I Thought He Was Talking About Proponents Of Liberation Theology

Damian Thompson the world famous English blogger "hits it out of the park" with this one. (Sorry Damian, but I must use American metaphors). His editorial is entitled, Another Glimpse of Future Church, his blog is called Holy Smoke.

Traditionalists sometimes complain that the modern Catholic Church turns priests and laity into social workers. If only. As the Holy Smoke contributor called On The Side Of The Angels (OTSOTA) explains, the functionaries of "Futurechurch" prefer not to dirty their hands with the tasks undertaken by social workers.

I'm going to embarrass OTSOTA again by quoting from his latest post. I've just read it out here in the Catholic Herald offices and we all agree that he's hit the nail on the head:

"Social work is not the aim – it's called "pastorally enabling", which is basically a load of committees, workshops, heartfelt group sharings and "icebreaking". [The Futurechurch enthusiasts] don't do anything, but spend a long time mutually admiring each other and their personal talents/capabilities and how much they are "growing in the spirit" by being affirmed and nurtured within this collective.

Once they get bored with each other's company, they convince themselves it's now time to be pedagogically ministerial - which is newspeak for going back to their parishes and spending months of abject tedium initiating a local pastoral enablement team.

Let's make this quite clear: their remit does not include visiting the elderly of the parish, or visiting the lapsed, or administering Communion to the housebound, or visiting prisons, hospitals, schools etc. They might have a few odd expeditions to "interesting" local government-initiated centres: an arts and crafts centre for ex-offenders, an HIV/AIDS hostel to have a nice chat with those near death...

These professional clergy and laity don't want to do ANY of the dirty work - they wish merely to be initiators, enablers, co-ordinators, members of the procedural committees, composers of the mission statements etc.

Now some young men love all this - but invariably the type who do would make the worst possible priests, and soon reveal their colours once placed in charge of a parish."

One thing OTSOTA doesn't point out, however, is the irony that these Tablet-reading zealots tend to be long in the tooth, and therefore have less of a future than the young traditionalists who are beginning to appear in the pews. So there is hope after all.