Father
Bill Burton, one of our professional scripture scholars with a real gift for
making scripture intelligible to people, used to get indignant: “’Abba’ does
not mean ‘Daddy!’”
He
didn’t say what it meant, but it clearly means someone Personal. And that is
the crux of the issue.
The
world can be divided into two classes of people: those who see the Source of
All Being as personal, and those who don’t. The second class includes all those
thoughtless folks around us who just don’t get around to thinking about God.
St.
Paul says we cannot say “Abba, Father” unless we are helped by the Spirit.
Being able to see God as Personal is not something that can be engineered by
creative catechesis. Being able to see God as Personal is a gift, a gift of the
Spirit.
This
week the bishop of our diocese, Thomas John Paprocki, wrote in his diocesan
magazine that the Second Vatican Council has destroyed the Church. He cites all
the statistics: numbers of Catholics in church on Sunday, numbers of priests
and nuns—all down, drastically. He has an engineering solution: go back to the
way things were before Vatican II. He now presides at the Eucharist in his
cathedral at least once every Sunday with his back to the people (“ad
orientem”). Recently he forbade Eucharistic ministers, whether ordained or not,
to bless children and non-Catholics at Communion. They are not even to touch
the people, even after Covid is gone. There is only one blessing at Mass, and
the priest is the one who gives it, and he gives it at the end of Mass and
nowhere else. People who are not authorized to receive Communion should not
even be in the Communion procession—they should stay in their pews. Mothers of
small children raised so much objection to this that he backed down. They can
bring their children with them, but the children are not to be blessed.
I
am reminded of a joke I heard years ago. “What is the difference between a
liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
But
Bishop Paprocki is not so different from the way most of us have thought about
the Church. I too have crowed about how Catholics outstrip other groups in
church attendance. We Catholics are the best in everything. We have the best
athletes (Notre Dame of course), the best entertainers, and now even the
president and six of the Supreme Court justices, though the president’s
credentials are suspect to the Republican half of the faithful.
Into
the mix is another recent episcopal decree: Confirmation is to be celebrated
along with First Communion. Confirmation is not a rite of passage to Catholic
adulthood, which is how much of our catechesis has presented it.
Religious
ed teachers use Confirmation preparation as a valiant effort to get young
people to see their faith in a more adult way. Every year classes of such young
folks come to our friary to get an informal lecture on what a friary and its
inhabitants look like. I admire the effort, but I wonder how much impact that
has on the faith of these young faithful.
Because
adult faith, which I think means seeing God as Personal, and as Personal in a
way that really impacts one’s life, cannot be engineered. We need to admit
that, and accept the fact that the majority of people baptized and growing up
Catholic, even if they attend Catholic schools, are likely to be indifferent
saints. In this view I am not so different from Pope Benedict when he observes
that the Church is likely to be smaller, more like a faithful remnant in a
hostile world, than a world religion calling the shots to secular politicians.
We
need to quit wringing our hands at numbers. What is important is when each
individual, young or old, opens his or her heart to the Lord. That is going to
happen at all kinds of moments in our life cycles, maybe at the birth of a
child, maybe at the loss of a child, maybe only when we are in hospice. All we
can do as religious grocery clerks is to keep the shelves stocked, the doors
open, and someone at the checkout counter to speak in person when we are
approached. And then ask the Lord to send the Spirit to help each of the people
we meet to be able to say “Abba, Father.”
