Episodes 2.8-10: end of the second term, and happy Easter!

Spring has sprung in Zurich!

We had one final Wednesday class followed by a marathon noon-‘till-late session the next Saturday. And with that, the second trimester of my class is over. Here is my sigh of relief: whew. In the first trimester, we were very much set adrift on our own – what do you believe about God, evil, the afterlife, sin, …? This trimester, things got much more concrete: the Roman Catholic Church holds x, y, and z to be true, are you with us or not? It’s safe to say I’m much more comfortable with the first approach: when left to my own devices, I gravitate naturally towards the Church; but when asked to sign on to specifics, I get squeamish. (Other students in the class felt exactly the opposite, which just goes to show that we’re not all wired the same way.)

I felt a tension in the readings between calls to “a mature faith” and statements bemoaning “individualism” as responsible for the modern drop in church attendance. Doesn’t maturity, as a concept, imply a certain amount of individualism? Even in a culture where strict adherence to social norms is valued, the “mature” person is one who has gone through some period of questioning and then agreed to accept those norms…right? “I do this because it’s what I was taught as a child” is good for church attendance, but it’s not particularly mature. And if church attendance is dropping because people are trying to think for themselves, is that entirely a bad thing?

There was also a good deal of talking around the idea of a small-c-catholic-meaning-universal church. In one handout church history was pictured as a tree, with branches lower down for early church schisms and further up for more recent splits. The official Church doctrine for a long time was that all the other churches had to eventually merge back into Roman Catholicism (do trees grow like that?) – and while there’s some slightly different spin on things these days, the readings didn’t stray far from that idea. Which I find frustratingly academic and divisive. What if the whole big tree is the “one holy catholic church” we profess to believe in?

I learned some things that I hadn’t known, like that “apostolic church” in the Apostle’s Creed refers to the fact that apostolic succession – each new bishop is consecrated by existing bishops, in a line that theoretically goes all the way back to the original apostles – is an even more important idea than the more-often-discussed principle of Papal succession (the Pope being the spiritual descendant of Peter). But there were also a lot of middlingly-helpful constructs straight out of high school theology class. The three functions of the church are martyria (sharing the gospel), diakonia (serving others), and leiturgia (ritual worship). Also koinonie (community), but that’s totally not four ok? Each of the seven sacraments of the Church has a material element (something concrete, such as the water at baptism), a specific prayer, and an element of consent. Except, well, in baptism the parents and godparents consent for the child, and the material element for marriage is…the ring you say? wrong, it’s the love!...wait what? The “sevenness” of the sacraments is somehow important, it would be unthinkable to have eight and we look down our holy noses at the protestant churches that have only two or three or five. Insert eye-rolling emoji here…again, I understand why these things are important in some contexts, but this isn’t the way I like to think about church.

I got particularly and possibly irrationally irritated about the church’s rules for receiving the Eucharist during Mass. Officially, people who have not received First Communion in the Catholic Church are not allowed to eat the bread or drink the wine. Because…I still don’t know. We believe that the bread and wine are Jesus’s body and blood, and if a non-believer consumed Jesus, the whole house of cards would come crashing down?  How? Why? Do we not believe that Jesus died for everyone, not just those who grew up Catholic? The answer from our instructor was that the Catholic Church is just like any other club, and it’s allowed to make rules: just like you as a random person off the street can’t just show up at the baseball game and expect to play, you as a random person off the street can’t just show up at Mass and participate in our central sacrament. Sure. But...isn’t that whole tree thing a sign that we believe we the Catholic/catholic church is not just any random club? And doesn’t that come with certain responsibilities, like being fully present for everyone who shows up? The first time I went to an Episcopal service and heard “all are welcome at this table” this hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course everyone is welcome. Or should be. In my opinion.

I guess what I’m coming around to is a kind of Catholic humanism. When I say I believe in one God, I mean I believe my God is the same as your God, no matter how many personal, traditional, or cultural differences stand between our two conceptions of this inconceivable entity. When I say I believe in a catholic church, I mean I think church exists any time people come together to encounter God (“where two or three are gathered in my name...” Matthew 18:20), regardless of whether they meet in the name of Catholicism or as a "gospel choir" or in an evangelical megachurch – none of which are perfect, and some of which may be more godly than others, but I’m luckily not in a position where I’m called to judge. When I say I’m Catholic, I mean that I mostly seek God through the traditions of the Catholic Church. But the thing I’m personally seeking isn’t full agreement with the Church, it is wisdom and communion with God – that same inconceivable entity that no person and no church has a corner on.

This term started with the question “is the Church in crisis?” and its unsaid twin “and if so, what do we do about it?” I don’t think the Church is in crisis. I think it has a long history behind it and a long future in front of it. But change is inevitable, even in an institution dedicated to preserving traditions and values. If I were running the place (thank goodness I’m not), I would tell everyone to stop wringing their hands about falling church attendance, and judging parents who don’t bring their kids up Catholic, and fall back this phrase, which sounds way better in German: “wer kommt, ist richtig.” Whoever comes is the right people.

I think we need to worry less about trying to teach a simplified version of our faith to children, and worry more about helping adults experience the depth and diversity of the church’s traditions – because it is most likely with their parents, not in Sunday school, that children will find the seeds of their own faith. And we could spend far more time helping people come to a mature understanding of their own spirituality. This includes making space for people to ask questions, and, yes, disagree with the official line. Are we brave enough as a Church to welcome people as they are, to stand with them even in doubt and disagreement? To invite people to contribute to church, not just participate in set rituals?

I’ve spent a lot of this term wondering if we’ve just completely lost our way – has the celebration of the Eucharist has become too far removed from the holy act of sitting together at a table and eating? Has the sacrament of reconciliation become too far removed from sitting together and sharing (per the class readings: “In the early church, people confessed their sins openly in the church, which again points to the sincere faith of early Christians and could hardly be imagined today.” Except…isn’t that what you do in AA?)? A totally non-church-related thing I’ve always been interested in is indoor public space: where can people go to sit, work, eat, and talk without pressure to consume? Why let church buildings sit empty when they themselves could be a service?

Lots to think about, and as it’s Holy Week, lots of church this week to think about it in. This post has been lurking around for a while now, and I want to work on it more, but I need to hit post because in the next two weeks I have to write a 5-7 page single-spaced paper for this class, in German (eek!). So bye for now, I’ll be back in May. In the meantime here’s my favorite Easter hymn, sung by some astonishingly stereotypical British students:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVduV0ustWw

Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Happy Easter everyone!