St. Aloysius Parish street ministry in Detroit, April 2015.
In our Catholic parishes, we have become more aware of the need to bring in those outside our parishes and to ensure that they experience a sense of belonging in our communities. Today, belonging is often the first step in a person’ s willingness to be open to Jesus Christ and his Church.
“ Belonging” yesterday and today
Belonging used to be a pretty simple matter in Catholic parishes. If you“ belonged” to the parish, you were part of“ the club.” The“ club” as a whole tended to follow the same moral code. Many Catholics who were members of a particular parish also lived in close proximity to one another. There was a lot of“ connection.” While this sense of being“ at home” in the parish was a wonderful experience for Catholics, it tended to be insular in the sense that Catholics rarely invited others— especially non-Catholics— into the fold. Priests and parishioners did not generally see evangelization as their responsibility. Somehow the comfort zones created in those parishes were so strong that the voice of Jesus saying,“ Go and make disciples of all nations,” was barely audible to many Catholics.
This type of belonging is becoming a relic of the past. There are new factors at work. For example, we have greater diversity in our parish populations. And many parishioners don’ t live in close proximity to one another since Catholics tend to hand-pick their parishes and not necessarily join the parish that corresponds to their geographic area. There are no longer as many built-in points of connection. We can also add two more factors: anti-Catholic bias and the extreme value placed on individualism. The almost automatic sense of belonging which was common in the past? Well, that pleasant picture has sung its swan song.
Which, thanks be to God, has led us into a land of great evangelical opportunity! The greatest blessing within our new situation is that we can seek to deliberately form parishes that have their sense of belonging built upon a belief in Jesus Christ and a desire to live as his disciples. Isn’ t that the best possible“ glue” for bonding? Isn’ t a sense of belonging which derives from a shared desire to be missionary disciples the perfect basis for meaningful community? We now embrace Jesus’ command to go and make disciples, to take seriously the foundational conviction of Archbishop Allen Vigneron’ s 2017 pastoral letter, Unleash the Gospel, to be resolved“ to undergo a‘ missionary conversion,’ a change in our culture, such that every person at every level of the Church, through personal encounter with Jesus Christ, embraces his or her identity as a son or daughter of God and, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is formed and
8 Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Spring 2021