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Waterloo Catholic
Faith Formation Commission
and Parish Identity
In the course of discussion about
the future of religious formation, parish leaders and
members regularly raise concerns about parish identity --
specifically, the impact which consolidating religious formation programs
may have on members'
identification with, commitment to, participation in and support
for the particular parishes to which they belong.
This is a serious concern, and one
which parish leaders and members should examine more fully
before endorsing the creation of the Waterloo Catholic Faith
Formation Commission.
However, the
question parish leaders should ask themselves is this: Will the
creation of a metro Formation Commission and the consolidation
of religious education be a cause of weakening parish identity,
or a response to it?
The fact is, parish identity is
already in a state of transformation, and has been for several
decades. Few urban parishes today experience the kind of
attachment or commitment from younger parish members that Catholic
parishes once took for granted. There are various reasons
for this, all of which are bigger and more powerful than the
consolidation of religious education programs. These
include the following social and ecclesial trends:
Social Trends
• Americans are rugged
individualists at heart; younger generations do not exhibit the
kind of social solidarity which was a characteristic of the
"Greatest Generation" of World War II veterans and
they do not tend
to form strong bonds of attachment to social or religious
groups of any kind.
• Younger generations are much more
mobile than the older generation. Driven primarily by the
need to obtain and retain meaningful employment, few of them can plan to live
in the same house, neighborhood, parish (or, in many cases, the
same city) for more than a few years. As a result,
commitments of any kind tend to take on a "temporary"
nature.
• The younger generations in
general are more ambivalent about traditional social or religious authority, and
so their attachment to authoritative social and religious communities is
always tempered by their sense of personal independence and
autonomy.
• Lastly, developments in
communications technology like the world wide web, social
networks, and digital communication, add to the sense which
younger generations have that they are now members of a virtual
"global village." For many younger people, this global
network seems more real and advantageous than local communities
limited in size, space and vision.
Church Trends
• Within the Catholic Church, we
have experienced a growing emphasis on the Church Universal, and
the role of the Universal Magisterium in Rome since the mid-nineteenth century.
Whether this is a causal factor, or merely a coincidence, many younger Catholics
today identify
more with the universal Church than with individual parish
communities.
• As traditional groups of Catholic
immigrants gradually assimulated into the American culture and
economy over the past century, the Church has experienced a decline in the presence
of, and need for, traditional "ethnic" parishes where
parish identity and attachment was very strong.
• There has been a growing
appreciation for the role of the Catholic lay person "in the
world," a role which began with the concept of Catholic Action in
the twentieth century, and was reinforced by the Second Vatican
Council's emphasis on the Church's role in the world. This
trend has tended to diminish the significance of participation
in the local parish as the singular characteristic of the
"active Catholic."
• Finally, the decline in the
number of priests available to serve as pastors has
forced the local Church to rethink what constitutes viable
parish communities. As a result, even parishes which were
able to maintain a strong sense of parish identity may be asked to sacrifice that sense of community
when their parish is closed or clustered with other
parishes.
Notwithstanding the principle
that the universal always presumes the particular (eg,
"all politics is local"), the cumulative effect of these trends means that younger
people in our parishes attach to the local church more "loosely,"
or tentatively, than
their parents or grandparents. Whether we like it or not, these
trends are redefining what it means to belong to a faith community, and
reshaping where and how we will "be church" in the future.
All of these trends are much
bigger than any individual parish or the local church, and
successful local parishes must find creative ways to take advantage of
these trends, or at least to live constructively with them.
The consolidation of religious
education programs in the Waterloo parishes, and the creation of
a metro Faith Formation Commission, is one component in a
coordinated effort among the
parishes to respond creatively to changing times and trends,
including the transformation which is occuring in our traditional
sense of parish
identity or affiliation.
-- Dave Cushing, Director of Adult Faith Formation
The Catholic Parishes in Waterloo
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Posted 04.20.10 •
Last Update: 04.25.10
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