Someone recently directed me towards a book entitled From Christendom to Apostolic Mission[1] as important for understanding the situation of the Church in Ireland, and he was certainly not wrong. While I have come across most of the ideas the author expresses here in different places, what this book provides is a most helpful synopsis of where we are coming from, and – more importantly – where we seem to be going. This book answers the sad question that all Irish priests hear almost daily from Catholic parents: “We sent them to Catholic schools; we took them to Mass. We did everything our own parents did! What went wrong?”
In fact Ireland is mentioned as one of the four places in the world, alongside Quebec, Belgium, and Spain, which most clearly embody the dynamic of radical secularisation that the author is describing. These four countries epitomise “the first culture in history that was once deeply Christian but that by a slow and thorough process has been consciously ridding itself of its Christian basis” (p. 9).
The West at large, and those once intensely Catholic countries such as Ireland, Canada (at least in Quebec), Belgium and Spain, were almost perfect examples of countries that the author describes as “Christendom”. Here the Catholic faith was “assumed as self-evident”. The Church itself established almost all the educational and healthcare institutions of these societies and became integral – as with the GAA in Ireland – even to sporting and cultural associations.
And yet Christendom has collapsed, not to return to the status quo ante, but rather, in the dramatic words of Pope Benedict in his famous Subiaco Address, by a culture “that constitutes the absolutely most radical contradiction not only of Christianity, but of the religious and moral traditions of humanity”.
The author points out that the situation which he terms “Christendom”, for all the apparent health of its Church institutions as well as other positive indicators such as a high level of Church attendance, contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. In a word it grows fat. Practice and devotion, though high, tends to be conventional and lukewarm, and “The Church goes from being a movement of spirit incarnated in institutions to a set of sclerotic institutions that have lost their inner spirit” (p. 29). Like a rotten tree it can stand there and look impressive, but when the storms come it doesn’t stand a chance. And of course the storm – in the form of the Sexual Revolution – hit Christendom hard over the past half century, and has appeared to simply level the Church.
But the demise of bourgeois Christendom provides at the same time the opportunity for the profound renewal of a dynamic, counter-cultural, and ultimately more attractive Church – and this is what the author terms “the Apostolic Mission”. Here “the Church understands herself to be vastly different from the world around her …” (p. 31) and following Christ is a much more immediate experience and ultimately more adventurous. And in fact it appears to me that this is borne out by the small but vibrant groups of young Catholics springing up around the country who are prepared to pay “the high cost of discipleship” by going against the strong tide of sensual materialism. However the author also warns that this attractive rebelliousness of today’s young and vibrant Catholics brings with it its own danger: “There can be a tendency to ‘let the rest of the world go to hell’ or to become dominated by a fearful attitude that robs the Gospel of its joyful and conquering spirit” (p. 33).
There is also the danger that the Church – as has been the situation here in Ireland – will either not notice or simply ignore the existential danger facing her, and “be led under an attitude of ‘business as usual’” (p. 36). Slowly the Church’s institutions die a death by a thousand cuts, refusing to take the radical steps needed at such a time: “During a time when there is rapid change away from a Christendom vision, a time like our own, the Church needs to think about the spirit and operation of all of her institutions in a different way. Otherwise, those institutions could lose their effectiveness or be captured by the prevailing culture” (pp. 36-37).
Instead the Church needs to embrace the fact that “in a society moving away from Christendom, the Church will by a kind of social necessity grow smaller: the majority in any society tends to embrace the ruling societal vision unconsciously unless they explicitly move out of it to something else” (p. 43). Declining Mass attendance is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem and in some sense a symptom of the solution: that those not willing to pay the price of discipleship is a necessary purification of the Church: “An apostolic age needs to free itself from the logic of sociological surveys and numerical extrapolations about the place of belief in the coming age. Whatever their use, such things tell us very little about the future fortunes of the Church” (p.44).
This does not mean replacing “organised religion” with a fresh new non-institutional “spirituality” as one might be tempted to think. Rather Church institutions have to recover their vibrancy, sense of purpose, and energetic refusal to conform to the anti-Christian environment. In this regard I think of the many so-called Catholic schools around the country which have clearly embraced the spirit of the age. I remember one theologian suggesting that for every four Catholic schools in the country, three should be closed or divested and their genuinely Catholic teachers be concentrated in a fourth, truly Catholic school. The same principle applies across the board: “In other Church institutions – schools, universities, charities, and parishes – the same principle is at work. Such institutions will cease to be meaningfully Christian and Catholic unless there is clarity of identity and understanding concerning the aims of the institution among all its members” (p. 51).
The book is both stark and hopeful. It is stark because it identifies so clearly the inevitability of the demise of the “Christendom” situation of countries like Ireland. It is hopeful because it identifies what can come to replace “Christendom”: a vibrant if small and embattled Church of “Apostolic Mission”. Such an “Apostolic” Church is far more youthful than its predeccesor. It is rebellious, self-confident and self-diffusive, for it is a Church whose members “experience daily the adventure that arises from the encounter with Christ” (p.80).
1. Monsignor James P. Shea, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age. University of Mary Press, 2020.