David French is a conservative attorney and political commentator, until recently with National Review, and now trying to launch a new endeavor called The Dispatch. He is also an Evangelical Christian. In his most recent e-newsletter from The Dispatch, he offers one of his occasional excursions into popular culture, commenting* on Kanye West's newest album, Jesus is King, in which (according to what I've read) West reveals himself as a Christian in a way that is difficult to describe as anything other than born-again. This experience is something that French, the Evangelical, is familiar with:
I am going to do my best to describe one reason why it has unquestionably connected with so many Christian listeners: It represents the power of the new believer, unleashed.French offers several reasons that new believers, on fire with the Holy Spirit, are important for Christian communities:
If you’re not from an Evangelical background, you might miss the vital importance of the new believer in the life of the church. And by “new believer,” I don’t mean the son or daughter who grew up in the pews and becomes a member of the church through a kind of natural progression. I mean the person who comes from the outside, the new convert who lives with a distinctive and infectious zeal.
- They demonstrate (witness) to the community the possibility of God converting hearts and transforming lives
- They remind the community that commitment to the Gospel must be all-encompassing
- They spur the faith community to look critically at their own lukewarm faith and lack of joy
If the experiences and effects I've bulleted here are things that don't resonate with your Catholic experience - then, in my view, that is an indictment of the Catholic church. Because we should have new believers who refresh and renew the entire faith community, and call the rest of us to renewal. This is, in my view, the biggest "missing piece" that is the puzzle of contemporary Catholicism.
I also think this is the lens through which we should look at the Synod on the Amazon: I think Francis understands the importance of the church being an evangelizing church, and he is trying to lead the church to think about fresh ways of proclaiming the Gospel.
But the part of the church that is most need of an evangelizing Great Awakening is at the grass-roots, parish level. Most of us are not comfortable evangelizing, we have no heritage or history of evangelizing, and we have few or no role models for evangelizing. We're struggling to figure it out.
Well, to be candid, in my view, many parishes and faith communities aren't really even struggling very hard. They're simply not trying. And that needs to change. Because the world needs to hear the Good News. And as French notes, faith communities need those who have heard the Good News and have had it transform their lives.
* If you wish to read French's reflection on West's new album, follow this link, and then scroll down until you come to that topic.
I'm pretty familiar with the Evangelical Protestant way of thinking, since my mom's family all were, and I was married to one for 10 years (I'm still married to the same guy, but he's Catholic now). Yes, they have the big conversion moment, but several years down the road they're pretty similar to the rest of us. They either settle into their "new normal" or settle back to their old normal.
ReplyDeleteAs a teen I read the book "Beyond Ourselves" by Catherine Marshall, who was a famous Evangelical writer back in the 50s and 60s. The moment of inviting Jesus into one's life and confessing him as Lord and Savior figured big in the book. So I decided I should do that. But pretty soon I was asking myself what was different than before. Pretty much nothing. I was already inviting Jesus into my heart every time I received Communion, and I believed that he stayed there as far as relationship. I believed that I had received the Holy Spirit at Confirmation, and that my life had been committed to Christ at Baptism. My connection was, and remains, sacramental.
My husband can tell you the date that he committed his life to Christ at age 14, and was Baptised by immersion soon afterwards. But he had attended church with his family pretty much always, went to Sunday school, and prayed and read the Bible every day. So the conversion moment was basically a formal recognition of what had gone before. Of course I realize that for some people it is a new beginning, that they didn't have the previous background or relationship.
We are all familiar with the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who take their evangelism on the street and door to door. My husband always chats them up and thanks them for their witness, but tells them he "has a church home". I just say that to begin with.
Don't know where I am going with all this, except to make the observation that the word "evangelism" covers a lot of territory. Most of it takes place in families, and one-on-one being willing to answer questions and talk with people if they want to. And by setting a good example. The old saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" applies.
I'm a bit surprised to find out French is Evangelical. I would have guessed smells-and-bells Episcopalian. (I would have guessed the same about David Gergen, who is likewise Evangelical and says today he is "honored" to be in his smallest political minority ever -- the 1% of white Evangelicals who believe Trump should be impeached and removed.[Pew study])
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure from reading French, though, whether the new-believer experience he is talking about is being born again or the well known Cursillo high. Nothing wrong with either, but we used to be aware of Ronald Knox's book, "Enthusiasm," which described, inter alia, the group that hit the high together, ripped off all their clothes and ran through the streets of a Dutch city shouting, "We are the naked truth!"
Maybe our influencers took Knox too much to heart, but the average Catholic parish seems to avoid enthusiasm the way British theatregoers are alleged to avoid sex.
"The Cursillo high", Yes, and Renew, And Life Teen, and JC Camp, and Focus, and Godparents, It's not that we don't have programs. We have gobs of programs. One mistake I see is that the programs are one-size fits all. They don't take into account personality differences. And most are geared to extroverts. I confess that I didn't connect much with Cursillo. I was there because I knew I would get no peace from a loved one who shall remain nameless, until I had gone. I would have made a really good high church Episcopalian if I had been born into it. I guess introverts seek out their own spirituality. Mine is more a type of centering prayer, along with Eucharistic adoration, and to an extent, Lectio Divina.
DeleteAnd the Charismatic movement. Don't get me started on that. Let's just say that that for me it's not a good fit.
One mistake I see is that the programs are one-size fits all. They don't take into account personality differences
DeleteI agree. Catholicism's great advantage consists of the diversity of our spirituality. Among the religious orders we have the life of desert solitaires, the communal life of the Benedictines, and the missionary life of the Jesuits. And then a wide diversity of saints for models.
>>If the experiences and effects I've bulleted here are things that don't resonate with your Catholic experience - then, in my view, that is an indictment of the Catholic church. Because we should have new believers who refresh and renew the entire faith community, and call the rest of us to renewal. This is, in my view, the biggest "missing piece" that is the puzzle of contemporary Catholicism.<<
ReplyDeleteRCIA should be viewed critically, imo:
--Are converts are kept isolated from the congregation with no effort made to incorporate them into the community during their formation period?
--Do RCIA leaders see their role chiefly as "processing" converts through a checklist of lessons, verification of baptisms, and resolution of marital irregularities on deadline?
--Are converts invited to discuss their religious experiences?
--Do RCIA leaders have any knowledge of or interest in other faiths and denominations that will help them understand where converts are coming from?
--Do RCIA leaders know how to respond to converts who decide not to complete their initiation?
--Do converts have a growing excitement as the Easter Vigil approaches? Or has their enthusiasm wanted and they just want it over with? Are RCIA leaders noticing, either way? How are they responding?
--What kind of ongoing religious formation does the parish offer?
RCIA is not the reason I lapsed, but in comparing notes with other converts, failed and successful, it is clear that RCIA varies wildly among parishes, and it can be a factor in whether converts stick with it or not.
*has their enthusiasm WANED
DeleteJeam, good questions to ask about the RCIA process. You are correct that it varies wildly from parish to parish. Some things I've noticed, pastor engagement matters a lot, and they all have their own style. The worst style is to sit everybody in a row facing the front, and run a video series. And not encourage discussion. I really wish they wouldn't teach with a canned video series. The best scenario is when there is personal engagement with the candidates, by the team, and the priest, if he is involved. Most of the time he is, at least here. And they need to make it plain, at the beginning, that there is no expectation to join. It is to find out if you want to join, and "not right now" is perfectly acceptable.
DeleteI know since VII RCIA is the norm, with reception scheduled for Holy Saturday. Which is nice, and liturgically correct. But is it always the best way? Sometimes I think that Holy Saturday deadline puts pressure on people. And sometimes people have concerns which they're not comfortable airing in a group.
Prior to BII, people took "instructions", one on one sessions with the priest. Now there aren't enough priests to do that, but there's no reason why well-informed laypeople couldn't assist. My mom joined through that process, when I was about six. She said it was really important to her to discuss the Biblical basis for Catholicism, and if the priest had come across as Biblically illiterate, it would have been a deal breaker. Fortunately Biblical scholarship was one of his strong suites. She didn't tell anybody she was going to instructions, including Dad, in case she chickened out. Or "discerned" out. I guess she did tell Nana, her mother-in-law, who was her sponsor. And also who sat with us kids while she was at class.
*BII, should be VII
DeleteAnother question for a parish: If someone has had some kind of conversion experience that doesn't happen to coincide with the parish Inquirer's/RCIA schedule, what is the response? Are people told to come back up to a year later to start the program? Is there some friendly parishioner who will accompany them until the program starts?
DeleteI am not sure how things are going in RCIA now, but I do know all the folks have a parishioner or significant other who goes through the process with them, sitting in on the meetings and attacking kidneys with coffee.
DeleteFor a long time we had an immovable lay director of RCIA against whom pastors plotted in vain. One of his idiosyncrasies was that he didn't believe in miracles. He thought most of the O.T. was children's stories.
Jean, you mean like Saul of Tarsus? Don't remember if he went through RCIA after he got knocked off the horse.
DeleteI don't think cradle Catholics know or care what goes on in RCIA, or understand the commitment it requires.
DeleteWell, actually they do, if they were on a team, or if they accompanied someone through it.
DeleteSomeone should write a book on the Disillusionment of the Former Believer. The stories would be myriad, but most likely have a lot in common.
ReplyDeleteJim, I'd be really surprised if that book hasn't already been written.
DeleteJimmy, here ya go: https://new.exchristian.net
DeleteRCIA isn't really evangelization (although I am sure a good deal of the content of RCIA is evangelizing). RCIA is downstream from the sort of conversion experience that French is talking about.
ReplyDeleteTo put it in St. Paul terms; evangelizing is the knocked-from-his-horse event. Paul's fuller initiation came afterward.
Well, Jim, enlighten us about what Catholic evangelization looks like (though it's moot for me; nobody's going to turn Catholic or Christian on my example).
ReplyDeleteI see the yearly Inquirers group (which the Church ladies see as part of RCIA) and the Confirmation class service projects as evangelization to some extent.
Yeah, nobody really knows what Catholic evangelization looks like. It probably looks like a bunch of things:
Delete* The traditional view: a religious order plants an abbey or a monastery in "mission territory" (Africa, India, Amazonia), preaches the Good News, opens a school, a hospital, builds churches, etc.
* The "New Evangelization" is a good deal murkier. One notion, to which I subscribe, is: it must be person-to-person. It happens during heart-to-heart talks in bars. Or company break rooms during lunchtime. Or across the neighbor's fence. One person tells another, with some enthusiasm, what it means to have Jesus in one's life. It doesn't happen via proselytizing; it happens at a privileged, blessed moment, when the person being evangelized has reached a point or state in his/her life where s/he is starving for some Good News and is open to transformation.
* A big part of Alpha, which is geared toward young adults, is that it is aided by technology. Short videos try to answer questions that the never-churched may have, like "Does God exist?" or "What is the Bible?" These questions are answered, not as an academic discourse (although there is some knowledge-sharing), but primarily by the sharing of faith, including by some dramatic faith-witness accounts. And the videos try to subtly illustrate that being a member of a faith community is something that is normal and easy to do, wherever and however you live.
I think it is sometimes true that we don't even know when we've done evangelization. That maybe a kindness done to someone, or taking the time to listen to them, had an effect beyond what we realize at the time.
DeleteOK, I've probably told this story before. When you reach my age, any story you tell is probably one you told before. So if you've already heard it, feel free to skip it. But:
DeleteMany many years ago, when we were young, I engaged Andrew Greeley in a discussion of how one turns good little Catholics into good big Catholics. He was then pretty much down on Catholic schools (his views evolved, I believe). And the conversation went on approximately like this:
Me: What about CCD?
He: Hopeless.
Me: How about reviving the Catholic Youth Organization?
He: It's dead for good reasons.
Me: Cursillo?
He: The logistics are impossible. And probably it wouldn't last.
Me (desperately): What will make good Catholics out of the little bastards?
He: Love, on a one-to-one basis. Nothing else is working.
So there is the answer. It has been tried and found difficult.
No, Tom. Haven't heard this one before. But it sure does sound like Greeley. I miss him. What a unique character.
Delete