CLM – Thinking with the Church, and Helping the Church Think
By Robert Fontana
We are grateful for your prayers and financial support. Because of you, Catholic Life Ministries (CLM) has offered a variety of outreaches over the years since we began our ministry in 1990:
Faith and fun camps for families; Taize youth ministry; sacramental preparation classes for Confirmation and Marriage; Camp St. Francis service weekends to repair homes for the elderly and poor; retreats for adults, youth, and couples; family workshops to prepare for Advent and Christmas; and counseling for individuals, couples, and families.
One of our major outreaches is this publication, The Troubadour, and online essays. Through these we offer our best effort to follow the wisdom of Fr. Judge, founder of the modern Cenacle movement, to “think with the Church.” However, we add to that the hard-learned wisdom from our 44 years of working in Catholic ministry: “help the Church think.”
Fr. Judge, in insisting that we think with the Church, was not demanding blind loyalty to what Catholic leaders might be saying and doing in a particular circumstance. Father Judge went deeply into what the Church believes by studying the Scriptures, the second and third generations of Christian writers, the lives of the saints, and the teachings of Church councils. This, of course, included praying with the Church by praying the daily office, and observing the liturgical year. In doing so, he developed an inner capacity, rooted in the faith of the Church, to discern the impulses of the Holy Spirit to “think with the Church” while confronting the new and complex issues of his day (early 1900’s).
Fr. Judge would encourage us to do the same as much as we can within the circumstances of our own lives. I agree with his sentiments…to a point.
For one, few of us lay people, other than professional lay ministers, have the time or interest to delve deeply into the many ways the faith of the Church is known and passed down from generation to generation. Most of the laity must rely on Church leaders, clergy and lay, to do this work for us. There lies the rub: the practice of many clerics, from past times into the present, from parish priests to bishops, has been to interpret the phrase “think with the Church” as “pray, pay, and obey!”
That attitude reflects a view of the Church as a monarchy with a small caste of men who rule and the rest of us who are “ruled.” This is still so evident in our church structure at all levels. Lay people serve on parish councils, finance councils, diocesan pastoral councils, and Lay Review Boards, etc., all of which are ADVISORY. We pay all the bills but only get to offer advice on issues of importance.
Working at the Diocese of Yakima, I had a meeting with Bishop George (later Cardinal George of Chicago). He said to me, “Robert, before we get to our agenda, I need to talk to you about your difficulty with authority in the Church.” (The context: inadequate supervision of lay employees by pastors, low salaries, mistreatment of women in ministry.)
I was surprised, not sure what he was talking about. “WHAT? I’m a good Catholic boy!” He continued, “Well, some folks have told me you think there is a need for a union of lay employees.”
I replied, “Oh that. Bishop, I have learned that in the Church the clergy will always be management, and lay employees will always be labor, and never the twain shall meet.” He said, “Oh, is that all? You’re right.” That was the end of our discussion; and we continued with our meeting.
This conversation happened before the Catholic world imploded over clergy sex abuse crisis. Back then I was addressing issues such as salaries, equitable personnel policies, inclusion of lay people on church boards, and expanding the role of the permanent diaconate. The sexual, physical, and spiritual abuse of children by clergy and other church ministers, and the coverup of this abuse by church leaders demonstrated to Lori and me that the voices of conscientious lay women and men were needed more than ever.
It is no longer enough to “think with the Church.” We must also “help the Church think!”
Pope Francis, apparently, would agree with us (or, perhaps, we are agreeing with him). He initiated a “synodal” process in the Catholic Church that reached out to every parish in the world. It was and is a process of listening to the real experiences of people, allowing these experiences to shape the conversation and discernment of how the Holy Spirit is leading the Church.
Lay women and men, for the first time ever, or at least since the time of the early Church, met with bishops and priests, religious women and men, to respond to questions generated from the worldwide synodal process, share experiences, and listen together, in prayer, to the Holy Spirit.
Through your prayers and financial support, Catholic Life Ministries has offered the Church community a variety of ministries and outreaches. In the essays we print online and in print with The Troubadour, we try, with you, to “Think with the Church, and Help the Church Think.”
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PLEASE CONSIDER SUPPORTING CATHOLIC LIFE MINISTRIES
Once a year we ask you to discern if God is calling you to join in the work that we do. It is work that you believe in:
- Counseling couples, individuals, and families in a non-profit clinical practice that offers a sliding scale to make our services available to people of all income levels;
- Spiritual and faith formation for adults through retreats and Cenacle faith communities;Marriage enrichment and marriage preparation workshops;
- Advocacy for persons, the vulnerable and those living on the margins: migrants and asylum seekers, the unborn, and, following Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si, our planet;
- Essays on living the Christian life within the complexity of the 21st century (“thinking with the Church and helping the Church think”).
To support Catholic Life Ministries:
1. Make a donation online at https://www.catholiclifeministries.org/donate/
2. Make a check payable to CLM. Mail to CLM, 1827 NE 58th St, #B, Seattle, WA 98105. (Your donation covers everything from stamps, the websites, gas expenses, subsidizing clients who are underemployed, rental of retreat sites, refreshments, materials for retreats, and our salaries.)
3. Commit to praying for the Fontanas and CLM. Let us know you’ll pray for us! Email us at Robert@catholiclifeministries.org. Send us your prayer requests which we remember every Thursday. Pray the following prayer which we use when we pray for you:
“O loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we commend to you this day our love and service. We pray also, that in the providence of our every day life, we may be mindful of the poor and spiritually abandoned, those who do not know your love or the love of their neighbor. Be with and bless the community and mission of Catholic Life Ministries. Make CLM an instrument for drawing the busy and the bored, those in and out of church, into the love and communion of the Trinity. We ask this in the name of Jesus and through the intercession of St. Mary and St. Joseph and all the saints. Amen!”
