Resurrecting Chicago

Secularism in America is growing fast.  Since the early 70s, any kind of belief in God or church attendance has dropped 21% among the lower classes of Americans to where less than 50 % believe in God or attend Church. (Charles Murray, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21-22, 2012, pp. C1-2)

It’s taken for granted that even among church-going believers, only around 30% attend church several times a month.

 However, many Catholic churches are overflowing with parishioners on Sundays. How can we think that the Catholic faith is not relevant and influential in our country? Things look good, right? Or, maybe not so much.

The fact is that we aren’t building many churches anymore so the ones we do have are filled. Yes, the number of Catholics has increased significantly as our population grows.  Lots of senior Baby Boomers are showing up while their children and their children’s children slip away. Hispanics have helped us grow but they seem to move easily to other Christian Churches when those churches attempt to incorporate their cultures and language into their worship services.

Since less than a third of our parishioners are present on any given Sunday,
we can easily accomodate them. However, on the feasts of Christmas and Easter we see a better picture of what would happen if they all came with any kind of regularity.

Meanwhile as church attendance diminishes in importance in the lives of our people, dioceses establish elaborate fund raising programs and the bishop’s conference installs baroque changes to the wording of the Mass, thereby attempting a renewal which is having about as much effect as rearranging deck chairs would have had on the sinking Titanic.

We must take the New Evangelization much more seriously. We should stop spending outrageous amounts of time and money trying to save enormous church structures of dubious architectural worth.  Instead, we need to get back to working with neighborhood groups and clusters of households in an attempt to develop vibrant Catholic communities. We should build churches where our people live and let the old churches fade away.

Our Sunday liturgies need  priests and deacons who can deliver well-developed homilies that speak to the needs and hopes of their parishioners. People who come to church need to feel welcomed and part of what is happening, and not just observers of a liturgical action.

Forget about trying to save dying Catholic schools, many of which are no longer part of the mission of their parishes anyway. There are many schools that have drifted so far away that they are no longer so much Catholic as elitist and separatist schools.  Let them die so that new ways of Catholic formation can emerge.

 We need a new vision for our Catholic Church in America.  So far, our episcopal leadership has been unable to provide heart and soul to Benedict XVI’s new vision of Evangelization. 

I’m confident that the translators wanted to keep certain values intact. As they faced translation problems they tried to retain core elements of the official Latin translation so that the final English text would attain a beauty and formality comparable to the Latin text.

Over the weekend I lost a good friend of thirty years. The news came from the man’s son and caught me like a sucker punch to the stomach.

My friend was a faithful and good man, Short of stature, yes, but you shouldn’t think to cross him.  He would not forget that. Nor would he ever forget a kindness shown to him.

He was a business man all his life, in fact, he was a salesman and a student of human nature.  He knew the right things to say and the right questions to ask to establish a relationship with a client that would make the guy want to buy whatever my friend was selling.

At one time, as a salesman for the family business he sold furs. When I knew him, he sold high end collectibles to people (mostly men) who had so much money they didn’t care the price of an item.  No matter, they wanted the thing. My friend would sell it to them. Both were happy.

Yes, it is hard to be good and a business man at the same time.  You know too much. You have all the advantage. The client, though, receives what he wants and happy with his purchase doesn’t care much about why the businessman is selling.

My friend looked at money in a slightly different way from most of his clients. Take donations.  He’d peal off several hundred dollars to send to a missionary who was building a clinic for poor indigenous in Mexico.  He called it “casting bread before the waters.”  I took that to mean my friend trusted that giving away without strings attached was the way to be a just man.

He once sent me a parcel of knishes which took a thousand mile trip to my doorstep. It was a spontaneous gift because he remembered that I loved knishes. He made them himself and when I tried to thank him he just said, “Hey, enjoy!”

He was raised in a strict Jewish household of parents who also came from generations of observant Jews,  He was taught to smile and he loved a good joke. Both he shared with his friends.

Recently, I learned that for some Jews a special day is set aside where the worshiper goes to a river and throws morsels of bread into the current while confessing their sins. The bread and the sins are carried away. This day, called “Tashlich,” occurs between Rosh Ha Shana and Yom Kippur.

I don’t think its a coincidence that Christians pray for daily bread in the most sacred prayer of the Savior. Bread is fundamental to cultures throughout the world. To eat bread is life-giving. To toss it upon the waters is sacrificial.

So, goodbye, good friend. I’ll miss contact with you.  I always considered you the richest man in town.