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Catholicism is a living tradition

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

Catholicism changes. The Catholicism of the previous generation is different than that of the one before it—and the one after it. The same is true for individual Catholics: They are different in their Catholicism precisely because Catholicism is a living tradition. People see different aspects of tradition to be more or less relevant to their situation for a whole host of reasons. Sometimes that phenomenon is mistakenly called “Cafeteria Catholicism,” with the implication that Catholics are deliberately jettisoning certain parts of the tradition in favor of other pieces of it. That’s one way of looking at it, of course, but it can be wrong and deceptively oversimplistic: Such an understanding fails to capture the complexity of a living tradition. Dead traditions are of purely historical interest because they are no longer being passed on. When a culture, a set of meanings and practices, when Catholicism is “handed on”—and that is exactly what traditio means in Latin—it will always be a personal and very human process, somewhat uneven, shaped by the situation in which it is transmitted and received. In the past two millennia being Catholic has meant something very different to people in different times and places. Yet because it does mean something very particular to those in different times and places, it is a living tradition. And that is precisely the point. A living tradition will always have unique contexts, particular circumstances, and a special emphasis. A human person, a parish or faith community, or a given historical moment is not a collection of vague generalities but of specific pressure points. It is at those pressure points, those places of pain, of sensitivity, where the tradition will be heard and understood in a special, even more real, way. © 2009, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

tradition

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An abundant gospel in a time of institutional scarcity

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

The single greatest trend in parish life today is scarcity: fewer personnel available, fewer parishioners attending, and, above all, fewer resources. Everything is relative of course in this regard: Some new parishes are being established and some parishes are growing, even dramatically. But those individual cases do not overall trends make. The most common organizational response to such trends is fear, but it does not need to be so. The challenge for our time is to proclaim a gospel of abundance within an organizational context of scarcity. This gospel—of hope, faith, and love—should win out before suspicion, distrust, and disconnection. It will not do, however, to deny real trends of scarcity and real declining numbers with happy talk that refuses to see things as they are. It is quite clear in the gospels that Jesus is not about happy talk. What Jesus offers instead is a focus on fundamentals. Gospel fundamentals come down to witnessing and living the Reign of God, not maintaining old structures for just a few years longer so someone else might close them down later. It is not for nothing that Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead” (Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60). Today’s trends of scarcity and diminishment are a clear message that the cultural and social ground around us is quaking. To struggle to keep structures functioning which are barely prepared for survival is foolish. It is time for a proper Christian burial: to let dead and dying things go and creatively build new possibilities even while selectively retrieving and retrofitting critical ways and structures of the past. In the words of church historian Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.” Parish trends of scarcity might just be nudging us to do creative new things for the first time, in conversation with the past but looking fearlessly to the future strengthened by Christ’s witness and the life of the Spirit. © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

scarcity tradition traditionalism

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An abundant gospel in a time of institutional scarcity

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

The single greatest trend in parish life today is scarcity: fewer personnel available, fewer parishioners attending, and, above all, fewer resources. Everything is relative of course in this regard: Some new parishes are being established and some parishes are growing, even dramatically. But those individual cases do not overall trends make. The most common organizational response to such trends is fear, but it does not need to be so. The challenge for our time is to proclaim a gospel of abundance within an organizational context of scarcity. This gospel—of hope, faith, and love—should win out before suspicion, distrust, and disconnection. It will not do, however, to deny real trends of scarcity and real declining numbers with happy talk that refuses to see things as they are. It is quite clear in the gospels that Jesus is not about happy talk. What Jesus offers instead is a focus on fundamentals. Gospel fundamentals come down to witnessing and living the Reign of God, not maintaining old structures for just a few years longer so someone else might close them down later. It is not for nothing that Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead” (Matthew 8:22; Luke 9:60). Today’s trends of scarcity and diminishment are a clear message that the cultural and social ground around us is quaking. To struggle to keep structures functioning which are barely prepared for survival is foolish. It is time for a proper Christian burial: to let dead and dying things go and creatively build new possibilities even while selectively retrieving and retrofitting critical ways and structures of the past. In the words of church historian Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.” Parish trends of scarcity might just be nudging us to do creative new things for the first time, in conversation with the past but looking fearlessly to the future strengthened by Christ’s witness and the life of the Spirit. © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

scarcity tradition traditionalism

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Strong institutions keep the richness of Catholic tradition

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

Unity, not uniformity. We live in a time of choice. We have many choices, and people are likely to make different choices at different times regarding religion and their Catholicism. Some call this cafeteria Catholicism: Give me a little more social justice, a little less sacrament of Reconciliation, and lay off that bit on Mary, please. We are now realizing that this way of doing things is simply how people go on constructing their religious meanings and how they have done so all along. Catholics of different ages, genders, education, ethnic backgrounds, occupations, and all sorts of other forms of social differentiation emphasize aspects of the tradition in different ways. Yet all are Catholic. Rather than a new phenomenon, it is something quite ancient, quite typical. For much of our history, such meanings were constructed at a group level, at the level of families, towns, and nationalities. Now they are constructed more at the level of the person, and that person might even say, if asked, that he or she rejects certain aspects of the Catholic tradition. But they give this answer really because he or she was asked. Without being asked, one tends to focus on what engages and gives life rather than a critique of what is weak or uninspiring. The key is that the tradition and the local church and Catholic institutions be robust and varied enough so that all the elements that make up the richness of the Catholic tradition, all the elements that might be creatively understood and assimilated, are thriving and present. The key is to create strong institutions and strongly networked institutions. © 2008, Bryan Froehle

Authors Bryan Froehle

choices cafeteria catholicism tradition

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Homily stories

25 Dec 2018 - Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas), Cycle C

Why is it that Christmas carols, the same ones we sing year after year, mean so much to us? I hear "Silent Night," and I think of setting up the creche in the family grocery store. I hear "O Holy Night," and I remember being thanked by an elderly couple from their window after going caroling through the neighborhood. And "Adeste Fidelis" always reminds me of carrying the infant Jesus to the crib at Midnight Mass. It is precisely the memories that are attached to the carols that make them so powerful to us. These memories are part of our Christmas traditions. These traditions are part of the parcel of faith that has been handed down to us. We add to it and then we hand it on to others—to family, neighbors, friends, and, as important, to those bereft of all that has been handed on to us. When we have been given so much it becomes essential that we share it with others. It is more of a gift than any of the wrapped presents we will open. The music of this season sounds out of place in July or at a funeral or instead of our anthem at a baseball game. But the reality of what we celebrate today is for every single day of our lives. It is never out of place to share God’s loving presence with others. The Light and the Word born into our world has been memorialized in hymns and carols since the angels sang “Glory to God in the highest” that first Christmas. But it lives on through our actions today and every day.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

carols song traditions hymns memories

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Homily stories

01 Jan 2019 - Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord; Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Cycle C

There is always a market for nostalgia. Depending on our age, we look back at the ’40s or ’60s or even the ’80s as the “good old days.” On the internet and in specialty stores, we can listen to music from Guy Lombardo to the Jackson 5. We can purchase lava lamps and bean bag chairs. We can play with Slinkys and Barbie and Pong. Things are in fashion one day and out the next. Family values, at least the phrase, has come back into style more as a political statement than a way of living. It is incredibly easy to look at the past and see simpler, better times. Our memories have a way of erasing the negative and smoothing the rough edges. This is especially tempting to do during the holiday season as we look to a new year filled with resolutions about the future. The secret is to take what is right about the past and make it part of our new reality. That is what Jesus’ mother Mary does. By reflecting on all that has happened to her within the traditions of her faith she is able to make the presence of our Savior a reality in our world, thus fulfilling a promise of the past and giving us hope for the future. And so we must model our lives on that same challenge Mary’s life makes. The traditions of our faith stand ready to help us find our salvation in the future. What we believe is far more than a nostalgia for the past. It is a challenge for the future.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

nostalgia memories traditions

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Homily stories

29 Aug 2021 - Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

Traditions come and go. The very thing built to withstand the test of time succumbs to time. Leanne, newly married, is preparing Sunday supper when she insists on slicing off each end of the roast before placing it in the pan. When her husband asks why, she admits she’s not sure but it’s what her mom always did. When they visit Leanne’s family, they ask. The mother is just as foggy on the details, having learned the tradition from her own mom. So they ask Grandma. “Why,” Granny says, laughing, “there was no real reason at all—except that my roasting pan was too small for the big cuts of meat your grandpa brought home!” On the flipside there have been traditions so important they were written into law—but now languish on the books as silly nostalgia. A Michigan law forbade a woman to cut her hair without the permission of her husband. In New Hampshire it was illegal to sell the clothes you’re wearing to pay off a gambling debt. Or consider this quip from the famous Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton: “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” And yet the traditions that speak most deeply to the human condition will always persist. Many of our Christmas and Easter traditions—lights aglow in the dead of winter, eggs to celebrate new life—are in fact refitted from more ancient pre-Christian times. In the same way, it’s God’s oldest tradition that trumps them all: protecting the most vulnerable among us.

Authors Mary Lynn Hendrickson

traditions laws

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