One sometimes gets the impression that the clergy live in another world. Surrounded by their fellow clerics and the most pious parishioners, we imagine, they immerse themselves in Scripture and liturgy, their minds and souls steeped in spiritual sentiments and theological thoughts. Hence their sermons, pastoral letters and the eparchial newspapers seem addressed to those who share their mentality.
Of course, this is not fair. Our pastors are very much in the world. That is why they are called “secular” clergy, by distinction from the monastic “black” or “regular” clergy. They deal on a daily basis not only with their parishioners’ joy at weddings and baptisms, but with their torments of sin and guilt, doubt and despair, sickness and death.
And yet it seems their world is far from ours. We live in a society which – from the highest levels of government down to some of our own friends and family – has become indifferent, and sometimes hostile, not just to Christianity, but to religion itself. A 2014 Pew Research Center survey shows a decline in U.S. religious affiliation since 2007 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/12/christianity-faces-sharp-decline-as-americans-are-becoming-even-less-affiliated-with-religion/?wpisrc=nl_headlines& wpmm=1). The percentage of self-professed Christians has fallen from 78 percent to 71 percent. The number of religiously unaffiliated people (the “nones”) has risen from 16 percent to 23 percent. Of these, 31 percent are atheists or agnostics – up from 25 percent. Catholics and mainline Protestants have suffered losses of between 3 percent and 5 percent. The former have lost 3 million faithful; in fact, 13 percent of Americans were “raised Catholic” but no longer practice the faith, while Catholic converts number only 2 percent. The trend is unmistakable. As for our own churches, the statistics are just as discouraging. By one estimate, the Ukrainian Catholic Church is hemorrhaging 5 percent of its faithful annually.
We think of our diaspora community as a place where we can “preserve” the faith – as in formaldehyde. But we no longer live in communities – whether villages or urban neighborhoods – centered on the parish church. It has become just a place where we worship once a week, see a few friends and then scatter. Virtual communities (such as e-mail lists) are no substitute. Those who seek a true Christian community may well wonder whether the Amish don’t have the right idea by isolating themselves from a fallen society in order to live by Christian principles. In such an enclave, those who have more than they need share it with those who have too little, while all live by a single moral code. Our Ukrainian church “communities” are a far cry from that.
In the absence of a Christian community, we may think of the family as a place where the faith can be nurtured and “passed on.” But to whom? The mass media, the schools and now the government override whatever we try to teach our children. We practice our colorful Christmas and Easter traditions, but aside from a vague notion of their pagan origins, we hardly remember what they mean. In a post-Protestant North American culture where Church-state separation has been extended to divide life from faith, religion is an inconvenient obligation tolerated only – if at all – within the space of an hour a week and the four walls of a church. The ideological department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would have been delighted.
In this context, the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Synod of Bishops’ program titled “The Vibrant Parish: A Place to Encounter the Living Christ,” created in Brazil in 2011 and set forth in a pastoral letter of Patriarch Sviatoslav of December 2 of that year, may seem like both a treatment and a symptom. Part of the “Vision 2020” (get it?) strategic plan, and the subject of local meetings leading up to this year’s patriarchal sobor, the program is evidently aimed at revitalizing a flagging Church. But its approach may seem all too typical of clerical bureaucracy. In 2013, the Working Group for Strategic Development of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church produced a 49-page Handbook for Pastoral Planning that provides checklists, tables, bullet-points and guidelines for “SWOT” situational analysis. This has all the Christian warmth of a Five-Year Plan. But as Father Andriy Chirovsky of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute recently remarked, it would be unfair to regard it cynically as just another exercise in clerical paper-pushing. It is undoubtedly sincere. But is it effective? Is this how Jesus attracted disciples? Shouldn’t we just give away our possessions and set out for the slums, feeding the hungry and announcing the Kingdom of God?
Well, maybe. But for most of us, there are more realistic options. “Vibrant Parish” is a good start.
I think that along with human solidarity, the key to rebuilding the Church is liturgy. Recently, I attended a Saturday vespers service at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of St. John the Baptist in Ottawa. I had experienced Byzantine-rite vespers, but never like this. As is traditional, women stood on the left, men on the right. (There is a reason for this: the former face the icon of the Mother of God – the latter, that of Christ.) One group would sing a verse and the other would chant the response, coming together for some parts, then separating again. One was reminded of an English country dance. (Pews inhibit the choreography of Byzantine services, with their processions and prostrations, while kneelers are ritually superfluous.) It gave the lie to the assertion one sometimes hears that Christian worship is too staid for bodily expression. During matins in the chapel of Holy Spirit Seminary, at the phrase “clap your hands, all ye people” (Psalm 46 (47): 2) the chanters literally clapped.
According to the Primary Chronicle, Grand Prince Volodymyr’s emissaries, stunned by the Byzantine liturgy, “knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth.” They had been in another world, sometimes described as a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. Our pastors invite us into that world. And the parish is our doorway.