BOSTON COLLEGE
Revitalizing Our Church
The Church in the 21st Century (C21) Center at Boston College seeks to be a catalyst and resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church in the United States.
All Photos Š Boston College Office of University Communications, Lee Pellegrini
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Revitalizing Our Church In the Spring 2019 semester, the Church in the 21st Century Center hosted a four-part speaker series called “Revitalizing Our Church.” Panelists from diverse areas of expertise were invited to offer their ideas as to how the Church can be a more effective institution, restore its credibility with the faithful, and move forward in the hope of Easter. Representing the Catholic press were John Allen, Jr., Vatican Correspondent and Editor of Crux, and Matt Malone, S.J., President and Editor-in-Chief of America Media. A conversation among Catholic college and university presidents included William P. Leahy, S.J., President of Boston College, Sister Janet Eisner, SNDdeN, President of Emmanuel College, and Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President of Fordham University. The C21 Center invited several Boston College faculty members who are active in their faith communities and parishes to share their scholarly and personal insights. Participants included Hosffman Ospino, Associate Professor of Hispanic Ministry and Religious Education, School of Theology and Ministry; Kristin Heyer, Professor of Theological Ethics, Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences;
and Michael Pratt, O’Connor Family Professor and Director, Ph.D. in Organization Studies, Carroll School of Management. The final program drew upon the expertise of lay business leaders. Three Boston College alumni with executive experience participated. Jack Connors, Jr., ’63, founding partner of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Inc., moderated the discussion, while Denise Morrison, ’75, past President and Chief Executive Officer of Campbell Soup Company and Chuck Clough, ’64, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Clough Capital Partners L.P., served as panelists. The following selections from the conversations have been edited and abridged for length and arranged according to common themes. Just as the Triduum begins in darkness and progresses to the light of Easter, the topics below begin with a look at the Church’s challenges and move to visible signs of hope. Full-length videos of each panel are available for viewing at bc.edu/c21revitalize. We hope that this resource will provide you with practical ideas and tools to undertake the work of revitalization wherever God might be inviting you.
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The State of Catholicism WILLIAM P. LEAHY, S.J. The Church in the United States and around the world is wounded and in too much disarray. A lot of that is the aftermath of the sexual abuse crisis. How are we going to move forward? And that’s where I think we are still very much struggling. But with that set of conditions, I would say the roots of the Church and a sense of faith still exist. It’s smaller and the practice is different, but I certainly find here at Boston College students and alumni have faith, even if it’s expressed differently. And so I think the huge challenge for the Church is figuring out how it wants to move forward in the midst of major issues that have to be acknowledged. I want to move forward. I don’t want to forget the past, especially the aftermath of sexual abuse, but I want to move forward. JOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. The American Church is once again a missionary Church, but it doesn’t realize it. Right now, like Paul in Athens,
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the Church is confronting a culture that it does not understand and for whom it is not calling the shots. We have to engage at the present time a culture which is natively digital; an age and a culture which describes itself as spiritual but not religious, hungry, but not satisfied, not sure where to turn but knowing that there is some darkness and is looking for light. The American Church has once again been returned to the status of a missionary Church, which creates for it tremendous challenges. First, we have to admit that we are in mission country. Second, we have to learn the language of the nation or the culture in which we find ourselves so that we can make some connection. We have to engage a culture which is post-Christian. We have to say, with apostolic honesty, that we’re somewhat clueless as to how best to engage a culture which is foreign to us and which finds what we say—our God-talk—to be a foreign language. We have to learn their language. We have to be bilingual.
PROFESSOR MICHAEL PRATT As a business school professor, I see the issues in the Catholic Church as organizational. On the one hand we have a lot of demographic changes happening, but at the same time we have a 2,000-year-old bureaucracy that is trying to change in a crisis. Change is tough for any organization. I do some work with companies. To make a culture change, organizations need a minimum of two to three years, and that’s for organizations that are 100 years old. Imagine an organization that’s thousands of years old. It’s a bit of a ship to steer. I also see it as a time where there is still some goodwill left, but unfortunately I think that’s being squandered. To make changes in any institution you need to have trust, and you need to have goodwill. From an organizational perspective, the multiple crises facing the Church are damaging. I think there has been very little from the Church about what they’ve done. In fact, the Church has actually responded to some of these crises. Reports of sexual abuse have plummeted since the Dallas Charter. So in addition to advertising what we’ve done, at present the change has all been very piecemeal and policy-oriented. It really hasn’t looked at deeper issues of culture change and changes in leadership. At a parish level, I’d characterize it as ambivalent. At some level I think people are hopeful. I think people get a lot of meaning out of going to church, but at the same time I think people are rightfully frustrated. This is supposed to be our moral center, and when you hear things about immortality coming from that moral center, it’s pretty disruptive and damaging. DENISE MORRISON With the state of Catholicism, I look at the external forces that are out there, which I call “seismic shifts.” You have a demographic shift from 80 million baby boomers to 80 million millennials. It’s a much more diverse population for the Church to serve. The economic bifurcation going on with a shrinking middle class in the U.S. and the more pronounced division between “haves” and “have-nots” is presenting its challenges. I believe the technological revolution has changed the way people are communicating, shopping, and interacting with each other. The one fundamental shift with the family is important. The American family of “Mom, Dad, and two kids” is only 24% of the population now. Our Catholic Faith has been built on the nuclear family, and this change is something we have to deal with as the Church brings Jesus to people, which is its noble purpose. Some of the things going on with the reduction in vocations is concerning. Are we going to have enough priests? For every one Catholic that is converted, six are leaving the Church. The scandals have really disheart-
ened people, and the way they’ve been handled in terms of lack of transparency is eroding trust. I’ve always been an advocate of “if you confront the brutal facts, you’ll find solutions.” It all comes back to purpose—the purpose of bringing Jesus to people. The Catholic Church has a lot to work with: many people of strong faith, wonderful priests, and a wonderful business model with the parish system. We have a population of young people, and I have a lot of hope in their ability to take our Church forward. It’s not all gloom and doom, but it is a call to get organized. JACK CONNORS, JR. The Catholic Church is 2,000 years old. I think it’s showing its age. As a business model, it’s broken. I say that because I care about it. After 2,000 years, it’s time for a reboot. Two thousand years ago things were a lot different. I ask myself this question: “What would Jesus think if he looked at what goes on in the world today in the name of the Faith that He founded?” I don’t think He’d be impressed by any of the abuse charges, by the Vatican museums with amazing resources but an awful lot of poor people outside who can’t afford a meal. I think it’s time this 2,000-year-old company opened its windows and let in fresh air. I think it needs to be more honest with itself and transparent. I think there’s been a great deal of secrecy. A lot of people don’t feel invited. They are welcome to Mass, to the sacraments, to help with corporal works of mercy, but not how to figure out how to run this thing for the next 2,000 years. Men are more welcome than women, women more than LGBT Catholics. We happen to be in a world today where we’re all supposed to be welcoming each other. PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OSPINO I think the best way to describe the Church in the United States of America right now is a Church in transition; a Church that is being changed in many ways demographically and culturally. It’s also changing spiritually. The Church of the 1950s was primarily a Church that had settled after many decades of migration in this country. But since the 1960s, we have seen a whole new renewal in the transformation of parishes, dioceses, and communities. New voices, languages, and ways of being Catholic are injecting new life. On the other hand, the transition means that certain ways of being Catholic are passing away and being left behind. In that process, I notice a little bit of tension between the old and the new. But it’s an exciting time. It’s a time of being in-between. And there’s a little bit of old that remains, and that old has a sense of newness. So, I don’t know where we are going, but we’re moving into something interesting.
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On March 28, 2019, the C21 Center hosted its second panel in the Easter Series, called “Revitalizing Our Church: Ideas from University Presidents.” Pictured in the top photo (left to right) are: Karen Kiefer; William P. Leahy, S.J.; Sister Janet Eisner, SNDdeN; and Joseph M. McShane, S.J.
Governance, Leadership, and Management JOHN ALLEN, JR. The Vatican’s problem here is that not only does it not get ahead of a story, but it operates out of this notion that it can set the terms of public conversation about the Church, that if it’s not ready to answer a question, then it doesn’t have to. The Vatican is an extraordinarily top-down environment. Everyone takes their cues from what the guy in charge wants. They can sniff out very quickly what he wants and what he doesn’t, and most people there will spend all day every day trying to deliver whatever it is they perceive that he wants. Therefore, if he doesn’t want something, that means it’s just not going to happen, no matter what the arguments for it might be. The good news is that if a pope is perceived as wanting something, things can change dramatically. DENISE MORRISON Leadership in a company starts with purpose—why is this company in business to begin with? There’s a set of values that goes with that. There’s the what you’re trying to do and the how, and the behavior you desire in your culture which brings that to life. I think if you asked 10 people, “What’s the purpose of the Church? JACK CONNORS, JR. What are its values?” you’d get Why does one company work out some different answers. — better than another? The common There’s an opportunity for some denominator is leadership. We have real clarity. If you want to capture William P. Leahy, S.J. a shortage of leadership. Leadership the hearts and minds of the next gendoes not require ordination. We eration—it’s got to be done with the don’t have to be ordained to take up the gauntlet, to fix head, heart, and hands—getting the heart is the tough part. that school, to rebuild that church. But if you can articulate a purpose and values that people Boston College, for its first 109 years, had been run can connect to, then you can mobilize and galvanize people by Jesuits. President Monan decided that of the 40 memto do some pretty extraordinary things because they believe in it. I think all of the content is there. But it’s a matter of bers of the board, 34 would be lay men and women who how bishops and priests react to that. Do they welcome the would help figure out the future. The endowment is now laity to help? $2.6 billion. Is this university any less great because it’s Maybe one idea is that the USCCB could have a not 100% controlled by the Church? This is a classic board of advisors that come from different walks of life. example of a partnership that’s been successful. You have two things going on: you have the work of God The Church’s history has had a lot to do with its past and the business of the Church. To think that clergy has rather than its plan for the future. Has anyone seen the to do all of that might be shortsighted. Or there might business plan for the future of the Church? I don’t think be a clergy shortage, so you can’t do it that way. There one exists. Success for the future of our faith is a team sport. could be a model that the universities have figured out that might work. WILLIAM P. LEAHY, S.J. I think we have to address the governance problem in the Church. And if there’s one lesson from Catholic higher education, it’s moving to boards of trustees that have lay men and women on them, with individuals who were part of the founding religious community or diocese. Having boards of trustees that are involved in the operations of archdioceses or dioceses, with reserved powers in terms of matters of faith and core teachings of the Church, would be huge. Secondly, if I were giving advice to a group of bishops, I would say one of the great strengths of Catholic higher education is that it engages in assessment and planning. We now need a major initiative to ask our parishioners about what they see in the Church, what we need to fix, and what’s working well. And then we need to ask, “How do we move forward?” So we should have listening sessions but then get down to strategic choices. That’s the strategic planning which I think is so critical. Leaders have to provide vision and decisions. We need that fresh vision. We have to get the fleet out of the harbor. It’s rusting at the dock.
Leaders have to provide vision and decisions. We need that fresh vision.
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Š Boston College Office of University Communications, Lee Pellegrini
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The Effect of Polarization JOHN ALLEN, JR. The Catholic press in this country is a faithful reflection of what we see in the media culture at large. These days, it’s a kind of extreme and vicious polarization in which the capacity to have a rational conversation about anything, including how the Church can be revitalized, is impeded. Our public spaces have been colonized by this kind of acerbic, vitriolic, nasty, sort of attack-mode journalism. The point seems not to be to get to the truth of the matter. The point seems to be to vanquish one’s perceived enemies, to out-snark them. And this is not a particularly helpful way of doing business. Now this is true to some extent in press cultures everywhere, but I think it is particularly true in the United States. And of course, in that sense, the Church is nothing more than a reflection of the wider social milieu in which we move. MATT MALONE, S.J. I think what John said (on polarization) is absolutely true. At America, we understand ourselves to be Catholics who happen to be journalists, rather than journalists who happen to be Catholics. I run a journal of opinion, which is a different kind of journalism. And we need to have a distinct point of view when we’re providing analysis, and that happens to be Catholic. We have failed as a Catholic press if we’re not offering something that is different.
And yet this is entrenched. This problem—I wrote about it in 2012 when I first came into this job—has only gotten worse. We all say that we would like to have a diversity of opinions, and we'd like to hear different points of view. And yet, if I publish somebody who is a conservative in America, I will hear about it. If I have somebody that’s a liberal, I will hear about it. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER I think in some ways, our Church has reflected or absorbed some of the ideological polarization that reflects wider society. So there are ways in which, unfortunately, even an abuse crisis can become weaponized in some of those battles. PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OSPINO It is really painful when I hear bishops say, “Oh, I don't want professors from that school,” or “I don't want to deal with theologians from that university or from that order.” Or the other way around: theologians or scholars will say, “I don't deal with this bishop or this priest or this particular community.” And I think that we should, in many ways, embrace what Clement of Alexandria says about the image of Jesus the teacher as a healer. We can do much healing in our faith communities.
On March 12, 2019, the C21 Center kicked off its Easter Series with the panel “Revitalizing Our Church: Ideas from the Catholic Press.” From left to right: John Allen, Jr.; Jack Dunn, Associate Vice President for University Communications and University Spokesperson; and Matt Malone, S.J.
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Women in Leadership Roles MATT MALONE, S.J. In the U.S. Church, there are things that we can do now. We don’t have to wait. If who is in the room when the decisions are made matters, then let’s get a greater diversity of people in the room when the decisions are made. And we should take an inventory of every job in the Church in this country and ask ourselves whether it really has to be done by a cleric. And if it doesn’t, then it should be done by a lay person with a preference for a woman. There is no reason why a woman can’t lead a dicastery in Rome. We have women chancellors of dioceses. Or why can’t a layperson be the rector of a seminary or the editor of a diocesan newspaper? We could do that tomorrow. If we change the people in the room, the culture will follow. SISTER JANET EISNER, SNDdeN I think one of the strongest messages that we need to get to the hierarchy of the Church is that the deposit of Faith, going back to John Henry Newman, is with the sensus fidelium. The sense of the Faith is with the faithful. It is not only with the hierarchy. The realization of the role of laity is critical for governance and engagement in mission. And I of course would want to say something special to the hierarchy about the role of women in the Church. It seems to me that anytime there is an opportunity to engage women in key roles in the Church that has to happen. This includes the opportunity to appoint women to be responsible for parishes. I think in higher education we have a responsibility to educate the laity, but also to make certain that we have prepared women for roles in ministry. I can’t say enough how important it is. If there are seats at the table, there need to be women present. Some of the difficulties we’re dealing with right now might have been alleviated had women’s voices been heard. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER The exclusion of women—who make up the vast majority of ministers in the Church—from positions of authority or meaningful influence remains a significant obstacle. Some have expressed concern that reforms resulting from this crisis not replace a clerical elite with a lay elite, because concentrations of power are almost always abused. But as a corrective in the meantime, and as a means to widen the conversation, lay and women’s
appointments to positions of authority and influence remain welcome. I have taught many extraordinary lay ecclesial ministers in different university settings over the past 16 years (mostly women but some lay men), some of whom are now parish life coordinators and many more of whom would thrive in leadership roles in our Church. JOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. The American Church was really the creation of American religious women. It was, what we would call in history, the empire of charity: whether it was schools, academies, colleges, or universities. Then you had the orphanages and hospitals. I’d say just about every aspect of Catholic life was enriched by religious women. So I think the contribution that has been made should be the basis upon which the invitation to contribute is now extended. DENISE MORRISON If you think about women in the Church, Mary was the first power woman. Think about the decisions she had to make at 15 years old. Imagine being tasked with being the Mother of God. She did it with grace and poise. She had respect, she talked to children, she inspired, she motivated. She was awesome. I think of her as a role model. I don’t know how many people are talking about Mary to the women in the Catholic Church as a role model. There are so many opportunities if we can just invite people in to make a difference. JOHN ALLEN, JR. How can lay people and especially women play a greater part in reform? By not waiting for an invitation to do so. If you look at how the Church has worked over the centuries, the great reforms did not happen because someone in power said, “Let it be so,” but because creative individuals like Francis and Dominic saw a changing social reality and created new apostolic models to respond to it. The great lay movements of the 20th century? It’s the same story in a different key. These things are born all of the time. Some of them stand the test of time and some of them don’t. But it’s never because Officialdom convened a Blue Ribbon panel and said, “This is what we need.” It’s because creative individuals at the grassroots simply did something. Don’t wait for Officialdom to open the door for you. Kick it in.
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The Culture of Clericalism MATT MALONE, S.J. We have to overcome clericalism. Clericalism is not the direct active force that we sometimes think. It’s much more of a passive phenomenon. It’s very rare that some clerics are saying, “Those people shouldn’t be in the room.” It doesn’t occur to have those people in the room. That’s how clericalism works. And yet what we know from our experience in this is that who is in the room when the decision is made is absolutely critical, not because the people in the room are necessarily going to care or not care about the welfare of children, but because we all have blind spots. We all have different experiences. We all bring different things to the table. When there are parents in the room and these decisions are being made, you’re going to get a different kind of input. It also requires those who are not clerics to examine how clericalism plays out among the laity. If I’m standing next to a lay person who is a Eucharistic Minister, I’ll have 20 people waiting to get communion from me, and no one waiting to get communion from her. That’s clericalism. If someone comes into my office and says, “Matt, you’re going to have to call them back because they are only going to return a phone call from ‘Father,’” that’s clericalism. If we’re going to overcome this crisis, everyone has to claim their rightful place in the Church. JOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. One of the things that stands in the way of a culture change is ownership, which is another way of saying “Who has power?” Power is exhilarating, it’s intoxicating, and it just won’t let you let go. Part of the change in culture has to be an examination of conscience, both individually and collectively, about what ownership and power has done to distort what the Church can and should be. PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OSPINO Something that we need to learn is that in the United States of America, Catholicism over-relies on the clergy. If the clergy fail, we think it’s the end of the world. But
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there are parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia where there aren’t that many priests. You have one priest for 50-60,000 people. So yes, you love your priests when they are around. You work with them. When they fail, you let them know, but you move on. We should affirm the value and importance of the clergy for evangelization but also understand that the failures of clergy are not the end of the Church. I think one simple way to address this is that every time you say the word “church,” stand before a mirror. That’s how we change that idea that the Church is one small group of people, an institution, or a structure. It’s all of the baptized. We all need to own our baptism. CHUCK CLOUGH Jesus’ mandate to us is to hand on faith to the next generation, and by extension future generations. How good will we be at that? Our numbers are declining in the Archdiocese of Boston. Over the last 10 years, the number of Catholics in pews was down 19%; baptisms were down 19%; confirmations were down 19%; and marriages were down 57%. What does that say about the next generation? To whom will we pass on the Faith? Obviously people aren’t being fed, either by spirituality or liturgy, and these are the areas we have to think about. What is the experience of the person in the pew? And what will it be 20 years from now? Forty years from now? Sixty years from now? The Council of Trent, which went on almost 500 years ago, created the model of the Church we have today. How many 500-year-old business models would survive today? There has to be change. It’s a terribly exciting time to be Catholic, because we’re going to see dynamic change like Trent. The Roman Catholic Church will become less clerical. I think that one of the most powerful things that will affect the Church is Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. Father Leahy had the foresight to make sure that the Jesuit, Catholic presence stays on the campus when there aren’t any more Jesuits. We all have to live out our baptism and the priesthood of Christ.
If we’re going to overcome this crisis, everyone has to claim their rightful place in the Church. — Matt Malone, S.J.
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“Revitalizing Our Church: Ideas from Lay Business Leaders” took place on May 6, 2019. From left to right: Jack Connors, Jr., ’63; Denise Morrison, ’75; and Chuck Clough, ’64.
Rethinking Seminary Education WILLIAM P. LEAHY, S.J. I’d reorganize the seminary system in the United States. Instead of having them removed in monastic settings, I would propose that seminarians of the future be educated with lay men and women. I think when you have that kind of experience in education in your formative years, that changes your mindset. JACK CONNORS, JR. Folks need to be exposed to the world the way it is today. Seminarians need to be spending more time in the community with the people they are serving. I haven’t heard of any seminary with a program on marketing, fundraising, or CAPEX management. I think it’s all logic,
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theology, philosophy, epistemology. We have some brilliant people, but they don’t know how to run the business of their parish. DENISE MORRISON I think the course of study could be broader, but we also need to be teaching them skills like collaboration, networking, and making sure they realize that no leader, no matter how good you are, can do it all yourself. You need to surround yourself with the best talent, set goals, measure outcomes, and go. I think having seminarians do work in the parishes during their course education and come back to deliberate on it could be a very positive thing.
Restoring Trust and Credibility PROFESSOR MICHAEL PRATT How do you change the culture of a 2000-year-old organization? The first thing is that you have to have a vision for where you want to go and how to get there. I don’t think it can simply come from the hierarchy. It has to be more inclusive. The temptation is to look to the future. Really effective change comes from re-interpreting your past. Take the notion of women in the Church. When I was growing up there was almost nothing about how women were important in the Early Church. I hear much more of that now. I think that is possibly going to cede bigger changes for more involvement of women in the Church. What are the levels of cultural change? There are four of them. The first is selection, getting people into the organization. This is particularly important when talking about the hierarchy, the institutional structure. The Church is changing demographically. I think one really important thing is to get more women involved in the voice of the Church. It’s part of the selection process. If you don’t have people there talking, they can’t contribute. Number two, you have to change how people are trained. We’ve talked a little about seminary training, but I think it involves training from that point or before. You have to change how people are socialized. What kind of values do you want them to have? Third, we have to change the reinforcement structures. What do you punish? What do you reward? Think about how difficult it would be if you were a priest and you saw a fellow priest do something wrong. For a priest, the Church is almost a total institution. It gives you a paycheck, it’s your housing, it’s your family, it provides your food. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to be a whistleblower? Because if you get kicked out for kicking out a friend of yours or for causing trouble, you could lose everything. Lastly, there has to be a change in leadership, and we have to model it from the top. Trust comes from competence and character. Character is benevolence: Are people kind and do they have integrity? Do their actions match their values or words? Because of the Church’s missteps, people are starting to really doubt the character of the Church, not so much its competence. The research finds that it’s more effective to apologize for a competence mistake because you can change competence, you can learn. If it’s a character-based one, people don’t think you can change very often. The Church needs to be transparent and offer accountability structures. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER Repairing the damaged sense of trust is this other larger, ongoing scandal. I think the enduring damage to that trust which forms of unaccountable power have reaped are what we’re dealing with right now when we think about restoring moral authority. I wonder if Pope Francis’s image of going to the peripheries, of the Church being a field hospital—“lest she become self-referential and get sick”—could teach us about restoring trust.
I think that would mean a couple of things. The Church could take its powerful teachings—about justice for the vulnerable, power-sharing, its longstanding social teaching—and turn those inward. Taking seriously accompaniment at peripheries would reframe the Church’s primary concern, reframe the focus not just on optics in terms of preserving the institution in a time of scandal, but it would center victims of abuse, outraged parents, maybe women more broadly, or maybe even these people who are leaving the Church from whom we might have something to learn. In terms of what impedes the model of Church as field hospital, harmful notions of power that need to be redressed which are not only structural but also cultural, as well as attitudes, practices, and theologies that have perpetuated clericalism. We need approaches and structures that counter the human tendency to overlook bias in terms of our own vested interests, to insulate ourselves from critique or ignore inconvenient truths. So I think going forward, transparency, real structures of accountability, rather than buzz words, will be key to moving us out to the peripheries and turning some of that teaching inward. DENISE MORRISON My experience in brand-building is that transparency builds trust. That means that you have to be a bit vulnerable. In the food business, people want to know what’s in their food. They want to know where it’s grown, how it’s made, what ingredients are in it, that it’s made with integrity, that it’s safe, that it’s high quality. It’s no different in building the brand of the Catholic Church. People want transparency about what’s working, what’s not working, what’s needed, and how they can help. By being more inclusive and much more transparent, that will help build the brand. JACK CONNORS, JR. I think we have to get back to being transparent. It goes back to my favorite quote of St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel at all times, even if you have to use words.” What keeps me going to Mass and praying the rosary three to four days a week is that I know of no other organization in the history of this country that does as much good as the Catholic Church. George Herbert Walker Bush talked about a thousand points of light. You see a million points of light in the Catholic Church. You can go four miles in any direction and probably bump into three missions. Those missions are not there to serve the one percent. That’s what’s going on every day and night in this country. We have a great sense of the fundamentals, and that’s what keeps me here. The faith I signed up for is the one that goes on at this university every day. The notion that we teach is “men and women for others.” The Church needs to understand the power of recruiting and embracing those men and women and putting them to work as best as possible.
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Revitalizing Our Parishes MATT MALONE, S.J. There are parishes that are being revitalized, and there are pastoral councils that are showing different models of governance. And there are brave pastors who are listening to their parishioners, and they are including people in new and vibrant ways. We don’t necessarily need to look to our teachers or our bishops to lead us. Oftentimes they are the last ones to learn something new. JOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. One of the things we find very interesting is that graduates of Jesuit colleges and universities, when they get out in the world, will seek a Jesuit parish. Why? They want to go where they were fed to begin with, where they became adult believers. And they want to have that same experience again and grow in it. These become the leaders as well as the people who fill in the pews. And they’ll be the people who will be our colleagues. They become companions with the Lord and will bring a new Church to birth. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER I can speak to a few initiatives taking place at my parish, St. Ignatius of Loyola. There’s a type of mini “Professors in the Pews” in which professors who are scholars meet and talk about our areas of research to parents in faith formation. It’s a place for peers to share their gifts and for parents to wrestle honestly with their questions. It’s not just information dissemination, but a place of celebration and a place to share honestly with each other. My middle school son also attends a book club. St. Ignatius has a lot of different tracks for faith formation. Some are arts-based, others are kind of standard catechesis. My son attends one on Friday nights and the group talks about a book including those which touch on difficult issues. High school students lead the conversations so they are peer-to-peer. We also have a Family Mass for parents with young children. It’s a chaotic, participatory, and engaged environment. A different family hosts each week. Early readers can try and fail at the ambo and then try again. Sometimes toddlers are dancing to the music. It’s powerful because young kids, from an early age, get habituated to being actively engaged, to be questioning, to be participating, to be taking lead roles in the life of the Church. I find a lot of hope in the people showing up week after week, not in a blindly compliant way. We’ve had a lot of courageous preaching, honest programming, and symbolic gestures. I think there’s been an eyes-wide-open engagement with the challenges facing our Church, and that gives me a lot of hope. PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OSPINO The one big miracle that I share almost everywhere and constantly write about is that my parish is a trilingual community: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. In the community, like every multicultural community, there are tensions, because people are constantly negotiating. But I remember that more than 10 years ago, our community decided that instead of fighting about whether
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we are going to speak English or Spanish or Vietnamese, we reflected on our biggest need. And we discovered that the biggest need was hunger in the city of Lawrence. Two out of three children in Lawrence go to bed with only one meal a day. So we decided that instead of fighting for the best language or culture or way of doing things, we could meet the needs of the people who are hungry. So we built a meal center. Every single day, we serve 500 meals. And it’s not only immigrants who eat there. People from all walks of life come to eat with us, and I think that has pulled the community together. PROFESSOR MICHAEL PRATT We’ve been looking at a parishioner-driven parish and more co-leadership. The pastoral council is really trying to help our pastor lead the church. And one of the things that happened in the wake of the Pennsylvania report and some other scandals rocking the Church is that the parish council got together to ask, “What do we need?” Rather than just assuming we knew what people in our parish needed, we decided to have listening sessions. We went to every single Mass community and asked what they needed. It probably took about a month or so. And there were three major things we found that the people were needing from St. Ignatius parish. One of them was community. People are starved for community. We live in an age in which we’re more connected and farther apart than ever before. The second was more communication. Decisions get made. People don't necessarily always get input on them, but they want to know why decisions are made, why things are the way that they are. And the last one was clericalism. So we talked more generally about building accountability structures, transparency structures, how to get women involved in preaching, things like that. And then to communicate that, we ended up having a party where we invited people from the parish to a social event. We’re also sharing it through the bulletin and through announcements at Mass. CHUCK CLOUGH When young kids graduate, some are committed to their faith. They’ve lived it, and it’s been transformational. But sometimes, they get back into a parish where the rectory is dead and they lose it. Fortunately there are other ways of building faith, like Cursillo, or Encounter Christ. But eventually, you’ve got to go back to the parish, because that is the model we operate on. Faith lives have to be lived in the parish, but that’s the model that has to be thought about and changed. We need to be open to the Spirit in new and creative ways. DENISE MORRISON In business, if a division is working better than another, you start to look at the best practices and key drivers of success. And then you scale that up and get that around. You want parishes to keep their local touch, but there might be certain principles that are working in some that could benefit some of the other ones and make that a better experience.
New Ecclesial Models to. Through our baptism, we are also part of the priestDENISE MORRISON hood of Christ. And we can be teachers of the Faith. I I just can’t imagine how someone could navigate all of think that’s really what we’re called upon to do, to be life’s events without faith. I can’t even comprehend that. And yet there are so many people that have lost touch builders by what we say and do. with faith. Where are we teaching the next generation the Faith if Catholic schools are closing, they aren’t getJOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. One of the things that I think we have to honestly ask ting it at home, and they’re learning from peer groups ourselves is, “Do we want to preserve the Church? Or who don’t have it? You see them turning to other things do we want to make God available to fill that void. to the world?” The Church is a sac I believe that we’ve really over-complicated it. Jesus was about rament of the encounter with God. “love God and love your neighbor We have to make it clear that the as yourself.” The 12 apostles didn’t Church exists not for herself, but to sit home. They went out and talked make God available. And so we have to people about Jesus. They didn’t to listen to people and ask them, build these huge churches and wait “Where do you find God? How do for people to come. We have to go you find God?” The culture of the out and get more people to appreChurch must make the encounter with God possible, captivating, illuciate the Faith. When we’re losing Catholics every day because they minating, compelling, life-changing, feel disenfranchised, we should reand life-enriching. That’s the center flect on what it’s going to take to be of it all. relevant, to bring Jesus to their lives The core of the Faith is the enand make them better. This is a big counter with God. And I think the calling. We can’t stick our heads in crisis is inviting us to strip away those — the sand and say, “If we pray it’ll things which are non-essential. That get better.” It’s not just about prayer. takes a lot of courage. It takes hard Denise Morrison Prayer is important, but action is work. It takes discernment. But an too. What’s the plan of action? ecclesial body gives strength, wisdom, and direction. And in that ecclesial body, it takes courage CHUCK CLOUGH to admit that we need that. But in that, we can rediscover I think we have to think of ourselves as more than just what the core is and allow ourselves to be set on fire by the lay people who do things because Father or Sister tell us encounter with God. Then the world will be transformed.
Prayer is important, but action is too. What’s the plan of action?
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The Role of Catholic Educators and Higher Education WILLIAM P. LEAHY, S.J. One thing that is important for leadership is the modeling that goes on in Catholic schools. Teachers, principals, and individuals who are a part of elementary, secondary, or higher education who have a listening heart and care about everyone around them provide a model that is effective. I am convinced that so much of the renewal of the Church in the United States will be shaped by what happens on the campuses of Catholic colleges, universities, high schools, and elementary schools. I would say critical to any college or university is the curriculum. How does the curriculum engage students in the large questions about the meaning of life, about what Christianity and Catholicism offer to them? But it’s also the relationships and experiences outside the classroom that are equally important. It’s what happens in residence halls and on retreats. It’s service programs helping students to integrate those experiences and ask, “What do I believe in and why? What touches my heart? How have I experienced love in my life? Who is God?” They need opportunities to discuss those questions with others and answer the questions themselves. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER I think Catholic universities are well poised to bring interdisciplinary scholarly resources to this crisis. But beyond that I think that professors could engage more outside of the ivory towers. When a crisis like this arises, it’s important to make space and make time to give more public lectures, write more accessible blogs, and do podcasts to bring scholarly expertise to bear on this question. I also think we can use our scholarly guilds to help approach the issues arising out of this crisis. What recommendations could we bring to our guilds to effect lasting change? JOSEPH. M. MCSHANE, S.J. Father Leahy and I had the fortune of being in an ongoing dialogue with bishops and Catholic university presidents, and we heard this: 10% of college-aged Catholics go to Catholic colleges and universities. Those 10% become 40% of the active members of every parish in the country and they contribute 70% of the money that keeps the Church in America running. The importance
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of schools cannot be overestimated. It’s an extraordinary impact that we have. I think we have to invite the hierarchy into conversation and ask them what they want from us, what we can give them. Some college presidents say to bishops, “Colleges and universities are where the Church does its thinking.” I think we need to be humble enough not to pull out full battle array but to meet at the table and understand that we’re working together to serve the People of God. SISTER JANET EISNER, SNDdeN I think the key is changing and adapting. To be able to change in response to where the students are is essential. And the institutions that are still around are doing just that. I think of Pope Francis, who says that we are a field hospital. That means taking the message, the mission, to where the people are. For us in higher education, that means really understanding, listening, and engaging with students about how they see their commitment to faith. PROFESSOR MICHAEL PRATT I think there are two ways professors can stay involved. The first is to stay teaching in Catholic universities [citing Father McShane’s statistics above]. As a return on investment, that’s pretty good. Number two, get involved in both local and more national and international organizations. Personally, I’m involved in my parish’s faith formation, parish council, and arts-based programs. I was asked to be on the parish council in part because I teach negotiations and conflict management. I have some idea as to how organizations run. So offer the skills that you have and get outside of your department. Ask yourselves, “Where do my skills fit the weaknesses of the Church?” PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OSPINO One image that comes to mind comes from Pope Francis, who says that we should not be “armchair theologians,” which is a way of describing the ivory tower scholar. Catholic university professors should be bridges between what’s happening in the scholarly worlds of economics, social work, and law and life in our churches and society. If professors follow Pope Francis’s invitation to “go out,” we could have a society infused with Catholic values.
C21 Director Karen Kiefer moderated the panel “Revitalizing Our Church: Ideas from Professors in the Pews” on April 29, 2019. From left to right: Karen Kiefer, Professor Hosffman Ospino, Professor Kristin Heyer, and Professor Michael Pratt.
Young Adults and Emerging Leaders MATT MALONE, S.J. The first thing we have to do is to take seriously the questions that people are asking and listen to those questions, rather than just entering into an encounter with them as if they’re waiting for us to give them the answers. When the pope talks about discernment and accompaniment, he’s talking about walking beside people in that process, which is crucially important. The fundamental reality of the Church is that for us, truth is a proposition that corresponds to an objective reality. For Christians, Truth is a person and His name is Jesus Christ. It’s only in that mindset that our evangelization becomes about encounter rather than confrontation, and accompaniment rather than lording it over people. If there’s a revolution happening under this papacy, it is that the Pope—sometimes in a very messy way—is calling our attention to the fact that our pastoral priorities have to be different and privilege the personal over the propositional. The difficulty is that everyone, particularly young people, feel they are drowning in an ocean of propositions. Everyone has a claim. The thing that we can offer is relationship, and the relationship that we bear witness to, and to accompany them to explore their relationship with the One who “is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” JOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. There are a lot of young people who love the Lord, but no one has asked them, “Have you thought about leading?” One of the things we have to learn how to do is invite them to lead and invite them to ownership. PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OPSINO I see at the School of Theology and Ministry here at Boston College an army of men and women in their twenties who want to dedicate their lives to ministry in an institution that seems to be in flames. To me, they are like firefighters. They have great ideas, and that inspires me.
I ask them, “Why do you want to be a minister? Why do you want to stay in the Church?” They just want to move forward. They want to teach theology, they want to make a difference, they want to commit to social justice. It’s not that they don’t have questions or that they are not asking the hard questions. As a matter of fact, they are asking questions sometimes that the institution is not ready to answer with convincing responses or ways forward. However, these young men and women understand that the Church is not only the institution or the clergy or the professors, but it is all the body of the baptized. Some great ideas that come from graduate students studying theology and ministry include starting a new non-profit organization that organizes people to advocate for just migration reform or working with women who are victims of domestic violence. In many ways, these great ideas are expanding the idea of being “Church” beyond the walls of our churches. Certainly some of them are looking at how to do better parish life and parish ministry, but many of them are taking the Church out into the peripheries as Pope Francis has been telling us. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER I was a teaching assistant here in 2001-2002 for the PULSE program and was thinking about that wave of revelations. My students that year were much more blindsided by what abuse revelations really meant for everything they and their parents and grandparents held dear. But today my undergrads have grown up in the subsequent era. They have seen Spotlight. This is what they’ve known. So I found in the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report that my students were really hungry to talk honestly in class about the revelations. I found them hungry to talk about the abuse crisis in ways that were honest about the depth of damage, and yet I found them open to understanding how to remain Catholic with integrity. Accompanying those students has been a source of hope for me in a rather dark time.
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The Gift of Diversity PROFESSOR HOSFFMAN OSPINO Today, a full quarter of all Catholics in the United States of America are immigrants. The average age of white Catholics in the United States is 55. The average age of Hispanics in this country is 29. So I always say, “Who’s having the kids?” And that’s important for us to keep in mind, because 60% of all Catholics in the United States of America under the age of 18 are Hispanic. We already know what the present and future look like. What are Hispanics and African Americans, Black Catholics who are immigrants and children of immigrants, and Asian Catholics bringing to parish life? The first thing is youth. They are also bringing a renewed spirituality that is carried by popular Catholicism. A lot of devotional life in this country that gave life to German, Irish, Italian, and French Canadian Catholics through devotions somehow was left behind by one or two generations. Until 20 years ago, the most popular devotion to Mary in this country was the Immaculate Conception. Today, it’s Our Lady of Guadalupe. So our Church is changing. It is transforming, and I think it’s also bringing new life, a new spirituality, and also youth. I believe that the younger generation has much better ecclesiology than the older generation because they’re not looking inward. They’re looking outward. Just as many American, white, young Catholics grew up with the burden of this scandal, we’re also looking at a whole new generation of Catholics in this country who are Hispanic, children of immigrants from Africa, and from Asia who did not have to deal with those scandals with their families. And for them, they they are wrestling with different questions. Most of them are asking, “Does the Catholic Church really want us here?” It’s a question of belonging more than the question of the scandal. SISTER JANET EISNER, SNDdeN The Church in America is at the center and the edge. The Church is at the center because so many graduates of Fordham, Boston College, Emmanuel, and other places are where Catholics have a major impact. They are involved in business and so many other things. And if you think of our graduates, you realize just how centrally and how significantly so many have contributed to American society as Catholics.
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It is also a Church at the edge. I can think of no better place to look than the southern border of our country. I've been in touch today and in the past with a number of Sisters of Notre Dame who are down there. They're in McAllen, Texas, working with migrants as they come across the border. And this morning, they told me that over 700 migrants—that means children as well—came into the country. They came to this respite center that they operate under the auspices of Catholic Charities. And it is the Church, certainly in our own archdiocese, where I think Mass is celebrated in 26 languages on a given week. So to me, that is the American Church: the center and the edge. JOSEPH M. MCSHANE, S.J. One thing that’s a humbling realization is that one size doesn’t fit all. We have to find those ways of piety and religiosity which work for different students. In days gone by, we would say, “Well, there are different ethnic expressions of the Faith.” Thanks be to God. You know, an Italian Catholic encounters God and celebrates God in a different way than an Irish Catholic would, or a Polish Catholic would. In this generation, we have to find out what the very different but very rich expressions of piety are that allow students from different backgrounds to celebrate God in their lives, or even speak of God in their lives. WILLIAM P. LEAHY, S.J. I want to highlight the importance of older Catholics with younger Catholics. I have been struck by the number of recent grads or current students at Boston College who love to talk to their grandparents. And I know of individuals— these are college-aged students or recent grads—who don’t necessarily go to Mass during the year, but during the summer they love to go to Mass with their grandparents. It’s that conversation with the grandparents that is important. The grandparents have a sense of faith and tradition. And they have memories. And memories are critical to handing on a culture. So those of you who are grandparents or aunts and uncles, you have a big role to play, along with parents, in handing on the Faith, because you have a lived experience. And I think young people want to know why is it that you believe? How do you handle difficult moments in life? And those conversations over brunch or being at Mass, doing something together, are invaluable.
Advice for Pope Francis JOHN ALLEN, JR. One piece of advice I would give Pope Francis is to rethink his impressions of Americans and of America. It’s quite obvious when you watch the internal workings of Pope Francis and his team—and the way they interact with people and the way decisions are made—while they do their best to be fair, there is a kind of fairly palpable low-level ambivalence that runs through that. The other piece of advice I’d give him is from a communications point of view. One of the basic bits of wisdom in crisis management is this: if you think you’ve got a communications problem, maybe it’s because you actually have a problem. And the reality of where we’re at with the clerical sex abuse stuff is that the response to that is not fundamentally a messaging problem. Because if it were, it would be over, because Pope Francis and his team have said all of the right things. The problem is that you have to deliver on those commitments. Whatever else you do, figure out this accountability issue, for the crime and for the cover-up, because until that happens, this crisis is going to be hanging around your neck like an albatross, and it will progressively erode your capacity to get anything else done.
MATT MALONE, S.J. Part of the advice that I would give to Pope Francis is to stop trying to make everyone a Jesuit, because not everyone is—and that is a good thing. Sometimes I think, He is such a Jesuit. He thinks like one and is steeped in the culture and spirituality of The Exercises. What’s more important is that he’s a religious, and that’s often overlooked. He comes from a place in the life of the Church that is not traditionally at its center. Every religious order is born in a sort of reform. Because the conclave called a person who is a member of a religious order to the center of the Church, its governance is different. So my advice to him is to bring the treasury of Ignatian spirituality to your office, but be cautious about imposing it. PROFESSOR KRISTIN HEYER My advice to Pope Francis would be, when it comes to insights from women and even feminism, do not be afraid. I wish he could think of women in the Early Church, women as witnesses to the resurrection, and insights from feminist theology about power, sexual ethics, and even broader images of God. There’s nothing to fear.
Finding and Maintaining Easter Joy CHUCK CLOUGH It’s been proven in health studies that people of faith live longer. They recover from heart attacks quicker. It does reflect in your physical life, your health. We have something awfully good to sell. I don’t know why the pews are emptying. We have to think of ourselves as more than lay people who do things because “Father” tells us to. We are part of the priesthood of Christ and we can be teachers of the Faith. We’re called to be builders by what we say and do. PROFESSOR MICHAEL PRATT I think what we can do as parents is role model. If you wake up and say, “We have to go to church,” that communicates something to your kids. I think it’s a lot of subtle things we don’t realize they pick up on. What we try to do in my family is have conversations about what we heard in church on the car ride back from Mass. We have a notech rule. We just talk. We ask, “What did you hear today? What was interesting to you?” I think that’s helpful. JOHN ALLEN, JR. No matter what period of time you look at, you could make a case for despair about the Church and you can make the case for hope. It’s about which one you choose to focus on. If you’re paying attention at the grassroots level, there is a remarkable, positive energy percolating in this Church despite it all. I think we [the press] do a really good job of telling the stories of the Church at its worst, but what we don’t often do an equally good job of is telling the story of the Church at its best. But it’s there. You see people who are involved in youth ministry who are doing great things.
You see people who are involved in jail ministries. You see people out in the trenches trying to make parishes come alive, trying to make worship relevant, who still believe in the possibility of all that. SISTER JANET EISNER, SNDdeN Pope Francis calls everyone to have a personal encounter with Jesus and to do it unfailingly every day. That’s the joy of the Gospel. My hope is that the passion that many different generations have had will somehow be caught and transformed by the current generation of students and recent graduates so that this spark continues. MATT MALONE, S.J. People ask me, “What do we do to promote vocations?” You live them joyfully. This is the thing that saddens me about the American Church: we had a joy deficit going into this crisis. This has only added to it. To find that truth that lies at the heart, that comes from the One who is Truth, that can only bring about joy, is needed more than ever. I don’t mean a giddy happiness. I mean knowing who we are and helping other people to become what they are called to be. The process of discernment is to continually ask, “What is it that I most deeply desire?” There cannot be a difference between what we most deeply desire and what God desires for us. And the realization of where those two meet is our vocation. The Church doesn’t exist for God. It exists for us, to lead to our fullest flourishing. I passionately believe, in the deepest parts of me, that the Lord is risen, that He has a name, He has a Church, and it’s the reason to get out of bed in the morning.
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