By: A (former) perplexed Catholic
Some time ago, we discussed in one of these columns the book by Canadian priest James Mallon, A Divine Renewal.
We explained how the Spanish version appeared in 2016, becoming a true phenomenon among bishops and parish priests, who found in the models he had applied in his parish ideas to renew the dying Spanish parishes.
It is a work that proposed, as its subtitle indicates, moving from a maintenance parish to a missionary parish, and explained what he had done in his parish in recent years to incorporate new parishioners by introducing the Alpha first-announcement courses and subsequent follow-up to consolidate the faith of newcomers with various other groups and dynamics that would make the parish feel like a community of communities.
It must be said that his parish, St. Benedict, was very large, the result of the merger of three parishes. Fr. Mallon stated that about 2,500 people passed through his Masses throughout the weekend.
The situation in Spain is different. Few parishes can say something like that, although in some parishes in the largest cities up to five Masses are celebrated on Sundays and the church is full at all of them.
Having had such an impact in Spain with Fr. Mallon’s book, I am surprised that now, only 10 years later, when we are so often called to be missionaries—at the same time that, paradoxically, it is stated that proselytism is a sin and that all religions are equally valid paths to some god—the reading of that book is not being resumed from diocesan structures as it was in 2016. The Church cannot function in the style of the world, with a “use and discard” mentality and ephemeral fashions; and, in this sense, although Fr. Mallon’s book was widely read in 2016 to find solutions, the same attention does not seem to have been paid to many of his diagnoses, and these can be of great help to the Church in Spain today. Alpha was implemented in many parishes, with the same results, but the necessary reflection on the second chapter of the book, titled “a house of pain,” with which the average faithful of the parish and good priests can identify, was overlooked.
Fr. Mallon dedicates 20 pages of his book to this chapter, in which he describes what he calls “a maintenance church,” which would be parishes that have become “dispensers of sacraments,” while their numbers decline, when, in reality, they are called to make disciples. The Canadian priest’s words are pure common sense when he compares what happens to a healthy body and a sick body: a healthy body grows, while a sick, weak body declines. And that is what is happening in the Church in the West: attendance at Sunday Mass and the sacraments are collapsing.
Fr. Mallon speaks about the pain with which the faithful experience the situation of the Church in the West in the face of the collapse of parish structures in many dioceses; the closure of parishes, mergers, pastoral units, and amalgamations of all kinds as a consequence of the decline in attendance of parishioners and the number of priests. Many very good people in the Church live with pain and disorientation in the current situation, and do not find answers in their pastors.
I think of the many people who could be described as “conservative,” who want to live their faith fully, do things well; serve God and His Church faithfully. They live confused, because the Church preaches a lot about ecology and welcoming immigrants and very little about God, and because in the conservative sectors of the Church there are groups that are turning toward Masses, retreats, and teachings increasingly filled with sentimentalism and less formation. The silent majority, meanwhile, suffers, because they see that something is not working, but we continue to act as if nothing is happening. Along with those who suffer, I imagine there are also many lukewarm, indifferent people, who fulfill their Sunday obligation and little else.
But, in this situation of pain felt in most parishes, and the need for true evangelizing mission, paradoxically self-referentiality in the Church is greater than ever, and is also in total dissonance with the official narrative, which only speaks of “mission” and “welcome,” also introducing the politically correct and suicidal wedge of welcoming Muslims, without seeking their conversion, turning the Church even more into a simple NGO that provides material help.
It is undeniable that Msgr. Davide Pagliarani, superior general of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, was right when he stated that there is a state of necessity in the current Church, in which most parishes do not offer the necessary means for the salvation of souls.
On the other hand, in addition to the suffering of the faithful, there is the suffering of good priests. Fr. Jorge González Guadalix has for years been an example of the effort required for a priest to maintain rural parishes in small population centers and how the effort does not always bear visible fruit. Those who remain heroic are the four Rafaelas and Juanas. For the priest, that is also a great pain. For the shepherd, not for the mercenary, to whom everything is the same and who closes the parish from Monday to Friday and leaves the town. It is true that in small towns and rural areas the general demographic situation influences: depopulation and population aging. But we cannot apply the same excuse to the dying parishes of large towns or cities.
Curiously, and although the short-term collapse of diocesan structures due to lack of priests and faithful is so evident, the bishops continue with their frantic agendas of meetings and various activities, with massive events, lots of pop-hakuna music and celebrity guests in the digital world; preventing activism from allowing them to look at the situation with realism and serenity, to pray and work to try to revitalize the Church from faith, prayer, and silence, without experiments with soda that do not produce any kind of fruit beyond the momentary high. In all the noisy and worldly activities of the current Church, at least in Spain, the call of the synodal church to mission contrasts gravely with the reality that the overwhelming majority of activities are self-referential; entertainment for those already inside, without going to seek the thousands of souls who are outside, in danger of being lost forever.
There is a new movement of young people in the Church, whom we have already discussed, who have created an app intended so that “the young person” can encounter the Church. Parish priests must themselves do the work of filling in the data of their parish in the app, so that “the young person” can find it. But, watch out!, parish priests whose parishes only have four elderly women praying the rosary should abstain, because the very excellent application is exclusive for parishes and communities where there is “young life.” The others are prohibited from signing up. What a ridiculous and puerile idolatry of youth, which is nothing more than a passing period of life; what ignorance of what the mentality of the Church is, so alien to the worldly idea of progress always for the better; and what an inelegant way of despising people who have spent their entire lives, throughout the turbulent 20th century, faithful to the Church of Christ, on the part of some twenty-somethings recently converted. Only God knows if, at the end of their lives, they will be able to say with St. Paul that they have remained faithful and have preserved the faith. Meanwhile, the contempt for those who do so and with whose silent prayer they have sustained many others does not seem the most Christian attitude.