Parishes Preparing Their People for…What Exactly?

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
—Richard Marcinko, founder of SEAL Team Six

Ordinarily, do untrained and unprepared people “rise to the occasion” when faced with enormous challenges? In great fiction, they often do. In real life? Well, that’s another story.

People who work in fields where error can result in death (e.g., soldiers, law enforcement, firemen, pilots, emergency doctors) will all tell you that “people don’t rise to the level of the occasion; they fall to the level of their training.” In life-or-death situations, when a split-second decision is required, if you must stop and think about what to do next, you’ve already failed. Careful training—including training under conditions of extreme stress—prepares individuals to act well in perilous situations. You can find innumerable accounts where survivors said, “My training saved me.”

That got me to thinking: What are Catholic parishes training their people for? More specifically, what is Fr. Cheerful, pastor of St. Typical’s (assisted by the younger Fr. Stifled) preparing his people for? Before I proffer an answer, let me suggest a few possibilities.

In Matthew 20, we see the apostles James and John (through the good offices of their mother) asking to be placed at the right and left hand of Our Lord in His kingdom. Jesus asks the brothers, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They assure Him that they can. What happens next?

Not long afterward, James is the first apostle to be martyred. Unlike the red martyrdom of his brother, John suffers a white martyrdom—enduring all manner of abuse and exile—dying after many years of faithful service. He is the last apostle to die. Biblical commentator William Barclay relates the living and dying of both James and John to a Roman coin in circulation during their lifetime. The coin depicts an ox facing both an altar and a plow. The inscription on the coin reads: “Ready for Either.” In other words, the ox is ready for the “red martyrdom” of being sacrificed at the altar, or for the “white martyrdom” of a life of unglamorous service, hitched to the plow until death.

These options illustrate what I think that the parishioners of St. Typical’s (henceforth known as “the Typicalians”) should be prepared for. Our world is at an inflection point in history. An empire is falling, nations are raging, and new technologies promise a strange (and likely dystopian) future. The Church’s current state of distress and disrepair has been ranked among other great ecclesiastical crises, such as the Arian controversy, the Great Schism, and the Reformation. Fr. Stifled might wish to speak to the people of St. Typical’s about the necessity to prepare for both red and white martyrdom. But will Fr. Cheerful let him?

I’d have to say no—and for a variety of reasons. First, serious talk about serious topics would work against Fr. Cheerful’s commitment to forming “a welcoming community”; trying to prepare people for martyrdom would fail to “meet people where they’re at.” (Does Fr. Cheerful see that as a—or the—sin against the Holy Spirit, i.e., the unforgivable sin?) Worst of all, such grim talk might generate complaints—and in Fr. Cheerful’s book, generating complaints certainly constitutes a sin against the Holy Spirit.

The Typicalians would also resist any attempt by Fr. Stifled to raise the difficult question of being prepared for red martyrdom, white martyrdom, or for anything at all. By their behavior (arriving late, leaving early, or clapping for the musicians), by the way they dress (carelessly at best, scandalously at worst), by the way they stare at Father while he’s preaching (either a vacant stare or a sullen stare that communicates, “Why are you still talking?!?”), and by the indifference with which they receive Holy Communion, the Typicalians communicate that they are reserving their attention, time, energy, and resources for something more important than the Mass they grimly resign themselves to each Saturday/Sunday.

The Typicalians and Fr. Cheerful have an unstated agreement: if Father arranges for an orderly distribution of the Liturgical Participation Trophy (also known as the “Liturgical Proof-of-Purchase,” or, as many of the children of Typicalians refer to the Sacred Host, “The Thing”), and they in turn agree to put an envelope into the basket, and the transactions don’t take “too long,” then the parishioners won’t ask much of Fr. Cheerful and Fr. Cheerful won’t ask much of them.

Fr. Stifled wonders what would happen to the Typicalians if they ever had to face or surmount aggressive or even kinetic persecution. What if “bird flu” suddenly makes worship a “non-essential service” again? What if a federal agency suspects that St. Typical’s is a hotbed of “far-right, white supremacist, Christian nationalist domestic terrorism”? What if “Advocates-for-Choice” firebomb St. Typical’s? What if Mormons, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Jews-for-Jesus ring the doorbell of each Typicalian? What then? Would they rise to the occasion?

Far be it from me to assign a priori limits to God’s grace. It’s not intrinsically impossible that the adult male who wears his SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirt to Mass every Saturday evening will die trying to keep a rampaging mob from burning down the church. But it’s unlikely. It’s not inconceivable that the Typicalians who still sigh nostalgically for the good old days of Covid, when “it was just so much easier to go to Mass on television,” will, when the next government shutdown is ordered, roar, “Not this time!” But it’s unlikely. It’s not unimaginable that members of Fr. Cheerful’s “welcoming community” who lament, “Why don’t we get to drink the wine anymore?” will be able to give an articulate account of transubstantiation while they are surrounded by an angry mob in a prison yard. But it’s unlikely.

Isn’t it more likely (or, better said, more than likely) that the Typicalians who have come to demand, expect, and welcome effortless, thoughtless, heartless “worship” will find that any natural or man-made barrier to Mass is a welcome excuse for not showing up at all? If Christians become the scapegoat designated by a hostile regime and media, won’t the lukewarm, rootless Catholics of St. Typical’s find even their minimalist discipleship to be too costly? Will the people who shoved Fr. Stifled out of the way during the recessional hymn to beat him to the exit really stand fast and give a firm defense of the Faith during a state-sponsored “Struggle Session”? These questions answer themselves, don’t they?

The dearth of sound teaching and the trivialization of worship at St. Typical’s will not ready anyone for the brutality of red martyrdom or for the long, slow, disciplined agony of white martyrdom. Grace builds on nature. The bodies, minds, and hearts of the Typicalians are, humanly speaking, unprepared to receive the graces necessary for any form of costly fidelity—whether the cost of fidelity is paid all at once in blood or paid over decades of hidden yet heroic daily duty. Fr. Cheerful has made clear that he will not offer the necessary preparation; the Typicalians have made clear that they will not receive it. 

Here I can’t help but recall the observation of A.W. Tozer: “A church that can’t worship must be entertained; and people who can’t lead a church to worship must provide entertainment.” Fr. Cheerful, along with those who bring bongo drums and tambourines to Mass (in both the presence and the absence of an organist) have agreed to provide the entertainment.

Not long ago, I received a message from a young priest in distress. He said: 

In the few years I’ve been in parish life, it seems to me that the only thing we prepare people to do here is to come to Mass and put an envelope in the basket. There seems to be no interest or inclination in teaching or requiring anything else.

That seems to be the case at St. Typical’s. Now, I readily admit that there are exceptions—even as I stipulate that the exceptions are, well…exceptions. What I hear from many priests is that there exists a pervasive and persistent (but brittle) parish system that prepares people for nothing—certainly not for the crises and confusions already at our door and on the horizon. Why is this so?

T.S. Eliot said, “It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.” It seems that a parish system has been designed that requires no one to be holy. Such a system cannot endure—and it does not deserve to.

[Photo Credit: Kamoteus on Flikr]