The storm on the horizon and my grief about it

No, I'm not talking about weather.  For two times in the last four days, I've been contacted to anoint someone who is dying.  Certainly, this is not a problem; this is "what we do" as Parish Priests.  The two live in the parish boundaries, and no one is questioning the state of their health.  But here's what both have in common:

• Neither appears on our books as a parishioner.
• Neither had family members contact us that the person is at the end of their life (in one case, it was neighbors; in the other case, the hospice caregiver).
• One of the two lived alone.  The other is living with children, who also aren't registered parishioners.
• I know it's petty, but neither asked if we could come, but ordered a priest to come, as if they were calling for a pizza to be delivered to their home.

Priests reading this will probably recognize the situation.  The elderly, fairly Catholic, Mass-attending, faith-having believers are old and dying.  Their children (and grandchildren) don't attend Mass and don't see the need for it.  They see no need to come to Mass to pray for their sick loved ones, or even to stop in a church to spend some time with the Eucharistic Lord, and now, to keep their consciences clear, they want a Priest to come and give their loved one "last rites" (though they really don't know what that is or that we stopped using the term decades ago).

There's a generation of Catholics out there, generally in their 40s to 50s in age, whose years of religious education left them with nothing to turn to in their adulthood.  Back then, doctrine went out the window, only to be replaced with arts and crafts and music time.  They know very little about the Sacraments (if given a word pool, they could probably name all seven), and essentially don't see the need for them on our road to Heaven.  Church, for them, is a commodity, like bread, milk, or eggs: They like having convenience stores nearby that will sell it to them when they want it, but they certainly don't believe they have any dependence on it for survival.  And, since in their minds, "all eggs are the same", it doesn't matter whether we get our eggs at Quick-Chek or WaWas.  Faith is more about instant gratification than eternal redemption.  If Blah-Blah Bible Church has better donuts than St. Fillintheblank's, we'll go there instead.  After all, it's all the same.

I was having lunch with a Priest-friend who lamented about a morning meeting he had.  A woman called the office, requesting a sponsor certificate to be a Godparent.  She identified herself as a parishioner, though there was no record of her.  She was in a marriage not recognized by the Church.  Oh yes, and the baptism was four days away, in St. Louis!  The woman, of course, was not happy that she wasn't getting the sponsor certificate.  My friend opined, "And somehow, all of this is MY fault.", when we explain why they really shouldn't have a letter from the parish identifying them as a practicing Catholic.  Whenever we talk about inactive Catholics, it's almost always with a presupposition that the institutional Church is the reason they're away from the Sacraments.  No one dares say that the reason they've been away is because they chose to do so.  Yes, we've had plenty of talk about the "New Evangelization", but what I fear we're dreadfully unprepared for is the question of what happens when we preach the Gospel to our own team, and they choose to walk away?  Do we, like Christ, have enough of a conviction of our beliefs to let them go, as he did with those who did not understand his Bread of Life discourse?

If all of this weren't enough, the generation of "Catholic-in-theory" has bred.  Their children, having been brought up with the church as "location, not vocation", only know the church as a physical place, and not as the Divinely instituted community of heaven and earth (of which, by the way, they are already members through Baptism).  Truthfully, most have spent more actual hours in basements of churches going to religious education than in the church itself attending Mass and praying.  They have been sent to us to gain an understanding of the Triune God, of Jesus Christ, of the Church and all she professes, much like parents send their kids for lessons in piano or gymnastics (something they buy, but don't do themselves).  To these families, we spend lots of time attempting a kind of ecclesial-seduction: We schedule special Masses and confessions at the same time that their children normally attend religious education, hoping in our hearts that this will get them to begin a regular practice of their faith.  In reality though, we know that, if we do not schedule Sacraments while the kids are here, many parents will not do it for themselves.  In their minds, this is "what they pay us for."  We try to instill in the parents an understanding of the need to take their children to Mass.  To do this, we try things like a sign-in sheet at the door, or prayer slips that are supposed to be placed in the collection basket.  Parents, meanwhile, treat this as a game of Cat & Mouse, in which they do what they can to avoid Sunday Mass, yet at the same time trying to fool us into thinking they went.  It used to be that church and parents worked together for the children; now it seems we've become adversaries.

I know that there's a quote out there from Pope Benedict which says that the Church of the future will be "less populated, but more faith-filled".  Maybe in other parts of the world, but not in the United States.  Our crowd of marginal Catholics will continue to live their lives separate from the Church, coming around for Christmas Eve, Easter Sunday, Baptisms, 1st Communions, Confirmations, and funerals.  We'll allow it, avoiding any conversations about accountability or responsibility.

Truth is, we really don't want them to change their ways.  Uncatechized adult Catholics would require work, time spent instructing them in the Truth and destructing what they've come to believe as truth, and we don't want that.  Priests have a work schedule largely unaccountable to anyone, and many of them take advantage of that.  We'd rather take their occasional envelopes and go on making them feel that what they do is perfectly fine.  For their part, most of these marginal Catholics disagree with celibacy, the papacy, contraception, abortion, and moral absolutes, yet are unwilling to make the commitment of formally leaving the Catholic Church and going to a community that espouses those very things.  They want none of the rules but all of the privileges.  They haven't played one game of the regular season or playoffs, but they still want the champagne bath of a champion!

Please forgive this rant if you are one of those families who do go out of your way to fight the cultural tide and hang on to your Catholic faith.  I do know you're out there and that your decisions sometimes make you the "bad guys" to your kids and "religious zealots" to your neighbors.  None of this rant applies to you.  It's just that sometimes pastors feel like we work and work and work to get somewhere, and we're still right where we started.

Still, time marches on.  Little by little, the older generation dies, and THIS will be the next generation.  The generation that put $10. in their envelope each week will be replaced by the generation that puts $10. in an envelope 4-5 times a year.  Since Priests are also the managers of their parish's budget, this is something that will affect us all.  The stormclouds are on the horizon, I'm just sayin'.