So, what will the “next normal” look like for the Catholic Church? Well, for the definitive word, I leave that to the Pope and the Bishops. As a Deacon, I am in marketing, not in management!
But, joking aside, perhaps this time of being apart from – distanced from – familiar ways of expressing our faith will give us the opportunity to seize our faith in a more fulsome manner.
Many of us have implicit models of Church that guide our thinking. For me, I see the Church as a tent in the middle of a field. People toil in the field all morning, and then come lunchtime, they drop their implements and come into the tent to be nourished, so that they can face the afternoon’s work. Our job in the tent is to nourish the workers. Deacon’s? We wait at table. Priests? They are the chefs. Bishops? Well, they are like head office making sure we have food enough, chefs and wait staff enough, chairs and tables and no leaks in the tent. And everything else that has to be there behind the scenes to hold it all together.
A simple model, I know. But for me, it reminds me that I am just here to serve at table. It is the meal, the coming together at midday, nourished and sent back into the fields, that is important. Church is not about the staff in the tent. If that’s the focus, then maybe it’s the wrong focus. Rather, it’s about the people working in the fields, and their need for nourishment.
But here is the challenge. My sense is that Catholics quite often prefer to be observers, not participants. It is all too easy for Catholics to see a faith life consisting of attending Mass, and nothing else. Many Catholics go to church and observe the Mass unfolding with little or no active participation. Maybe a few “amens” and a genuflection or two, and some silent prayers. And then they head home, and not much gets done with their faith life until the following Sunday.
From my perspective, that’s not what the church is all about. We are called to take a much more active role in our faith and our church. With over a billion Catholics and well less than a million clergy and religious…. who will bring about the reign of God … the more than 99.9% living out of their baptismal promises, or the less than 0.1% who are called to serve them as clergy and religious?
I firmly believe that this time apart can give us the impetus to explore more fully the role of the laity in our church.
This “priesthood” of the laity is based on the fact that all those baptized receive not only sanctifying grace, but also a character, an indelible mark in their souls by which they are conformed to Christ as priest, prophet and king.
Vatican II reminded Catholics that all the faithful are truly priests through baptism, while the laity’s priesthood differs from the ministerial priesthood in its essence. Put another way, the clergy are but a means to an end – which is the holiness and consecration of all the faithful. We are here to serve you, as you live out your commitment to the renewal and sanctification of the temporal order.
This role goes far beyond entering into the ritual of the Mass (by acting as lectors and extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.). The Laity exercise their proper and characteristic dignity in transforming the secular world of the family and the professions, where they find their proper place. The laity live in the world and work in it; they sanctify the world and in this they imitate Christ who had to act among ordinary people in an ordinary life in order to save us.
It seems to me that the “next normal” for Catholics would be to appropriate what is truly a more active participation of the Laity in building the reign of God. Because it is not the 0.1%, but rather the 99.9% who will change the world.