A Pastoral Strategy
Wicker, Brian
Finally, of course, if Henry Kissinger actually does lecture, as it is announced that he will, in those surroundings those performances will revive an ancient, useful and now almost forgotten...
...When we get further into the Repert, we find more important things being said, and some quite radical suggestions being seriously put forward...
...Although a "basic Christian community" will have most of the functions of the present "parish" ("regular worship...
...Of course, in the absence of any consensus about what these needs are, it might seem (to a more logical mentality than that of the English, even the Roman Catholic English) that this suggestion is merely a recipe for fruitless bickering: and the Report certainly does not say how it thinks such a critical study should, or could, be made, or by whom...
...The first interesting thing about the report is its deliberately provocative title: "A Time for Building...
...This part of the document needs a lot of clarification...
...In a summary, published earlier, of reactions to the working party's initial repot, it became clear that the only concerted opposition to the new postVatican II spirit of cooperation with the modern world, which that report expressed, came from "the extreme right": to put it bluntly, from the sympathizers with pre-Vatican II sensibilities, from the Lat.in-Mass-enthusiasts and Lefebvre-type conservatives...
...social service...
...The "small groups," of course, already exist in many places, as branches of various Catholic organizations, family groups, prayer groups, professional groups ete...
...In a period of economic and indeed general recession, it is good to see somebody suggesting building new things, and not just hanging on to what has not yet been destroyed...
...regular correspondent in Great Britain...
...but of what it call~, somewhat mysteriously, "basic Christian communities," and within these, "small groups" dedicated to working, as Christians, 24 lune 1977:390 in some shared activity or task...
...Of course, it could be cynically said that all the report asks for is the ecclesiastical equivalent of Mr...
...Such a shift of priorities (especially remembering the financial implications) will be very hard to achieve, despite the obvious fact that such a program will be far cheaper to run ahd organize than the massive investment in buildings and plant implied in the attempt to provide a place for every Catholic child in a Catholic school (an attempt long ago doomed to failure, and indeed abandoned in practice, though still vaguely left as an ideal in social theory...
...What it is hoped will now happen is that the results of this whole exercise, including reactions and comments on the latest, and final series of recommendations, will be collated and presented to a large conference in early 1978, which will have the power to take decisions and initiate some of the action requested by the working-party...
...The working party has now just published its final report...
...Admittedly, the group, was almost (not entirely) clerical in composition: but at any rate it was given the task of doing some freewheeling reflection, with no holds barred, on the state of the Church in Britain and what should be done about it for the long-term future...
...Some thought it too tame and unadventuroas...
...Probably it will have to begin in a small way, in a few places where a bishop and a few far-sighted others can get together and do some experimental work, and make the mistakes that others can learn from...
...If there is a criticism to be made of the Report as a whole, it is that it takes too easily the proposition that the Church must identify with, and work within, the "world" as described in the Introduction...
...FRANK GETLEIIq 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM BRITAIN A PHSTORH STBHTEGY In 1971 a "working party" was set up by the Catholic bishops in England and Wales and by the National Conference of Priests, to "study the question of a pastoral strategy for the Church" in this country...
...Was the answer not to be sought in changes in outlook on the part of the younger, post-war, post-Vatican II, post-Christian generation...
...In this sense, I think the working party Report is on the right lines...
...While making allowances for the "loner," the Report makes it clear that encouraging people to be members of groups, rather than of parishes is what the pastoral mission of the Church is all about...
...This is a pamphlet of about 50 pages, based on the original ideas but revised in the hght of the many criticisms and suggestions made in the intervening period...
...On the contrary, it was an attempt to encourage the free expression of ideas and views by everyone interested, in the hope that some good and fruitful suggestions might turn up...
...The iguana's gone or hidden at the bottom, where cement's the deadpan color of a bridge abutment, and the earth forces through every flaw a cactus like a stop-action shot of a green geyser...
...Indeed, given the foreseeable breakdown both of parish and school structures under the double burdens of financial inflation and priest-shortages, it is pretty well inevitable...
...It is a very interesting and thought-provoking document...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0000 THOMAS REITER _9 SNAPSHOT OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS Bolts thick as your wrist are rusted fast in the fashionable air...
...But it was not designed to produce a blueprint, or any kind of dogmatic solution, thought out in the abstract from the top downwards and then imposed universally...
...The creation of the working-party, then, was an exercise in "participation...
...education...
...Callaghan's big drive for productivity through better use and investment of resources: a sort of updating of the capitalist Church...
...ministry of the word...
...In any case, later in the Report, the working-party does say something about present-dhy lieCds which would presumably be the basis for such a strategy...
...I think I understand why this is so: but I think the reasoning is mistaken...
...Yet without this first move, the strategy can hardly begin to work...
...But what matters is how such a new pattern of Christian living, such an "alternative church" (for that is what it really is), can be brought into being...
...A "left-wing" Catholic radicalism, which rejects the modern world, not out of nostalgia for a lost spiritual "law and order" authoritarianism, but out of a principled rejection of the general ethos of capitalism, seems hardly to have impinged on the working-party...
...I don't personally understand this part of the Report's ideas: but perhaps there is a lot behind the concept which there is no room to spell out...
...Others again, just thought it, like the curate's egg, to be good in parts...
...But the real crisis was: why this "shortage...
...This was in itself a fairly remarkable event...
...Obviously this "activist" image of the Church, with its possible implication of social do-goodery and heartiness, is a dangerous one: and the dangers must be recognized and met...
...In a pillbox notch an hour's climb above cabanas' rainbow jeeps, the socket of a coastal gun focuses concentric tiers on zero, where an iguana calmly chews a cactus' spines and fleshy pads...
...Yet surely it is fundamentally correct to see the Church of the future as existing in a sort of diaspora, and not as a Christian icing spread over the whole social cake...
...Commonweal: 391...
...True, there's not much searching analysis of fundamental causes here: yet perhaps that is a strength of a sort, in that the report is patient of genuine analysis, without pretending to being more than a superficial survey of the territory...
...The working party produced a report, in 1974, called "The Church 2000...
...The important thing is that this time, in the wake of the final Report, and with the prospect of decisions being taken which will affect the Church for a generation or two at least, the people who represent such a position must make themselves heard...
...later, they tick in your jacket in the wind at the emplacement's rim...
...No doubt, this is a measure of the disarray and ineffectuality of those who take such a stance: but the fact--if it be a fact--is surely bordering on the tragic...
...mission to the world") it is not .a parish...
...The concept of a "basic Christian community," also mentioned in the Report, is a rather more elusive one...
...Predictably, reactions were mixed...
...Nearby, a cave Pearl Harbor crammed with ammo because the war blew elsewhere is splayed with termite tunnels...
...Finally, of course, if Henry Kissinger actually does lecture, as it is announced that he will, in those surroundings those performances will revive an ancient, useful and now almost forgotten meaning of the word "Jesuitical...
...The latter apparently will subside into being just a place for ritualizing births, marriages and deaths...
...The first recommendation of basic importance is for a critical study of the myriad organizations in the Church in the light of present-day needs...
...Flashbulbs fume and blister...
...But what is here being suggested is that members of such a group, or groups, should be envisaged as the normal and ordinary way in which any person who is a Catholic will express his faith...
...Yet all is not necessarily lost: it is quite possible that some sort of reasonably acceptable formula may emerge for producing a study that would gain wide (if far from universal) acceptance, and thus result in the possibility of a genuine strategy for change...
...Here the second major recommendation is crucial: namely for a major shift of priorities towards a relevant sort of adult education program designed to form those who might "animate" and help create such groups...
...What strategy do we need to adopt now to create such a church...
...But there is no real need to see it this way, even though the introductory section, which describes the world in which we live (the "General Ethos of Society"), reads much like a set of Sundaynewspaper clichrs...
...The light is perfect you catch him in...
...This was a "kite-flying" exercise: that is to say, a preliminary stating of tentative suggestions and conclusions, inviting widespread comment from all and sundry...
...This is the idea that the Church of the future will consist, not of territorial "parishes," which exist (in theory) to include, and cater for the needs and activities of, everyone in their boundaries...
...BRIAN WICKER (Brian Wicker is Commonweal's...
...If so, what sort of church do we need to cope with the world as we are likely to find it in (say) 2000 A.D...
...others said it was a sell-out to "the evil tendencies of the modern world...
...True, one particular crisis, of a foreseeable kind, may have sparked it off, namely the decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious orders...
Vol. 104 • June 1977 • No. 13
