A Lecture By Mark Massa, SJ

Basileus from his post entitled life keeps me busy

Earlier Thursday evening we attended a lecture at school given by Mark Massa, a Jesuit at Fordham.

I read his book Catholics and American Culture for a class here and I really liked it, so I was looking forward to his talk.

Mark argued that Catholicism in this country is very good at the sacramental/mediated side of worship, but to keep the Church vibrant we'll need to develop a more evangelical approach, offering more opportunities for a direct personal encounter with Jesus (and not in an in-your-face or proselytizing way).

He said parishes didn't become canonically normative until the Council of Trent, and while he thinks they won't utterly disappear, in the upcoming decades they will probably not be the main model for Catholic organization if people are to be reached effectively.

He said that it's good that the Church maintains its distinction from our culture; churches that tend to closely parallel our mainstream culture have hemorrhaged members over the past few decades.

At the same time, providing these opportunities for more personal encounters with Jesus will tend to promote more lay involvement in liturgical and para-liturgical services and will certainly counteract an excessive clericalism.

A couple people's comments suggested his ideas were a little short on practical advice, but overall I thought it was a very good talk.