Catholica Commentary by Fr Peter Dresser: God is Big .... Real BIG! (Chapter 10: Ourselves at Prayer Part 2)

"God is Big ..... Real BIG!" by Fr Peter Dresser (Chapter Ten - Part 2)

This is a commentary for the 86% and those who are seriously thinking of joining them. It was actually written a decade ago and you might well ask if the situation has improved for any of us in that time? It's a tragedy what has happened to the Church but Fr Peter Dresser writes with considerable optimism: we desperately need a new theological understanding that better accords with people's lived experience of their relationship with God and their understanding of the relationship the Creator calls humankind into.

Chapter Ten (Part 2): Ourselves and Prayer

The ecclesial contest between the magpies and the sparrows...

The decline in traditional church attendance is an all time high. It has been estimated that 86 or 87 percent of Catholics, more in some places, do not attend church on any regular basis. Yet people in their millions are searching for a spirituality, are searching for meaning in their lives, are searching for a relationship with their God. In this regard the established Church or the institutional Church has become embarrassingly irrelevant in today's world. It is not meeting the spiritual needs of the people and the voice of its teaching authority is largely out of contact with the real world. What was once listened to with attention and affection is hardly given a hearing at all.

Australia magpie.
Image Source & further information about this bird HERE

And yet the institutional Church continues to provide sanctuary and spiritual nourishment for a small number of people. Unfortunately it is not meeting the spiritual requirements of the majority of young people and those who are exploring their theology and listening to the signs of the times. Among the small number of people whose spirituality is being catered for by the Church are those that I have occasionally referred to as the magpies of the church community, the heavy weights who seem to be the same ones doing everything — members of the parish council and various committees, liturgy and resource people and so on. They are the principal organisers of the local church community. They are the dogmatic and doctrinal imperatives of parish life. These concern me a little because they tend to frighten away the sparrows, God's little ones in the church community. Sparrows find it difficult to be nourished when there are magpies around! Whilst it is easy to criticise the established Church, it is a criticism born from love because it has been the nurturer and enricher of my faith since childhood. In any case it is not my intention to dismiss the Church. I am after all an ordained minister within its community. My concern is that the church has lost direction and is not providing that solid, meaningful and vibrant spirituality for the vast majority of people.

As stated earlier, one of the reasons given for people not attending Mass or other church liturgies was that they were not getting an experience of God within the institutional church. And since the church would appear to be heading towards demise, what is needed is restructuring, reforming, revitalising and regenerating. A winter will always give birth to a new spring, disintegration is probably a prerequisite for reintegration, and Calvary is but a prelude to Resurrection. We live with great hope for a church that can read the signs of the times and to provide a religion that will nourish the spirituality of contemporary society. This religion incidentally is meant to be a lived life-long experience and not merely to be embraced at key moments in life (births, deaths, marriages). It therefore must be a religion that will continually nurture and nourish the spiritual dimension of each man and woman who continually experiences God at the coalface of human endeavour.

Golden Crowned Sparrows.
The National Geographic Society has an extensive website showing images of many animals and birds HERE

As mentioned above, the church community consists of both sparrows and magpies. Sometimes I get the impression that the sparrows are freewheeling beautiful people who appreciate with great wonder the beauty of their God with his freeing and liberating and healing spirit whereas the heavy magpies are weighed down with dogma and doctrine and fail to see or appreciate or experience the magnificence of this beautiful Spirit of the Universe. We must look after our magpies but magpies can do much harm when they dive-bomb and attack the sparrows in our community.

Just recently some young people told me what they appreciate at Mass. • Above all the ceremony should be brief and to the point; • the homily should be short and provide real meaning and sustenance for their lives; • and there ought not to be too much music and singing. When they heard this, the magpies in the music ministry actually extended the music and singing in the liturgy. The sparrows' voices were heard but not heeded. The magpies had their day. The sparrows never returned. And this is but one example.

Making Catholicism relevant again to the majority of the baptized...

We should all strive to make our beautiful Christian religion with all its heritage and tradition once again credible and relevant in a world which cries out for all those qualities that Jesus made manifest in his own life and which made him our saviour: freedom, liberty, forgiveness, healing, beauty, truth and goodness. And let no one, even the Church and its hierarchy, ever attempt to limit God's strength and magnificence because God is big. Real big.

As it stands at the moment, I do not think that our religion can give us an adequate contemporary spirituality. The current spirituality offered by the Church is based on the fall/redemption theology and basically says that God will love us if we do certain things, like loving everyone and not cheating at cards and not stealing your neighbour's wife and so on. This spirituality is well catered for by an older understanding of the Mass and Sacraments and so on. You go to Mass to offer sacrifice to God. You get baptised to have original sin removed from your soul. You go to confession to have your sins forgiven by the priest and so on. Essentially life was seen as some kind of test and if you passed this test, you went to heaven. If you failed the test, you went to hell. The sacraments assisted people to get to heaven! But a contemporary spirituality differs quite markedly from this older spirituality.

We now understand that we do not do things so that God will love us; we do good things because God loves us already. Besides, a contemporary spirituality is filled with a whole lot of goodies quite foreign to an earlier way of thinking about God. A contemporary spirituality must take into account the evolutionary mindset and the nature and enormity of our cosmos. It must try to make a connection with all of creation and to see God's immanence in all that is and also to appreciate his transcendence. It has to be a spirituality based very much at the heart of human endeavour and one that is able to read the signs of the times and to see and feel the hopes and joys and griefs and anxieties of all men and women. In short, a contemporary spirituality must take into account the scientific world in which we live and must be able to see and experience this God that we have been speaking of in all the order and randomness and chaos that this world has to offer us, in all its beauty and in all its ugliness, in all its love and in all its hatred, in all its calm and in all its turbulence. Above all a contemporary spirituality in a world that is developing extremely quickly and radically will always be open to the truth and will tend to identify with Chet Raymo's description of the sceptic as outlined earlier. This is the kind of spirituality that I envisage for today's world.

Do we have a religion that can nourish and enrich this spirituality? Is it possible that our beautiful Christian religion and Catholic tradition might be able to nurture such a spirituality? You know, I think it can — with a little bit of rethinking and retheologising of the doctrine, dogma and liturgical prayers and practices. In other words, for our Catholic religion to be relevant and meaningful for a contemporary spirituality, it must itself listen carefully to the signs of the times and must take measures to ensure that it easily embraces a fast developing society and culture, and that its doctrines, teachings and prayers do not cause violence to human intelligence. It needs to unleash God's freeing and healing Spirit in a world crying out for freedom and healing.

NEXT WEEK: Chapter Ten Part 3: "Ourselves at Prayer"

“For our Catholic religion to be relevant and meaningful for a contemporary spirituality, it must itself listen carefully to the signs of the times and must take measures to ensure that it easily embraces a fast developing society and culture, and that its doctrines, teachings and prayers do not cause violence to human intelligence. It needs to unleash God's freeing and healing Spirit in a world crying out for freedom and healing.” ...Peter Dresser

IMAGE CREDITS:
Clicking on the images in the body of this article will take you to the original source and further information.

Peter Dresser grew up in Orange NSW. On completing his Leaving Certificate he studied for some years at Springwood and Manly Seminaries. His life journey has led him down diverse paths and he enjoyed the experience of many and varied employments including postman, public servant and factory worker. He has appreciated his exposure to different life styles and religions and his involvement with music and sport, particularly Rugby League. He eventually turned to teaching where he found an easy rapport with and respect for young people. Peter decided to continue with his studies for Priesthood and entered St. Paul’s Seminary. He was ordained in 1990. Peter's love for his Catholic religion dates from his very early years. His involvement with Science is only a recent phenomenon. His fascination with nature has always been predominant. His continuing pastoral concern is that the Good News proclaimed by Jesus be preached and mediated meaningfully in all its richness and fullness to the contemporary world. Peter holds degrees in Arts and Theology and a Diploma in Education. He produced this document in 2004 whilst Parish Priest of Kandos in Central West NSW. He now lives privately in retirement at Kandos where he spent six memorable years.

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[Index of Commentaries by Fr Peter Dresser]

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