FORTRESS CATHOLICISM

Getting teenagers up for Mass on a Sunday has probably been a struggle since the beginning, but, until the last half century, baptism meant at least nominal lifetime membership of the church, so parents didn’t have to worry about that. Parents didn’t need to explain or justify the Church’s structure or teachings: the school or Father or the Catechism would take care of that. Job done!

Since that time the wider world has largely broken through the walls of fortress Catholicism and unfortunately it has occurred at just the time when the church is least able to defend itself. We have been caught stumbling with the forces of modernity, hamstrung by traditions and methods unfit for purpose and shamed by the betrayal of sexual abuse from deep within our Church

Today’s readings speak particularly to Catholic parents and go to the heart of the coming Plenary Council of the Australian Church. Our hearts ache to transmit our love of God and of his Church to our children. But how and where to start? The “Wisdom of Solomon” didn’t have to deal with the complexity of issues Australian parents deal with.

Today’s children, teens and young adults are digital natives, inhabiting a vastly different world from recent preceding generations. Details of their interactions, relationships, influential figures, social media and immediate and global environment and their perspective on our credibility damaged Church might be beyond parents and grandparents.

But what we want them to know of God’s Kingdom remains. It isn’t about structures or prohibitions but about “love your neighbour as yourself” proclaimed by Paul (Romans 13:9) and in Jesus’ call to treat those who won’t conform as “pagans or tax collectors” (Matt 18:17), which sounds harsh until we recall that Jesus treated “pagans and tax-collectors” with boundless and unremitting love.

That is a message we can sell! It is to this core of Gospel teaching that the Plenary Council seeks to return us. If we prayerfully and actively engage with that then we may well re-engage our non-conforming offspring in our Church.

Deacon Mark Kelly