ARTICLES

We Don't Want to be Silly

San Jose Diocese's Plan for Renewal

By Christopher Zehnder

Self-reflection is a good thing. So are self-correction and renewal, both for individuals and institutions. So, I should have been encouraged when I read on its website that the diocese of San Jose has, for the past few years, been undertaking a process of reflection with a view to a renewal of its institutions and mission. But, given my own experience of what "renewal" has meant in the Church, I wasn't encouraged; and a reading of the diocesan plan, Renewing The Church: A Pastoral Plan for the Diocese of San Jose, the Catholic Community of Santa Clara County, only confirmed my doubts.

It was not the introductory letter to the plan by Bishop Patrick McGrath that I found particularly troubling. Indeed, the bishop said some very good, if somewhat vague, things in the letter, which promulgated the pastoral plan in March 2002. Bishop McGrath spoke of the "great opportunities and challenges" the diocese faces as it seeks "to carry out the work that Christ has given" to it. He spoke of the "great hope for the future of the Church" and stated that "as members of the Body of Christ, our hopes and dreams are rooted in Our Lord's life, message, death, and resurrection." McGrath asked, "how can we, Christ's Church in Santa Clara County, be a sign of unity and an instrument of God's peace? How can we fulfill the work that God has given us to do?" Nothing particularly objectionable could be found in the bishop's means of discerning the answers to these questions; for, while asserting the uniqueness of his "ministry to discern the promptings of the Holy Spirit," McGrath did not rely on his own judgment, but consulted the faithful of the diocese and "engaged in a broad consultative process over the course of more than a year." In doing this, he invoked the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, in Lumen Gentium, that said (in McGrath's words), "all baptized Catholics participate in Christ's offices of priest, prophet, and shepherd."

And what was the result of this "broad consultative process"? The faithful of the San Jose diocese determined that the most pressing issues facing the diocese are "Lay Leadership, Youth and Young Adults, the Church's Teaching on Social Justice, and Organizational and Structural Concerns." While in themselves these issues are neither unworthy or unimportant, yet to present them as central issues seemed to me odd. Why these issues, and not catechesis, vocations to the priesthood, or missionary outreach?

To understand better what the plan was really about, I spoke to Sister Pat Mitchell, SFCC, who directs the diocesan office for parish and planning and oversees the implementation of the plan. Sister Pat said the diocese sees the plan as "ongoing" and has no definite time frame for its implementation. "We're working at the diocesan level and at the parish deanery level on different facets of the plan," she said.

I told Sister Pat that one aspect of the plan I found none too clear was its mission statement. "The mission of the Diocese of San Jose, the Catholic Community of Santa Clara County," says the plan, "is to be a local Church that will inspire the people of the Valley to live the values taught by Jesus Christ, inspiring them to integrity and action." What are these "values" taught by Christ? I wondered. Sister Pat said that the vision statement "seems to articulate in a more detailed way what those values might be." They are being "a church that welcomes people, a church that is attuned to the world around us and tries to respond to that, tries to make a difference in peoples' lives." This is what the plan means, she said, when it speaks of the kingdom of Christ. "Our vision," the plan went on, "is rooted in faith: Christ and Christ alone is at the center. That vision must rise out of faith and be different from any merely worldly vision. Christ guides all we do. His hope for the Kingdom is our vision."

Yet, however commendable these visions may be, I had thought the Church was about more than welcoming people and being attuned to the world. The Church is about "making a difference in peoples' lives," but in a rather more specific way. Encouraged by Bishop McGrath's letter, I had read the first three chapters of Lumen Gentium. There I read of the necessity of the Church for salvation, of Christ's establishing the Church in order to gather all men in unity and so bring them salvation. Speaking of those outside the Church, the Council said that "to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, 'Preach the Gospel to every creature,' the Church fosters the missions with care and attention."

Why does the San Jose plan, then, not emphasize missionary outreach to non-Catholics? The plan does speak of attracting lapsed Catholics back to the Church (and presents this surprising statistic: that of the estimated 600,000 Catholics in the diocese, only "100,000 gather for Mass each Sunday.") The plan also speaks about being welcoming to all, but says nothing about missionary outreach. "What we're trying to do.... We're not looking at trying to convert everybody to Catholicism; that's not the point of the plan and that's not what we see the mission to be," Sister Pat told me. "What we're trying to do is, we have people coming from many faith traditions, and the values that we espouse as Catholic Christians are very important values that we think make a genuine contribution to society. So we would hope that other people would see these values as good values in and of themselves and would want to live by those values, as well."

"The whole idea of bringing people into the Church, either welcoming back those who have been away, or trying to facilitate that return, as well as welcoming newcomers to the Church" did come up "as one of the potential areas of focus" during the plan's consultative process period, said Sister Pat. "But in hearing from people from around the diocese they did not in fact end up as among the top three pastoral issues. We saw them as among the ten potential different issues that could have ended up being the pastoral priorities, but we decided that the focus would be on a few and not on all ten -- because all ten were good and important priorities, but knowing that we could really only give adequate time and attention to some in particular, those were the ones we decided to focus on. Now, at a later time, that may change. If, in fact, we make some real inroads with our youth and young adults, our Catholic social teaching and our lay leaders, the goals may shift. [Missionary outreach] could be one of the goals for the future."

Sister Pat also noted that the plan's goals will not be the sole focuses of the diocese. "The liturgy is central to who we are as a Catholic community, so we continue to put our best efforts into liturgy," she said. "We continue to put our best efforts into Catholic education, just to name a couple of things. And to vocations to the priesthood. But those efforts are not lessened by what we're doing here."

At some points the San Jose diocesan plan sounded vaguely like the Communist International: "Arise, you prisoners of starvation! Arise, you wretched of the earth! For justice thunders condemnation. A better world's in birth. No more tradition's chains shall bind us. Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations. We have been naught, we shall be all." With similar rhetoric (though with less eloquence), the plan exhorts, "let us be a Church unafraid to dream. Our diocese is a microcosm of the new world in which a new world Church is struggling to be born. We find ourselves on the cutting edge of this struggle. We cannot be content with the ways of the past. We have new challenges; we must use our imaginations in meeting them and we must not be afraid to take risks."

Sister Pat, explaining the phrase, "microcosm of the new world in which a new world Church is struggling to be born," made it sound much less revolutionary. "We're looking at the whole idea that, in fact, each day the world is born anew," said Sister Pat. "So, we're looking at the circumstances of our world today and having a church that is ready to respond to that. A church for today -- faithful to the founding vision, the vision that Jesus gave us, and responsive to the times. The mission of the Church overall is a consistent mission. In trying to achieve that mission we change the way we do things in order to meet the changes in society. But the fundamental vision remains the same."

One way of being "responsive to the times" is by emphasizing not merely lay ministry, but lay leadership. Lumen Gentium, in speaking of the role of laymen in the Church, notes that they, "by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God." Yet, the document also notes that, besides their mission in the world, "the laity can also be called in various ways to a more direct form of cooperation in the apostolate of the Hierarchy. Further, they have the capacity to assume from the Hierarchy certain ecclesiastical functions, which are to be performed for a spiritual purpose." But, in what way can this "cooperation in the apostolate of the hierarchy" be called "lay leadership"? How is a concept of lay leadership consonant with the hierarchical character of the Church?

Sister Pat emphasized that it is lay leadership, not simply lay ministry, with which the diocesan plan is concerned. "Lay ministry is one thing," she said; "lay leadership is another. In fact, and as we look at our church going forward, the laity, who are the church -- we're all church together -- have great gifts in leadership in their own respective business lives and in their family lives and in their social lives. And so some of those leadership abilities and talents the Church needs as well, and we're asking people to put those gifts at the disposal of the Church." The laity will serve as leaders both within the Church and in the Church's mission to the world, said Sister Pat. "There are roles of leadership in the future that we don't know what they're going to be," she said, "and so both internally and externally we need lay people to provide some of the leadership for these roles."

And how will this lay leadership jive with clerical authority? "We have groups, like the parish pastoral councils, and even the parish financial councils, who, in fact, are lay leadership groups who advise the pastor." explained Sister Pat. "They don't make decisions about what happens in the parish, but they give their best advice to the pastor, and then the pastor is the one who is responsible for decision making."

So, is their role advisory, then? Yes and no, said Sister Pat. "Some people will say it's just advisory, or it's only advisory, or it's more advisory," she continued, "but that advisory role is an absolutely critical role that can't be underestimated. And if the leadership groups are well chosen, and those groups function very well, then the pastor and those leadership groups are going to be very much in tune with each other."

So, then, I asked, the role of lay leaders is formally advisory, but carries an influential quality? "Absolutely," said Sister Pat.

Indeed, it appears that the bishop and his diocesan staff allowed the laity to "influence" it in the choice of goals for the plan. Yet, Sister Pat said that though the impetus towards the plan's final goals "has come largely from what people in the county have said," the diocese "used different sources to help us arrive where we are. We've looked at demographics information. We went out and held different meetings around the diocese about what people believed to be strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and the threats, and putting all of that together with the demographic data, we looked at what seemed to be suggested as some possible priorities for the future. And then we went out to the parishes and said, based on what we've learned so far, these seem to be the potential issues for the future and now we need to prioritize them. And so we need your help to do that. And they did. They helped us for sure."

Among the most important goals of the plan is attracting Catholic youth to the Church. This will include incorporating "the language and culture of youth and young adults into the worship and daily life of the Church." When I pointed out to Sister Pat that I (when a youth), as well as others of my acquaintance, had found past attempts at youth Masses hokey, at best, she replied: "Your own observations about it seeming hokey to you, in fact, is true for you and some of those other people that you have spoken with. But for other people, they don't find it that way, and it has been an instrument of, in fact, connecting some of our youth to the church that maybe would not be connected otherwise. It kind of cuts both ways.

"We don't want to be silly, either," Sister Pat added. "So, it's a matter of how do you do this and do it well?"

"What we're trying to do is respect young people where they are in their lives as youth, in particular, while preparing them and trying to help them to see that they have something to contribute," explained Sister Pat. "The Church isn't waiting for them to become adults to have something to contribute to the life of the Church, but [saying] that we respect their contributions now."

The diocesan plan's emphasis on the social justice teaching of the Catholic Church means that the Church in San Jose "must help all Catholics to live out Catholic Social Justice Teaching in areas such as the dignity of human life, housing, immigration, and labor." While making special emphasis on "efforts in developing solutions to the critical economic issues of Santa Clara County, which at this time include housing, just compensation, and immigration," the plan touches on other issues, as well. Among the more encouraging are the plan's exhortation to "witness the poverty of Christ in a consumer society;" the statements that "we value life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death;" and the declared dedication "to improving the situation of our community's poor, marginalized, and suffering." Yet the plan states the diocese also strives "to be supportive and inclusive, including people of all ages, physical and mental capacity, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, languages, and ethnic groups."

"Let us be a Church that is in tune with the world around us, dealing with the real concerns of real people," says the plan. "We should not be answering questions that no one is asking." But shouldn't the Church be posing questions that no one is asking? "That's very true," said Sister Pat. "We should be posing questions. We should be helping -- the Church should be a major influence in our society, and that's one of the things that hopefully will be an outcome of all of this. That in Santa Clara County the Church will be an influence, and can in fact ask questions no one is asking."

But will the Church in Santa Clara County not only be asking the right questions, but giving the right answers? Only the future implementation of the diocese of San Jose's plan will tell.

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