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Follow-up to yesterday's commentary…
Dear Friends,
 Fr Kevin Murphy's commentary yesterday has triggered some good discussion in our forum. In particular I would like to draw attention to the following post from Dr Ian Elmer which seeks to widen the canvas about new ways of being Church. I think his post contains some excellent ideas. The trouble is there is so much negative inertia in the Church. The smallest attempts to change anything stir up this enormous panic from a tiny subset of the population and in the end it just becomes too hard for anyone to do anything. We do need to persist though. Ian makes a suggestion about taking our Church to the shopping malls. We've seen that happen where another conservative instution, the banks, have done precisely that in the last few years. They've opened up "shops" — they don't even call them banks anymore — and they now trade seven days a week and are only closed on Christmas Day and Anzac Day. That's almost the business hours my father was required to keep his pub opened. Any way have a read of what Ian has to write here and have a gander at what the other contributors to this conversation has also added in the forum…
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Dr Ian Elmer |
There are some great discussion starters in this article, “New Ways of Being Church”; many thanks. I take the point that there is increasing resistance to the notion of lay-led liturgies and SWAP (Sunday Worship without a Priest), but perhaps the terminology is the problem. I agree with Father Andrew that liturgy was originally the “work of the people”; more accurately it had to do with the “duty” or “service” of homage paid by the common people in pagan temples. Nevertheless, it has come to mean (especially since Vatican II) the parish Eucharist on Sundays and weekdays, which by-and-large remains the province of the priest/president.
If lay-led initiatives are to have any success, we need to get away from the idea that Sunday “worship” or “liturgy” without a priest/president is a substitute for Eucharist. We are doing a lot of this already with Family Groups meeting for pot-luck dinners, Scripture Groups meeting to reflect on Scripture, Prayer groups, Christian Meditation Groups, SVDP, and various other expressions of the lay apostolate. What I am saying is the mechanisms are already in place. All we have to do is rethink them, highlight their role (call them Basic Christian Communities if you like), promote them as an integral part of parish life, and present them as an adjunct or compliment to Eucharist (mot a substitute).
On a broader issue, I have long felt that we have continued to hold onto an old medieval model of parish which, while it correctly views the village church in the town square as the centre of the community life, has lost sight of the fact that the town square has moved. Today, the centre of community life has moved to the shopping malls. Westfields Mega-malls have displaced the market square at the centre of town.
In addition to (or even instead of) building large imposing churches on suburban streets, perhaps we should be renting space in a shopping mall for chapels tucked away between Starbucks and Valley Girl. We need to be where the action is. The picture theatre people realised this ages ago and started building multi-cinema complexes right in with the malls. Restaurants and pubs opened outlets and liquor stores in the food courts. Solicitors, doctors and dentists opened practices in the professional suites. So where are the churches? Stuck out in the suburbs!
Following the same line of thought, as well as returning to my original point, the establishment of parishes along geographical lines is another medieval concept that is not longer completely adequate to the modern world. Although rising fuel prices may make this idea new again, I still think there is scope to create a different system maybe along the lines of Basic Christian Communities or workplace/professional associations; but, again, the role of priest/resident becomes a factor. Many parishes now encourage the development of small communities (e.g., Family Groups) that meet for shared meals and prayer/discussion; but perhaps this structure could be widened. Could we create a community associated with the local footy club or bowls club? Maybe a regular get-together at the local coffee shop for theological discussion?! Better still, why not have the parish open a coffee shop in a shopping mall, where we can meet for coffee and communion?
Cheers,
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Ian J. Elmer
The true and adequate end of intellectual training and of a university is not learning or aquirement, but rather is thought or reason exercised upon knowledge, or what may be called philosophy. (John Henry Newman)
Now as for yours truly, I'm going to try and catch up on those chores I was supposed to tackle on Wednesday... <Contribute your thoughts to the dicussion on future models of "Being Church">
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