Too many Catholics (1/25/22)

---

In the last several years there hasn’t been a month gone by that I haven’t thought about changing parishes! Why should that be? A couple of weeks ago I was shocked to hear my brother say he didn’t know what “My parish” means anymore. This is after over 30 years in the same parish. In trying to come to grips with this I thought a lot about my parish and its interactions with parishioners. I know a lot of good people, friends, brother-knights, etc. So how can I explain it? Then I had an aha moment. I realized what the problem is. There are too many Catholics in my parish (especially in the “leadership”). The parish is way out of balance. There are too many Catholics, and not enough Christians! And I realized I and a lot of other parents and parishioners are responsible. We spent a lot of time trying to raise our kids as good Catholics, and not nearly enough time raising them as Christians. We taught them to go to Mass every Sunday, to pray the rosary, confession, ten commandments, and a lot of other rules that Catholics love. We didn’t spend enough time getting them to understand the two great commandments. While we emphasized that loving God should come before anything else, we didn’t get across the point of loving your neighbor as yourself. And loving God meant putting priests on a pedestal because they were God’s ONLY representatives on earth. The fact that there were many good priests made it easy to do this. And we didn’t pay any attention to the priests that weren’t so good. The result was the priest sex scandal that has rocked the church in recent years. And we still haven’t figured out that power corrupts. I can go to confession and tell God anything, but I can’t say almost any of this to a fellow Catholic without fear of being criticized and ostracized. The fact that the greatest abuse that has occurred in the church is not the priest sex scandal, but the continued abuse of the laity. As a lay Catholic I have no calling to celebrate the Mass and confer the sacraments. That is a role that the Lord confers on those He chooses for that ministry. But I do have a role in the administration of the parish, the diocese, and the church and its outreach to the world. I do understand what it means to treat others as you would like to be treated. And like many others I often fail in living up to that standard, but I do keep trying. It is instructive that when I asked a protestant minister what the word pastor meant to him,, he immediately replied “shepherd”. While our diocesan paper talked about training our priests to be “leaders”. A distinction in terms that many don’t see. The net result is that a flourishing parish suddenly stops flourishing when a new “leader” is assigned. A change that likely wouldn’t have happened if a new “pastor” had been assigned. A new leader makes sure he selects parishioners who can also be leaders and so we have a Catholic cabal that results in people no longer knowing what “my parish” means. I have come to realize why churches in Europe are mainly empty after centuries of this environment. I fear that we are sliding in that direction. I pray that the Lord will see his way to shine a great light on us (as He did with St. Paul) and that a conversion will occur.