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Ministries
Communities offer hope for church,
society
By GARY MacEOIN
San Antonio
The mega-parishes that are the
Catholic experience for thousands of parishioners in urban and suburban North
America and Europe are a far cry from the simple “house churches”
portrayed in the New Testament. Both the Acts of the Apostles and the letters
of Paul describe a model of simplicity: small groups of believers coming
together for the breaking of bread, holding all their goods in common and
sharing with the needy of the community.
Massive growth has been the boon and bane of the church over the
centuries.
Experiments with smaller, more manageable models of faith-based
community have been blips all along the screen of church history. Various
models developed and bloomed, only to be greeted with disfavor by a suspicious
hierarchy; more often than not the grassroots communities were condemned. But
the seeds of small, vibrant Christian communities seem deeply planted in the
Catholic imagination, and, every so often, they push to the surface with
refreshing regularity. Like now.
Based on the experience of those who’ve tried the small
Christian community model, it’s apparent that different structures are
indispensable to the future of Catholicism in the United States. This is clear
not only from the present crisis in the institution, but also from a shift in
ecclesiology: A priest-centered church -- and especially, but not only, when
priests are in critically short supply -- simply no longer responds to the
needs of a highly educated and culturally diverse Catholic community.
Fortunately, the past 20 years have witnessed the emergence of nearly 50,000
small Christian communities that have the potential to provide a new model of
being Catholic.
St. Mary’s University in San Antonio Aug. 1-4 hosted 600
delegates representing formally established small Christian communities, which
among some constituents are dubbed SCCs. The delegates were gathered for a
conference that discussed the successes of the movement, offered tips to
fledgling groups, and looked at the future of the church, Christian community
and society in a post-Christian and post-9/11 world.
In the words of the Franciscan liberation theologian Leonardo Boff
of Brazil, the small community is “a new way of being church.”
Drawing inspiration from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and the landmark
Medellín, Colombia, meeting of the Latin American bishops (1968), the
small Christian community concept first emerged in Brazil and neighboring
countries in the 1970s and has since spread around the world. One reason for
the movement’s success is its cultural flexibility: Communities adapt and
modify their structures according to the needs of each place. Its success in
doing that was evidenced in the San Antonio gathering, where in addition to
participants from the United States, representatives came from Brazil, Mexico,
Canada, Australia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Netherlands, England, Ireland,
Scotland and Sweden.
The communities reached the United States in the 1980s, thanks
largely to the initiative of Rob Mueller, who was a student at Trinity
University in San Antonio. Mueller, who is now a Presbyterian pastor serving a
heavily Hispanic congregation, teamed up with Fr. Balty Janacek, then the
Catholic chaplain at the university. With the support of the archdiocese, they
set out to create communities patterned on the Latin American model that would
combine “a passion for growth in one’s own personal faith and a
commitment … as a group to transforming our community, our world.”
Proof of the success of their efforts was the presence of about a hundred
delegates from San Antonio at the conference.
As the movement expanded into other parts of the United States,
its emphases have changed. The evolution is described in a study of “The
Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communities,” which was prepared by
Marianist Fr. Bernard Lee and constituted the main working paper for the
conference. Lee, vice chancellor for Marianist Affairs at St. Mary’s
University, was the principal planner and organizer of the conference.
The change was singled out for major discussion by Robert Bellah,
professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, who was a
keynote speaker. About a fifth of the small Christian communities in the United
States, those in the Southwest, continue the Latin American model’s
combination of development of personal faith and commitment to transforming the
larger community. The other four-fifths, however, are, according to Bellah,
“more into gathering than being sent.”
Bellah, following Lee, would not exclude the class difference as
explanation. The view from below of the relatively deprived Hispanics, he
contends, enables them to see problems in U.S. society that the more affluent
overlook. But, Bellah also warned, as he analyzed the drift of American
society, that if the small Christian communities continue on their in-focused
course, they will fail to perform the service to the church and to religion of
which they are capable.
The past half-century in particular has seen the rise of “The
American Religion,” which Bellah described as a philosophy of life that
“keeps the traditional demands of discipleship from upsetting the
equilibrium of the individualized, rationalized, market-driven consumer
society.” This culture, he said, with its absolute belief that each
person’s religion is the free choice of the consumer rather than a
response to God’s call, is inherently in conflict with all that
Christianity stands for.
Bellah told participants that the impact of consumer-driven
religion is in evidence throughout the whole of U.S. society. It manifests
itself in a “progressive decline in engagement, a withdrawal from every
form of commitment: political, civic, social, religious, even family.” And
according to Bellah, participation is not only declining, but its quality is
changing also: “We ask more what we can get out of it, and less what we
can give through it.”
Compounding America’s disengagement is the fact that economic
considerations now dominate most of life: HMOs make life-and-death decisions
for us; schools and jails are run for profit. People work longer hours, but one
salary is no longer sufficient to maintain a family. Employees have less
loyalty because the employer has no sense of commitment to workers. A major
role small Christian communities need to play if they are to be faithful to the
“sending” mission of the gospel, according to several conference
presenters, is to restore balance and a sense of God-given worth to individuals
and society.
Under the influence of U.S.-led globalization, the negative
cultural trends that began in the United States are spreading to the rest of
the world. If the current mindset lasts, Bellah said, future generations will
have to function in a world that considers them individuals first, members of
collectives only secondarily, and in which their main purpose on earth is to
maximize one’s own self-interest. That’s one arena where small
Christian communities will have a pivotal role to play. The other, in which
they’ve done so well until now, will be to keep challenging the church to
allow room for innovative models of lay-based community to thrive. Both that
barnacled institution and the “me first” society in which it lives
will need them more than ever.
Gary MacEoin lives and writes in San Antonio.
At a glance
Designed around a model developed in the Latin American church
in the 1970s, small Christian communities in the United States today vary
widely in their structure. But there are some commonalities:
- An average community has 13 adults, eight women and five men,
with young people. Some eucharistic-centered small communities number as many
as 50 or 60 people, but larger groups tend to divide into smaller units for
their day-to-day functioning.
- More than three-fourths of them meet every week or every two
weeks, mostly in members’ homes on a rotating basis.
- Most small Christian communities come together for a Liturgy
of the Word, using one of several lectionary-based publications designed
specifically for them.
- Almost none of the communities in the United States has an
ordained minister as a member; instead, they attend their local parish for
eucharistic celebrations.
National Catholic Reporter, September 20,
2002
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