Learning to Lose Control

Why do people, good people, leave one parish and move on to another one?

In my protestant days it was a common enough occurrence. One pastor would leave and another would arrive who  did not preach exciting enough sermons, or who lacked the charisma of the previous pastor. In one parish I served in southeastern Minnesota people inexplicably and sadly left when the pastor began inviting Hmong refugees to attend worship.

In a Catholic parish it seems to me that if the mass is rightly understood, there should be much less occasion to church hop. After all, the mass itself is the primary focus of one's church life.

Or it should be.

Leaving a parish, let's say, because there are plans to build a new chapel, somewhat smaller than the existing chapel seems to me to signal a less than fully developed notion of what attending and supporting a church really mean.

The same trust in God's wisdom and guiding light that Catholics are encouraged to nurture in their personal lives, apply equally to parish life. We are meant to trust that through the given organizational  structures, the established committees, and the staff  both lay and pastoral, God is working his purpose out, as the hymn says.

We can't each control every facet of church life nor should we.

In the Congregational, United Church of Christ  every single decision is put to a vote. And I can report that people still leave when the votes don't go their way.

A more or less congregational way of doing things, one that strives to be democratic still requires trust and generosity from each member. And deep humility.

It can be hard to watch a group with new ideas come and make changes. It is hard when a new pastor makes changes. It is difficult to endure a church -wide decision to build or not to build, and be in the minority voting the other way.

But God asks that of us and really, it is so little.

What is left for us when a decision does not go our way? The presence of  Jesus Christ in the mass; the love and mercy, the forgiveness  in the sacrament of reconciliation; the washing away of sin and the new life poured out during the sacrament of baptism. How trivial our differences seem when held up in the light of what really matters, what really makes church CHURCH.

Terrible, sad events have taken place in Catholic parishes during the past decade, events which have left many Catholics shaken to the core. But the church goes on, and the faithful come to mass with hope and trust.

If we can survive scandal, surely we can survive a new chapel that looks different from the previous one. Surely we can survive a few hymns we don't care for, or the occasional indigestible homily. Surely we can survive different leadership styles, fresh ideas from young members,  whatever it is that causes irritation. It is, I suppose a very minor form of martyrdom, a  way of bravely carrying on in the face of obstacles. But the martyrs themselves died for our faith. All we are asked to do is die to ourselves now and then and in ways too insignificant to really matter.

After all we still have the Eucharist.

We are still the Catholic church. We are still blessed beyond our own limited imaginings.

And may God be praised for that.

Deo, dicamus gratias.