Dear Friends in Christ,
When I was in junior high in public school, I attended an assembly that was a preview for an event of speakers, music and other entertainment. The students were invited to attend a concert to be held at the Moody Convention Center on Seawall Blvd. I went along with classmates only to discover that the event, which had some innocuous name, was actually a Gospel revival. It was part concert and part Bible crusade. The music came with testimonials and an altar call. I remember feeling very uncomfortable and put off. During those years, a lot of churches were attempting to attract youth and others by resorting to all sorts of gimmicks to get people to attend their church. They were trying to make Christianity attractive. There were churches that had services with weightlifters to show how ‘strong you could be with Jesus!’ There were Christian rock bands to show how “cool” being a Christian was. There were ad campaigns with catchy slogans and “Christian” books and movies were everywhere. There were new “paraphrase” translations of the Bible in “contemporary American English” to make the Bible easier to understand. To each their own, but I never thought much of such things.
The mission of the Church is evangelization! We should use every effective and appropriate means of communication to spread the truth of the Gospel. We use many here at St. John Vianney: social media, our website, direct mail, etc. What I do not like is bait and switch: trying to trick people into coming to church, or trying to make the Christian faith into something it is not. A lot of “popular Christianity” is actually “Christianity Lite”. There have always been attempts to market a “tamer”, less religious, less demanding Gospel: A Gospel message more acceptable and palatable to the masses; Jesus as an all-around nice guy who said some nice things; Christianity as a social service agency; church as a social club or fraternal organization; faith as a positive, ego-affirming, self-help therapy. These efforts can sometimes have a bit of momentary success, but they do not last. Truth in advertising should be our modus operandi! Someone once suggested that we could get more youth to church if we did like some other churches and had different music and a smoke and light show at our Masses! My response was that our music is different, and we already had smoke and lights – it is called chant, incense and candles! There are those in every age who have advocated that Catholicism would be more popular if we just changed our teachings to go along with the times. That is probably true. But if we did that, we would no longer be Catholic.
The English author, W. Ralph Inge (1860-1954) wrote, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” Many of us have closets full of expensive clothes that are no longer in fashion! Some of us still have 45’s, 33 LP’s, 8 tracks, cassettes & CDs, that we can no longer use. Attempting to package the Christian faith in contemporary idioms to “sell it” does not work. There is a reason we don’t sing “Kumbaya” or have “folk Masses” anymore! Well intentioned as those efforts may have been at the time, they did not work, and they do not last! When it comes to the Gospel, we need to remember that “Jesus is the same today, yesterday and forever.” (Heb 13:8) Watering down the Gospel or compromising the demands of faith to comply with the present age does not attract and cannot sustain. Being a “Cafeteria Catholic” is not the same as being a faithful and devout Catholic. The demands of discipleship are not always easy or popular. There is no salvation without the cross. Jesus pulls no punches. To be His disciple requires and demands sacrifice.
Why do you believe? Why are you Catholic? Why do you come to Mass?
In Pace Christi,
Fr. Troy