The Catholic Current XX
[0] Imagine you're working for a company and you go to the office manager and say, look, we're losing customers every day.
[1] No matter what we do to recruit customers, we can't keep them.
[2] I don't know how we're going to stay in business much longer.
[3] And the manager just looks at you, nods, and just goes back to shuffling papers.
[4] It wouldn't be hard for you to think.
[5] Gosh, this person isn't taking this very seriously, doesn't really care, maybe has another source of income, but this isn't going to work, and maybe it doesn't deserve to work.
[6] Imagine a job like that.
[7] Now imagine the same situation, but it's a church.
[8] You say to your church manager, your pastor, your parish secretary, your fellow Christians, We're losing people.
[9] We're losing old people.
[10] We're losing young people.
[11] Our congregations are shrinking.
[12] We've got to do something different.
[13] Can we talk about this?
[14] Now imagine everybody shrugs and just starts shuffling papers again, getting ready for the next day, the next Sunday.
[15] What would you do?
[16] What should you do?
[17] Hi, I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host every day at The Catholic Current via the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network.
[18] Let's take a closer look.
[19] I'm glad that you're here.
[20] I had a friend, we'll call him Pete, and with all the goodwill and all the good intentions in the world, he decided to accept an invitation to teach the confirmation preparation class for the kids at his parish.
[21] I bit my tongue.
[22] What I wanted to say to him was, oh, Pete, you sweet, sweet summer child.
[23] You have no idea the heartache and disappointment that you signed yourself up for.
[24] But my guardian angel put its wing over my mouth and I didn't say anything.
[25] Several months later, I get a frantic call from Pete.
[26] As it turns out, on Saturday, all the kids were confirmed.
[27] They all received the graces of the Holy Spirit.
[28] The bishop was there.
[29] Photographs were taken.
[30] All the boxes were checked.
[31] All the paper was filed.
[32] All seemed right with the world.
[33] And the very next day, Sunday, all the people who had just been confirmed in the faith and sealed.
[34] with the Holy Spirit, based on the witness and testimony of their formators and their confirmation sponsors, they were all no -shows at Sunday Mass. How did that happen?
[35] He was surprised.
[36] Sadly, I was not.
[37] But the next day, he went to the director of religious education and said, this is a disaster.
[38] They've treated confirmation as graduation.
[39] They all left.
[40] They didn't come back.
[41] Apparently their parents had no say or no influence on them.
[42] What are we going to do?
[43] Should we resign?
[44] We've got to tell the pastor.
[45] Maybe he should declare a fast, have a town hall meeting.
[46] We need to tell the bishop, oh my gosh, we'll have to resign.
[47] And she just looked and shrugged and said, well, you can't force them.
[48] And then went back to doing the paperwork to prepare for next year's confirmation leading to graduation.
[49] Now, it's true you can't force them, and we shouldn't force people, but here's my question.
[50] You can't force them, but can you attract them?
[51] Can you attract them and maintain them?
[52] Can you live a life such that people will point and look and say, wow, what got into him?
[53] I want some of that too.
[54] I don't think that We've given a lot of thought to handing on the faith to the next generation.
[55] Instead, we're in the cycle of what one observer called the business of churchianity, which one witty friend called the status quo ordo.
[56] You do the thing, you do the thing, you do the thing, you fill out the paperwork, you check the box.
[57] Jimmy and Sally went to the confirmation preparation classes.
[58] If you got a really cool parish, you had some service hours that they had to go through, some volunteer work.
[59] Songs were sung.
[60] The bishop was there.
[61] The right words and gestures were done.
[62] And then the very next day, it's as if nothing happened.
[63] Now, while I'm heartsick for the young people, I have to wonder what's going on in the mind of the director of religious education.
[64] I have to wonder what's going on in the minds of the parents.
[65] And I have to wonder what's going on in the mind of the pastor.
[66] Now, I don't read minds.
[67] I don't read souls.
[68] The relationship with God, that's a mystery to everyone but God.
[69] But I want to offer a suggestion.
[70] I want to draw an analogy.
[71] When I was teaching at seminaries, I would always tell the seminarians, look, If you want to be a good confessor, and I'd stop and say, if you don't want to be a good confessor, let me know so I can help you pack.
[72] But if you want to be a good confessor, you have to start by being a good penitent.
[73] You have to know in your soul, in the roots, in your guts, in your viscera, your own desperate need for sacramental confession and for the mercy and healing and liberation.
[74] that is found only there.
[75] And once you know your own need for that, not only will you persist in it as a penitent, you will be a generous and compassionate confessor, being willing to spend time in the confessional, being willing to hear confessions at odd times, places, and circumstances when it's inconvenient.
[76] and you'll be willing to preach and teach about the importance of sacramental confession as well.
[77] I don't know the state of any priest's soul, but I can say with a pretty fair degree of confidence that if a priest is not zealous about making the sacrament of confession available, I have to wonder how zealous he is as a penitent as well.
[78] Now, let's take this.
[79] and transfer it to the sacrament of confirmation.
[80] If someone has a lively, active spiritual life and knows that there is a power and a peace and transformation that only comes from God's grace, something that gives you the desire to go full Ephesians 6 and put on the whole armor of God, something that makes you go all in for 1 Peter 5, knowing that the devil is like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour, someone who has had the thrill and the joy of fighting for the gospel side by side with fellow Christians, and someone who knows what it's like to get up and have to slay the dragon only with God's grace.
[81] A person like that will not shrug and let the process happen again.
[82] of letting young people just fall out of the bark of Peter, just wander away blithely from the shepherd.
[83] Let me draw another image.
[84] In the workaday world, we talk about quiet quitting, people who have lost any zeal, desire, or appreciation for the work that they're doing, but they've got rent, they've got bills, they've got mouths to feed, including their own, so they show up.
[85] and they sleepwalk through work, and they take the money, but there's no there there.
[86] There's no energy.
[87] There's no commitment.
[88] There's no zeal.
[89] You're not part of a team.
[90] You don't identify with the mission.
[91] You're just doing the barest possible minimum to get the paycheck.
[92] Now, my fear is that that director of religious education, Those parents, that pastor, I don't know if it's so much a quiet quit.
[93] I fear, God help me, I hope I'm wrong, is that it's a grift.
[94] It's a play on words.
[95] You don't really believe, but you're taking the money and you're sort of kind of putting in the time.
[96] But it's better than working a real job.
[97] It's better than working nine to five where you got to hustle for 40 hours a week.
[98] And there are consequences for failure.
[99] There's consequences for not meeting goals, for not being a contributor to the mission.
[100] Someone very dear to me has recently started working with folks who are part of special forces in the military.
[101] And I know that one of the reasons he enjoys it is because there are people who are committed to excellence and all in for the sake of the mission.
[102] And my fear, I don't like saying this, but my fear is that there are church workers who are only workers managing the paperwork of the business of the church, but have had so little.
[103] experience of conversion and disciple and grace and gratitude, who have never experienced, as St. Paul said, working out salvation and fear and trembling, that when children and congregations entrusted to their care drift away, the most they can say is, well, you can't force them.
[104] I don't read souls, but a reasonable man might infer that people who are so indifferent to the state of other people's souls don't really believe that God is watching.
[105] And they may have a vague invocation of God's mercy, but have no sense of God's justice and no sense of God's broken.
[106] We live in a sick world that is making people sick.
[107] And the only remedy that I know of is the gospel, is Christ.
[108] To be a good steward of what Christ entrusted to his church and make that available to people and to live and die to make it stick.
[109] The ultimate success is God's grace, of course.
[110] But I have to do my job, and you as a Christian have to do yours.
[111] So here's my suggestion.
[112] Let's have an examination of conscience.
[113] Have we quiet quit on God?
[114] And if you're working within the church, is it your mission or your grift?
[115] These are hard questions.
[116] They require prayer.
[117] They require self -examination.
[118] and they require very candid conversations.
[119] Think on these things, take them to prayer, and talk about it with those you love.
[120] I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host every day at The Catholic Current via the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network.
[121] You can find The Catholic Current on your favorite podcast channel, your local radio station, and you can find new content for Let's Take a Closer Look.
[122] on the on the youtube on the i catholic radio channel go in peace and please do pray for me for i am a sinner