Recently I wrote about the decline in Mass attendance in Australia and some of the drivers for that. We see the decline and we mourn it. It seems wrong that people are leaving and we feel like we should try to bring them back.
But what else might be going on underneath all this? That requires a longer and more complex answer. Let’s start with what Jesus himself said about this (as it turns out, quite a lot).
He talks about seed being sown on good and poor soil, with predictable consequences (Mark 4). He talks about weeds growing up with wheat (Matt 13).
He talks about sheep and goats needing to be divided from each other (Matt 25). He talks about shaking the dust off your feet when people don’t want to hear the gospel (Luke 9).
He talks about throwing pearls before swine and the risk of being torn to pieces by them (Matt 7). He was very sharp about people who put on a façade of religion but are horrible in real life (Matt 23).
Jesus was clearly aware – and was trying to teach us – that not everyone is going to think that the gospel is a good idea. He’s also teaching us that when people stop believing and they leave our church, we must let them go. That’s the right thing to do.
People’s free will – and thus their freedom to believe or reject the gospel – is enormously important to God. It should be important to us as well.
God doesn’t want slaves, drones, or people who are terrified of him. He also doesn’t want people who are just going through the motions because they work at a Catholic-origin organisation. Nor does he really want people who are only in church to get their children into an exclusive Catholic school for social cachet.
God really wants human love that’s given freely and regularly, even with plenty of wobbles and failures. And only he knows if that’s what he’s getting, or not.
If people want to talk about their faith struggles with us, we should welcome it, listen to them, and be ready to share our reasons for the hope that’s in us (1 Peter 3:15). But it’s their decision as to whether they stay in the church or not, and we have to respect that. Jesus is also going to respect their decision.
He knows all the ins and outs of that decision, so he can be very merciful. We don’t know the full story, so we can’t judge them. We especially can’t threaten or scare them into coming back. But we can pray for them for the rest of our lives if we want to.
This should also make us think of how we behave as Catholics in our own communities and families. Are people maybe leaving the church because of us? Catholic psychologist Dr Greg Bottaro recently said on Facebook that, “We all build our image of God at the kitchen table.”
So what kind of image of God are we modelling there? What image of God and of the church do we bring every day to the non-Catholics around us?
We’re all human, and we all make mistakes, and none of us is perfect. But we also need to take responsibility for that. So before we name, blame, shame, and judge the many Catholics who no longer attend Mass regularly, we might want to consider our part in their downfall.
It might not be the liturgy or Vatican II at all. The real reasons might be much closer to home. Can we help God to bring these people back to himself? Maybe.
I think there’s special graces when the family who first – albeit accidentally – alienated their child from God realise what they’ve done, repent, and pray for that adult child’s return to God.
This might mean that the person can only come back to the church in a different place from where they grew up, and away from the family where they first learned about God.
That’s hard on the family who have prayed for them all this time. But we must always avoid the idea of taking credit for someone’s reversion.
After all, the whole purpose of praying for them is so that the person comes back into a loving relationship with God and receives the sacraments again.
That’s a wonderful thing – it’s like a second resurrection. You don’t have to be in the room when it happens to believe in it, hope for it, and be happy for them.
