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A liminal moment

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Sometimes the word postmodern is used to describe our times. Sometimes we talk of a new globalization or an emerging church. Whatever we call our era, we have the sense that we are on the threshold of something new—socially, culturally, ecclesially. It is not a reality that is entirely new; it is not something that hasn’t been experienced before in different ways. But we know we are on the threshold of a new, emerging moment. Perhaps what is most clear is that we know the future of our parish, our church, our society will look different than it does now. We are in a threshold moment, anticipating a future different from our present. If we were to use a word sometimes found in sacramental theology or mystagogy, we might say we are in a liminal moment, which is to say, literally, a “threshold” moment. That is the task of pastoral leaders and preachers at all levels and places today: to prepare the community of faith to flourish in this liminal moment and beyond. That means cultivating a certain humility, even faith, in the midst of this remarkable transition before us. It means embracing the church that is emerging and growing up around us, not arrogantly rejecting the gifts of past experience and insight and yet not insisting on using words and ways designed for contexts long gone. © 2010, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

threshold moment Change liminal moment

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Nostalgia doesn’t work, part I

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Conversion is a “turn toward,” a facing to the future. But are we willing to take the risks conversion entails? Today we find ourselves in a kind of in-between time, a transition time as a church. We might call it a “liminal moment” where we know the old paradigm of the past few generations is no longer what will sustain the church of the future. We know that things are changing, but we don’t quite know where they are going, or what things will look like at the other end. From the perspective of pastoral sociology, the surest recipe for disaster is nostalgia, an emphasis on what we have known before or on an idealized past. We need to let that go. To focus on the past underlines the fact that folks in ministry, like church leaders at the highest levels, are a kind of gerontocracy, a leadership distinguished by their age and ability to collectively think of peak moments that are not so much socially and ecclesially important as biographically and generationally important. The majority of Catholics in the United States today were born after the Second Vatican Council. Their engagement needs to be in the living reality of the present, hopefully one deeply informed by the council but by no means mired in a kind of time warp. Telling the old Catholic campfire story—European immigrants huddling in the big cities, building remarkable institutions, and moving into the middle class and social and political acceptance and leadership—is arguably insulting and insensitive to a generation of the youngest Catholics for whom only a relatively small majority has any blood connection with those European immigrants. The next generation is sure to bring a majority of Catholics who are decisively Hispanic/Latino, Asian, African American, Native American—and where being Irish or German or Italian is simply less common and far less important as a cultural marker within the church. This doesn’t mean that culture is unimportant; far from it. It does mean that the way we often frame it is hopelessly nostalgic.

Authors Bryan Froehle

nostalgia transitions liminal moment

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Take Five for Faith Daily

Monday
January 27

Remember for humanity’s sake

At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, senior Nazi officials met to coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” No longer interested in driving Jews out of Germany, the Nazis embarked on a more efficient campaign: systematic extermination of those they deemed “undesirable” and “enemies of the state.” In addition to the estimated 6 million Jews murdered, millions of others—political dissidents, Poles, Romani people, individuals with disabilities, gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, and people of African descent—were also targeted. For any devoid of humanity, this plan could be seen as a success. For the rest of us, it stands as one of the darkest moments in human history, when evil reigned. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, remember the horror of the final solution, for, as Pope Francis says, “Remembering is a condition for a better future of peace and fraternity.”

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