Keeping the faith
It's an old joke:
Several pastors were talking at an ecumenical lunch. "Blasted squirrels," complained the Baptist minister. "Can't get rid of them. They scamper around the rafters during services." The Methodist pastor agreed. "Tried traps and poisons," he griped. "Nothing works."
Then the Catholic pastor admitted he'd solved the squirrel problem. "Simple thing, actually. Baptized and confirmed ‘em. Haven't seen ‘em since!"
Like most humor, this is rooted in truth. And it's a truth reflected in our focus on evangelization. After all, how can you expect Catholics to change the world if you can't proclaim the Gospel to them?
Catholics are sometimes wounded, shaken perhaps by the abuse crisis or drawn off into a more materialistic world. Like those squirrels, Catholic kids may grow up and away, often finding too little relevance in their faith. They'll straggle back for a wedding or to baptize a new generation. Maybe.
The problem is hardly reserved to Catholics. Recent polls reveal that the number of Americans who consider themselves religiously unconnected is growing.
In March, the American Religious Identification Survey conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., found that just 76 percent of us consider ourselves Christian, down 10 percentage points from 1990. A second poll, by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, showed that the number of Americans who say they are unaffiliated with any faith has doubled in recent years to 16 percent.
That certainly would include some who were baptized and confirmed as Catholics.
During his April 15 installation Mass, New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan acknowledged the challenge in reaching those disconnected Catholics. He said with "people mad at the church or even leaving her" it's difficult "to get the Gospel message credibly out there."
But Mark Gray, director of telephone polling for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, says that how often people attend church is more important than denominational identification. He told Catholic News Service that the percentage of Catholics attending weekly Mass has remained stable since the center began polling in 2000.
Still, it's a measure of who is paying attention when the church speaks about what it means to be a follower of the Gospel in the 21st century.
For the most part, recent popes have received good press, largely because of the number of U.S. Catholics. On Good Friday, for example, secular news outlets reported on Pope Benedict XVI's homily warning that a secularized world had "drifted into the desert of godlessness."
Strong words, and true. But will the media continue to report on the pope when it seems that fewer people are listening?
It's hard to persuade an increasingly disconnected world to accept the Gospel values we believe should shape behavior and culture when we may not be first reaching Catholics themselves.
In other words, it's important to proclaim the Gospel to the world, but we've got to start closer to home. With Catholics.
Evangelization efforts often stress doctrine as a way to stem the tide of young Catholics who don't remain close to their faith. No one would question the importance of this, but connecting it with the church's social gospel shouldn't be overlooked. Teaching about sacraments, salvation and sin - the traditional deposit of faith - is vital. Showing how that faith is relevant to living in today's society is equally important.
Many dioceses have been successful in demonstrating that relevance by linking Gospel-value service projects to evangelization efforts. That's critical, since doctrine alone is often not enough to restore that sometimes-missing sense of relevance.
The Gospel was proclaimed as a way to change the world. But before the world can be changed, the Gospel has to change Catholics.
By Tom Sheridan
From May 8, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
