Human beings need beauty and awe
You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; * and so you renew the face of the earth. (Ps 104:31)
The Roman Catholic Church is growing. The global count is something like, 1.376 billion in 2021, 1.390 billion in 2022, and 1.406 billion in 2023. The church continues to decline in Europe while it is growing in the US. Many American dioceses are seeing an increase in adults joining. For example, in the same period of time (Rite of Election), in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, they saw 653 this year and 444 last year.
How Catholicism Got Cool
I looked at "How Catholicism Got Cool" by Madeleine Kearns in The Free Press. She was curious about what appears to be an increase in younger people, especially men, becoming Roman Catholics. The article points to a number of elements.: “In an age of instability, people are attracted to ancient traditions,” “the aesthetic elements,” “human beings need beauty and awe,” “immediately felt, like, this sense of peace,” “You give adoration to God,” and of course music and silence.
The piece noted Pope Leo’s sense there was a “great need to recover the sense of mystery” in the Mass. My mind went to all the comments I’ve heard over the years of Roman Catholics who had attended an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish and wished that their church expressed the same level of beauty and harmony. But it appears to be true, that even if “we can do it better”, it remains that many of our parishes can't do it very well, and for many people the Roman Catholic Church did it well enough.
She spoke with a number of people who offered various reasons for the attraction. They all shared one reason: “The religion fulfilled their yearning for transcendence better than anything else.” She noted Bishop Robert Barron understanding that evangelization often moves in a sequence, from what is beautiful to what is good, and into what is true. There is some interesting thinking in the article about the appeal, felt by young men looking for a sense of purpose. (For a related article see “You were looking for a place to give your heart”)
I’ve seen some of our Episcopal Churches attract young evangelicals around the same mix of factors, e.g., transcendence and a stronger base of liturgy, tradition and community. We Anglicans appear a couple of times in the Free Press article, not at our best. For the first time since the Reformation, Roman Catholics may outnumber Anglicans in England. Ross Douthat, the New York Times columnist told Kearns that, “Roman Catholicism is increasingly coded as the natural option for American believers who are highly educated or would-be elites, playing the role that used to be played by, say, Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism.” Ouch! I can argue with that, but I'd have to begin by admitting — there's also something true about it.
What the young people joining the Roman Catholic Church now expressed isn't a new phenomena. The “Ancient-Future Movement” was a source of much interest in the parish development discussions in the late 80’s and into the 90s. That movement was connecting with many of the young evangelicals of that period who were seeking deeper roots and longed for a more transcendent worship.
As this cycle of Shaping the Parish (STP) wraps up, I've noticed the same hunger in participants. The program offers many “practical” resources for parish development, methods, theory, and such. But in our approach to parish development we appear to offer a connection to the transcendent. I've received several comments along these lines: “a mirror held to the soul—revealing the interplay of grace and human frailty,” “It recalled me to the reason I became a priest, ”a contemplative approach to parish leadership rooted in Benedictine spirituality.” One participant noted how STP takes a stance about the purposes of the parish church, i.e., “the adoration and awe of God, the formation of God’s people for the sake of the world, and being a sanctifying presence in the community.”
I have no great “therefore” to offer. Just a few things I’ve noticed. The Episcopal Church is a lot smaller than it was when I was ordained. Maybe it's my fault??? We have many wonderful parish churches. Saints are nurtured in all of them. I wonder if we struggle more with the confusion in our people about how to understand the church. Are the analogies that would compare us to — a social service agency or mental health center or voluntary club or social justice movement or business — more powerful in many places than the reality of God, our participation in the Divine Life, and the parish being a “wonderful and sacred mystery”? In this time do too many of our dioceses and parishes get things backward and believe that Jesus was wrong in thinking that Mary's way was better Martha’s [1] and Underhill was mistaken in thinking that our service won't be much good if it didn’t rise out of adoration. and awe. [2] And I noticed how the Holy Spirit keeps nudging us toward real life and how so many among us experience the nudge and respond.
I’ll end with a portion of one of the readings from tonight’s Evening Prayer.
On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. - From Exodus 19
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
The Eve of Pentecost
[1] Luke 10:38-42
[2] Evelyn Underhill, ““One’s first duty is adoration, and one’s second duty is awe and only one’s third duty is service. And that for those three things and nothing else, addressed to God and no one else, you and I and all other countless human creatures evolved upon the surface of this planet were created. We observe then that two of the three things for which our souls were made are matters of attitude, of relation: adoration and awe. Unless these two are right, the last of the triad, service, won’t be right. Unless the whole of your...life is a movement of praise and adoration, unless it is instinct with awe, the work which the life produces won’t be much good.”