A Reflection on the Year of the Parish as Communion of Communities

Prepared by: Fr. Ritsche J. Gamaya
San Pablo Vicariate
April 29, 2017

AN INTRODUCTION

In its Apostolic Letter “On the Era of New Evangelization”, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines has declared 2017 as the Year of the Parish as Communion of Communities. This is a year “to discern not only the structures of governing our dioceses and parishes. This is also an opportunity to examine the quality of faith life in the parish, the fellowship, belongingness, and participation by its members.”

“In a special way we shall probe into our efforts of making the parish a communion of communities, a communion of Basic Ecclesial Communities and of covenanted faith-communities and ecclesial movements. We shall discern and implement measures on how communities of consecrated life may be more integrated into the life and mission of the parish. In brief, our focus will be the building of a parish that is truly a faith community immersed in the lives of its people.” (CBCP Pastoral Exhortation on the Year of the Parish as Communion of Communities)

What this article is not: a theological treatise about the parish or BECs; a definition of the parish or BECs; a detailed research on the etymology, dimensions and levels of communion. This is a reflection taken from important Church documents which may hopefully help us in our attempt to understand more deeply and to celebrate more meaningfully the year of the parish as communion of communities.

Let us reflect on this theme by first discerning what kind of culture does the culture of communion face. Then let us humbly try to offer a proposal to promote communion. And finally, we present a few requirements for conversion in our mission for communion.

Why should the Church promote communion? Is communion relevant?

Communion: A Culture of Encounter in the Face of Isolation

What kind of culture does the parish as communion of communities face?

Pope Francis exhorts us to see the need of evangelization in cities which are multicultural: “At the same time, what could be significant places of encounter and solidarity often become places of isolation and mutual distrust. Houses and neighbourhoods are more often built to isolate and protect than to connect and integrate.” (EG 75)

Today we are living in a world which is growing ever “smaller” and where, as a result, it would seem to be easier for all of us to be neighbours. Developments in travel and communications technology are bringing us closer together and making us more connected, even as globalization makes us increasingly interdependent. Nonetheless, divisions, which are sometimes quite deep, continue to exist within our human family. (Pope Francis, 48th WCS)

A “culture of encounter”, as Pope Francis believes, is an expression of communion that the Church is called to live. However, the reality of the culture of isolation poses a challenge before us. The following are the manifestations of the culture of isolation.

INDIVIDUALISM

The context why communion becomes relevant and meaningful is the culture of isolation. The first manifestation of the culture of isolation which poses a challenge to communion as a culture of encounter is individualism.

Our world is being torn apart by wars and violence, and wounded by a widespread individualism which divides human beings, setting them against one another as they pursue their own well-being… I especially ask Christians in communities throughout the world to offer a radiant and attractive witness of fraternal communion. (Evangelii Gaudium 99)

A spirituality without God promotes individualism. “These religious movements, not without a certain shrewdness, come to fill, within a predominantly individualistic culture, a vacuum left by secularist rationalism.” (Evangelii Gaudium 63)

Pope Francis in EG emphasizes that Church institutions, small communities, movements and associations bring new evangelizing fervor and capacity for dialogue with the world whereby the Church is renewed. “But it will prove beneficial for them not to lose contact with the rich reality of the local parish and to participate readily in the overall pastoral activity of the particular Church. This kind of integration will prevent them from concentrating only on part of the Gospel of the Church, or becoming nomads without roots.” (Evangelii Gaudium 29)

Evangelii Nuntiandi reminds BECs to help the growth of the Church “that they remain firmly attached to the local Church in which they are inserted, and to the universal Church, thus avoiding the very real danger of becoming isolated within themselves, then of believing themselves to be the only authentic Church of Christ, and hence of condemning the other ecclesial communities” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 58).

EXCLUSION

The second manifestation of the culture isolation is exclusion. This is another challenge that the culture of encounter face. Exclusion is a counterculture of communion.

Pope Francis observes that our world suffers from many forms of exclusion, marginalization and poverty, to say nothing of conflicts born of a combination of economic, political, ideological, and, sadly, even religious motives. (Pope Francis, 48th WCS)

Some are even no longer content to live as part of the greater Church community but stoke a spirit of exclusivity, creating an “inner circle”. Instead of belonging to the whole Church in all its rich variety, they belong to this or that group which thinks itself different or special. (EG 98)

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion… Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. (EG 53)

Those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers. (EG 53)

Our instinctive response to difference is exclusion… By excluding those who are different, we don’t have to work so hard to interact with new faces with “foreign” backgrounds and histories. In our comfortable group, we know all the rules; we know what to expect from each other; and we can be ourselves… Can we imagine what would have happened, had the early Church decided not to include the Gentiles into the Christian community?… Pope Francis, at his general audience on October 9, 2013, was quoted as having stated that “we must include the excluded.” (Pernia, Davao Clergy Retreat, November 16-20, 2015)

Jesus did not tell the apostles to form an exclusive and elite group. He said: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19)… To those who feel far from God and the Church, to all those who are fearful or indifferent, I would like to say this: the Lord, with great respect and love, is also calling you to be a part of his people! (EG 113)

Evangelii Nuntiandi reminds BECs to help in the growth of the Church: “In some regions they appear and develop, almost without exception, within the Church, having solidarity with her life, being nourished by her teaching and united with her pastors.” And “that they maintain a sincere communion with the pastors whom the Lord gives to His Church, and with the magisterium which the Spirit of Christ has entrusted to these pastors” and “that they show themselves to be universal in all things and never sectarian.” (EN 58)

INDIFFERENCE

The third manifestation of the culture of isolation is indifference. When members of the community become indifferent, it would be difficult for them to collaborate with one another. This poses a challenge in our pursuit for communion.

Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us. (EG 54)

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. (EG 53) When human beings are treated as objects, relationships are sacrificed.

In the prevailing culture, priority is given to the outward, the immediate, the visible, the quick, the superficial and the provisional. What is real gives way to appearances. In many countries globalization has meant a hastened deterioration of their own cultural roots and the invasion of ways of thinking and acting proper to other cultures which are economically advanced but ethically debilitated. (EG 62)

Evangelii Nuntiandi recalls the development of BECs: In these cases, they spring from the need to live the Church’s life more intensely, or from the desire and quest for a more human dimension such as larger ecclesial communities can only offer with difficulty, especially in the big modern cities which lend themselves both to life in the mass and to anonymity. Such communities call quite simply be in their own way an extension on the spiritual and religious level – worship, deepening of faith, fraternal charity, prayer, contact with pastors – of the small sociological community such as the village, etc. (EN 58)