Church could say `come home'

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The ad has been running in newspapers for more than a month now. "Rediscover the Catholic Church." It isn't a bad ad. The words are all in the right places. The intent is clear.

But the message is strained, because the tone is formal and distancing. "More than anything, we can show you how to rekindle your relationship with God. We can show you an approachable God, a merciful God, a God who gladly welcomes those who come back to Him."

"Come home to the Catholic Church" would have been a far better theme.

"I have come to bring you home, dear brother! Father is so much kinder than he used to be." That's what the young Fran said to her brother Ebenezer in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," and that's what I think the Catholic Church is trying to say to its flock: Come home. We've changed. We're kinder. We're more interested in your problems. We're sorry we were so rigid in the past. You're part of our family. We want you back.

The radio ad hints of all this. I heard it just once and not in its entirety because a single sentence took my breath away.

"We don't have all the answers," the announcer said. The words that followed were lost because these so eclipsed them. "We don't have all the answers," the Catholic Church had admitted.

Alone in my car I repeated the words out loud in total wonder.

For the old Catholic Church, the church in which I grew up, did have all the answers. That was its blessing and that was its curse. The way to Heaven was so clearly marked that all you had to do was follow the yellow brick road and you'd eventually get there.

These were the rules: Obey the 10 Commandments. Avoid the occasions of sin. Don't eat meat on Fridays. Pray every day. Go to Mass and communion on Sundays and holy days. Offer up your sufferings for the souls in Purgatory. And always make a good confession.

It was easy being a Catholic, especially a Catholic child, because children love structure. Besides what sins do children commit? I lied to my parents? I fought with my sisters? These are the sins for which we atoned.

Then came adolescence and adulthood and Vatican II. The altar got turned around, and the Mass was suddenly in English. Lay people were handing out communion and St. Christopher was demoted. And we who had believed every word the nuns and priests had uttered about the Mass being universal because it was in Latin, about the Holy Host being so sacred only a priests' fingers could touch it, about Mass being the time to talk to God, not to each other, felt betrayed and hurt and stunned.

For we were used to a paint-by-number religion. We were accustomed to staying within the lines, to using yellow where it said yellow and green where it said green. We depended upon the picture being drawn and delineated for us.

Then, overnight, the numbers were erased and the rules were changed. The rail that separated the priest from the people was taken down. The priest faced us. He talked to us, not at us. He invited us to talk to each other, shake hands, sing like Protestants.

For many the freedom wasn't liberating. It was frightening.

Catholics left the church in droves then, some because the church was changing too quickly, some because it wasn't changing quickly enough. Many nursed personal affronts. A woman who married a Protestant before Vatican II had to have her wedding in the rectory. Her sister, who married a Protestant after Vatican II, was invited up to the altar. The woman left the church angry that the rules had accommodated her sister and not her.

Now the church is trying to find and bring back home the angry and the disenfranchised and the disillusioned and the uprooted.

"All we want to do is remind you that the Catholic Church can help you reaffirm your belief and your faith," the ad says.

But, in fact, the church wants to do more. It wants to greet at its doors all those who left for whatever reason and embrace each person and say: Come in. Sit down. Give us a chance. You are family. You are loved. This is your home. Stay with us.

For this is what the church is offering: The safety of home, the comfort of home, the feeling of home.

It's a different home from the one many ran away from 20 years ago. For Father is so much kinder than he used to be. He doesn't preach, anymore; he talks. He doesn't demand; he asks. He is the head of the church, but he is not the church. The church is its people. We, father says. And he means we.

Few want to rediscover whatever it is they ran away from. But most everyone longs to go home again.