It’s up to us, not the Pope, to revive the Church

It’s unlikely that your children or grandchildren will keep going to Mass unless some of their peers are doing so as well, writes David Quinn

It is now coming up to seven years since the start of this papacy. What has changed in the Church in the meantime? The main thing is probably tone. The Pope, whoever that is, can set a tone for the rest of the Church and Pope Francis has set a softer tone than his two immediate predecessors, Popes Benedict and John Paul.

He has made the mercy of God a special theme of his pontificate. He has reduced the emphasis placed on issues like marriage, the right to life and rising cultural relativism. Francis has also placed a strong emphasis on justice for the poor and saving the natural environment.

But we should be careful not to exaggerate the differences between Francis and his predecessors. John Paul and Benedict did talk about mercy, and social justice and certainly in the case of Benedict, the environment.

Shaped

Every pontificate will be shaped in part by the times it is in. Pope John Paul II was elected in 1978, when communism still governed Eastern Europe and Moscow de facto ruled his native Poland. European communism has now disappeared thanks in part to St John Paul and today issues like immigration and climate change are much more to the fore.

For his part, Francis speaks out much more on topics like abortion, the family and gender ideology than we often think, and certainly far more strongly than the average priest or bishop. In the case of abortion, Francis has compared abortionists with ‘mafia hitmen’, for instance.

In addition, he often refers to the Devil. I can’t remember Benedict or John Paul talking about the Devil as much as Francis does.

Francis often adopts a very strong, almost aggressive tone when denouncing tendencies in the Church he doesn’t like, for example, over-intellectualism, or moral rigorism.

We all have our preferences for different popes. That’s only natural. John Paul is the pontiff I grew up with, so I have fond memories of him. I was there with my classmates in 1979 in the Phoenix Park for the papal Mass along with a million other people. You don’t forget something like that too easily. It makes an impression. I covered his funeral for the Irish Independent.

But consider for a moment whether any recent pope has made much difference on the ground, in your parish. I don’t think they do.

Certainly, on any given Sunday the Pope will be prayed for, and he might rate a mention. For the most part though what he says and does makes little enough impression. This isn’t a criticism. It’s just a fact. An encyclical or apostolic exhortation might come out, but most parishioners couldn’t name them.

We must lead the revival of the Church in our local communities, which is no easy task”

Probably the local bishop doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to the day-to-day lives of parishes either. A good bishop can encourage his priests, and that will improve morale. He can encourage certain initiatives and put his full weight behind vocations, but these things on their own won’t really revive the Church as a whole, or the local church. Your local bishop, much less the bishop in Rome, can only do some much evangelisation for the rest of us.

What I’m saying is that we must lead the revival of the Church in our local communities, which is no easy task. We can’t expect someone to come on a white charger and do it for us. As Barack Obama said when he was campaigning for the US presidency first time around, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for’.

Obviously, as Christians we are ultimately waiting for God, but the point still applies; we have to be the agents of change in our local parishes in the various ways we are called upon to do that, whether that be through something like the local St Vincent de Paul, the parish council, a bible study group, a prayer group, or the Legion of Mary.

There must be more stress on evangelisation. For example, how many of us encourage friends and family to come to Mass? To what extent do parishes reach out to those who have stopped coming to church, or who might never have come (there are more and more of them)?

How many parishes make serious efforts to attract vocations to the priesthood and religious life? We hear a lot about the vocations crisis, but we can’t address it if we do little or nothing about it, or make only token efforts. Although it is a crisis, we aren’t acting like it.

An awful lot more has to be done on the youth front as well. It is very unlikely that your children or grandchildren will keep going to Mass unless some of their peers are doing so as well. In some parts of the country, there isn’t a decent Christian youth group for miles around.

Something else we have to try and address, and here is where the Church’s leadership comes in, is to do a better job challenging the ambient secular culture and the all-pervasive individualism of our times.

In a secular, individualistic culture, people will feel less conscious need for God and will be less inclined to join strong communities that might make demands on them.

Or maybe people think they are saved almost no matter what they do because God is all-forgiving in their minds and so there really isn’t any need for confession or repentance, a very dangerous delusion.

A Pope or a bishop can certainly try to challenge the underlying assumptions of our times, but at the end of the day it is up to us, locally, to save the Church. It’s no use pretending it’s up to someone else, like a John Paul II, or a Benedict or a Francis, or whoever comes along next, when it is up to all of us.