Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 9: Step 1 - Reduce Institutions ... Step 3 - Profit?

by Dan Masterton

It sure seems to me that Catholic parish life is struggling.

As an adult, I’ve seen the issues up close, not just through how our parish looks and through my work in ministry but also through our own parental and familial choices.

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It’s always been important to me, each time I move, to minimize my church-shopping. I will try Mass in a few places, get a feel for each community, and think it through. But then I want to choose one place to settle, formally register, set a repeating online donation, and go to Mass and try to really plug in there. In our settled hometown for our family, we have done that and put down roots at one parish for a few years now. So in terms of commitment, consistent attendance, and financial support, we are doing what we can to vote with our feet in favor of one parish and parish life.

However, we struggle to prioritize socializing and seeking ongoing formation at our parish. As we hear announcements and flip through the bulletin, we grumble about trying to fit potential Church outings around soccer practices, ice skating lessons, music classes, and other appointments — not to mention sitting at home and relaxing together for at least some of the time. Most often, we come for Sunday Mass and our one night each month of family faith formation, and then we aren’t really around the church much. I may squeeze in a food drop for the quarterly soup kitchen crew’s cooking or bring gifts for the Christmas giving collection, but our in-person presence at anything more is minimal. So in terms of engagement, presence, and relationship-building, we are nearly a non-factor — and thus part of the problem a bit.

The potentially growing poverty of parish life is surely financial and infrastructural — younger generations are just less likely to register and donate, both to weekly collections (and capital campaigns I imagine), and vocations to priesthood and religious life are of lesser quantity than they used to be (though, in my work in vocation ministry, I do see a probable increase in quality of discernment and formation). But perhaps the greater poverty is the poverty of engagement. And that’s just the topline issue I would identify among families that do belong somehow.

Moving one layer outward, sociological studies are indicating a reduction in formal belonging, and perhaps an aversion, among Gen Z (generally considered those born between 1997 and 2012), including to formal religion. Yet, these studies also see a continued desire for spirituality and exploration.

In a sense, it’s a new version of the old issue of being “spiritual but not religious.” However, sometimes this is now connected with those who identify as “nothing in particular” or “none” rather than as atheists or agnostics. Where as the SBNR vibe was often a hedge or a cover against admitting atheism, this newer identification often indicates an active and ongoing desire to engage with one’s spirituality and beliefs actively. Yet, it is done so in a personal, often private and hard-to-identify way, and a certainly in a way uncoupled from institutional religion.

On one hand, I can understand the institutional distrust, especially of an institution with high-profile and significant modern struggles, not least its cover-ups and sexual scandals. On the other hand, I am skeptical of the idea of taking on major spiritual exploration disconnected from a community element — we know that many, if not most, things are richer, more impactful, and more sustainable when reinforced by a community experience and by relationships, from drug and alcohol addiction recovery to professional organizations to bowling and softball leagues. A tricky wrinkle is that I imagine many from this crowd would welcome communal religion if it was a grassroots thing. The problem there is that this breezes past the funny tension between desiring an organic, spontaneous start and a group that doesn’t strike me as especially organized or proactive toward this.

Whatever you may think about these tendencies or preferences, I find myself worrying about the downstream impact. Those who resist, oppose, or tear down institutions while desiring the things they perennially prepare and offer, and those who do so without all that much of an idea of what comes next, are playing a risky game. 

That’s easier for me to say because I am more optimistic about institutions overall, thinking those who are active and rise to leadership can make an impact that improves institutions. For those who are skeptical of churches but desiring spiritual lives, I would hope for a level of engagement that evolves to reform community spiritual life, especially among Catholics, rather than discard or reject it.

For Kevin, here, there’s a real challenge of taking the cold realities of data and subjective input and trying to make a strategic and sustainable decision. It is easy to see merging, closure, and reduction as the needed intervention; it is also easy to see the care and hope of people longing to retain a fading community. The harder thing, often, is to chart a third way, one that acknowledges increasingly sad realities yet also retains hope and responds with creativity. We don’t have tosimply close a bunch of churches; we don’t have to give in to high emotions that cling to fading models. The idea here is that Kevin, his bishop, and the people of St. Brendan may have a creative third way.

Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 8: Multi-Potentiality and God's Ongoing Invitations

by Dan Masterton

When I was in college at the University of Notre Dame, I always liked finding folks who had unusual combinations of majors, supplemental majors, and minors. Why pre-health and economics? Why accounting and theology? Why piano performance and engineering?

The conversation usually unfurled a fascinating combination of gifts, talents, and skills alongside intriguing passions and desires. Sometimes, it was more of a lark — a way to explore an intellectual curiosity at a high level and expand one’s mind; more often, it reflected a healthy inner tension that wondered what crossovers and professional potentials could be unlocked at an unusual point of overlap.

As an adult professional working in Catholic schools, this kind of person was all around me. While some colleagues were came into teaching from a classic education/subject area course of study, many others were this kind of hodgepodge I describe — the math teacher who could also teach classical guitar, the football coach and assistant AD with a divinity degree, or the theology and social justice warrior finishing a counseling degree.

And in a situation where you’re constantly underfunded, understaffed, and underrested, having a faculty/staff with diverse backgrounds, a wide range of skills, and ready passions goes a long way. There are plenty of times where a school can abuse or exploit this depth in their human capital, but, when this is well managed and done with grace, it becomes a major blessing — and an often necessary way — that a Catholic school can evolve and endure and sustain.

In a perfect world, the faculty, staff, and admins would have clear, concise job descriptions without amendments and add-ons and loosely worded “other duties as assigned” clauses to go with healthy salaries that help you stomach the time commitment. In reality, Catholic education usually has to be a bit more Mad-Max-Fury-Road. And survival and the chance to thrive are usually tied to the nimble ways that school leadership can identify its employees’ gifts, utilize them effectively, and try to juggle titles, responsibilities, and expectations flexibly to fit.

The strongest schools I’ve seen have sought to retain dedicated, talented people and use them and their skills in the best way possible. Usually, this meant clinging less tightly to cardboard-cutout titles and rigid job descriptions and leaning into more unconventional combinations. When you trust your people and manage the relationships faithfully, this can and does work.

Part of this is leaving space for people to grow and develop, and for people to admit and nurture secondary or subtler gifts they have deeper within them that can be brought to bear on the community. In my time in Catholic education and ministry, I’ve variously leaned into writing, graphic design, social media management, and community organizing in ways I didn’t know I had in me — and ways I didn’t know I’d want to. I’ve seen others go back to school for new and different training, seek out new roles in coaching or student life/activities, or pursue faith formation anew. 

All this is to say that we have a multi-potentiality within us that often only comes out by necessity in our professional lives, but often is rooted in wider, richer curiosities or even sometimes in impulses from younger days that may thrive when given new air to breathe. Sometimes, this can tax or stretch us in partly unwelcome ways; at other moments, it can unpack a long-wondered-about potential that enables us to grow and serve in badly needed ways.

Part of the mystery at play is God’s ongoing invitations. I used to think of vocation largely as “God’s call,” but I’ve found that language and understanding to be too reductive. Some religious brothers, priests, and sisters I know — many of whom work in vocation ministry — prefer to use the phrasing of “God’s invitation and our response.”

And my dear friend Br. John likes to add that “God’s invitations are ongoing.” It is neither a one-sided interaction nor a once-and-for-all prompting. God called us by name in birth and baptism; God calls us in our states of life, beginning as singles and then considering continuing in that or turning to marriage or religious/ordained life; God calls us to a vocational path of work or service; God calls us to particular lanes of that path; God calls us also to personal and specific vocational expressions. And all through these invitations, what we hear — and the response we discern — can evolve, both in expected and unexpected ways.

 

For Jill, she has always been a teacher. For decades, it has been expressed through patient education and peer mentorship and training. Now, that expression may be evolving, and just as her heart evolves in its understanding and desire to express itself, so, too, do the invitations come from God, especially through those faithful people around her.

God doesn’t waste any of our faithful presence to God, others, and ourselves. It is all part of our vocational path of striving to be part of Someone (Christ) and Something (the Church) bigger than ourselves.

* * *

In returning to blogging, my first project is to finish up the audiobook/podcast of my fiction stories. My three stories — “What There Is to Be Done”, “Abundance, not Scarcity”, and “Bigger than Ourselves” — are collected into “Go Your Way: Stories from Our Lives of Faith,” which is available on Amazon. (I basically use Amazon as an on-demand printer; the price is set to yield a $0.00 royalty.) My third story was in progress when I stepped away last summer, and here I’m getting back to it. Each episode is one chapter from the book plus a brief reflection.

Bigger than Ourselves is itself a series of short stories, about various people at a Catholic parish, and the book as a whole ties them together through their community life.

For more on my writing, visit my LinkTree portfolio or book information website.