Revitalizing Our Church

S UMME R 2019

THE CH U R CH IN THE 21S T CE NT U RY CE NTE R

REVITALIZING OUR CHURCH

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The Church in the 21st Century Center is a catalyst and a resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church.

C21 Resources, a compilation of the best analyses and essays on key challenges facing the Church today, is published by the Church in the 21st Century Center at Boston College. c 21 resources editorial board

Patricia Delaney Patrick Goncalves Robert R. Newton Barbara Radtke Jacqueline Regan O. Ernesto Valiente

c 21 center director

Karen Kiefer

managing editor

Elise Italiano Ureneck creative director

Angelo Jesus Canta

the church in

21 st century center Boston College 110 College Road, Heffernan House Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467 bc.edu/c21 • 617-552-6845 the

on the cover

Appalachia Volunteers Send-off Liturgy in St. Ignatius. ©Boston College Office of University Communications

by Yiting Chen ©2019 Trustees of Boston College

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REVITALIZING OUR CHURCH

a tough year for our Church and our Catholic community.

Confronting the sexual abuse scandal, coupled with leadership, governance, and management challenges, has caused deep hurt and mistrust, and many have lost faith. But Pope Francis continues to remind us that the Holy Spirit “makes the Church grow by helping it to go beyond human limits, sins and any scandal.” May we hold his words tight in prayer as we begin the work of revitalizing our Church.

I can promise you that the C21 Center’s commitment to be a catalyst and resource for the renewal of the Church has never been stronger.

We believe that conversation changes things: it unites, empowers, and spurs action. Therefore, we have dedicated this issue of the magazine to start a conversation on what revitalization might look like. On the following pages you will find reflections and analyses on where we are and the opportunities that await. The middle pages of the magazine capture some of the important exchanges and ideas from conversations born out of the Center’s Easter Series, “Revitalizing Our Church.” You can find an expanded version of these conversations in a downloadable booklet online at bc.edu/c21revitalize, along with an abundance of additional resources.

Our hope is that the articles within will serve as a touchstone for action. So turn the page and begin reading the opening article by Elise Italiano Ureneck, the C21 Center’s associate director and the new managing editor of this magazine, who shares her thoughts on the road ahead.

With God in our hearts, let us remain faithful as we place our hope in the Holy Spirit. it has been

Karen K. Kiefer Director, The Church in the 21st Century Center karen.kiefer@bc.edu

CATALYZE

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The Road Ahead Elise Italiano Ureneck

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REFLECT

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Selections from the Letter of His Holiness to the People of God Pope Francis

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The Power of Listening to the Peripheries Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R.

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On Not Losing Heart: Catherine of Siena and the Strategies of Prayer and Friendship Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P.

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The Big Picture

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Guided by the Holy Spirit Richard Lennan

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A Crisis—but Not of Faith George Weigel

REVITALIZE

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Revitalizing Our Church C21 Easter Series

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The Laity’s Role in the Church’s Mission Michael Sweeney, O.P.

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The Opportunity Before Us: Giving Women a Place at the Table Helen Alvaré

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To Serve the People of God: Renewing the Conversation on Priesthood and Ministry Boston College Seminar on Priesthood and Ministry for the Contemporary Church

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It Starts with Our Seminaries Fr. Thomas Berg

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Revitalizing Our Parishes Daniel Cellucci

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Young Hispanics Are Revitalizing the Church in the U.S. Hosffman Ospino

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A Moment for Young People Q&A with Jonathan Lewis

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Home: Where Jesus Lives Katie Prejean McGrady

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CATALYZE

The Road Ahead Elise Italiano Ureneck

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throughout sacred scripture , God reveals Himself as the Lord, the Giver of Life. In the Book of Genesis, we read that God “formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). And Saint Paul tells the earliest believers, “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). God not only provides our beginning, but He is there to revitalize—literally, give new life to—His people along the journey.

That the Catholic Church was in need of revitalization came into sharp focus in the wake of the revelations about clergy sexual abuse and episcopal cover-up in the summer of 2018. Not only did the news resurface old wounds from 2002, but it pulled back the curtain on deficiencies in methods and means to hold bishops and leaders of religious institutes and congregations accountable when failures become known. Moreover, they revealed deep-seated issues related to power, decision-making, and clericalism that have been affecting the Church’s leadership for some time.

Prior to these revelations, the Church was facing several critical challenges including the vitality of Catholic parishes and the disaffiliation of young people from insti-

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tutional religion. These and other issues already necessitated a strategy to reimagine, reinvigorate, and revitalize the Church’s members and mission.

In this issue of C21 Resources, we have curated content that addresses both the need and strategy for renewal. The contributions have been divided into two sections: pieces that provide a deeper reflection about the context—ecclesial, historical, and cultural—of the challenges we face and those which provide practical strategies and pathways for reform and renewal.

In the first section, we hear from Pope Francis, who in an unprecedented move, wrote the “Letter to the People of God” addressing how the Church gravely failed its most vulnerable members and inviting the entire Body of Christ to join him in repentance and the work of renewal.

You can also read reflections from Cardinal Joseph Tobin, C.Ss.R., Archbishop of Newark, and Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., who reflect on other pivotal periods of reform in the Church’s history, as well as key figures who played central roles in righting the ship. Both authors highlight lessons and strategies from the past that are applicable today.

In that same section you will find contributions from theologians like Richard Lennan and George Weigel, who offer distinct but complementary strategies for next steps.

In so doing, they illustrate the essential contribution that theologians make to the Church’s self-reflection and self-understanding, founded on both truth and charity.

© Boston College Office of University Communications

Boston College students, joined by their philosophy professor Jeffrey Bloechl, walked 215 miles of the Camino de Santiago as part of a class called Self-Knowledge and Discernment: The Experience of Pilgrimage.

The second section of the magazine examines the people who are essential for the work of revitalization as well as the places where it most needs to take place. This section opens with coverage of the C21 Center’s spring 2019 speaker series, “Revitalizing Our Church.” As you will see, panelists explored the theme in depth and surfaced a number of practical ideas that can be implemented at all levels of the Church’s governance, decision-making, and pastoral work.

Because of their role in the sacramental life of the Church, priests are essential to the work of reform and renewal. Revitalization must begin in seminaries if we are to hope for a systemic response to clericalism.

Illustrative of that type of culture change is the theological statement on the contemporary priesthood entitled “To Serve the People of God,” published by participants in a two-year seminar at Boston College. Accompanying that piece is a reflection by Father Thomas Berg, vice rector of Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York, on the same subject.

How can laity, especially women, participate in the work of revitalization? Fr. Michael Sweeney, O.P., executive director of the Lay Mission Project, and Vatican advisor Helen Alvaré share that the current roadblocks are not caused by the Church’s theology—the laity’s vocation and women’s dignity are spelled out clearly—but by the Church’s stalled implementation of its own vision.

Daniel Cellucci and Katie Prejean McGrady, both noted speakers and leaders in the areas of diocesan life and youth

ministry, speak to the challenges that ordinary Catholics face in their parishes and homes and offer ideas for how the Church can be revitalized at the grassroots level. Finally, Boston College Professor Hosffman Ospino and Jonathan Lewis, a lay ecclesial minister, look to the future. They explore how Hispanics are contributing to the revitalization of

God not only provides our beginning, but He is there to revitalize—literally, give new life to—His people along the journey. the Church in the United States and make the case for why dioceses should empower young adults to take on leadership roles today.

Can the Church be a more effective institution and restore its credibility? We know that with God anything is possible. A question to ponder as you read: what part is God asking you to play? ■ Elise Italiano Ureneck is the Associate Director of the Church in the 21st Century Center and the Managing Editor of C21 Resources.

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REFLECT

SELECTIONS FROM THE

Letter of His Holiness to the People of God Pope Francis

In the wake of the revelations about then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and growing concerns with abuse in the global Church, Pope Francis released the “Letter to the People of God.” The Holy Father acknowledged the failure of the Roman Catholic Church to adequately respond to the crisis of clerical sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults and cited clericalism as the reason for its cover-up. In the end, Pope Francis pledged to root out all forms of abuse within the Church by addressing the material and spiritual dimensions of the problem.

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“ if one member suffers , all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons.

Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerless-

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ness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike.

Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient.

Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.

We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity.

Photo by Ashwin Vaswani on Unsplash

With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.

While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history.

It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures

without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism. ...[P]enance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of goodwill, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.

In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1). ■ “Letter to the People of God” was published on August 20, 2018. To read the full letter, visit vatican.va.

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REFLECT

The Power of Listening to the Peripheries Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R.

The Church has undertaken the task of selfexamination and course correction throughout its history. Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, reflects on how the Church might seize this moment, learn from its mistakes, and chart its way forward by listening to the marginalized and extending mercy.

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Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, N.J., greets people during a reception after a Mass at which he took possession of his titular church, St. Mary of the Graces in Rome.

The ultimate fruit of that meeting would come after at the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the bishops in the room all had one thing in common: they John’s death in the form of Nostra Aetate, the council’s 1965 decree on the Church’s relationship with non-Chrisall had, in some way or another, survived World War II. Humanity had glimpsed the depths of its potential for tian religions. It affirmed that “the Jews should not be preself-destruction, and this horrific vision demanded a deliber- sented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed ative response. The Church needed to proclaim prophetical- from the Holy Scriptures” and that “the Church, mindful ly and apply more urgently what the Gospel offers. Witness- of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved ing to this trauma made them attentive to the movements of not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, the Holy Spirit in profound and surprising ways.

What we saw at the Council was also a revolutionary directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” (No. 4). If Vatican II formally condemned a flourishing of a Church of synodality, heresy, this was it. that is, one whose members move toIn his 2013 interview with the world’s gether with Christ, along a path guidJesuit publications, Pope Francis discussed ed by the Holy Spirit. I believe we as a this kind of development: “St. Vincent of Church have entered an age in which we Authentic Lerins makes a comparison between the will live out, with increasing intentionmercy is biological development of man and the ality, this model—left by the Council something transmission from one era to another of Fathers and lifted up by Pope Francis— the deposit of faith, which grows and is of a synodal Church. And a central charthat, like love, strengthened with time. Here, human selfacteristic of such a Church is that it has is reflected to understanding changes with time and so learned to listen to people who have, in others once we also human consciousness deepens. Let us one way or another, been pushed to the think of when slavery was accepted or the peripheries, in a way that is open to conourselves have death penalty was allowed without any version and action. been shown it. problem. So we grow in the understanding The most devastating trauma of of the truth. Exegetes and theologians World War II came in the form of the help the Church to mature in her own Shoah, the systematic, industrialized and institutionalized murder of over 6 million Jewish people at judgment. Even the other sciences and their development the hands of the Nazis. In 1960, French Jewish historian help the Church in its growth in understanding.”

Jules Isaac sought out Pope John and was received in an Today the Church grapples with another septic wound, audience, a meeting that would have seismic implications for one that has also been compounded by the perennial ignoring the Council and would in some ways provide a prototype for of the voices of people who have been wounded and pushed the vision of Church that Pope Francis calls us toward today. aside by the Church—whether those sexually victimized as Isaac sought out Pope John in hopes that the upcoming children or as adults. In society, we have seen a paradigm ecumenical council would provide an opportunity for a shift in the rise of the #MeToo movement. That shift is course correction, to stave off the possibility of the horrors one from disbelief to belief when it comes to the stories of survivors. The Church’s focus has shifted as well, from the of the Holocaust ever occurring again.

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actions of perpetrators to the harm their behaviors—and their enabling—have caused in so many lives. Something has been taken from victims of abuse that the Church can never repay on our own. The void of injustice that looms before us is deep and vast.

This kind of dialogue requires an abundance of courage, because authentically listening has real implications.

It is not something we should expect to be easy or pleasant. As with the Christian roots of anti-Semitism, we find ourselves confronted by our blind spots, our prejudices and real carnage. But we have already witnessed the undeniable ways in which listening to the voices of abuse survivors has forever changed our Church.

We are called to humility. Authentic humility is not a lofty idea or aesthetic choice. It is living with the crushing weight of the knowledge and reality of your failures.

We are called to be a merciful Church, and mercy isn’t merely a beautiful, benevolent concept. Authentic mercy is something that, like love, is reflected to others once we ourselves have been shown it. The Church of the future will have little choice but to be humbler and more merciful in its treatment of others, because our only hope is to be shown mercy, by our own people and the rest of the world, for our failures.

We are also called to synodality. The Council Fathers envisioned a Church with an active laity helping to lead the way. A strange blessing of the past year has been the overwhelming evidence that lay people haven’t given up on the Church, but are in fact willing to dig in and be a part of the rebuilding.

My prayer is that the next flash of purification experienced by the Church will have its fuse lit at the summit and that it will be the purging of structures and attitudes that foster clericalism and the abuse of God’s children.

Ideally, the synod strives to include marginalized voices in the calculus of the Church’s thinking and decision-making, even at the level of the Vatican. Francis

recognizes the power of this model and has expressed his dissatisfaction with consultation he finds too filtered.

The ultimate fruit of this process is conversion, particularly conversion away from attitudes and behaviors that dehumanize others—whether attitudes towards those outside the Church (as with anti-Semitism), actions that harm our most vulnerable people (as with abuse and clericalism) or both. As Nostra Aetate itself says, “We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God” (No. 5).

What might a “Nostra Aetate moment”—of a bold, transformed witness by the Church—look like for any one of these, or other, issues?

In the wake of massive cultural shifts and led by a pope who insists on the primacy of God’s mercy, the Church should respond to the call to synodality with confidence that the Holy Spirit guides and speaks to us, through our Tradition, through Scripture and through each other. By answering this call, we transform our hearts, ourselves and the entire Body of Christ into something that ever more closely resembles what Jesus Christ wants us to be. ■ Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, C.Ss.R., is the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey.

The original piece, “The Power of Listening to the Peripheries: A traumatized Church can truly embrace the Pope Francis vision and offer a witness that is more accountable to the Gospel,” appeared on the Newark archdiocesan website, www.rcan.org, on February 20, 2019. Reprinted with permission from the Archdiocese of Newark.

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REFLECT

On Not Losing Heart: Catherine of Siena and the Strategies of Prayer and Friendship Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P.

The Catholic Church is no stranger to reform.

Throughout its two-thousand-year history, many holy, creative men and women have risen to the occasion and introduced necessary changes for the health and well-being of the Body of Christ.

Saint Catherine of Siena is one such woman who labored for the institutional Church’s purification and reform during her lifetime. Theologian Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., argues that Saint Catherine’s approach can serve us well today.

in our search for the kind of inner wisdom that can sustain us in our limited, but important, efforts to transform ecclesial and social structures, we would do well to turn to the spiritual classics of our tradition, especially the wisdom of women who were engaged in strategies for change in the Church and world of their own day.

One Christian mystic was the fourteenth-century lay Dominican tertiary Catherine of Siena.

The wisdom that guided Catherine of Siena in her efforts on behalf of political and ecclesial reform is evident in her prayers and letters as well as in the major work of mystical wisdom for which she is known, her Dialogue with Divine Providence. The Dialogue is structured as a conversation in which God replies to four prayers that Catherine, like the widow in the Gospel of Luke, prayed persistently. A closer look at the focus of the fourfold petition that she prayed “without ceasing” can provide insight into the kind of prayer that is needed today if contemporary disciples are not to lose heart on our own journeys.

It may be something of a surprise to note that Catherine’s first prayer was for herself, but it is a clear

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reminder that the call to personal conversion is integral to the vocation of the prophet or reformer. Catherine’s passionate calls for reform in Church and government, as well as her preaching and her ministry on behalf of the poor and the sick, were rooted ultimately in a deeper passion—her desire for God. In her contemplative search for God, however, she came to two clear realizations: the love of God is impossible without love of neighbor, and experience of God brings a deeper self-knowledge that is at once delightful and painful.

This keen awareness of God’s love for every human person and for creation itself was at the heart of all of Catherine’s efforts to reform the Church and the social and political factions of her day. Catherine called for conversion and courage on the part of popes, politicians, political leaders, and even her own mother. But she knew well that she herself was in need of that same transformation.

Her bold criticisms of Church leaders and structures when they failed to incarnate the Body of Christ or to carry out the Church’s mission in the world were grounded in the vocation she had been given to “speak the truth in love.” Catherine never doubted that the Holy Spirit would be faithful to the Church and to Church leaders in spite of their limitations and sinful failures. She prayed faithfully for the reform of “Holy Church,” which she believed to be not merely a human institution, but the Body of Christ at work in the world. That same conviction about the Church’s identity and vocation fueled her calls for reform when ecclesial leaders who, in her words, were meant to be “flowers in the garden of the Church,” were instead “stinking weeds.”

In the Church of the twenty-first century, in which one finds patterns of sexual abuse and financial corruption,

Wikimedia Commons

manifestations of dishonesty and raw ambition among high-ranking Church officials, and a lack of transparency and accountability in aspects of ecclesial structures, Catherine’s love and prayer for a sinful Church and its leaders is not easy to embrace. But it was that love that empowered her to speak so frankly and that enabled those she addressed to hear a call to conversion, rather than simply a harsh judgment. She placed even her strongest critiques of the Church and its leaders in the context of affection, concern, and the possibility of conversion.

Catherine had great respect for hierarchical authority within the Church, but she also believed all members of the Church were called to be obedient to the higher authority that comes from the Holy Spirit, source of all truth. She held herself accountable to Church authorities, but she also criticized explicitly the selection of poor pastors and cardinals for the Church.

Catherine’s prayer for love and of the Church brought clarity and boldness to her calls for reform. She was not concerned about offending others, nor did she limit her speech to what others wanted to hear. She criticized popes and even her dear friends when they did not have the courage of their own convictions. She spoke of being a lover of the truth and a spouse of the truth and had little patience with those she saw as compromising truth in a misguided attempt to “keep peace.”

Catherine respected the fact that the pope and all the Church’s ministers were entrusted with a unique office and responsibility. Yet precisely for that reason she argued that they were in need of consultation and discernment in discovering the truth of God’s will for the Church.

Part of the reason that Catherine was so insistent on the responsibility of all members of the Body of Christ to

speak the truth in love was that she was convinced that no one member, not even the pope, had full access to the truth that rests in God alone. Her prayer for the Church was not only a prayer for the conversion of its leaders, but a prayer that the baptized would realize that we are indeed one body with many diverse gifts and responsibilities.

Catherine of Siena does not offer concrete strategies for ecclesial, social, or political change. But her Dialogue, prayers, and letters do provide strategies for the kind of prayer that is necessary to sustain efforts for reform and renewal of Church and world. Catherine’s ability to call others to conversion was grounded in her desire to grow in self-knowledge and virtue and her love and concern for those whose behavior she criticized. The prayer that sustained Catherine of Siena’s strategies for change widened her vision and tempered her judgments of others, even as it strengthened her voice and empowered bold action. Catherine was a peacemaker, but she never sacrificed truth for a false peace. She desired the unity of the Church and supported even weak leaders of the Church of her day, but that love and desire prompted her frank calls for their reform as well. ■

Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., is a Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

Excerpted from “On Not Losing Heart: Catherine of Siena and the Strategies of Prayer and Friendship,” in Prophetic Witness: Catholic Women’s Strategies for Reform, ed. Colleen M. Griffith (New York: Herder & Herder, 2009).

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THE BIG PICTURE On February 23, 2019, Sister Veronica Openibo, Leader of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, became the second of three women to address the participants at the Vatican’s global meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church (Feb. 21-24, 2019). Sister Openibo, a graduate of Boston College (BC ’01) with degrees in pastoral ministry and social work, delivered a stirring speech to the participants gathered in Rome in which she exhorted them to “have courageous conversations,” to “admit wrongdoing,” and “build more effective and efficient processes...for safeguarding minors.” “Let us not hide such events anymore because of the fear of making mistakes,” she said. “Too often we want to keep silent until the storm has passed! This storm will not pass by. Our credibility is at stake.”

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REFLECT

Many Catholics who lived through the 2002 clerical sexual abuse crisis have been bereft and downtrodden, unable to comprehend how this scandal re-emerged. Author George Weigel proposes a few reasons why the Church is living through another iteration of this crisis—and makes the case for why the Church needs the faithful more than ever.

A Crisis— but Not of Faith George Weigel

recited at Mass on Sundays, Catholics affirm their belief in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” It’s not difficult to imagine hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Catholics in the U.S. choking on that second adjective over the past several months.

Grisly allegations of sexually abusive clergy in Chile, Honduras, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia and the U.S.; the former cardinal-archbishop of Washington unmasked as a serial sexual predator specializing in the degradation of seminarians under his authority; clueless and bureaucratic responses to these crimes from some bishops seemingly incapable of sharing the rage being expressed by their people; unprecedented charges of inattention to sexual abuse against a sitting pope, first leveled by furious lay Catholics in Chile and then by a retired Vatican diplomat; stonewalling in Rome; unhinged polemics across the spectrum of Catholic opinion: where is the holiness of the Church in all of this?

Little wonder, then, that some of my fellow Catholics have taken to the internet and the oped pages, not just to condemn gross failures of Catholic leadership but to confess to a crisis of faith. In this summer of nightmare, with the bad news by no means all out, the gag reflex of many Catholics is entirely understandable.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

in the ancient creed

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But that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, make it a crisis of faith.

The Catholic Church is such a large, fascinating, complex and storied institution, and Catholic life is so focused on institutions like parishes, schools and hospitals, that it’s easy for serious Catholics to lose sight of something quite basic: Catholics aren’t—or shouldn’t be—at Mass on Sunday because they admire the pope of the day, or their local bishop or their pastor. Catholics come to Mass on Sunday to hear what we believe to be the Word of God in Scripture and to enter into what we believe to be communion with God because of Jesus Christ.

Friendship with Jesus Christ is where Christianity begins. To learn from Christ and to be fed by him in Holy Communion is the primary reason for Catholic worship.

If Catholics lose sight of that, the awfulness that has come to light about some of the people of the Church, at all levels of Catholic life, can cause what might seem at first blush a crisis of faith.

Yet much as I share the anger and disgust of my fellow Catholics over what has surfaced these past months, I’d suggest to those imagining themselves in a crisis of faith that they’re experiencing something different: a challenge to understanding what the Church really is. As the Second Vatican Council taught in the first sentence of its most important document, the Church, first and foremost, is about Jesus Christ, the “light of the nations.” Catholics trust Jesus Christ; trust in the institutions of the Church follows from that. And when trust in the Church as an institution is broken—as it has been so many times over two millennia—it’s important to refocus on the basis of Catholic faith, which is trust in Jesus Christ.

This is, in fact, a very old story. Catholics at Mass on Aug. 26 were reminded of it in the Gospel reading they heard. Although it was prescribed for that Sunday by an accident of the Church’s triennial cycle of Scripture readings, it seemed remarkably germane to the present moment.

At the end of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus has caused a furor among his first followers by declaring himself the “bread of life,” on which his friends and disciples must feed. Many found this a “hard saying,” left the itinerant rabbi from Nazareth and “returned to their former way of life.” Jesus then turns to his closest companions, the Twelve, and asks, “Do you also want to leave?” Peter answers in two sentences that every outraged or embittered Catholic today should pause and ponder: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

That conviction is the reason to be a Catholic, the reason to stay a Catholic and the reason to bend every effort to reform the Church as an institution, so that it can be a credible witness to the Lord who offers communion with God and words of eternal life.

Fifteen years ago, during another shattering crisis of Catholic credibility, I was signing copies of my new book after giving a lecture at a Catholic parish in rural Indiana when a young couple approached me. They were much less dour than the figures in Grant Wood’s American Gothic but were remarkably similar otherwise: honest,

hardworking, uncomplicated farm folk. They said, quite casually, that reading the book’s candid description of ecclesiastical corruption and fecklessness, and my proposals for reform, had finally convinced them, after years of indecision, to enter the Catholic Church during what was then the worst crisis in U.S. Catholic history. Why, I asked? Because, they said, any Church that could be this honest about what’s wrong with it had to be based on the truth and on Jesus Christ.

I’ve thought about that couple many times these past months. Their testimony has not only helped sustain me during this annus horribilis. It has, I hope, given me a deeper insight into the nature of the current crisis and what is required for its resolution.

Those of us who believe in God’s providential guidance of the Church must wrestle with the questions, Why is this awfulness going on and what are we supposed to do about it?

My answer, inspired in part by those Indiana farmers in 2003, is that the Church is being called to a great purification through far more radical fidelity to Christ, to Catholic teaching and to Catholic mission. Bishops who have failed in their responsibilities as teachers, shepherds and stewards have typically done so because they put institutional maintenance ahead of evangelical mission. Keeping the institutional Catholic machinery ticking as smoothly as possible, by compromises with truth and discipline if necessary, was deemed more important than offering others friendship with Jesus Christ and the sometimes hard truths the Church learns from Christ.

All that institutional-maintenance Catholicism must now end. There is little holiness there. Throughout the world today, the living parts of the Catholic Church are those where people have embraced Catholic teaching in full and have grasped that being a faithful Catholic means offering others the gift they have been given— friendship with Jesus Christ. These Catholics, who have been stirred to protest but have not been shaken in their faith, are those who will effect the reform the Church needs. They include those bishops, priests and lay men and women who have squarely faced the present wretchedness, who are determined to get answers to the questions that must be answered and who will not settle for that form of institutional maintenance called stonewalling—whether it comes from their local bishop in the U.S. or from Rome.

Happily, those Catholics exist in considerable numbers. This is their moment. ■

George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

Reprinted by permission of Wall Street Journal, © 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. License number 4587670759522.

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Richard Lennan Theologian Richard Lennan argues that the course forward for the Church must be charted by the cultivation of intentional discernment, memory, and Christian hope. Together they will ensure that the Church is moving according to the direction and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

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the renewal of integrity in the Church requires more than individual pieces of reform; it requires broad and deep cultural shifts. To achieve the latter, it will be necessary for the Church to embrace an overarching approach to change, one that can guide the integration of specific changes. Here, the key question is what might provide such an approach.

A principal aspect of a satisfactory answer to that question is that the ongoing discernment of God’s desires for God’s people must become the norm for the Christian community. Broadly speaking, the sole non-negotiable in the life of the Christian community is the obligation to be responsive to God’s Holy Spirit at the heart of the Church. The Spirit promotes only what is conducive to God’s reign and the good of God’s people. Every aspect of the Church’s life, from how we interpret the Scriptures and our forms of worship, to the goals we set for our structures and ministries at every level of the Christian community, must continually find its rationale in relation to discernment of the Spirit.

Discernment is the polar opposite of idolatry. As Pope Francis describes it, discernment “is not a solipsistic self-analysis or a form of egotistical introspection, but an authentic process of leaving ourselves behind in order to approach the mystery of God” for the sake of our mission in the world (Gaudete et Exsultate, article 175).

In urging the members of the Church to cultivate practices of discernment, Pope Francis stresses that discernment “is not a matter of applying rules or repeating what was done in the past, since the same solutions are not valid in all circumstances and what was useful in one context may not prove so in another. The discernment of spirits liberates us from rigidity, which has no place before the perennial ‘today’ of the risen Lord. The Spirit alone can penetrate what is obscure and hidden in every situation, and grasp its every nuance, so that the newness of the Gospel can emerge in another light” (Gaudete et Exsultate, article 173).

Those of us who believe that God’s grace is inextricably linked to the Church, that it does sustain the Church’s mission in history, long for the community of faith to be a transparent witness to that grace, to be a community that reflects thoroughly and consistently

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Richard Lennan is a Professor of Systematic Theology in Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry and Professor Ordinarius.

This is an excerpt from a paper presented at an ecumenical conference, “Health and Integrity in Ministry,” in Melbourne, Australia, in August 2018.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

Photo by Chad Gretier on Unsplash

REFLECT

Guided by the Holy Spirit

the boundless compassion, justice, and reconciliation expressive of the God of Jesus Christ. Even more, we long for that to be true of all of us, every day, and in our every action. The reality of the Church is, of course, otherwise. Nor are the failures of the Church a new story. Nor have the Church’s sins remained only within its own community, but have, indisputably, brought about the sufferings of others. That truth is one that we must never seek to escape or deny.

Remembering, however, is insufficient on its own.

We must remember with intent. Johann Baptist Metz, in the context of discussing the task of theology after Auschwitz, explains what “remembering with intent” implies: “Christian theology must be able to perceive history in its negativity, in its catastrophic essence…If this perception is not to turn tragic—that is, develop into a farewell to history—then these catastrophes must be remembered with practical and political intent” (A Passion for God, 40). Our remembering, then, must drive a commitment to change, must not dissipate itself in either despair or a casual retreat into “business as usual.”

A future for the Church, a future that offers an alternative to self-deception, and a future in which the Christian community might become not perfect, but less equivocal in its witness to all that God enables, will not be the product simply of our willpower, or even our best desires. Rather, it can come only from recovering the hope we have in the crucified and risen Christ, the hope “that does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). This hope is not a soft option.

As a Church we must not turn away from the devastation that clerical sexual abuse and episcopal malfeasance have caused; we must remember it with the intent to reform our community and its ministry.

We must also, all of us without exception, open our own hearts and actions to the transformation that God’s Spirit seeks and empowers. What difference all of this will make, whether it will aid the healing of survivors of abuse, and whether it will enable some reconciliation with the Church for the many people who have walked away in understandable anger and sorrow, we cannot determine or control. Here, we see the radical nature of hope, indeed its poverty, in the face of all that it cannot control. Here too we understand why it is that Christian hope cries out for others and ourselves to the God who alone can heal what human beings have broken. ■

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© Boston College Office of University Communications

Revitalizing Our Church C21 EASTER SERIES

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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

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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. A more comprehensive resource detailing the ideas put forth from this series is available for download at bc.edu/c21revitalize. Full-length videos of each panel are also available for viewing.

GOVERNANCE, LEADERSHIP, AND MANAGEMENT

news is that if a pope is perceived as wanting something, things can change dramatically.

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.

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? What are its values?” you’d get some different answers.

There’s an opportunity for some real clarity. If you want to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation—it’s got to be done with the head, hearts, and hands— getting the heart is the tough part. But if you can articulate a purpose and values that people can connect to, then you can mobilize and galvanize people to do some pretty extraordinary things because they believe in it. I think all of the content is there. But it’s a matter of how bishops and priests react to that. Do they welcome the laity to help?

Maybe one idea is that the USCCB could have a board of advisors that come from different walks of life. You have two things going on: you have the work of God and the business of the Church. To think that clergy has to do all of that might be shortsighted. Or there might be a clergy shortage, so you can’t do it that way. There could be a model that the universities have figured out that might work.

JACK CONNORS, JR. Why does one company work out better than another?

The common denominator is leadership. We have a shortage of leadership. Leadership does not require ordination.

We don’t have to be ordained to take up the gauntlet, to fix that school, to rebuild that church.

Boston College, for its first 109 years, had been run

by Jesuits. President Monan decided that of the 40 members of the board, 34 would be lay men and women who would help figure out the future. The endowment is now $2.6 billion. Is this university any less great because it’s not 100% controlled by the Church? This is a classic example of a partnership that’s been successful.

The Church’s history has had a lot to do with its past rather than its plan for the future. Has anyone seen the business plan for the future of the Church? I don’t think one exists. Success for the future of our faith is a team sport.

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 what 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

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?

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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,

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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.

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 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

Left to Right: Sr. Janet Eisner, SNDdeN Joseph M. McShane, S.J. William P. Leahy, S.J.

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 Fr. 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.

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.

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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 the 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.

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

Left to Right: John Allen, Jr. Matt Malone, S.J. Prof. Michael Pratt Prof. Hosffman Ospino Prof. Kristin Heyer

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©2019 Boston College Office of University Communications, Lee Pellegrini

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 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 evangeliza-

tion 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.

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, 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.

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.

Left to Right: Jack Connors, Jr. ‘63 Denise Morrison ‘75 Chuck Clough ‘64

©2019 Church in the 21st Century Center, Patrick Goncalves

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” be-

yond 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.

to do in my family is have conversations about what we heard in church on the car ride back from Mass. We have a no-tech rule. We just talk. We ask, “What did you hear today? What was interesting to you?” I think that’s helpful.

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.

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.

FINDING AND MAINTAINING EASTER JOY

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.

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

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?” because 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. ■ Access the extended edition of this series at bc.edu/c21revitalize, which features panelists’ insights into themes including The State of Catholicism, Advice for Pope Francis, The Gift of Diversity, The Effect of Polarization, New Ecclesial Models, and Revitalizing Our Parishes.

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The Laity’s Role in the Church’s Mission Michael Sweeney, O.P.

What role can the laity play in the work of revitalizing the Church? Will clergy welcome them to the table? What might a new paradigm look like?

Michael Sweeney, O.P., founder and director of the Lay Mission Project, reflects on how the laity can help the Church move beyond clericalism.

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that every modern conversation begins one step too late. His assertion pertains, unfortunately, when we think of the Church.

Immediately we tend to think of its structure: there are the ordained, the religious, and the laity. According to this reckoning, the laity are defined in a negative manner: they are the ones who are neither ordained nor members of religious orders. If one is a Catholic, and neither ordained nor a religious, then one is lay; it cannot be helped.

There is, as a result, a paradigmatic clericalism within the Church. It is not ill-intended. I would argue that it is not intended at all, but it is present nonetheless. There is a widespread assumption in the Catholic community that, to have any real agency in the Church, it is necessary that one be ordained.

That the laity have no agency in the Church is not magisterial teaching; it is not, in fact, true. Yet it is the paradigm through which we relate to each other and through which we tend to filter our understanding of magisterial teaching. This apprehension is founded on, and fostered by, the common conception that the purpose of the Church is predominantly, or even exclusively, the care of souls. We read in the Second Vatican Council’s decree Christus dominus that “the parish exists solely for the care of souls.” The purpose of the care of souls is personal holiness, our salvation in Christ, which translates in our communal imagination as an invitation to personal piety.

The common conception would seem to suggest that the ordinary vocation of lay men and women is a vocation to be cared for, especially through their participation in the sacraments. That this is the paradigm that governs Catholic imagination is manifested in the fact that lay men and women tend to identify the Church with the hierarchy, and therefore to disenfranchise themselves. g . k . chesterton once commented

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When Catholics say “the Church teaches,” they really mean “the hierarchy teaches,” or when Catholics say “the Church believes,” they tend to mean “bishops and priests believe.” They count themselves out. The Church therefore comes to be identified with the bishops and the ordained. What follows from this improper identification is that, when a bishop is immoral, the whole Church is held to be corrupt.

Clearly, there are problems with this paradigm. First, personal piety is an insufficient basis for witnessing the Faith to others, or even for imparting it to one’s children. There is therefore a widespread presumption in the Catholic community that conversation about the Faith and instruction in the Faith must be left to experts.

Second, this paradigm tends to infantilize one’s relationship with Jesus. The relation is one in which the layperson never acts with Jesus, never stands in his place—a function reserved to the clergy—but merely receives the grace that he affords for the sake of personal holiness. Adult in all other aspects of their lives and secular responsibilities, many Catholics still conceive of themselves as dependent children in their relationship to Christ and the Church.

A half-century ago, at the Second Vatican Council, the role of the laity was taken up for the first time in the Church’s history at an ecumenical council. [Yves] Congar had remarked that, for the ecclesial role proper to the laity to come fully into view, the hierarchy had to come to two realizations: first, there is a world out there; and,

© Boston College Office of University Communications, Lee Pellegrini

Students and faculty engage in conversation at the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College.

second, it is not the Church. The Council, as we well know, added to the care of souls a more fundamental duty of the Church: to incarnate the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ for the sake of the world.

Given that this is, in truth, the single purpose of the Church, then the ecclesial role proper to the laity comes into focus. It is to proclaim the Gospel in every area of secular engagement by transforming the very structures of society according to the plan of God. The laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world; that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven (Lumen gentium, 31).

This suggests a different paradigm, one in which the laity are “co-responsible” with the hierarchy in the Church’s mission. Real co-responsibility would require at least four things. First, if we are really co-responsible for the mission, then we must be equally responsible for it.

The clergy are not more responsible for the mission of the Church than the laity are. Second, if we are co-responsible, then our tasks for the sake of the mission must be seen to have equal dignity.

Third, we must have equal voice in discerning the mission. We must learn to take counsel together and to discuss the way in which the Church’s mission is to be fulfilled in our parishes and dioceses. Fourth, we must learn to exercise mutual accountability for the sake of the Church’s mission. Whereas the pastor has personal responsibility for the governance of the parish, he is nonetheless accountable to our Lord, in whose place he presides. Similarly, in the exercise of their apostolate to the world, lay men and women are accountable, not to the pastor, but to the Lord who has commissioned them.

Together accountable to our Lord, pastor and laity are accountable to each other.

The current crisis of the Church can only be resolved through a new paradigm centered upon the redemptive mission of Christ—a mission for which all of us, lay and ordained, are called to take our place, co-responsible in our participation in the one priesthood of Christ. ■

Adult in all other aspects of their lives and secular responsibilities, many Catholics still conceive of themselves as dependent children in their relationship to Christ and the Church.

Michael Sweeney, O.P., is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Lay Mission Project. He also co-founded the Catherine of Siena Institute and served as President of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (DSPT) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. ​ 2019 Commonweal Foundation, reprinted © with permission. For more information, visit www.commonwealmagazine.org.

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The Opportunity Before Us: © Boston College Office of University Communications

Giving Women a Place at the Table Helen Alvaré

A consensus emerged after the crisis that putting more women into positions of leadership and decision-making would strengthen the Church’s mission-effectiveness and credibility. Legal scholar and Vatican advisor Helen Alvaré argues that for this to become a reality, both the commitment and creativity of those currently in charge will be necessary. The good news is that women are ready and willing to get to work.

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the secular feminism of the latter half of the twentieth century made more than a few just demands, especially in light of the global, historical record concerning women’s dignity. But still it could not be reconciled with a wholly Catholic project for women, including the project of conceiving the work of women in the Church. Even stripped of a few of its most objectionable elements—an intrinsically combative approach to men, the derogation of childbearing, and the championing of abortion—something has always been clearly missing from the secular feminist project.

What is it? Nothing other than the framework, the foundation of any program or philosophy concerning human dignity or anthropology within the Church: a true account of the meaning of life, which is neatly expressed in Evangelium Vitae as being a “gift which is fully realized in the giving of the self,” the giving of self to God, our author, and to every “neighbor,” our sisters and brothers in the Lord who are also “authored” by God. This is the framework, the condition, for every single work in and of the Church, whether by its sons or by its daughters.

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Even if we begin on this foundation, however, more specific conclusions about how to make women’s presence in the Church more “capillary” and “incisive”— in Pope Francis’s words—remain elusive. As a woman who has worked in the Church for about thirty years, I would like to speak about women’s service specifically as Catholics representing the Catholic Church, either as part of some Catholic institution or by speaking publicly in their capacity as Catholics.

First, the Church’s burgeoning material in this arena includes both the language of women’s “rights” and women’s “dignity,” “gifts,” “vocation,” and “genius,” all within the framework of that “service—when it is carried out with freedom, reciprocity and love (as the Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women says), expresses the truly ‘royal’ nature of mankind.” To this set of concepts, Pope Francis adds the line dividing “service” from “servitude.” In other words, reasoned notions of women’s dignity and rights are not independent of the project of women in the Church, even while they must be enacted within the framework of service.

Second, given the service framework, immediately we can see that Catholic women have to eschew standard secular feminist notions such as quotas or identical outcomes for women as for men. In the secular system, these outcomes pose as ends, not just means; but the Church, of course, has different and higher ends.

Third, we have a lot of great theory to work with, es- Fifth, it is quite possible that we will see in the Church pecially from the last fifty years’ treasury of teaching doc- what we have seen in the world in the matter of the uments, and also from female and male theologians and intersection of women’s desires and the needs of others: philosophers and other scholars—lawyers, economists, women may well cluster in certain vocational areas and be sociologists, and so forth. While the theoretical track is less represented in others. I mused to the Washington Post always important, we are right now facing the question a few years ago that my experience heading a commission investigating clerical abuse in a large archdiocese led me of how to realize this theory in practice.

Fourth, and broadly speaking, in the visible, practical to believe that having women, particularly mothers, in world, giving flesh to the image of God as male and fe- the complaint-intake office at a diocese would have male means integrating women into the Catholic project made a historical difference to the Church. This was in the world, regularly in partnership with Catholic men, simply my sense after one year sorting through the abuse and also regularly as an individual voice, depending upon complaints and the diocese’s responses. This will have the work at hand. It is the “great anthropological theme to play out according to women’s gifts and the Church’s of our times,” this theme of the meaning of the two-sexed needs over time. That is the way of true vocations.

Other obvious areas probably include humanity, created in God’s image. medicine, administration, education, Women never achieved in the worlds immigration, and I think law, based of work, politics, media, entertainment, upon what I’m seeing in women in law and business the sort of humanizing, perShould the Church over the last fifteen years. son-centered influence that some secular start down this

Sixth, Pope Francis is confirfeminists claimed women would achieve. path of integrating But should the Church start down this mation that at least one of the pracpath of integrating women into more tical realizations of women’s work in women into more fields of action, it will only—according the world precisely as Catholics will fields of action, it to its own theology—make God more involve the Church moving toward will only—according visible in the world, and offer a revoluwomen, not just women moving into specific roles within the Church. By tionary model for the world to follow. to its own theology— this I mean the following: Pope Francis I won’t go into the details here, of make God more is saying that what women are doing course, but it is easy to imagine that such visible in the world. already—their loving, merciful, pera commitment will require the Church— women and men together—to figure out son-centered ways of working and livhow many women can answer their voing—are what the Church wants to be, cational calls to serve the Church while doing what wom- as an institution with both a Petrine and a Marian face. en have continued to desire even over the last fifty years of In “Catholic speak,” part of discerning a vocation is feminism: assure themselves first that justice is being done at to identify needs lacking adequate responses. The world’s response to Pope Francis indicates the need for the kind home, to their husbands and children.

The amount of coming and going in and out of the of virtues women often manifest, the kind a Church with workforce, flexible hours, job-sharing, benefits-negotiat- a more developed Marian face might manifest overall. ■ ing, and other strategies this may involve could be considerable. This is why it hasn’t been done well in many Helen Alvaré is a Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia places. (But may I say—not exactly modestly—on behalf Law School, George Mason University, where she teaches of women that anyone who has watched forty mothers Family Law, Law and Religion, and Property Law. She is a set up and break down “international food day” at a member of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Catholic high school in less than two hours flat, feeding Life and serves on the board of Catholic Relief Services.

500 boys, caring for each other’s toddlers, serving up food from twenty-five countries, and leaving the school Excerpted from the chapter “Even Our Feminism Must hall spotless in time for first lunch period, simply has be of Service” from Promise and Challenge: Catholic no doubt that women will be of tremendous aid to the Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity, and the Church in figuring out how to get this whole “home and Church, ed. Mary Hasson (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday work” thing sorted out.)

Visitor Press, 2015). Reprinted with permission.

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Forming Our Future Priests In order to bring about a new culture of leadership in the presbyterate, many have argued that the best place to start is with seminaries. In December 2018, Boston College released a report on the priesthood, “To Serve the People of God,” which included concrete recommendations for reforming seminary education and formation. It followed a two-year seminar hosted by the Department of Theology and the School of Theology and Ministry

To Serve the People of God: Renewing the Conversation on Priesthood and Ministry

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“ formation ” summarizes the multi-faceted—human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral—and multi-stage— initial, seminary, and ongoing—process that nurtures the Church’s ordained ministers prior to and after ordination.

The choice of candidates for formation has an impact on every aspect of seminary life and priestly ministry. This fact reinforces the urgency of discernment about the vocation of candidates for ordination.

Pope Francis highlights missionary service as the test of authenticity for all Christians: “the ultimate criterion on which our lives will be judged is what we have done for others. Prayer is most precious, for it nourishes a daily commitment to love.” Accordingly, the community of faith must seek out and encourage candidates who are able to connect their faith with a life of self-giving: “Let the students most clearly realize that they are not destined for a life of power and honors, but to be dedicated wholly to the service of God and pastoral ministry.”

Since diocesan priests must value communion, and be people who seek to unite differences for the sake of a shared discipleship, the capacity for relationship with a variety of women and men should be evident in those entering diocesan seminaries. A principal task in assessing applicants for the seminary, therefore, must be discerning the presence of the human qualities conducive to the building of positive relationships. Psychological screening can make a major contribution to this process of discernment.

Although the seminary is the primary venue for academic and pastoral formation leading to ordination, spiritual and human formation can begin prior to philosophical and theological studies.

Given the demands of contemporary culture, it is imperative that human formation be a priority in the earliest stages of preparation for priestly ministry. Human formation aims at the “affective maturity” that arises from “convinced and heartfelt obedience to the ‘truth of one’s own being,’ to the ‘meaning’ of one’s own existence.”

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and included priests and laity, men and women, scholars and pastoral formators.

In the wake of the revelations about thenCardinal Theodore McCarrick and the release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report, Father Thomas Berg, vice rector and director of admissions at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., took to the Washington Post on the subject of reforming our seminaries.

Excerpts from both the report and the op-ed follow.

Psycho-sexual development is a key component of affective maturity, a component whose importance the sexual abuse crisis has brought into sharp relief. Accordingly, initial and seminary formation must directly promote alternatives to “the celibate cloak of silence” that discourages attention to issues of sexuality. History shows unequivocally that the failure to address such issues has only deleterious outcomes.

One aspect of current programs of formation for diocesan seminarians that warrants serious reconsideration is the relationship between their living situation and the place where they study. Present practice in the United States generally privileges the seminary as the venue for all aspects of formation, thereby separating diocesan seminarians from lay and religious candidates for ministry, even though they are all undertaking similar philosophical and theological studies.

If candidates for ordination study in universities and theological centers with others who are preparing for ministry, this is likely to enhance a healthy future for ministry in the Church, a future in which collaboration and co-responsibility are typical; this could be done while also respecting that the residence of seminarians may be specific to their formation.

This change would introduce diocesan seminarians to the gifts and talents of those with whom they will work as ministers. It would also open them to a greater diversity in theologies and convictions than is likely to be common in diocesan seminaries. This diversity can be enriching; it certainly reflects the reality of the Church in which the ordained will serve.

It is imperative that priests and those in formation for ordination embrace the reality of change and look towards the unknowable future with hope, rather than with anticipatory despair. To meet the opportunities and challenges of the present and the future, priests and the Church as a whole require such hope, which is inseparable from courage, discernment, and an engaged and deep faith in the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the pilgrim community. ■ To read the full report with citations, go to: bc.edu/c21revitalize.

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It Starts with Our Seminaries

a heightened, even unprecedented, level of concern for the well-being of Catholic seminarians.

They rightly wonder, as well, whether our seminaries can not only screen out potential sexual predators, but also rise to the challenge of preparing for life and ministry men who are emotionally mature, and psychologically and sexually healthy. This requires training for contemporary American society.

Young men who feel called to priesthood, although well-intentioned, often have enormous gaps in their prior formation and upbringing. Many lack interpersonal communication skills. Many need basic formation in Catholic teaching. Not infrequently, they need counseling to discover and deal with trauma: “father wounds,” bullying, parental divorce, porn addiction and even sexual abuse.

Added to that, they must acquire qualities and pastoral skills before ordination.

Typically, our seminaries work like this: Upon a chassis of a heavily academic four-year program, we superimpose elements of human, spiritual and pastoral preparation for ministry. In addition, seminary life too often unfolds in the confines of old, cavernous, institutional buildings. Such parameters easily foster isolation, and work at cross purposes to an experience of genuine fraternity and the kind of deep-down formation our men require. This model of seminary is today highly inadequate, and it’s time for bishops to think far outside such boxes.

So what needs to change? First, an overemphasis on academics must yield to a sharper focus on forming candidates who are emotionally mature and have a healthy, well-integrated personality and spirituality. Where focus on personal psychological integration is lacking, space opens for disordered living of precisely the type that has made headlines in recent months.

Second, bishops need to work urgently to ensure that in our seminaries there reigns an inner culture of trust, transparency and honest dialogue between seminarians and the formation team. Seminarians must feel that they can freely, frankly and confidently express to the formation team their concerns about the seminary community, their opinions about the formation process and any other honest apprehension or contribution they want to make in the spirit of honest dialogue.

Third, bishops need to slow down the rush to ordination and consider a minimum age for beginning seminary formation—perhaps 22, with the candidate having a college degree and some work experience. They could then follow up with eight years of formation, beginning with a year dedicated to detoxing from the culture and social media, growth in self-knowledge, prayer and a secure masculine identity. The final year before priestly ordination would be dedicated to intensive fieldwork and pastoral ministry. The delayed maturation process of young men these days is well documented. My years of screening candidates for priesthood confirm that our men

© Boston College Office of University Communications

many catholics share

need ample time to allow life wounds to heal and to grow in a solid, well-integrated interior life.

Fourth, bishops must not assign to seminary priests who lack the skill set and drive to become mentors, role models and moral guides—nuances all captured in the term “formator.” A doctorate in theology does not render a priest automatically suitable for such ministry. Bishops must also demand and provide for the ongoing professional formation of the formators themselves.

Fifth, let’s identify the seminaries that are working hard to get formation right and those that are not. Bishops should convene an independent blue-ribbon panel of seasoned seminary formators to undertake a visitation and review of our seminaries. Bishops should think seriously about either reforming or closing those seminaries that are failing in their mission.

Sixth, the Center for Applied Research on the Apostolate (CARA) annually collects data on the 70 seminaries that serve American dioceses. As reported by CARA in 2017, 11 of those seminaries have 100 or more seminarians enrolled, but one-third have fewer than 50 seminarians. What must we conclude? The United States does not need 70 Catholic seminaries. So, let’s reduce the total number to 15 or 20 regional institutions. Let’s pool and share the best formators to serve as teams in these regional seminaries that offer the quality of formation our times require. ■ Fr. Thomas Berg is a Professor of Moral Theology, Vice Rector, and Director of Admissions at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y. Reprinted with permission from the author. The original version of this article appeared in the Washington Post on October 18, 2018.

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Revitalizing Our Parishes Daniel Cellucci

While there are exceptions to every rule, it is increasingly clear that most Catholic parishes in the United States are going to face hard times ahead, given the rapid disaffiliation of Catholics from institutional religion, the abuse crisis, and other cultural factors. The good news is that parishes that are open to setting aside maintenance for mission are in a stronger position to face the future—and maybe even thrive in it.

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i want to share some of the truths about the landscape we find ourselves in. Most of these truths existed before the summer of 2018, but I believe they have important implications and ties to our recent crisis.

TRUTH #4: WE’RE BRACING FOR A SEISMIC GENERATIONAL SHIFT

Beginning in 1990, we’ve seen a precipitous drop in the practice of the Faith. Marriage is a good leading indicator for baptism, but Catholic marriages are down by 55 percent. But even one in five children who are baptized will not make their First Holy Communion, and two in five baptized Catholics will never receive Confirmation.

Eighty-five percent of those confirmed will leave the Faith by age 21. Many people believe that the young and disaffiliated will come back when they get married, but with marriage rates down, that return rate is not nearly what it was.

One of the projections that we find the Church least prepared for is the seismic generational shift that will affect our country. Of the 22 million Catholic baby boomers, 60% practice their faith today. Only 30% of Gen X Catholics practice their faith. Because the vast majority of volunteering and giving in the Church is done by those over the age of 55, when Gen Xers replace Boomers as parish leaders, we are looking at an estimated loss of $5 billion a year for the U.S. Catholic Church if we continue on similar trend lines.

TRUTH #3: IT’S HARD TO HAND ON THE FAITH

The majority of our institutions and ministries are based on assumptions that are simply no longer true—one being that the family is where the Faith is passed down. That’s

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no longer a guarantee. Many parishes have been trying to fill a void that is impossible for them to fill. What that

has given rise to is a set of mismatched and unmet expectations: for example, one hour of parish-based religious education each week under threat of not being able to play CYO basketball cannot replace daily and intentional formation of children by their parents.

Even Catholic schools can’t fill that void, nor were they designed to in their current format. Many parents don’t feel equipped to hand on the Faith if their own formation wasn’t strong, and some really do believe in their hearts that stretching to invest in Catholic school tuition is the extent of their responsibility to form their children.

Pastors and parish leaders are frustrated, parents don’t see the value in their effort or investment, and the two rarely meet in the middle.

TRUTH #2: PROFILES OF OUR PRIESTS

For most Mass-going Catholics, their practice of the Faith is correlated to their perceptions of their pastor. I am the first to say that leadership matters, but our research has pointed out what I believe to be an unhealthy dependency on our priests. A parishioner today is 11 times more likely to recommend their parish if they like their pastor. Moreover, they are four times more likely to say the parish is helping them grow spiritually if they like their pastor.

At CLI, we administer the DISC profile—a commonly used tool in the corporate world—to a huge population of priests and bishops. Seventy-five percent of our clergy are instinctively wired to be conflict and/or change averse. That doesn’t mean they can’t handle change or conflict, but if they do not have a healthy understanding of themselves, they are much less likely to respond consciously and effectively.

lose everything. The more we try to hold onto things out of fear of loss rather than purpose of mission, we will see stress levels exasperated, debt and deferred maintenance grow, and worst of all, our time will constantly be consumed by temporal issues.

© Boston College Office of University Communications, Lee Pellegrini

FACING THE FUTURE WITH HOPE

I don’t think this is the only explanation for our crisis.

But we need to understand these characteristics of our priests and bishops if we hope to make sense of it. I do know that many of these men can quickly become overwhelmed and paralyzed in the face of great disruption and conflict, and they can make the wrong decision. If our pastors have our confidence, we think the parish is in good shape. But they also need confidence in their decision-making, especially in tough situations.

TRUTH #1: WE’VE GOT ATTACHMENT ANXIETY

One of the pressures I have seen that drives leadership decisions the wrong way is our attachment to “stuff.” I see it on the largest of levels and the smallest of levels. We see the effects of an overextended infrastructure in places like the Northeast that are consolidating parishes. But across the country, whether it’s our Mass schedule or our pet ministry, by and large we, the laity, are resistant to give anything up. We want change, but we don’t want it in our backyards—and when we demand it, we give very little thought to implications. We want the right to our parish but not necessarily the responsibilities.

In my extensive experience onsite, our clergy are change averse, but their primary fear when it comes to change is what our reaction will be. Sometimes that is justified, oftentimes it is an assumed constraint. The reality is we have both a priest shortage problem and a pew shortage problem.

We have to plan for a smaller institutional footprint, not with peril, but with intentionality.

It strikes me that the Early Church had one great advantage—it had nothing to lose but its life. When we think about some of the greatest companies or leaders, they often start from nothing and/or they aren’t afraid to

So what does the parish of tomorrow (and today) require?

Catholic parishes need to reclaim the basic foundational purpose of their existence and embrace a missionary impulse reminiscent of the Early Church. The parishes we have studied that are poised for the future are focused on the Eucharist and a clear purpose—to go and bring people home.

What we call the “Next Generation Parish” is grounded in the Church’s wisdom and present in people’s everyday lives. It is central for those who are seeking and those who are sent out to seek. While it may continue to be headquartered in the parish hall, it can no longer be restricted to a single destination. It must be, as described in The Joy of the Gospel, “capable of self-renewal and adaptivity, living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.” In the Next Generation Parish, the Eucharist is a priority rather than a commodity to be distributed in the most convenient manner possible.

The Next Generation Parish cultivates a community that knows it is a part of the larger Body of Christ. It deepens faith not in buildings, personalities, or structures, but in Jesus. The Next Generation Parish spurs among its members a boundless hope for the potential that exists in those who don’t yet know or follow the Lord.

Catholic Leadership Institute and several other apostolates, institutions, and movements have provided a wealth of research on what makes a parish effective.

Looking across the breadth of what has been surfaced, we believe there are four key drivers to a vibrant parish that lives out its call.

The Next Generation Catholic parish…

• fosters spiritual maturity and a plan for discipleship of its members; • shares leadership and maintains a commitment to a healthy organization; • consistently offers an intentional and excellent experience of Sunday Eucharist; and • most importantly, the pastor and the people embrace a missionary impulse to go out and bring others to know Jesus. ■ Daniel Cellucci is the Chief Executive Officer of the Catholic Leadership Institute.

Excerpted from a speech delivered at the 2019 Legatus Summit and data collected from CLI’s Disciple Maker Index. Reprinted with permission from the author.

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Young Hispanics Are Revitalizing the Church in the U.S. Hosffman Ospino While the institutional Church may need to rely on external sources of expertise for its work of reform, the work of revitalization in the United States is already underway from the inside. Hosffman Ospino argues that key to this enterprise is the growing population of Hispanic Catholics in the United States who are bringing new life—and youth—to parishes, schools, and diocesan ministries.

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gathered in dallas , TX, for four days (Sept. 20-23, 2018), more than 3,400 Catholic leaders—the vast majority Hispanic—met for the highpoint celebration of a fouryear process called the Fifth National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry (a.k.a., V Encuentro). Participants at the V Encuentro national meeting represented the voices of several hundreds of thousands of Catholics who had met in parishes, dioceses and regions to discuss current realities affecting the life of Hispanic Catholics and discern how the institutional Church in this country could better accompany the largest body of Catholics that is redefining its identity.

The atmosphere was electrifying! These Catholics were truly energized. Such energy reflected the depth and quality of their conversations during the years leading to the national meeting. I had the privilege to envision and write many of the resources used during the V Encuentro process.

One of its driving forces was to discern how the Catholic community in this country could respond more intentionally to the needs and hopes of young Hispanic Catholics, especially the U.S.-born generations. More strikingly, though, were the perspective and insight that young Hispanic Catholics participating in the V Encuentro process brought into the conversation.

As soon as the national meeting began, it was clear that these young Catholics were not there to be the object of someone else’s reflection. They were there to let the rest of the Catholic community know who they were— their realities and frustrations—in their own words.

They were there to share their vision for the Church.

They reminded all those present that, as baptized women and men, along with others who share the Faith in Jesus Christ, they are the Church! They brought to life the words that Pope Francis would later write in his 2019 Apostolic Exhortation:

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Access the special edition of C21 Resources, “The Treasure of Hispanic Catholicism,” at bc.edu/c21revitalize.

Dear young people, make the most of these years of your youth. Don’t observe life from a balcony. Don’t confuse happiness with an armchair, or live your life behind a screen. Whatever you do, do not become the sorry sight of an abandoned vehicle! Don’t be parked cars, but dream freely and make good decisions. Take risks, even if it means making mistakes. Don’t go through life anaesthetized or approach the world like tourists. Make a ruckus! Cast out the fears that paralyze you, so that you don’t become young mummies. Live!

(Christus Vivit, n. 143) Revitalizing Presence No conversation about revitalization of Catholicism in the United States would be credible without paying attention to Hispanic Catholics.

We do not have to spend much time imagining what the Catholic Church in the United States will look like tomorrow. Just look at our young Catholic people today.

About 60 percent of all U.S. Catholics younger than 18 are Hispanic. Within the next two decades, these will be the young women and men raising the next generation of U.S. Catholics, supporting our Catholic communities and organizations and building the structures that will allow Catholicism to remain a vibrant voice in our society. Most young Hispanic Catholics live in the south and the west of the country, although they are also present in large numbers in nearly every large city. Hispanics in general are a very young population: they have a median age of 29. About half of all Hispanic Catholics are younger than 30.

It is true that during the last few decades, many young Hispanics have stopped self-identifying as Catholic. Millions of them have joined the ranks of the non-religiously

Edith Aliva Olea, of the Diocese of Joliet, speaks at the V Encuentro. affiliated. A sign of hope, however, is that Hispanics have the strongest retention rate in terms of religious affiliation among all Catholic groups in this country, including young people. What helps such a phenomenon is the (still) strong Catholic character of Hispanic cultures and families, particularly as embodied and sustained by immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. Although 94 percent of Hispanics younger than 18 are U.S. born, millions of them are being raised under the influence of at least one Catholic immigrant adult at home. Investing in Hispanic Catholic families and affirming the religious and cultural values of immigrant adults remains essential to support the Catholic identity of Hispanic Catholic youth.

The presence of young Hispanic Catholics in parishes and dioceses is perhaps the biggest opportunity for ecclesial revitalization. They are there, waiting to be engaged!

They are ready to witness the Faith they received from their parents and catechists. Will we as a Church seize the opportunity? There are about 8 million school-age Hispanic Catholics in our country. What are Catholic schools waiting for? This is not a time to close Catholic schools! On the contrary, it is time to strengthen those that we have, and open many more where these young Catholics live. Many pastoral leaders decry the decline of Catholic youth ministry programs. There are nearly 10 million Hispanic Catholics younger than 18 and about 7.5 million Hispanic Catholic millennials ready to be engaged in our ministries. What are we waiting for?

Priorities for Ecclesial Revitalization During the V Encuentro, and through a survey distributed nationwide, young Hispanic Catholics named—in their own voices—what they considered ought to be the priorities for the Catholic community as it accompanies them with pastoral care and evangelizing zeal. Among the various priorities they named, the following five stand out (I reword them here for brevity):

Photos: iStock, Unsplash, CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn Illustration: C21 Center

1. Intentional and more creative catechesis that engages the lived experience of young Hispanics and leads them to a truly transformative encounter with the risen Jesus Christ; 2. More opportunities to be educated for leadership in the Church and beyond; 3. Spaces to further discern their vocation as baptized women and men, and thus consider opportunities to serve the Church and society in light of that vocation; 4. Hispanic Catholic young people want to be acknowledged and embraced in their communities. They do not want to remain invisible. They do not want to be treated as second-class citizens; 5. Affirm their Catholic spirituality sustained by the best of the cultural, religious and social traditions present in their Hispanic roots. For them, being Catholic in the United States is not antithetical to being Hispanic; in fact, they find it essential. It is who they are!

It seems that with this set of priorities, young Hispanic Catholics offer the Catholic community in the United States an agenda for revitalization. Pope Francis recently reminded the Catholic world that, “To be credible to young people, there are times when [the Church] needs to regain her humility and simply listen, recognizing that what others have to say can provide some light to help her better understand the Gospel” (Christus Vivit, n. 41).

Perhaps it is time for Catholics in the United States to listen to Hispanic Catholic youth and walk with them.

After all, they are a major force shaping the present and the future of U.S. Catholicism. ■ Hosffman Ospino is an Associate Professor of Hispanic Ministry and Religious Education at Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry. He served on the central team coordinating the process of the Fifth National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry.

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A Moment for Young People Q&A WITH JONATHAN LEWIS

Pope Francis made history by convening the first-ever Synod of Bishops on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment. The gathering was organized so that the Church could listen to young adults from around the world and develop a response to their needs, hopes, and desires. Jonathan Lewis, Assistant Secretary for Pastoral Ministry in the Archdiocese of Washington, was one of about thirty young adult auditors to participate.

In this role, he joined bishops and other young adults in small group discussions and offered a four-minute address, or intervention, to all participants. “I was struck by the openness of the bishops to go out of their way to listen and prioritize the voices of young people throughout the Synod process, especially in the small group discussions,” Lewis remarked. “This spirit of listening is something I hope spreads from Rome into our local communities as one fruit of the Synod.”

1. Why was it important for the Church to have a gathering on the faith and vocational discernment of young adults at this moment in history?

Young adulthood is a relatively new social phenomenon.

It wouldn’t have made sense in past centuries to separate out “young people” (ages 16-29) from older adults. So the discussion is important, first, because it seeks to respond to the lived experience of the Church today.

Second, the Synod on Young People followed two synods on the topic of the family. It makes sense after reflecting on the family that the Church look to young people who are in the period of discerning whether or not to enter into family life. And perhaps most obviously, this synod was timely because we are experiencing a dramatic decline in the practice of faith among younger generations of Christians that requires a concrete response from the Church.

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Jonathan Lewis greets Pope Francis during the Synod of Bishops on Young People at the Vatican.

2. What are some concrete action items you will implement in the Archdiocese as a result of the Synod?

One of the key themes from the Synod we are discerning is how to leverage the potential of spiritual mentor relationships in the life of our communities. Almost all of us can look back in our lives and identify the key presence of a spiritual mentor. Yet we hardly see intergenerational mentorship at work in parishes today.

There are countless touchpoints for mentors to engage young people: professional mentoring, coaching, marriage preparation, baptism preparation, R.C.I.A., new parishioner registration, service outreach, small group ministry, men’s and women’s ministry, etc. We are exploring practical ways to help parishes increase the number of young people and church elders in friendship and mentorship relationships. We have seen from experience that these relationships help young people stay engaged and grow in their faith and help to renew the faith of elders at the same time.

3. What are some practical things that Church leaders can do to empower young adults in the work of revitalizing the Church?

Engaging young people in revitalizing the Church is the work of encountering young people, knowing them by name and forging friendships with them, not simply offering them programs.

I think Church leaders can cultivate this culture of encounter with young adults by: • hosting a one-day “synod” with people of all ages, discerning how their local community can empower young people; • increasing the number of young adults on councils and committees where real decisions get made; • finding ways for local clergy, religious, and lay leaders to spend less time behind their desks and more time in coffee shops and restaurants engaging young people where they are; and • hosting accompaniment training for Church leaders as well as spiritual direction training for clergy and lay leaders.

But you don’t need a special title to have a powerful impact on young people. I would challenge every Catholic to get to know one young person by name and to invest in a mentorship relationship with them. Buy them a cup of coffee or invite them for a home-cooked meal.

Listen to their story, encourage their dreams, and offer wisdom from your experience.

4. The Synod took place in the wake of the “Summer of Sorrows,” when the global sexual abuse crisis re-emerged.

How did this shape the Synod?

It was humbling to experience the catholicity of the Church in such a practical way at the Synod. Every bishop and layperson brought with them the hopes, joys, and sorrows of their people. My friend Safa from Iraq talked about his friends being murdered in church bombings and the reality of Christian persecution in the Middle East.

Many bishops talked about the harmful impact of global migration on millions of young people and on the people who remain in countries in conflict. And, of course, those of us from the U.S., Germany, Chile, and other affected countries talked about the scourge of the sexual abuse by clergy and the loss of trust that many young people have in the Church.

All this is to say that the sexual abuse crisis certainly impacted the conversation in the large group and small group discussions, but it did not take center stage. Many bishops and laypeople (myself included) made pleas in the Synod hall for the Church to address this, and I believe those interventions opened the eyes of many participants from other parts of the world where scandal has not taken place or garnered attention.

5. The major narrative about young adult Catholics is that they are leaving the institutional Church and religious practice in large numbers. Can young adults help to reengage their peers? Is there a story to be told about young adults who are still engaged and ready to be leaders?

Absolutely. In his recent Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Christus Vivit, Pope Francis said, “I want to state clearly that young people themselves are agents of youth ministry” (203). Pope Francis spends significant time earlier in the exhortation telling the stories of young saints in Scripture and in our Catholic Tradition whom God called to do extraordinary things. His point is that God still calls young people to be saints today. Peers know best how to evangelize their peers but they need to be given training and practical support to do so.

My experience is that young people evangelize best when they have mentors who walk alongside them to challenge, encourage, and offer practical wisdom. I love the closing paragraph of the exhortation when Pope Francis says to young people: “The Church needs your momentum, your intuitions, your faith. We need them!

And when you arrive where we have not yet reached, have the patience to wait for us” (299). ■ For more on young Catholics, read the C21 Resources magazine “A Hope to Share” at bc.edu/c21revitalize.

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Home: Where Jesus Lives Katie Prejean McGrady

Photos: Unsplash/Illustration: C21 Center

In light of the disaffiliation of young people from the Church and the effects of the sexual abuse crisis, many parents are wondering what they can do to pass on the Faith to their kids so that it sticks.

Katie Prejean McGrady argues that it’s the little things in the home that make a big difference.

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last june , i found myself sitting next to Cardinal Joseph Tobin on a bus in Florida. I had just addressed the general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about my experience at the pre-synod meeting in Rome in March of 2018, and we were all headed to Mass at a local parish. Over the course of the half-hour bus ride, Cardinal Tobin and I talked about a lot of things: a new company that made Catholic socks, our favorite books, recently watched TV shows and our families. As the oldest of 13 children, Cardinal Tobin had a number of stories about his siblings and their kids—how loud family gatherings were and the nicknames his nieces and nephews had given him over the years.

As we talked, he said, “You know, Katie, the thing my mother is most proud of when it comes to us kids— most of us have professional degrees, we’re well educated and successful—but all 13 of us are still Catholic. She is proudest of that.”

Knowing the statistics of disaffiliation, the decline in Church attendance over the years, the emptying of the pews in just the past decade alone, I was shocked.

“How?” I blurted out. “Forgive my bluntness, Cardinal, but what was the ‘secret sauce’ to keep you all Catholic? What did your parents do?”

Cardinal Tobin took a long pause, then replied: “I think for all of us, the Church has always just been home.

And you don’t leave your home.”

That brief conversation on a bus last summer is etched into my mind, especially in light of the scandals that have rocked our Church these past few months. In the moments when I have not wanted to go to Sunday Mass, I hear, “You don’t leave your home.” When I have wanted to skip daily prayer or avoid having a conversation with a priest or take off the crucifix pendant hanging around my neck, I hear, “You don’t leave your home.”

In the face of great pain and scandals, it is healing and helpful to think of the Church as home.

But perhaps I am lucky to be able to think this way.

I do not feel out of place in the Church. Even when I go to a new parish, surrounded by total strangers, with a priest I’ve never seen and songs I have never sung, I feel at home. There is the familiarity of where to find the tabernacle, when to sit, stand and kneel, where to put my hand when I walk through the door, searching for the holy water font, looking for the candles burning in front of a statue of Our Lady.

My deep-seated love for the Church began with what surrounded me in my own home growing up: the art on the walls, the nativity sets displayed at Christmas, the crucifix hanging in our kitchen, right next to the refrigerator, so that every time you went to grab a glass of milk, there was Jesus, staring at you from the cross.

The Church is my home because my home was a domestic church.

My parents are not theologians. My mom is an accountant and my dad a director of bank security. They

did not raise us in a mini-seminary, and they could not explain the ins and outs of the sacraments (nor would I expect them to). But they are good, salt-of-the-earth, hard-working, everyday Catholics who brought me and my sister to Mass on Sunday, sent us to youth group events, led us in grace before meals each night and encouraged us to be unafraid to ask questions and talk about our Catholic faith. They attend morning Mass every day, go on retreats and serve as mentors to engaged couples in our parish. They have rosary beads in their pockets, crosses around their necks, holy cards stuck in the dashboard of their cars and Catholic art adorning the walls of their home.

The deep faith of my adulthood was born out of a very rich experience of the simple Catholic living that surrounded me as a child.

Now that I have a daughter, the thought of raising children in the Faith and “building the domestic church” can be intimidating. There is a fear that my husband and I are doing something wrong or that we are not doing enough or that our children will someday become part of the disaffiliated “nones” that swear off the Faith and hate Catholicism because it was forced on them or does not make rational sense anymore.

But the best way to build the domestic church and to quell those fears is not necessarily by doing anything other than simply being faithful Catholics ourselves. Our personal witness to the Catholicism we love can and does deeply enrich the lives of our children. The objects we place in our home that call to mind our faith imprints the images of our Church into their hearts and minds. The simple conversations we have about what we believe will be remembered for years and carried into adulthood.

Pope Francis recently told a group of parents, “The important thing is to transmit the Faith with your life of faith: that they see the love of the spouses, that they see the peace of the house, that they see that Jesus is there.”

The domestic church is not constructed in a day but built up over time, growing with the family through the witness of the parents, the things filling the house and the conversations encouraged and shared. The Faith is not simply learned and memorized. It is transmitted. It is experienced. It is witnessed and then loved and then lived. It is in those homes, where faith is visibly lived and loved, that the Church becomes a home one would never leave. ■ Katie Prejean McGrady is an international speaker, educator, and author. She participated in the Vatican’s pre-synod gathering of young people in March 2018 as a delegate of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

This article was reprinted from America, January 22, 2019, with permission of America Press, Inc., © 2019.

All rights reserved. For subscription information, call 1-800-627-9533 or visit www.americamagazine.org.

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non-profit organization u.s. postage

pa i d boston, massachusetts

permit no. 55294

FEATURED FALL 2019 PROGRAMS

REVITALIZING OUR CHURCH The speaker series continues this fall, with three upcoming conversations focused on:

• Revitalizing our parishes • Reengaging young people • Reawakening all vocations Full program details will be announced on the C21 website in late summer

ESPRESSO YOUR FAITH WEEK September 23–27, 2019

DRAWING GOD BOOK LAUNCH September 18, 2019 12:00pm | Gasson Hall 100

This week celebrates the gift of God working in our lives.

Students will have many opportunies to discover spiritual practices and campus resources to grow in faith.

Karen Kiefer’s new children’s book hopes to get the world talking about and drawing God. Learn more about the inspiration behind the book.

An online programming schedule will be available in early fall.

To register, visit bc.edu/c21drawinggod

FEATURED RESOURCES TRIM

Agape Latte *Vistaprint is not responsible for guides layer left in customer’s document

AGAPE LATTE Agape Latte is a national faith-storytelling series, started at Boston College, that shares personal narratives in comfortable settings to offer transformative life lessons.

FAITH FEEDS This new program is for individuals in parishes or other Catholic communities who are hungry to share faith conversation over a potluck meal with old and new friends.

GODPODS This podcast series shares conversations about our Church, our Catholic faith, with featured guests. Drawing from Ignatian spirituality, GodPods helps you find God in all things.

Visit agapelatte.org for more information.

To host a Faith Feeds, visit bc.edu/c21faithfeeds

Listen on bc.edu/c21godpods

Visit bc.edu/c21 38

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