Why the Mission is Urgent: The Church is Crying, Too
February 10, 2021
Fr. John Riccardo
We argued last time that the world is crying. To be sure, it has been crying since the Fall, but, still, it is crying today in a unique way, at least in our lifetimes, and this is seen most clearly in the fact that life-expectancy in our country declined for a third consecutive year in 2018 for the first time in 100 years (and this was before COVID-19). This is what we call our first “fundamental conviction.”
Our second “fundamental conviction” is this: The Church was established by Jesus to be the means by which the cry of the world could and would be answered, people would come to know their identity as beloved sons and daughters of the Father, the regenerative and restorative power of the Holy Spirit, and rescued from the destroying powers of Sin and Death. The problem, however, is that the Church is crying, too.
This cry of the Church is heard and experienced in a number of ways. We are living in a time of polarity and division within the hierarchy of the Church unlike any in recent memory. It’s not unusual to publicly hear, or read, a cardinal, bishop, or priest speaking out against another cardinal, bishop, or priest. Certainly, the loudest cry of the Church over the past 20 plus years has been the clerical sexual abuse crisis and subsequent cover-up by bishops. The disgraced former Cardinal McCarrick is the poster-boy of this horrific scandal. A 2018 Gallup survey revealed that nearly 30 million Catholics were considering leaving the Church because of this criminal and sinful behavior.
For those who serve in parish ministry, however, both clergy and laity, these terrible events and the poor metrics we cited on January 13 aren’t the only evidence of a crying Church. With some rare exceptions, most pastors are pastorally responsible for far more people than they can reasonably care for, and woefully under-supported in terms of co-laborers. The average Catholic parish has 2.5 staff people. Many pastors and staffs spend much of the day playing some version of the game of “whack-a-mole,” going from trauma to trauma and crisis to crisis, with their heads on a swivel, and little to no time to think and pray about what God is asking them to do to best care for those entrusted to them, let alone reach the fallen away or the lost out on the periphery. The urgent all too often crowds out the important in parish life.
It has been said that working in the Church is often like a football game: 22 men running around on the field, desperately in need of rest, watched by thousands of people desperately in need of exercise. Every time we share this quote with bishops, priests, and their lay brothers and sisters who serve in the Church, they nod their heads in something between laughter and tearful agreement. Speaking for myself, when I left serving as a pastor for 15 years and began serving in ACTS XXIX, I felt as though I was recovering from something akin to PTSD. A good friend of mine, who had only known me as a pastor, said one day to me, “I’ve never met this Fr. John.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, you seem more…human, alive and relaxed.” I told him that I finally felt like I was coming back to life again after the demands of parish life.
Our collective personal experience in parish and diocesan ministry, and our experience ministering to bishops and priests across the country this past year and a half, has brought to the fore what we call “the unspoken crisis in the Church”: parish life is broken and untenable.
Nothing bears this out for us as much as the testimonies we hear from bishops and priests wherever we go. “I’m tired.” I’m discouraged.” “We’re on our own out here.” “I’m exhausted.” “I want to quit”—and these are testimonies of men who love Jesus, the Church, and their people. One bishop confided in us that his priests are “screaming for healing.” And he’s not alone in saying this. Again, most priests spend most days going from fire to fire, with little to no time to seriously think, pray, or talk with their key leaders in a way that is necessary to truly arrive at innovative answers—all of which is made more urgent by the rapid transition we’re experiencing as we move from a Christendom to an Apostolic era, a transition for which many people serving in the Church were not trained or prepared.
The crisis is not limited to the ordained serving in the Church; we hear many of the same laments from lay men and women who serve alongside pastors. It’s not uncommon to hear them say they’ve never seen the level of dysfunction or ingratitude in secular business as they do in parish or diocesan ministry, and there’s often a desire to return to their former line of work.
This can sound, and is, downright sobering. But there is a third fundamental conviction that animates our ministry, and it is a very hopeful one. But that’s for next week.