Communicating Faith

4. Communicating Faith in the Parish: Maintaining a Presence, Care, and Mission

50 4 Communicating Faith in the Parish Maintaining a Presence, Care, and Mission Atli Jónsson The parish is a privileged location for communicating faith. Busy with keeping long-standing activities alive, it needs to step back and reflect on the limits and opportunities it has for making the faith that sustains us known in this familiar setting. For the purpose of this chapter, four presuppositions are made about how the parish is perceived and about its nature. First, the experience most people have of the church is in their parish, and the two, church and parish, are virtually synonymous. As they refer to church they intend mostly what they themselves have experienced in the parish, the community they are part of, the people they have met, and the concerns that arise from this experience . The second observation is that, theologically speaking, the parish is a valid expression of church. As the community gathers for the celebration of the Eucharist, the summit and source of the church’s life are realized.1 1. Cf. Christus Dominus 30/2, Presbyterorum Ordnis 5, Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 2 (1963) and Lumen Gentium 11 (1964), in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, vol. 1., ed. Austin Flannery (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984). Communicating Faith in the Parish 51 Third, the parish is a place of communion with the local church, a bond expressed in the person of its own pastor (pastor proprius), the representative of the diocesan bishop.2 Finally, the parish shares in the mission of the church to bear witness to the Christian faith (martyria), to offer worship and sanctify (leiturgia), and to serve neighbor (diakonia). These core activities structure the work that is done in the parish. Consequently the success of parish life can be seen from how these three essential elements of liturgy, formation, and service help the community to live as Christians and indicate how vibrant or otherwise a parish is. This contribution is based on the particular experience of life in an English parish. I assume that many, even most, of the challenges we face are similar to the rest of the developed world, where many institutions can no longer rely on loyalty or convention for belonging. This situation is particularly evident with younger people, who see meaningful participation in terms of selfidentity and evaluate their involvement in terms of how successfully it is attained .3 The educationally, economically, and socially deprived may not have the same aspiration to realize themselves. Reaching those who—for whichever reason—are distant from faith is made more difficult in the UK as public religious discourse is often seen as suspect.4 The rhetoric in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, broadcast worldwide, shows a very different situation, where religious references are not only possible but positively encouraged. The content of this reflection was helped along by three ideas of the late German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, whose interest in the situation of the modern believer and the future of the church’s mission is evident in his numerous publications. Two reports to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales on Collaborative Ministry and Evangelisation in England and Wales have been useful resources, as has the detailed study of Callum G. Brown, The Death of Christian Britain.5 2. Cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 42; The Code of Canon Law (London: Collins, 1983); canons 515 par. 1, 517 par.1–2, 519, 520 par.1 list the various ways in which the appointment of the pastor proprius can be made and the categories of persons that can serve in this capacity. 3. Carol E. Lytch, Choosing Church: What Makes a Difference for Teens (Louisville, Ky., and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 84–85. 4. Many examples could be given of how religious discourse does not sit easily in public life in Britain. One famous example may, however, suffice. In an interview for Vanity Fair Magazine in 2003, reporter David Margolick asked Prime Minister Tony Blair about his Christian faith. One of Mr. Blair’s unelected assistants, Alistair Campbell, interrupted the Prime Minister’s reply to say, “I’m sorry, we don’t do God”; quoted by Brian Walden on the BBC website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4903424.stm (accessed February 16, 2009). 5. Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, The Sign We Give: A Report of the 52 Atli J...