Today's email and lead commentary... (Main Forum)

Thanks desi for the link.

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

I can play YouTube videos and stuff, videos from The Age and elsewhere, but this one won't buffer at all. It takes 5 to 6 seconds to download 2 second's worth, and is not watchable at that rate. Any clues, please?
tony

'TonyL
"A post is a free gift, and it will go where it pleases."'

In many ways, Desi and all, I think the second half of the program is more interesting than the first. This is an excellent documentary that I do think cuts to the heart of what the contemporary crisis is about: it cuts to the heart of the question that I keep asking: what is the objective in being a Catholic? Why pray? Why go to Mass? Why believe? Why participate in the sacraments? I don't think anyone in the documentary comes close to actually answering the question but at least the right questions are now being asked in that program. What does comes through in the documentary, I believe, is the confusion that is "out there" today in response to those fundamental questions.

I was impressed by what Archbishop Diarmuid Martin had to say at a number of different points but, in a global sense, I honestly don't even think bishops know what the objective is ultimately: what they're trying to "sell", or "evangelise", what change believing, or "being Catholic", is supposed to bring about in the lives of ordinary people.

The big message many people pick up these days, often not necessarily from the official institution but from this plethora of conservative/back-to-the-past/zealot websites that want to impose their version of what the answers to the questions of objectives are all about is the very stuff that drives the great majority away from listening and participation. The vast majority of people though are "over all that". They've had it up to the back teeth. That's what they're running away from. And they're running away from it because they believe those people have "screwed up the objectives" or they midunderstand the ultimate objective of what Jesus Christ was on about. That perspective presents Catholicism as some game of social conformism — pleasing mummy, pleasing the parish priest or the bishop, demonstrating that "I know all the rules". It actually has almost nothing whatsoever to do with demonstrating that you can actually apply the "way" (of thinking, acting and feeling) in your life offered by Christ.

The people who are leaving or "escaping all that", the ways of looking at Catholicism that are no longer attractive, might not be able to clearly articulate what they don't like in that perspective. It's an intuition that "this is screwed". What comes through in the documentary, I think, is this sense that people are searching for an alternative without, at this stage, necessarily being able to articulate what the alternative might be.

I submit that is the challenge we all face. It IS the challenge the bishops face. It IS the challenge the entire institution faces. Catholicism is NOT some game of trying to be good, to be obedient, to be nice to one another and conformist little citizens, in the hope that if you rake up enough brownie points, and make your mum feel proud about what a nice person you have turned out to be, this may provide some passport to paradise.

Catholicism, I submit, is about learning to think like Christ — to navigate one's "way" through life using the blueprint given by this man Jesus ... whether he personally gave us "the way" or whether it was a series of insights stuck onto his form by a few wise heads who came later and wrote down "the Jesus story" that we have in the New Testament. The Jesus figure, I submit, shows us whatever particular trade, profession, or walk of life we are in how to negotiate or navigate the great mountains, valleys and the deserts of life. But that is not some "game" of social conformism — running around trying to prove how much more holy, or law abiding we are than anybody else. It is demonstrated by our actual capacity to make an intelligent decision about our life when the entire sky has caved in around our head and we find it difficult to discern the correct pathway forward. You don't pick up the instructions about how you do that from an IKEA store. It takes a lifetime of actually making the decisions, and often screwing them up totally, but gradually learning each time how to make a better decision the next time a similar situation presents itself. This is not something that is primarily learned at school, or even at university level. It is learned in the classroom that extends for the whole of each of our lives.

Desi, thanks so much for drawing our attention to these documentaries. I think they are a milestone even if they are really only talking of the situation in Ireland. What comes across though has universal application.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]