Can Pope Francis bring Catholics home?

People want  leaders who practice what they preach, and Francis seems to be doing just that. Will his charismatic charm and concern for the poor be enough to bring Catholics home?

In my last post, I mentioned that I was on vacation. I had such a relaxing vacation that I completely forgot to post my most recent column. Here it is, with a little preamble not included in print versions.

A few weeks ago, I had a call from a reader, an older gentleman of the Anglican persuasion. He expressed his admiration for Pope Francis, and his hopefulness for change within the Roman Church. We had a lively and interesting conversation, and I was grateful for both his support of my column and for his comments on Catholicism. 

I have been surprised at the amount of interest that people are showing in Francis. He seems to be touching the hearts of people, which brings us to the question of my column: "Will Pope Francis’s charismatic charm and concern for the poor be enough to bring Catholics home?"

Church attendance on the decline

Research surveys support what most people already know.  Church attendance is declining and has been for decades.  In Canada, 28% of Catholics attend Mass at least once a month, compared to 40% in 2004.  In the United States in 2012, 24% of Catholics attended Mass at least once a week compared to 47% in 1974.

While I have no idea what the stats are for Catholics in my little neck of the woods, I can certainly provide anecdotal evidence of declining church attendance.   I have sat through numerous meetings over the years grappling with dwindling finances that correlate with shrinking congregations, and listening to laments about the lack of young people in the pews.  Only a handful of children attend the after school religious education program, and a significant percentage of students enrolled in our Catholic school are non-Catholic.  Sunday after Sunday, the spaces that deceased parishioners formerly occupied remain empty; no one is rushing into fill the gaps. In the last three decades, my family has belonged to three parishes within a ten-mile radius, and our current parish church is next on the local chopping block.

The generalized lack of interest amongst baptized Catholics to practice the faith concerns bishops, priests, religious, pastoral councils, and parents alike.  Dioceses are desperately trying to turn the tide through evangelizing already baptized Catholics.  The Archdiocese of Vancouver, British Columbia, for example, launched a sophisticated advertising campaign called “Catholics Come Home” to entice Catholics back to church.  Other dioceses are offering adult faith formation courses, and promoting youth programs modeled on the hip style of evangelical churches.

Opting out of institutional Catholicism

Catholics are opting out of institutional Catholicism for many reasons. Church teaching on sexuality, the treatment of women, and the clergy sexual abuse scandal are among the most often cited reasons for leaving the Church. 

Pope Francis has begun to address the sexual abuse scandal that so rightly outraged Catholics in North America and Europe. Although it remains to be seen how the Vatican will implement the pope’s directive to  “act decisively” to protect minors, help victims, and deal with the guilty, Francis wasted no time in making his views known.

With regard to women in the Church, Francis shocked some Catholics when he included women in the annual Holy Thursday ritual of the washing of the feet. While washing the feet of a woman in detention is a far cry from the ordination of women, Francis’s action demonstrates an inclusive attitude towards women not previously seen from the Vatican.

On matters of sexuality, Pope Francis upholds the teaching of the Church on gay marriage, birth control, divorce and remarriage. I think all that we can realistically expect from Francis in these areas is a compassionate response to individuals who, in the eyes of the Church, do not measure up to its high standards of sexual morality and holiness.

The place where I believe Francis has a real chance for making inroads with Catholics and others is in his genuine concern for the poor. People see a huge disconnect between the suffering of the poor and the wealth of the Vatican with its ostentatious pomp and ceremony. Even though thousands of religious and lay Catholics are walking with the poor, theological speeches about the poor disappoint when there is no visible action from the Vatican: the credibility of the Church suffers.

Our world needs authentic leaders. Catholic or otherwise, we want leaders who practice what they preach, and Francis seems to be doing just that.  Will it be enough to bring Catholics home? Possibly not, but it may be enough to stop the bleed.

Hallmark is partially right about mothers

...I thought of my mother as springing into the world, fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, ready for the action of being my mother.

This Mother's Day, I am enjoying a vacation in Sooke, BC on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  We are in a modern cottage on an expansive property overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca surrounded with beauty and quiet. The place is conducive to reflecting on blessings. My own mother  has been a blessing in my life, and I hope that I am a blessing to my children. I was also blessed in my relationship with my mother-in-law, my grandmother, and several aunts.  

Around Mother's Day, we tend to focus on the traits that we commonly associate with mothers; flowery cards abound extolling mothers for their gentleness, kindness, compassion, and lifetime support. One of the dangers of this Hallmark style of effusiveness is that we may reduce women to the biological role of child bearing and the sociological role of child rearing. While I am privileged to be a mother and am extraordinarily blessed in my children, motherhood is not the sum total of who I am, or of my contribution to the world.  

Springing fully formed, ready for action

I suspect that from an early age we quite naturally think that the primary role of a woman is to be a mother.  We literally begin life attached to our mother’s body, and in our immaturity, we think that our mother is an extension of our own self.

My mother and father 

I’m not sure when I first came to the realization that my mother had her own identity. For a good portion of my life, I thought of my mother as springing into the world, fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, ready for the action of being my mother.  It just did not enter my head that my mother was once a little girl, skipping on the street; or a teenager, breaking loose from her own parents; or a young woman with dreams and aspirations for her future.

My mother's brown coat

If I were to design a Mother’s Day card, it would have two pictures: a mother in a brown, wool coat with the caption, “a generous mother”, and a mother in a navy coat with the caption, “and a talented woman”.

My mother had two such coats.  I remember the brown coat clearly. It had a beautiful fur collar and big round black buttons.  At the same time the brown coat made its way into her closet, a white faux fur coat appeared in mine.  I loved that coat; it was haute couture for a little girl, and I felt special and glamorous when I wore it.  It was a sad day when I outgrew it. I wonder if my mother felt a similar sense of sadness when she said good-bye to the brown coat.  You see, while I wore my coat for one season, my mother wore her coat for years.

The brown coat is fixed in my memory as a symbol of generosity. It never occurred to me that Mom went without so that her daughters could be well turned out.  But, it was even more than that. We enjoyed Mom’s lavish generosity on a daily basis, even if we failed to notice it. Material sacrifices, like wearing the brown coat winter after winter, meant nutritious food on the table, a roof over our heads, swimming and piano lessons, properly fitting clothes, and a university education.  With the gift of her time, she nurtured us and our dreams, while her own took a back seat. 

And her navy coat

Perhaps my mother did feel a touch of nostalgia when she got rid of her brown coat because that coat had seen us grow from children into young women. It had been with Mom through the busy years of raising four daughters and the lean years of building a business.  But more than likely, Mom was ready to put on her new navy coat as a symbolic welcome to the next phase of her life, a phase that gave her the freedom to explore new avenues of service to the community, to discover new talents, and to have some fun of her own along the way.

I have never asked Mom if she minded wearing that brown coat for so many years, but I am confident that she would look at me incredulously and reply, “No, why would I mind?”  And in that reply, lies the lavishness of a mother’s love and the generosity of a woman who graces the world with her particular talents apart from motherhood.

Much Ado About Nothing?

Chicago Blackhawks defenseman, Duncan Keith, made some snide comments to female reporter Karen Thomson following a 3-1 loss to the Vancouver Canucks. Don Cherry went on a rant about women in men's dressing rooms, and his colleague Ron McLean countered with an opinion on the CBC website.  

I have never personally understood why any reporter, male or female, needs to be in the locker room getting an "exclusive" interview with a player. Really, what earth shattering revelation hinges on how a team played or didn't play its game?  It's much ado about nothing. But, this latest sports controversy prompts the question, "What price do we put on respect? How highly do we value the dignity of each person?"

For my thoughts on this, please see "Locker room banter isn't always funny" from Troy Media.

Gender hierarchy: a dangerous paradigm

"Every expression of male arrogance over women demeans the dignity of both sexes."

Have you heard about the Clothesline Project?  

A coalition of women's groups came up with the idea back in 1990. They were responding to a most alarming statistic: 58,000 American soldiers died in the Viet Nam war, and during that same period, 51,000 women in the United States were killed by their intimate partners. 

While the project initially focused on domestic abuse, the aim of the project is to heighten awareness regarding violence against women.  The Clothesline Project does this in a simple, but powerful way. Victims of violence paint a T-shirt to communicate their experience of abuse, and hang the T-shirt on the Clothesline. 

No community is exempt 

From the Clothesline Project, Trail BC
L. McEwan photo

We might like to think that our communities are exempt from the reality of violence against women and girls, but this reality is present in every community in every country on the planet. Some acts of violence against women and girls, like the 1989 Montreal Massacre, the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, or the rape and subsequent suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons, become part of the public domain.  Others remain private, occurring behind closed doors, hidden under clothing, and concealed in a web of lies.  The Clothesline draws our attention to these private acts of violence against women. When T-shirts flutter in the breeze outside the local supermarket, the presence of violence in our community becomes a harsh reality. 

Culturally and religiously conditioned, gender hierarchy distorts the fullness of our humanity

Gender hierarchy is one of the underlying causes of violence against women. Gender hierarchy is culturally, and religiously conditioned. Culturally accepted (think of  “honor killings”), and Biblically rationalized (think of “wives obey your husbands”), gender hierarchy reduces male/female interactions to domination and subordination.

Domination has many expressions. Some, like Muslim women walking around in tents because men perceive their bodies as sexually provocative, are blatantly obvious. Others, like North American men describing strong, talented women in the boardroom as “bitches”, are subtler. Every expression of male arrogance over women demeans the dignity of both sexes.

Gender hierarchy distorts our understanding of what it means to be fully human.  Over the millennia, this distortion reduced men and women to a series of stereotypical and opposing traits. The so-called male traits (strength, aggression, rationality and intelligence) were placed on a higher level than the so-called female traits (weakness, meekness, irrationality and emotion).  Instead of integrating strength with compassion, self-assurance with humility, and rationality with nurture, cultural assumptions diminished men and women to an “either/or” proposition. It is time to cast off this ratty, old mantle of distortion that fuels violence against women, and tears the soul apart.

Gender hierarchy crops up everywhere. We find it in myth, in literature, in the art forms, in our institutions, and in our places of worship.  It has inserted itself into this column in the conventional word order that places “male” before “female”. We incorporate it into our psyches, and propagate it unconsciously, passing it onto our children in a myriad of ways, including the repetition of nursery rhymes that appear innocuous:  “What are little boys made of?/ Slugs and snails and puppy dog’s tails. /What are little girls made of? /Sugar and spice and everything nice.”  Men are supposed to be nasty, and women are supposed to be nice. It’s a dangerous paradigm.

The destructive results of this cultural paradigm hung on the Clothesline in my hometown for all to see. While I was talking with the organizers of the event, I observed that the majority of passers-by ignored the Clothesline. Were they too busy to stop, or was the subject matter too upsetting to ponder? 

Let the T-shirts speak

The Clothesline presents us with a choice. We can walk by or we can stop to discern its message. It was a message that surprised me with its optimism. Where I expected to see dark and disturbing images, I saw T-shirts that communicated healing and forgiveness. 

From the Clothesline, a challenge for human society
L McEwan photo

We can let the T-shirts accomplish their goal of opening our consciousness to violence against women.  We can change the cultural paradigm if we begin to challenge the assumptions that first created the problem so many centuries ago. However, if we persist in nurturing a false understanding of what it means for us to be human, gender hierarchy will continue to leave its sinful stamp on individual lives and on human history. 

Rediscovering joy from our places of sorrow

"There is an abyss, a terrible Holy Saturday, between the Good Fridays and Easter Sundays of our lives, between our mourning and our dancing."

A dark and lonely abyss separates sorrow and joy. This was evident to me as I sat in the church waiting for the funeral to begin. The church was beautifully decorated for Easter; its symbolism proclaimed the joy of the resurrection and the awakening of creation after the long winter.  In the days before Easter, this same church spoke of sorrow; it was bare except for a simple black cross with a heap of stones at its base.

Through symbolism and liturgical celebrations, those of us who worshipped at churches like this one during Easter, entered into the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. On Holy Thursday, events threw us into confusion. On Good Friday, we entered the dark tomb of death. We were silent and alone on Holy Saturday, the only day of the year when there is no liturgy. On Easter Sunday, we rejoiced in the light of the resurrection. In the space of a few days, we had moved from mourning to dancing, from weeping to singing,  “Alleluia!”

"The Risen Christ"
Louise McEwan Photo

Joy is out of synch with the immediacy of suffering

Three days after Easter, on a brilliant spring morning, we were back in church struggling with the realities of life and death. Our mood was more in keeping with the solemnity of Good Friday, than the exuberance of Easter Sunday.  We had come to mourn. The joy of Easter and the glory of this spring day were jarringly out of synch with the immediacy of human suffering.

At times like this, it is difficult to reconcile joy with sorrow.  While we desperately want to know “why bad things happen to good people”, no answers soothe the heart that is heavy with grief, and every word of comfort, even those spoken in faith, sounds like an empty platitude. Still, I found myself pondering the relationship between the Easter liturgies and our real life experience of death and resurrection.  

With hearts entombed, we are the dead among the living

When we lose a beloved one, our heart quite literally aches within us, as if it is entombed in our body.  Outwardly, we go through the motions of living, while inwardly we are numb to the fullness of life.  We have become the dead among the living.

At times like this, the only way out of suffering is to pass through the terrible and lonely darkness of this very personal crucifixion; to live the Easter story according to the timeline of our own heart and in our own way.

At times like this, it seems impossible that our mourning will ever turn to dancing. Yet, sorrow and joy may not be as irreconcilable as we think. Love motivates them both.

Darkness does not extinguish love

The same love that overwhelms our spirit with sorrow and plunges us into darkness, coaxes us back into the light. The relationship that we shared with the beloved one reawakens our sense of joy; no darkness can extinguish the reality of this love that reaches out to us from beyond the tomb. Through the prism of our tears, we emerge, profoundly changed, into the light of our own resurrection.

Yes, there is an abyss, a terrible Holy Saturday, between the Good Fridays and Easter Sundays of our lives, between our time of mourning and dancing. Onto the black cross of the abyss, imagine the image of a man, his head inclined towards the earth. This is the face of Love that accompanies us out of the tomb, and guides us back into the land of the living where the glories of spring await us.