Who do we think we are?

People with a History

Being a Catholic has got a history to it!  Catholics have lived through very many times which were quite different from each other.  There are things which have always been part of being Catholic: such central things as believing in Jesus as the centre of our lives; believing that he seeks to gather us into his Church; believing that he continues to be with us in our lives and especially in the celebration of the Eucharist.

But these core realities of our faith have been lived out in very different cultures and in changing circumstances.  Christianity is very adaptable. 

Christianity began as a very Jewish faith, following the ways in which Judaism prayed and expressed itself.  There was a great controversy in New Testament times about just how Jewish Christianity had to be.  Some thought it should exist within Judaism, others thought it had to break out of Judaism in order to become truly itself.  St Paul was strongly of this latter opinion and became quite angry with those who were not prepared to move on, as they were with him.  

There was a tension between moving on into the future and the desire to leave things as they were!  This tension has repeated itself throughout much of the Church’s history.  It is a tension which is still at work in the Church today. 

We have only to read the changes that are going on in our time and the need to adapt to meet these circumstances.  For instance, many of us today grew up in a Catholic culture in which, it was presumed that we would continue ‘the faith of our fathers and mothers’ and this was supported by the atmosphere in which we lived out our lives which tended to take belief in God for granted.  That is no longer so.  In the atmosphere in which we live today: belief in God is something which is not part of what is taken for granted.  So, handing on the faith simply cannot be taken for granted. 

We have to be able to give an account of ‘the hope that is in us’ as St Peter says in his First Letter in the New Testament.  We are in a new ball game.  We need to remember that the Lord is playing in this game also; but we have to be open to the way he is playing. 

The Synod on Synodality taking place in Rome is about listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit as that emerges in the interplay between listening believers.  To simply hold on to our way of seeing things without listening is to walk into a dead-end!

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Published: 25 October 2024