Is your parish a healthy liturgical ecosystem?
READ TIME: 4 MINUTES
The International Society for Ecosystem Health states:
A healthy and diverse ecosystem is one that provides abundant and beneficial services to its constituents, such as food, water, shelter, economic livelihood, recreation, and natural beauty.
Let's adapt that.
A healthy God-centred liturgical ecosystem is one that provides abundant and beneficial assistance to worshippers to help them thrive, such as orthodox preaching, authentic spirituality and reverent prayer, a refuge of righteousness, immersion in biblical wisdom, restoration in virtue and charity, and supernatural beauty.
Authentic Liturgy
- Is your parish's Eucharistic Liturgy reverent and oriented entirely to God?
- Is the Liturgy true and beautiful? Is the text of the music and is the preaching orthodox?
- Is the Liturgy well organized and rubrically responsible?
Authentic Fellowship
- Spiritual: Is the liturgical culture of the parish faith-forming or does it amount to mere entertainment? 2 Timothy 4:3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.
- Charitable: Is the liturgical culture communion building or mired in polemics of one kind or another? St John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Ephesians 4:16 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,...
- Actual: Hospitable or just ticking all the woke boxes? ... (ibid.) from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love. Tertullian c. AD 160–c.225 Apologeticus ch. 39, sect. 7 ‘Look,’ they say, ‘how they [Christians] love one another’ (for they - the pagans - themselves hate one another); ‘and how they are ready to die for each other’ (for they themselves are readier to kill each other).
Authentic Organization
- Is your parish characterized by clarity and order? Ephesians 4:11-15 And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles.
- Is your a parish communicative and cooperative for the sake of the salvation of souls? 1 Corinthians 12:14-25 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honorable we invest with the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so adjusted the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
- Is your parish connected to the diocesan family, or does it function in relative isolation, i.e., more like an independent protestant community?
What if...?
- The Liturgy of your home parish is characterized by chaos and conflict (and few if any parishioners seem to care that chaos reigns)?
- The music and preaching is heterodox and confused to the point of distraction?
- People just come and go and barely invest themselves, and are seemingly content with maintaining a veneer of religiosity?
- The parish offers little or no adult faith formation, and the formation that is offered never tackles Humanae Vitae, for example?
- More than a few children treat the church like a playground, are disruptive, and there is little about their behaviour that distinguishes them from the unchurched?
- The Liturgy is characterized by a cult of personality? The community's faith is no longer built on Christ, but on the personality of a pastor. The community's faith is now in a perilous position, as it has been detached from Christ.
- The pastor enables misbehaving laity by acquiescing to the parish hosting events that clearly contradict Catholic teaching?
Then... it's likely your parish is not a healthy parish at all. What are you going to do about that?
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Even in the darkest nights, the Lord raises up men and women who refuse to give up, who persevere in doing good, who protect the vulnerable and open pathways to reconciliation. The memory of the saints, righteous people and the oft-forgotten peacemakers, show us that grace does not magically eliminate conflict, but instead it inspires active resistance to evil and an astonishing creativity in doing good” (paragraph 211).
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I doubt not then but innocence shall make false accusation blush, and tyranny tremble at patience.
WORDS TO THE WHYS
You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible. Thomas Sowell
EPICTETUS
If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone."
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