An institutional Church in a world that doesn't trust institutions
Hey everyone,
Well, I said “late January,” and I’m sliding in at the last minute.
I have been doing a lot of reading, but I’ve been a little intimidated about getting back to posting my ideas regularly. Anyway, I’m back. I just got off zoom with my thesis advisor and I feel ready to go.
Today I’m thinking about institutions.
It seems like the Vatican II / John Paul II era envisions priests and lay people working together to further the kingdom of God (or however we want to term it) -- in response to the widespread practice of lay people as passive recipients of what the priests offer.
R. R. Reno, in a reflection on what the Church ought to be post-McCarrick, argues that all the best Catholic stuff these days is not coming from parishes or dioceses but from lay groups (who often have a priest chaplain, the blessing or at least permission from the bishop, etc.). This tracks with my own experience -- in general, the parish and diocesan events are not especially helpful for me, and if I want to grow in my spiritual life or learn more about the faith, my instinct is to get a book recommendation from a friend or attend an event organized separately from the institutional Church. I think it’s worth discussing a vision for what this relationship between lay people and priests / the institutional Church ought to be.
My thesis director said he had recently heard that in the early 20th century, the model was the parish as the engine and the parishioners as the fuel, whereas today the model is the parishioners as the engine and the parish as the fuel. If the parish is the engine, the parishioners staff the catechism classes and donate to pay for the boiler and iron the altar cloths, and the parish as an institution is a force in (local) society, and this is how the kingdom of God is furthered in the particular locality. The hungry are fed, the poor are clothed, the people have the good news preached to them, etc. But if the parishioners are the engine and the parish is the fuel, it looks like this: the parishioners are fed (fueled) by communal worship and access to the sacraments and whatever else the parish offers, and they go out into the world and bring the kingdom of God to the hospitals and law firms and landscaping companies where they work, to their families and neighborhoods, etc.
This brings up two pieces worth considering:
Does the structure or model need to remain the same as culture changes? History seems to indicate otherwise. The Church has existed in many different cultures. It’s existed under persecution and as European Christendom; it’s blended with civil government and been separate. Through all of it, the basic core/skeleton structure has remained the same (i.e. there’s a pope, there’s bishops and priests), but the way it interacts with the world changes according to the circumstances. So if the relationship of lay to parish is changing due to the circumstances of our world being different from the circumstances of the early 20th century, that in itself isn’t bad, I don’t think.
Building on that: what does (can? ought?) an institutional church look like in a world that doesn’t like institutions? I would say, millennials and younger generally don’t trust institutions. It isn’t just religious institutions -- we also don’t join the Lions Club like our grandparents did. So, I think it’s worth considering what this means for the Church and particularly for the laity. The structure of the Church isn’t going to disappear; we will still have the priesthood. But maybe it does make sense that the parish as an institution is no longer at the forefront of the work of building the kingdom of God.
Does Reno’s assessment track with your experience, too, or am I an exception?
What do you think of the engine/fuel analogy? Where do you see it working, not working, or in tension?
The Church is never not going to have (be) an institution. But in a world that doesn’t trust institutions, how should the Church operate? What do you see that’s working well or not well?
(edited 7 p.m. 1/28/25 to fix typos)
Responses:
1) As a Protestant, I have to point out that you don't take this point nearly far enough. There wasn't even a Pope - I would argue at all, but certainly not in the imperial sense inherited from Gregory the Great - for several hundred years. Similarly, while I can't recall off-hand the date of the change, the Roman church has decided that the Apostle Paul's injunction that bishops ought (in general) to be married can be ignored and celibacy mandated instead. If modern Roman Catholic institutional arrangements are legitimate, this necessarily requires that the Church has the power to re-arbitrate even Scripture-based organizational practice. (Of course, I think quite a bit of the Roman Catholic institutional accretion isn't legitimate, but that also has nothing to do with whether it's considered suitable by the surrounding culture.)
2a) Let's define "parish" broadly as the practice of Christians living with the people they worship with. I admit that this has been almost entirely - and wrongly - abandoned by American Protestants; but it doesn't seem to me that Roman Catholics are much behind us in practice. Even for Protestants - despite the glorification of individual conscience - I think it's mostly accidental: you live one place, work some distance from home, have to shop in a third place, and even the closest church may be off in yet a fourth direction. I'm not sure the individual's responsibility to pursue geographical life integration - actually I think this is a weakness of mine - but it seems like the church as a body ought to, as much as possible, live full lives together and the Church's institutions and clergy ought to actively encourage this goal and not merely leave it to lay efforts - without denying that the laity will in fact have to do much of the work and even instigate at times. Overall, I think the goal is to reinvigorate institutions, not shrug off their loss as simply humanity moving on to some kind of new phase.
2b) I'm not sure about the descriptive accuracy of the engine/fuel analogy, but I don't like it at all as an aspirational one. I suspect the fuel:engine::parishioners:parish analogy may be descriptively accurate for the 20th century, as it mirrors the secularization of the American Protestant churches during the same time period. By "secularization" I mean the Church trying to leave God out of the equation. The "fuel" of the Church must Christ. If I want to extend my correction, I might say Christ is the fuel and the Spirit is the engine. The clergy are the guidance mechanism for our machine - that is, while they are of course crucial to proper progress of the Church, they provide no motive power on their own - and the laity the actual machinery. In this analogy and consistent with what I said above the organization of parishes (or any proposed alternative) ought perhaps to be considered the frame? It doesn't, maybe, really do much by itself, but try doing anything without it!
1. I tend not to look to the institutional church for spiritual friendships and growth. I have a prayer group that meets in my home, and I started a book club in the parish because I wanted one. Other women's ministries in the parish have been started and are run by lay faithful who saw the need and made a plan to meet it. Except for RCIA run by a deacon and one 20-minute prayer service weekly run by our associate priest, clergy isn't involved in anything fostering spiritual growth. It's all done by the laity.
2. Our parish is focused on the personality and preaching/teaching skills of our pastor. He is amazingly gifted at bringing people to Jesus through his preaching and teaching. Reconciliations is celebrated with enthusiasm. However, the daily life of the parish is run by the laity - and we do a good job helping each other grow in our faith. I don't think our pastor really knows what else is going on in the parish besides his preaching and teaching ministries. I feel like the engine and the fuel are in 2 different vehicles running side-by-side. It seems to be working, however.
3. In a world that doesn't trust institutions, our parish's ministries are just what the doctor ordered. Our pastoral staff does not lead at all in meeting the fellowship and educational needs of the laity. All our ministries are run by the laity. Most have grown up organically by lay people who have seen a need and gathered people together to run the needed ministry.