been baptized into
Christ Jesus, into his Body, the Christian
labor movement in order to help citizen
groups carry out effective community
action.
- Dioceses and parishes and other church
institutions picked up planning and
management techniques used in the business
world.
- Teachers learned many new educational
techniques.
-- Social work techniques, budgeting
techniques, communication techniques and
techniques for surveying the likes and
dislikes of people, are all being used in parish
ministry.
- Even among scholars, techniques are
important. Scholars of the Bible, for
instance, tend to take seriously the
techniques of archeologists or
anthropologists. Many biblical scholars feel
those techniques can help them understand
better the lives of people during the periods
when the books of the Bible were written.
The parish has benefited from good use
of techniques. They have helped us to be
much more careful and effective in what we
do and how we use our gifts. But we also run
the risk of letting techniques take over,
becoming ends in themselves rather than
means for accomplishing our purposes.
Misuse of techniques can occur, for
example, if we do not evaluate the findings
of psychology in the light of faith, or if we
let efficiency in planning make the
community. So, they are consecrated, set
apart from an ungodly world with its
perverted value system and false standards of
judgment.
Even though the people continue to live
in the world, they have been made members
of a community with different standards of
judgment. In this atmosphere they enjoy the
freedom to develop into the kind of human
beings their creator intended them to be.
The exercise of this freedom demands,
however, that the people make decisions and
choices of their own - including some
difficult ones. The choices they make will be
a measure of their growth as Christians.
Still following the conventional pattern in
his letter, Paul proceeds to an expression of
thanksgiving. He reminds the Corinthians of
the favors God has bestowed on them in
Christ Jesus. The favors he singles out for
mention are spiritual gifts “of speech and
knowledge,” gifts on which the people
doted. Paul would have preferred to
congratulate them on their possession and
exercise of far more important gifts, like
faith, or hope, or love. But the people were
sadly deficient on these scores, as the sequel
will show.
Paul counters any smugness on the part
of the people by injecting a sobering
reminder of what really counts: the
condition in which the Lord Jesus will find
them when he returns in glory. The return of
Jesus was not a remote prospect for Paul and
his contemporaries. They looked forward to
the Lord’s return in the not too distant
future. To be found blameless on the day of
his return, the people must cooperate
faithfully with the grace bestowed on them
by the faithful God who called them.
In First Corinthians, the paramount
importance of the community is highlighted.
God called the people to a profound
fellowship of mutual love and sharing.
Anything that militates against this
community betrays their call, no matter
what else they may be able to point to in
their favor.
maintenance of church buildings more
important than the mission of the church.
We can misuse techniques if we simply
teach people how to fit into the existing
systems of the world, or if we fail to
evaluate our social-action efforts in light of
the Gospel. We can misuse techniques by
placing such emphasis on the scientific study
of the Bible that we forget to let God speak
to us through his revealed word.
Parishes now are making clearer the
usefulness and the limitations of techniques.
More and more, these “how to” procedures
are being subjected to the tests of faith.
Thus, in counseling parishioners, the
ability God has to help people determine the
meaning of their lives and to face difficult
challenges is now being reasserted more
clearly. Parish groups organizing to promote
social justice in their communities are
reflecting on the connections of faith and
action.
Teachers are considering again how
educational methods can best be used as aids
in the larger task of guiding students toward
an understanding of the life of Christ.
In various ways, the meeting of the
human and the divine, of technique and
faith, is occurring. Some people would like
to scrap all the techniques and return to a
‘simple’ ’ faith. They distrust secular skills,
or they complain that the techniques do not
have a place in the church.
In cases where techniques seem to “take
over,” the complaints may be justified. But,
in other cases, it seems that the discoveries
of human understanding can have a relation
to God.
That relationship is seen when people
committed to the Word of God use the best
aids available for understanding the Bible;
when people committed to justice develop
skills for justice; when those who counsel
the doubtful study counseling. Good
intentions are not always enough.
When St. Theresa of Avila was asked
about a good spiritual director, she insisted
that the person had to be a good theologian
as well as someone with deep faith. It seems
she felt that faith and technical ability could
work well together.
An ancient Chinese proverb asserts, “The
longest journey begins with a single step.”
An ancient curse reads, “May you live in
interesting times.”
Is this puzzling?
The people of a parish often don’t know
each other very well, let alone find time to
share their lives of faith. They may go away
from Mass with a sense that they’re missing
something -- that the people who
worshipped together weren’t all they could
be as a Christian community.
But in many places, the people of
parishes are responding to this situation by
taking single steps toward a renewed
experience of the church. Some of them
have had remarkable success. Others have
experienced a slow but steady growth in
finding ways for parishioners to know one
another better and to grow together in the
faith.
Many of these people are discovering that
for Christians these can be very interesting
times. And they're finding that interesting
times need not be a curse.
Sometimes pastors, parish staff members
and other leaders undertake programs aimed
at the renewal of entire parish communities.
Elements of such renewals may include
homilies, parish missions, a number of small
NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS
have had beneficial results for
parishes. But new techniques should
not become ends in themselves. Faith
groups of people who meet to study and to
pray, and efforts to revitalize a parish
council and its committees.
In the process, not only can victories be
shared, but frustrations and disappointments
too. That builds community.
It is possible to engage parish
leaders and people in a process aimed at
sharing faith, building the whole community
and strengthening ministry and service. The
value of this cannot be overestimated.
But as good as renewals directed to an
entire parish can be, they are not always
possible. Are there some intermediate steps
to take?
Many people are familiar with the success
of programs like Cursillo, Marriage
Encounter and the charismatic renewal.
These and other programs have helped to
deepen the faith of hundreds of thousands
of people. When they entail proper
follow-up efforts, such experiences enliven
people. But the follow-up is sometimes hard
to come by, and a spiritual awakening often
becomes private or gets oriented away from
the parish community.
What else do parishes do to provide ways
for members to hear and respond to the
word of God, to pray and worship together
in settings beyond that of the Sunday
Eucharist, and to reach out ■ > others in
works of service and of justice. Some
and technical ability should work
together for the good of a parish. (NC
Sketch by Christopher McDonough)
The Liturgy
parishes have experienced success in efforts
with the already existing groups of a parish.
Existing parish organizations - parish
councils, mens’ and womens’ councils - have
strengthened their mission when they have
shared prayer in a variety of traditional and
new ways. Taking time for a day or evening
of recollection or a weekend retreat together
has served members both as individual
persons of faith and as a group.
Parish staffs which have set aside regular
time for prayer and reflection have found
this is a resource that helps them through
the inevitable rough or disappointing
periods.
Members of liturgy committees or
committees for Christian education and
service have often found that devoting some
significant time to prayer and personal
reflection during their meetings provides the
best basis for effective action - because the
group begins to reflect - to resemble - the
kind of Christian community it hopes to
build for the whole parish.
All these are single steps that can help
parishes in their journeys of faith and
service.
The times we live in are interesting, with
all the challenges and frustrations that
interesting times entail. But interesting
times, many people are discovering, can be
an opportunity for growth.
/ ^
KNOW
YOUR FAITH
(All Articles on this page Copyrighted 1980 by N. C. News Service)
V
PARISH STAFFS AND ORGANIZATIONS
rediscovering their spiritual center through the sharing of
prayer in new as well as traditional ways. At St. Joseph’s
Church in Dubuque, Iowa, Father Donald Bakewell, left,
and Father Albert Maternach share a prayer with altar boys
before a Mass. (NC Photo by James L. Shaffer)
Discussion
Points And Questions
1. Father Philip Murnion feels that techniques, when used correctly,
are helpful in parishes. Discuss one technique he lists and show how it
can be used in a parish.
2. Why does Father Murnion say “how-to” books are so popular
today? Have you ever purchased such a manual? Why?
3. What are some single steps that Richard Lawless thinks whole
parishes or groups within parishes can take toward building a Christian
community?
4. What place does prayer play in renewing parishes and individual
groups, according to Lawless?
5. Father John Castelot says St. Paul states his own qualifications for
writing to the people of Corinth at the beginning of First Corinthians.
Why does Paul do this?
6. How would you compare Paul’s qualifications with those of the
other apostles?
7. Think about some of the ways in which parishes can help
members get to know each other better.
Paul: The Harried Pastor
Everyday Living Reflects
BY RICHARD LAWLESS