St Paul was asked this same question by our Lord when he was on the road to Damascus. Stubborn and hard-heartedly willful, he was ready to forcefully repress the bold and ostentacious moves of God because of his position in the “golden snood” of the-then contemporary religious tradition and zealously proud conventional thought-patterns held high and strong by those in authority. I’m saddened to say it in some ways because I would rather not have to say it as I would rather things be as God would ideally want them for us all. But as sure as “nature calls” on each of us in daily life, so does the unavoidable move of God’s Spirit make it clear to us in and through the depths of our hearts, and often at pivotal times in our lives, that there is a change so necessary, that we’d be fools not to welcome it. Hence, the deep-seated interior conviction to call-out the spiritual tepidity and laziness engulfing parish life at large here within Oceania’s Catholic scene.

I know that for those who’ve read this blog many times over, you will have realized how much of a call-out freak I actually am. And btw, I am not doing it to simply get ‘a kick’ out of being hyper-critical. Actually, as I already pointed out, I would rather not have to do this but the Spirit beckons me on and my conscience tells me in a still small voice that I would be grieving the Holy Spirit if I were to remain silent. So here it is again, although verbalized somewhat differently to the last time I called this out:

Our Holy Mother Church is going through an unprecedented crisis and this crisis is symptomatized by long painful birth pangs because she is on the verge of casting off the old man of the pre-Exchanged Life for putting on the new self alluded to by St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians 4 : 1-30.

In fact, this passage has all the highly nutritious meat in the sandwich so to speak…Just look at it will you! 😆

Unity in the Body
(Cf: Psalm 133:1–3; 1 Corinthians 1:10–17)

As a prisoner in the Lord, then, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have received: with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, and with diligence to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Now to each one of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. This is why it says:

‘When He ascended on high,
He led captives away,
and gave gifts to men.’

What does “He ascended” mean, except that He also descended to the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the very One who ascended above all the heavens, in order to fill all things.

And it was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for works of ministry and to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head. From Him the whole body, fitted and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love through the work of each individual part.

New Life in Christ
(Cf: Colossians 3:1–17)

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more. But this is not the way you came to know Christ. Surely you heard of Him and were taught in Him—in keeping with the truth that is in Jesus— to put off your former way of life, your old man, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be renewed in the spirit of your minds [and hearts]; and to put on the new man, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another. “Be angry, yet do not sin.” Do not let the sun set upon your anger, and do not give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing good with his own hands, that he may have something to share with the one in need. Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up the one in need and bringing grace to those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Why! It has all the beautiful content that enblazons yesterday’s Gospel message. That message was emblazoned with all the mighty stuff contained therein the passage above. And “this is why it says:

‘When He ascended on high,
He led captives away,
and gave gifts to men.’

What does “He ascended” mean, except that He also descended to the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the very One who ascended above all the heavens, in order to fill all things.”

For Jesus, in fulfilling Isaiah 61, did it by way of descending into the realm of the dead at the glorious Easter tide to set the prisoners free as well as right throughout His earthly ministry, by giving due diligence to this holy mandate in the temporal when He did all manner of good works by healing all who were ill and oppressed under the power of the Devil. And in this passage too, we get the allusion to the strident symbolism of Christ’s baptism.

Therefore, in view of this, we are called upon to not only renew in ritual dedication, our baptismal promises but also to live these out. And it is precisely the living these out which has for the most part, been sorely absent from the mainstream life of the parish in the contemporary era, and this is most poignantly felt here in the Australian context. It is not enough for parish life to merely be linked to schools for as surely as those educational paths are completed, the students move on and their involvement is no longer embraced and support is no longer given. The culture such a limited set-up promotes is too transitory to keep people rooted firmly in a vibrant faith-life. People are moved on to drift aimlessly and this is all because of the laxity in keeping community together. And sure enough, behind this is a philosophy of giving wings to enable emergent youthful lives to fly, and hopefully to flourish. But the question needs to be asked, to “fly where, to flourish how?” Failure to ask this question leads all-too frequently to the family unit, the family life being okay with “drifting”, and only because, that supposedly is built upon respecting freedom of choice through honouring the “free will” of the person. The danger however lies in the lack of wholesome variety of faith-life initiatives in the parish setting. The gross disparity of potentials for new involvement and building up of relational bonds and strong roots based upon faith formation has become synonimous with the highly secularized culture prevailing in contemporary parish life.

Therefore, there needs to be activity options within parish settings that purposefully draw people together so that proper fellowship and brother/sisterhood develops between attendees. It’s no good for parishes to only make available seniors activity groups, youth groups or bingo for while it is important to have activities for the senior members and school-aged kids, why scale back everything so that there is nothing else but these or bingo? It is an unfortunate trend nowadays that most parishes only provide these activity streams. For one thing, may I ask what does bingo do to foster one’s relationship with God and others through Him? It seems to me that rather, it serves only to embolden a go-and-play-pokies mentality over and above anything else for the secularity of parishes that provide only these types of social outlets and activities are for the most part dead spiritually, except for the liturgical rites that happen as a matter of necessity.

Inasmuch as these rites are vital, the complementarity of a solid variety of ongoing in-person faith formation initiatives (besides RCIA) is equally necessary, to ensure that the spiritual (and extending from that), relational nourishment within parish life is NOT sorely overlooked, compromised, and resultantly forsaken. What needs to happen is a reinvigoration of activity zeal centered around the positive interrelational building up of the spiritual and fraternal life within and between each person who attends, much like that which is encouraged and fostered within seminaries. That said, these activities and ministries should be optional but participation ought to be boldly encouraged – that is, enthusiastically encouraged, not coerced. I am all for things like language classes in say, parishes where there is a tradition of certain cultures underpinning them. For instance, St Clement’s of Rome in Melbourne’s outer Eastern suburb of Bulleen has had a strong Italian participatory background and so they should hold Italian language classes for people interested to learn. Other things could be walking & sight-seeing groups for those who love doing bushwalks and that sort of thing. Perhaps combine those activity groups with a faith-formation practice such as cojoining prayer & catechesis on a regular basis where participants meet fortnightly for group prayer, relational building & bonding, encouragement & support. There can also be book clubs centered around reading and talking about good, solid, faith-centered stories such as lives of the Saints or sacred music and art. And these groups should be encouraged to hold retreats and outings too. All of this will make parish life revitalized and switched-on to the powerful move of the Holy Spirit. To withhold this kind of thing on a chronic basis is equivalent to stripping people of opportunities for positive empowerment that they may not otherwise have.

To presume every person who dares set foot inside a Catholic parish has a family life that is all together, healthy, and spiritually envigorating is a far-flung presumption at best and a ghastly turning of a blind-eye to the reality of brokenness within the Church and world around us at worst. The wishy-washy excuses as to why on the whole parishes do not provide all these pastoral helps and growth/resilience initiatives seemingly boil down to the widely held belief and misconception at-that, that providing these would be taking away the sacrosanct role and autonomy of family life in these areas. But this is nothing short of a modern-day myth borne out of the tragic left-over vestiges of a by-gone era when things were on the whole much more culturally coherent and less secularized, one in which families were much more together and switched on to living their lives through the providential guiding lens of faith, hope, and charity.

Since the late 1960s, there has been so much more rupture in both the core and at the seams of family and community life generally. It is a sad fact that due to an overwhelming prevalence of collective denial within the Church hierarchy and broad-base membership generally that this rupture has in fact even directly entered and affected very personally and sometimes, very tragically, the lives of some less fortunate ones in the Church on multiple levels. Therefore, such excuses as to why parishes need not be so centered around faith and community building, are indicative of an unwillingness to acknowledge the painful transigient reality we are in here and now. It stems in part from a covert denial to face the reality that there is a far greater need for amplification in the quality of pastoral care due to the incessant rise in socio-relational dysfunctionality coupled with a seriously steep decline in religious fervour due to an insipid culture of diluted faith, leaning more towards being reliant upon the dictates, ‘wisdom’, and practical solutions afforded by secularism – the world out there. And alot of this has to do with the Church hierarchy on a local level having “passed the buck” of responsibility for the holistic care of the flock to the secular realm. We have the classic example of mental health problems becoming bigger and more complex and yet the Church hierarchy chooses to trust more and more foolishly, the so-called ‘expertise’ of secular health professionals.* When you consider that these professionals are more concerned with pay-rises than with the actual care of their patients (re: the recent Sydney walkouts)¹, exactly how reliable and truly caring from a Gospel-centered perspective is this whole agenda? To “pass the buck” of shepherding the flock to the realm of secular science and profiteering-solutioneering is not what the Church should be doing. Meanwhile, various intra-Church administrative cliques continue to pat themselves on the back by justifying this passing of the buck as dispensing of excess workload while they simultaneously claim they are still holding the fort through ‘care’ provision via agencies like St Vincent de Paule and Catholic Care.

To be frank, when I read the St Vincent de Paule mission statement, I was enthralled to read something that sounded like it was directly inspired by the spiritual charism of Bl Frederic Ozanam himself. However, when I made a call to them for help, they told me (contrary to the impression given by their mission statement), that they do not provide pastoral care or spiritual help. They do not do faith formation either and yet, Bl Frederic Ozanam’s founding of the St Vincent de Paule Society was deeply rooted in providing for spiritual and material wellbeing through a very personal empowering of those who were marginalized from the Church and society generally. I got the shock of my life to discover that this, what is supposed to be a charitable arm of the Church, is no longer operating along the same lines that its founder implemented and actualized. Instead, it has turned into a shameless replica of other secular social service organizations like Apex and Co. The same has to be said of the Archdiocesean welfare arm, Catholic Care (formerly Catholic Social Services). This body is so miniature compared to the size, depth, and breadth of need that is out there. There is no steering committee made up of people with lived experience in either addiction problems, mental/spiritual health issues or a combination of these. There are no social workers or group therapy options either to help people develop spiritually healthy awareness of their mental health conditions and no on-going pastoral care options for people to receive spiritual guidence, direction or counselling from pastors, chaplains, ministers or religious sisters or brothers. They only provide exactly in the same roles and format the kind of “regular help” available through secular social services. Apart from the name “Catholic” in their official title, there is practically no difference. How do I know this? Why, personal experience of course!

Therefore, my dissatisfaction with the trendy unwillingness to welcome positive change and corrective empowerment within the Church does not ride on the waves of political correctness. Rather, it rides on the tidal wave of change and transformation that is upon the Church and through her, in due time, the world. I am a zealous advocate for the changes that are coming since in these changes is to be found the voice of God beckonning us to divest ourselves of hardness of heart and instead harken our ears and hearts to His Word, His Way, His Salvation. Way too many resist change out of fear of the unknown but Jesus says to you “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” (Acts 26 : 14c) Hence, it would do many well to remember St Paul’s own conversion and draw inspiration from the feast we just celebrated last Saturday, aptly commemorating this marvelous event. Jesus told Saul (St Paul) this because He wanted him to understand that against the move of the Holy Spirit, he can do nothing. In fact, resisting necessary change will only make things more difficult for those who resist it.

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Key Words:

Parish Life, Oceania, Mental Health, Pastoral Care, Spiritual Charism, Community-Building, Positive Empowerment.

Additional References:

*https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/261503/exorcists-9-practices-to-avoid-when-fighting-the-devil?utm_campaign=CNA%20Daily&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8HLFR4a_ncF5WLTTx_XG0BkGORUT4RUtrjmDMWk7nlbMtc5nuvrOFV-Gc1d62CZVq2L1F3G1gArtvCSZhMyPANltf3Vg&_hsmi=342204741&utm_content=342204741&utm_source=hs_email

¹https://www.medicalrepublic.com.au/psychiatrists-mass-resignation-ethical-and-very-very-brave/113561