Catholics who want to “conserve” the best of the church—the “conservatives”—are our spiritual culture-bearers.
Like our Aboriginal people, they’ve been taught something precious and sacred by their elders. They recognise that they’re a link in a great chain in passing on that sacred knowledge to their children and grandchildren.
But I also like to think of them as the environmentalists of the church. Perhaps “conservationists” is a better name for them.
They’re the ones who identify things that are nearing extinction and then work hard to try to save them.
This annoys the people who are in favour of “progress.” These are the ones driving the bulldozer through the spiritual old-growth forest, clearing what they think is an easier path to heaven for everyone.
Progressives in their high-vis jackets are shaking their fists at the conservationists who’ve tied themselves to the spiritual equivalent of the last Wollemi pine tree.
But you can go too far in your conservation efforts. It’s not good to turn into a spiritual hoarder with a house (and a head) full of Catholic stuff that’s no longer fit for purpose.
And this is where progressives and conservationists disagree. Progressive Catholics think that we have far too much from the past clogging things up.
Conservationists would rather err on the side of caution and not throw everything into the skip simply because it’s old. But even they have to acknowledge that they can’t keep everything.
What to keep, and what to discard? The church has shown over time that it’s generally very good at sorting out what to keep and what to leave behind.
For example, what we now call “Mass” has always been said in basically the same way with the same sequence of actions. It’s described in St Justin Martyr’s writings, and he died in around 165AD.
But the wrappings around the structure of the Mass—the language, the vestments, the furniture, and the texts—have changed a lot over time and space.
Some Catholics don’t even go to “Mass”—they attend the Divine Liturgy or the Holy Qurbana instead.
You have to distinguish between the stark realities of the Mass—Jesus Christ comes down from heaven in the flesh to feed us—and the wrappings.
I was just reading the other week about Masses now being said in the US for people on the autism spectrum and with other processing disorders.
They have a lot more silence, much dimmer lights, and no singing. It sounded like heaven on earth to me.
There are things we cannot and should not throw out. Our core doctrines are clear, all based on scripture, and designed to help us, not harm us.
Driving the progressive bulldozer through the old-growth forest of the church’s teachings on sexual morality has already proved disastrous.
We now have a rapidly shrinking church in Australia, and plenty of problems outside the church that have also been caused by our low birth-rate.
We’ve pushed the fragile species known as the “young Catholic male” to the brink of extinction by flooding their natural habitat with toxic chemicals like porn, sloth, anger, and absent fathers.
As a result, they’re all warty and miserable, like Tasmanian devils with clonally transmissible cancer.
Thankfully there are now other male Catholic conservationists hard at work helping to tag and treat this at-risk population, with the aim of saving the species and making it strong and healthy again.
Our conservationist Catholics know what fuel the church runs on—prayer and the sacraments.
They know that its engine doesn’t need to be converted to run on the fossil fuels of property investments and public relations.
And they welcome refugees. If you turn up to a conservationist parish and say, “I’ve come from that parish where we all have to say the consecration together,” you will be surrounded at once by sympathy and love.
There’s nothing wrong with progress. The church can and does change, because it’s always meeting new difficulties invented by people who want to have everything their own way.
Next time you find yourself grinding your gears about the church not moving with the times, stop and think. “Moving with the times” at the expense of core doctrines is like drilling for oil straight down the middle of Uluru.
As in nature, so in grace. It takes time to discern what is essential to a healthy church ecosystem and what needs to be put back into storage.
And you need to think long and hard about what “progress” costs before you rush into it.