Dans ce JOURNAL je partage de temps en temps un aperçu de ma vie de chrétien catholique et de prêtre pour rejoindre d'autres qui désirent contribuer au bien commun et pour faire avancer l'ouverture personnelle à Dieu qui fait vivre toute l'humanité et veille sur nous. G.S.
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Slide of our church in l'Épiphanie, QC, I took in 1965 when our family moved to a dairy farm there when I was 16. It burned down almost 30 years ago and they built a smaller, more modern one inside some of the remaining walls. At present, we are small, lively faith communities, much like in the early Church at the time of the Apostles.
What is your understanding of God? Of Jesus Christ? Of his Church? Of the Roman Catholic Church in particular?
Dear Friend who are willing to read me here, please allow me to "vent" a little of these
thoughts regarding the "state of the Church" today....
We are the Church of Jesus, all of us who believe in Him as the Son of God, and the only Saviour of the world. We are all in this together, in trying to live together on Planet Earth. Pope Francis since his election in 2013 has pleaded with all of humanity to work together as brothers and sisters sharing this planet as "our common home". Unlike the doomsayers, Pope Francis is hopeful that we can work together to prevent the worst from happening to our world which we will be leaving to our children and grandchildren.
Many if not most people today no longer believe in God, let alone worship Him
One of our realities and burdens for Church workers in recent
years is the reality of so few people regularly going to Church,
which translates into few Sunday offerings, which results in
churches being unable to have full time employees but only part
time, and in many cases, not even part time but relying in part or
completely on volunteers. Our Church may look impressive in its
buildings, but they were erected at a time when the majority of the population was Catholic and attending Church every Sunday. Now, most of them are almost resembling ghost towns in
fact. Some French parishes only have a volunteer secretary for
under ten hours of office time a week. That's all.
Demographics have radically changed in 75 years
One of my first parishes was St. Aloysius, where I served from 1985 to 1994, which was founded in 1908. At the time, it was the 8th English parish because there were only 7 others; whereas today, there are 35 parishes and one worship center (Newman at McGill). Nine parishes or missions have been closed. Two or three of those original 7 parishes no longer exist because some of their churches were expropriated for the building of the Ville-Marie Expressway and the CBC complex downtown.
The people living in the new St. Aloysius Parish had lots of
young families and built a church, hall, and rectory between 1908
and 1910. The population shifted to the north and west and east
ends of Montreal and then to the West Island suburbs. By 1970, the
parish could no longer afford to maintain its buildings and let
them be expropriated by the City of Montreal in 1969 or 1970.
Parishioners stripped the church of valuable items like stained
glass windows. The Diocese put some church furnishings in storage
to be used in new churches being built. Stained glass windows were
auctioned off to parishioners to allow the Sunday Assembly to keep
going in rented premises like Protestant churches.
There was a terrific expansion of English parishes as families with lots of children all became adults, married, and had children of their own from the 1930's to 1960's. Over two dozen new English parishes were founded and new churches built during those decades, during which time 75 to 85% of the population were going to Church every Sunday. Those parishes saw 5,000 to 15,000 people at 7 to 10 Sunday Masses every Sunday, including children, teenagers, and young adults. Even when they gave small offerings between $0.10 and $2.00 - in today's money that would be $2 to $15 - the sheer number of people provided parishes with proper operating budgets and allowed them to hire staff, pay operating expenses, and maintain and repair their buildings, and pay down their mortgages.
Attendance dropped off dramatically between the 1960's and 1990's until today, where barely 5% of the population participates in Sunday worship regularly. People went to Church because they believed in God. They knew they were much blessed by God and, despite life's challenges and sufferings, they were grateful to God and went to Church to express their gratitude and worship the living God. Now, many people have doubts. It's only human to have doubts.
God chooses to remain silent before his accusers
Sadly, many people who have power and influence promote their doubts or skepticism about God or about the Church in order to arouse contempt for God. Reduced in numbers, the Church can no longer defend herself, or the truth, with the exception of people like Pope Francis, who is still covered and quoted in many places, both the mass media and social media. Apart from Pope Francis' success with media coverage of his words and actions, these critics are quite successful; consider the "absence" of God in the mass media, in government, in economics and business. It's "the law of the jungle" without God. They often pass on misinformation or even bare faced lies, and our Church now, reduced in numbers of loyal members as well as reduced in young, bright, enthusiastic clergy and lay workers, no longer enjoys "holding the microphone" which addresses the general public.
The scientific revolution was initiated mostly by Christians and Catholics
As Jesus chose to remain silent before his accusers 2,000 years ago; so too now, does God choose to remain silent before those who proclaim that He does not exist. Many "myths" are being passed on in both mass and social media
today, such as faith is opposed to reason, the Bible is opposed to
science, and the Church is opposed to justice and progress. It makes no sense to blame people who believe these things - they have
simply been misinformed; choosing not to go to Church, they have little access to the truth. However, it is wrong to pass on
information if we have not investigated it
ourselves to verify whether what we are passing on is true or not.
The truth is that the majority of scientists leading up to and
making up the "scientific revolution" of the 1500's to the 1800's
were in fact Christians, most of them were devout Catholics, and deep believers in God, and many were
even priests.
It is because they believed in God and that the universe was his
Creation manifesting his beauty and wisdom that they engaged in
scientific study and experiments. They were in awe of the ways in
which nature reflects the qualities of the Creator, just as art
reflects the qualities of the artist. Most if not all of the first
universities in Europe were started and developed by the Church so
that more people could have access to learning. Missionaries all
over the world brought education to the impoverished people to
whom they went to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
Missionaries in Canada and the far north worked to construct
dictionaries in order to preserve indigenous languages, knowledge,
wisdom, and history, and in many cases, even invented written
languages for those peoples.
The residential schools issue
Residential schools were a tragedy enforced by the Canadian
government, which was copying policies of the American government.
The American government was carrying on a systematic genocide of
indigenous peoples because of the wars caused by whites not
respecting treaties made with the indigenous as well as some
indigenous rebellious braves warring on innocent whites. Our
Canadian government was ignorant or prejudiced in enforcing
residential school policies to subdue the indigenous population
and force them to assimilate into Canadian society. It was wrong
also for the government to force religious and missionaries to
implement this government policy. Today, the Church and Pope
Francis have apologized, the Canadian government established the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the rest of us need to
catch up on taking interest in indigenous peoples and being
willing to meet, listen, and talk with them. Many "calls to action" have been put together and published like this one. We have a long way to
go yet.
What about the graves?
We moderns, with all our modern medicine publicly funded, have no idea of all the trouble and suffering endured by our grandparents and great grandparents going way back. They had no medicare. If they were able to have medical care at all it was thanks to armies of religious women, for the most part, who dedicated their lives and labours of love - with no salaries or pension plans - for the love of God and their neighbour. Moreover, we think that Covid-19 has been horrible, and it has for many who suffered it. The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was far worse. Of the total world population of 1.5 billion, one out of three were infected - that's 500 million people, and of those, 17 to 50 million, possibly as many as 100 million died... that's between 4 and 20% of all those infected. The stats are not exact because national governments were so overwhelmed that they had trouble keeping count, and many of the victims were buried in mass graves.
There were many other "waves" of epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries, and there were many mass graves. Just a few years ago, the authorities had to conduct archaeological digs in Confederation Park next to the Cathedral Marie-Reine-du-monde before being able to reconstruct Rue de la Cathédrale. The reason: in the early 1800's, when the city was down the hill and this was nothing but fields, the city had to make an emergency cemetery to bury the fever victims who came off the boats from Ireland. Many were buried on Grosse Isle in the St. Laurence River, but many more died here. Later, the graves were moved to Mount Royal, but they found a few more here who had been overlooked. The point is that the mortality rate was not necessarily any higher in residential schools than it was everywhere else. It is only since World War II, with the great advances in medical technology, that the death rate has been drastically reduced. We all have to die, but most now die in old age rather than in infancy or childhood. In summary, those mass graves were not a conspiracy to conceal the identity of those who died, but simply the fact that public authorities were often overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of sudden deaths.
Jesus and early Christians actually promoted women's dignity and freedom
If Saint Paul in some of his letters insisted on women covering their heads in the Sunday assembly (there were no church buildings yet or for another few centuries), it was not a put down of women. The truth is that in the Roman Empire, woman were only safe in their father's house or their husband's house. If women lived anywhere else, it was because they had no choice but to be slaves or prostitutes, where they were exploited and forced to expose their hair for the enjoyment and exploitation by everyone. After their hair was seen and enjoyed, it was other parts of them that were often exploited. St. Paul was saying that when women came to the worshipping Assembly of Christians, they would not be exploited and did not have to expose their hair or be seen or used for the pleasure of others. In the Christian Assembly, they would be left alone and could keep their hair covered, because they would be safe and respected, whether they were living in their father's house, or their husband's house, or their own house, or in one of the new Christian communities even if they were still single.
That is only one among hundreds of examples of how people today
misunderstand the conditions of societies in the past and misjudge
the Catholic Church for her teachings and practices and also
misread the Bible, not understanding the actual conditions in
which the Church existed and developed over the past 20 centuries,
or the conditions under which each of the books in the Bible were
inspired by God and written between roughly 2,200 B.C. and 99 A.D.
Jesus predicted that his followers and disciples would receive no better treatment than he himself would receive, and that they would be
persecuted, accused, falsely condemned, unfairly jailed, and even
executed for his sake. This is now happening in dozens of
countries around the world. It is partly happening here, and it
may very well get worse soon. In the meantime, those who still
work for the Church are courageous and generous, and extremely
devoted, even if they are only able to work part time, and even
when they have to volunteer because their parish is unable to
afford paying them.
As a result, errors happen. We are no longer anything resembling
a "big corporation". We are little, poor, often aging, like
myself, often brilliant, at times smart enough but far from
brilliant. But God loves the poor, the misunderstood, the
persecuted, widows and orphans. You who may be "young professionals" have become accustomed to a very high level of competence and performance in the public sector and business world. Even so, many errors of judgement and accidents of information continue to happen, despite all our technology. So, please be understanding and kind when dealing with those who still, for the love of God and their neighbour, serve you and the Church.
Thank you for reading my "vent"... (smile). I hope to meet you or have an exchange by email or phone, or even to see you soon. Thank you for reading me. Peace to you and your family, to your colleagues and friends, and all their families.
Christ is risen, alleluia!
Dans ce JOURNAL je partage de temps en temps un aperçu de ma vie de chrétien catholique et de prêtre pour rejoindre d'autres qui désirent contribuer au bien commun et pour faire avancer l'ouverture personnelle à Dieu qui fait vivre toute l'humanité et veille sur nous. G.S.
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© 2004-2023 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2004-2023 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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