Ministering in Tomorrows Church

...in short, it must lead men and women to hear the word of God that is being spoken to them in the totality of their human experience...

...Given the wide range of persons to whom such preaching would be addressed, and the wide range therefore of "adaptation" to such pluralism, it does not seem likely that effective preaching can be confined to some clerical group...

...Now, however, we have irreversibly moved into a situation where only individual moral judgment, made in a given set of circumstances, can possibly express Christian faith in appropriate decision...

...Our Christian faith must forego its classic claims to monopoly on revelation and on charity...

...in the deepest sense it is sacramental, because the celebrant "summarizes" in his public profession of faith the faith of the assembled group...

...In the Church's relation to "the word"---for the sake of whose transformation into the kingdom of God the Church exists--a number of important areas of reconciliation demand ministration...

...There is no hope for the kind of mature faith that both Christianity and mankind's needs demand, no hope for anything that deserves the name "Christian community," unless there is a liturgy that can genuinely express and nurture such faith...

...We must face fearlessly the mounting evidence that somehow the different paths of religious reflection, such as the contemplative traditions of the Far East that are only now becoming known to us, lead to the same transcendent divinity whom we know as the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ...

...Which means that the liturgical leader will have the complicated function of guiding into a coherent activity the distinctive understandings and outlooks and experiences and "faith postures" of the men and women who comprise a given worship community...

...rather, it would be exercised in quite different fashion by men and women specially equipped to preach to a given audience, either within liturgy or in other contexts...

...To speak of this widened context for preaching is to draw attention to just one facet of the radical changes needed in tomorrow's Christian ministry...

...for that matter, we cannot foresee too sharply the future shape of any of the other ministries we have mentioned...

...R e c o n c i l i a t i o n in t h e post.ecumenical age FAITH AFTER AUSCHWITZ - - AND BELFAST GREGORY BAUM T oday Christians demand that their faith make .sense to them...

...Truly to reconcile persons with one another in the Church we need an understanding of God neither as masculine, nor as the protector of the privileged classes, nor as one who works through a clerical caste...

...But the unifying function of the sacramental leader is not only "organizational...

...but a symbol in the richest sense, i.e., a sacrament, which implies the coincidence of symbol and symbolized, the presence of that God about whom his creation speaks...

...The so-called "crisis of faith" through which we are passing, and all the human anguish and tension that accompanies it, can quite accurately be viewed as the birth pangs of this new Christianity...

...man and woman he created them...

...it must foster responsibility and freedom and vision and hope, for these are the sources of the decisiveCommonweal: 151 ness that is proper to Christian faith...

...Yet--and this dramatizes the "newness" of our present situation--one of the most basic and far-reaching forces that is bringing a "new world" into being is the revolution in human communication...

...I do not think that today's Christians are interested in proofs for the existence of God...

...Yet, we must simultaneously search for some honest explanation of the unparalleled importance of Jesus of Nazareth, and attempt with less naivet6 to situate his redeeming role in the evolution of mankind...

...So, the only way of fostering community in any given situation is to nurture the appropriate process of communication...

...In other words, one of the principal ministerial tasks of the Church of the future is that of widespread reconciliation-within the Church, but not confined to it, since the alienations within the Christian community are part of the basic social maladjustment of our world...

...What is at work is a developing insight that the sensible reality that enters into our daily experience is intrinsically sacramental of the divine presence...

...Perhaps it seems that the changes in Christian ministry that we suggest are being dictated by a movement towards the secularizing of religion...

...They are unable to accept that faith can be equated with believing a system of dogmas that describe a sacred realm apart from life...

...today it has particular demands...

...We find it impossible to believe a message if it locks us into the small circle of Commonweal: 153...

...Christians find it increasingly diMcult to believe if the message preached to them refers to a reality apart from and unrelated to their experience of life...

...Yet, this has been a need recognized just for the privileged few who "had a vocation to the religious life...

...In particular, the opportunity to share with today's young people their perspective on things religious definitely dispels this temptation: there is no predicting where today's young people will carry our world--and Christianity within it...

...and who then translate that belief into the grey-area decisions of human experience and social existence...

...Yesterday's and today's Christians also needed such truly internal knowledge, but until very recently it was more possible to rely upon adherence to some official translation of faith into specific laws...

...Nor can it ignore any of the modem insights into the deeper aspects of the human person, into the historical and therefore relative character of all human knowing, into the limited and distorting tendency of human language...

...It is hard to see how such integral sacramentalizing of the community (or for that matter, of the divine action) can take place unless both men and women function as celebrant, so that the full scope of human experience find symbolic statement...

...Now, as painful experience has taught us that one cannot legislate a deepened faith in Christ, nor a better understanding of God, nor genuine liturgy, nor true Christian love, we may develop patterns of ministry that are dictated by the needs of the Christian community as it seeks to fulfill its historical destiny...

...actually, whatever kind of communication is proper to a given group is "community" in its dynamic (rather than structural) sense...

...and there is the danger of projecting abstractly one's own theological or sociological theories without regard for the life forces now at work in Christianity...

...Many Christians today also demand that their faith relate them to people everywhere...

...The shape of the future MINISTERING IN TOMORROW'S CHUnCH BERNARD COOKE T wo temptations threaten anyone who wishes to look ahead and suggest the ministries that the Christian community is likely to have, or should have, in the future: there is the danger of asking how the present situation of ministry will be altered (which automatically and unacceptably limits us to our present context of ministry...

...The relatively undemanding membership in a religious group that asked for nothing more than a formal acquiescence to doctrines and practices has been unmasked as "imitation faith...

...Even the simple, unquestioning religious submission that accepted as true everything that came by way of authoritative teaching has failed to measure up as mature 15 November 1974:150 Christian faith...

...Christian understanding must be uncompromisingly pluralistic (which means "respectful of any truth that anyone possesses") and humble (i.e., open to moving wherever the evidence of truth suggests...

...Faith today and in the future will have to be a critical, questioning, even somewhat doubt-fiUed but trusting acceptance of the risen Christ's presence in the sacramentalities of the Christian communitymand beyond that in the sacramentalities of human life...

...This says something about the qualitative changes needed in the preaching ministry: it must bring accurate understandings of Christian tradition and of contemporary human life into creative confrontation...

...Perhaps the most important purpose of such projection is to give some guidance to our present preparation of Christians for the future, so that in the years ahead we have properly skilled men and women who can successfully midwife the birth of a new Christianity...

...but it is distinct from both of these: it is the guidance of persons as they develop the art of making authentically Christian judgments about practical courses of action...

...After the radical alterations in Christianity in recent decades, no one should be seriously tempted to "foresee" what l~es ahead...

...In theory we have recovered the understanding that Christian faith means a personal acceptance of the risen Lord, with all the practical implications of such personal relatednessmand that the conscious sharing of such acceptance is what we mean by Christian community...

...Whatever else the Church of the future will be, it will necessarily be a community of believers, a sharing of faith in the risen Christ...

...Moreover, imposed "teaching" cannot possibly achieve that interiorization of faith understanding which tomorrow's Christians will need...

...How in detail such a ministry to the sacramentalisms o[ human lile is to be structured, we cannot predict...

...With communication in general taking new forms, Christianity must discover anew how to minister to more profound and more genuine communication of faith from one Christian to another...

...it must touch upon the imagery and mythology that underlie people's individual and corporate consciousness and motivations, and challenge them by "the Christmyth...

...and even here the need was one that was for the most part recognized but not filled...

...For liturgy to have this kind of close relationship to people's consciousness and daily activity, it will have to be much more human, carried on (at least for the most part) in smaller community groupings, open to rather wide diversification in its details...

...there is the alienation of the Church, at least in much of its official posture, from the agonizing questions and prob15 November 1974:152 lems of most thoughtful men and women--the Church still issues triumphalist claims to much more certainty about life's meaning and fulfillment than it really possesses...

...But a frightening chasm separates that theoretical knowledge from the reality of what goes on in institutionalized religion...

...it is truly "word of God...

...In any period of history such personal faith is demanding...

...is at work...

...It is a truism that community springs from communication...

...prudential judgment lies at the very heart of this life, and imaginative and critical foresight is a key element in all prudent judgment--even if the judgment be tentative and open-ended...

...what faith will mean in the future depends on the evolution of our Christology...

...At the root of whatever liturgical ministry does evolve will lie tomorrow's need for sacramental actions that are much more humanly perceptible and intelligently experienced...

...and the very pain can symptomatically give us some limited insight into that which is emerging and into the ministrations it will require...

...Today, if we are to face realistically the potential and demands of the future, there is a basic need to provide the kind of sensitive and theologicallyformed spiritual direction that can guide men and women, through their years of growth and into adult life, towards the capacity to grasp personally the meaning of their faith and to inject that understanding into the pragmatic decisions of their lives...

...By this I do not mean that they are looking for an apologetics defending the rational credibility of the gospel...

...So, there is real purpose in trying to sketch out the kind of Christianity and the kind of ministry we would like to see emerge in the years ahead, grounding that vision in whatever insights we have about the processes of life now emerging in the Church, grounding it also in the understandings about the nature of Christianity that scripture, sacraments and two thousand years of Christian tradition give us, understandings that contemporary scholarship has done so much to clarify...

...Acceptance of full freedom and equality will mean the abolition of divisions between "lay" and "cleric," between rich and poor, between "establishment" and "people...

...It cannot ignore any of the probing questions raised by those who have sincerely been searching for the "reality" of God and of his revelation in Jesus of Nazareth...

...Life produces organs appropriate to its needs...

...Tomorrow's liturgy must celebrate the Christian dimension of a given community's secularity: as the recognition of the intrinsic secularity of Christianity grows, Christian worship will be seen as that total life response to the Gospel that comes to focus in a community acknowledgment of God's word in Christ...

...The world we experience (especially people) is a profound symbol of the divine...

...already we know fi'om our own experience that the day of "cheap faith" is over and gone...

...God is imaged, i.e., worshipped, by the dialectic of human experience, not by any single pattern...

...it develops organically by insight, understanding and choice...

...it must often presuppose competent psychological counseling...

...That a multiplicity of ministries (rather than one allembracing "pastoral ministry") will be needed is rather clear...

...There is the long-standing and unacceptable alienation of most contemporary thought from Christianity...

...To some extent this is true: one of the positive elements in our present change in values is a recovered esteem of the "material" and the "bodily...

...It also seems quite clear that jurisdictionally-grounded ministry, as we have known it for many centuries, is incapable of ministering to the needs of tomorrow's Christianity...

...Such alienations constitute an almost impenetrable barrier to the hearing of the Gospel, because they negate the basic meaning of the Incarnation...

...There is more serious danger that some will attempt a priori projections of what authentic and effective ministerial structures should be in tomorrow's Church, instead of allowing ministerial forms (along with all other institutional aspects of Christianity) to emerge organically from the Christian community's living response to the needs and potential of the human situation...

...Even this hasty mention of the path that Christian faith is already taking, and to be true to itself must continue to take, makes it clear that the ministry of teaching must assume new proportions and find new orientations...

...Mutatis mutandis, the same situation has existed in religious contexts other than Christianity...

...Whether this will mean the reduction of the Church to "a remnant" of convinced believers, or whether Christians will begin to exist in a diaspora situation, we cannot see clearly...

...For centuries the need of spiritual direction has been recognized, if persons were to acquire accurate and profound religious insights through contemplation, and if balanced and innovative decisions about life were to be made...

...For it seems quite certain that this is what is taking place: a new world is being born, and within it a new Christianity...

...Admitting women to full equality in the ministerial life of the Church will be but one of the sociological changes required if the Christian community is to attain more mature communication in a vision of "the human...

...This does not mean that faith should impose an extrinsic meaning on human history by relating it to what is far away...

...What will it mean for Christians in years ahead to believe that Jesus is "the incarnate Word...

...No genuine advance in human knowledge can be overlooked...

...and scripture singles out the man/woman dialectic as specially revelatory of the divine--"in his own image he created mankind...

...Faith, we demand, must give meaning to our personal and social existence...

...and where, as a result, the task of forming Christian conscience looms as one of the principal ministries to be developed...

...there is the alienation of the masses of the world's poor from a Church that still projects the image of an ally of the powerful...

...this is true also of the life of the Spirit...

...Means that in another historical setting might have been effective in achieving basic consensus of Christian understanding could well be outmoded and counter-productive in tomorrow's Church--indeed, there is good evidence that such has been the case for some time now...

...However, something more basic and religiously more important than a recovery of balance in assessing the "human" (important though that is...

...In justice, we cannot deny such spiritual direction to anyone in the Christian community, according to their capacity to profit by it--and, of course, we must avoid the gnostic judgment that most persons are incapable...

...Such a ministry must draw upon accurate teaching...

...What new significance will flow from the Eucharist (and other Sacraments) when the full symbolism of woman comes into play we do not know...

...This should not frighten us, for jurisdiction was never that appropriate a ground of effective ministry...

...what do we mean by "risen Christ...

...And these questions are inseparable...

...Clearly, authoritarian teaching, with its inevitable and over-simplified insistence on one particular formulation, cannot deal satisfactorily with such pluralism in understanding and in faith itself...

...What has become important to Christians is, I think, that the gospel message shed light on their daily life, on the issues that actually trouble society, on the problems posed to people by history itself...

...Probably the place where new forms of ministry will be most noticed will be in sacramental liturgy, since Christians have been conditioned to equate "minister" with "liturgical leader...

...But having said this, a host of question remains: what kind of faith...

...While this process can justifiably be called a "rebirth," since it is the already-existent reality of Christianity that is passing into this new life, we are at one of those points in Christian history when some drastically new life form is coming to be...

...all we know now with some certainty is that until now we have a truncated word about God's saving love...

...However, the life of the Spirit is consciousness and affectivity...

...there is the alienation of the Church from the indigenous cultures to which Christians belong in various places, an alienation that is felt most symptomatically in sacramental liturgy...

...what will it mean for them to believe that he is present to them in the Church and in the world...

...While this ministry will involve a fundamental recasting of the Sacrament of Penance (simply changing its name to Sacrament of Reconciliation will accomplish very little), it will reach much further: it must be rooted in a basic alteration of our religious understandings...

...Without in any way relinquishing the concrete personal witness to Christ that the Christian teacher shares with the prophet and the preacher, religious education must be sophisticated and thoroughly "with it...

...what manner of community...

...to believe that he is our savior...

...and unquestionably this is having an impact on our Christian attitudes, probably most obviously in our more candid and open approach to human sexuality...

...such a multiplicity is already coming into existence...

...Community in faith must be a union of persons who commit themselves to the principle that love, human but reaching out to embrace the divine, can overcome evil...

...It might be good to recall, however, that denigration of any portion of creation (referring to it as "'secular" in a pejorative sense) has never been consistent with Christian revelation, and that exaltation of the "spiritual" at the expense of the body has been a denial of the basic thrust of Christianity...

...Today we know enough about the extension of the kingdom of God into the entirety of human life (though our ignorance is still immense) to know that we must admit and cherish some kind of community, even in faith, with all men and women who honestly face life with love...

...While it will function as part of a more complex effort, preaching will certainly be a major component in such formation of conscience, unless we are to provide such formation only to some elite group--and so foster a new clericalism...

...it means rather that faith should clarify our daily experience, bring to light the hidden meaning of it, and reveal the gracious presence of God operative in our history...

...Christian Eucharist will bring to fuller statement that word which is spoken sacramentally in Christian men's and women's whole life experience, and beyond that the word spoken by all human life...