** Catholic Church frustrates me because they call it a community. In my experience I never saw this, I found no support. Other Christian churches seem to me to be more supportive of the flock.**
Without addressing the other points you raise here, I wanted to say that I have observed this myself, mostly in the larger urban and suburban Latin parishes. ‘Community’ is often something of a misnomer when applied to a Latin Catholic parish. There are probably missions in remote places, or small towns, where this is not an issue but around Chicago where I live all the smaller parishes were scuttled or consolidated long ago.
These larger parishes are not any more a community than a large high school is a community. In such an environment one may be part of a small clique that serves as a pseudo-community, but doesn’t involve the greater portion of the population. Or one might be a complete loner.
In a large parish one may be totally anonymous. No one in particular is glad to see you walk in, and no one in particular misses you when you don’t show up. This is a major problem, it has become impossible to keep abreast of all the parishioners and their special needs. In a smaller parish, like a mission perhaps, everyone knows everyone else and when someone hasn’t been seen for a while there is a phone call from a friend, or even the priest. There will be emails, greeting cards and sincere letters posted in the mail. There may be a knock at the door from a good friend, gift in hand.
Even the strongest Christians at one time or another go through that dark night of the soul. They can become discouraged, they grapple with acedia and lethargy, they can have doubts. These are dangerous times when the devil can be very active.
No one wants to let their fellow travelers feel neglected, abandoned or uncared for at times like that.
Yet that is precisely what will happen when the parishioners have not forged strong ties to one another. In the early church the Christians were intimately close to one another, and it is no cliche’ to say “they’ll know we are Christians by our love” because they were just like that long ago.
We must not forget that we are saved in community, that is a paramount Catholic principle, we need to act like a community of like-minded Christians at all times. Sadly, that is extremely hard to do in a mondo-parish with multiple liturgies, and that does not address some of the other conditions that (if not actually making things a bit worse) are certainly not helping the situation. I cite anonymous confession and a large rotation of eucharistic ministers, which have had the effect of making the clergy even more remote from the congregation, and pews that keep the people corralled in like animals in stalls.
Finally there is very little time for real fellowship after the Mass, the parking lot has to be cleared out before the people coming for the next Mass start rolling in and snarling up the exits.
The people have by-and-large become so used to these conditions they have come to perceive it as normal.
Michael
I don’t really even think there’ll be flames as such. Except in the heart. The flames will ‘‘purify’’ the heart, making it new in the sight of God, any stains will be eroded, and the heart will be made worthy in the sight of God.
