Church Shopping (2)

                               Church Shopping (2)

Scandles however are not the major cause of leakage if faced honestly and dealt with promptly. In most cases loyal parishioners will close ranks and pick up the pieces. According to a national survey in 2011, 70% of those who left Catholicism for another church say they did so because their spiritual needs were not being met.  Richard Gaillardetz, professor of theology at Boston College, explains this as “because the quality of Church life is poor and church leadership is inattentive to their real pastoral concerns.” By “quality” he seems to refer to teaching, preaching or community life and liturgy. My personal experience suggests that the quality of the preaching has improved but that the content has not. Homilies are more Scripture based and better prepared, but still comfortable and unchallenging. Community life and liturgy have deteriorated in the last thirty years.  Gaillardetz also points out that our hierarchy seems to focus its recent teaching on abortion, same-sex marriage and artificial birth control – all serious issues but indicative of an emphasis on human sexuality --while ignoring other issues including clerical pedophilia, which is disturbing to many. Twenty years ago the Church dealt with human life as a “seamless garment” that included issues of war and peace, capital punishment and social justice, which are still critical but no longer a priority from the bishops’ perspective.

I am impressed by the emphasis on ongoing adult religious education and formation by many other Christian communities in their Sunday School programs and various groups which focus on Scripture study and family living and by their outreach through home and foreign mission trips. I welcome the efforts which have developed to build such programs among Catholics, though I think more home visits by pastors or parish associates would be more effective in building up the parish community. I know it worked in the past. A priest and his parishioners can get to know each other, to share their needs and vision, far more effectively in the family living-room than from the pulpit to the pew. People will utter criticisms far more easily and honestlyin the privacy  of their home than in public.

Other churches utilize home visit programs with sufficient frequency to suggest that it still works. I think the social gospel of the Church has been reasonably promoted in spite of the amount that is still lacking.  The current economic recession has demonstrated that Christians of all denominations have grasped their responsibility for those who are hungry or homeless. I realize that Christ told us we would never get it perfectly: “The poor you have always with you.”

(To be continued)