Vincent Kundukulam
All those who love Church agree upon one fact: in future, we can’t go with Church activities as in the past. If the clergy and the parish want to play their role in the religious living of Christians, they need to change their old patterns. How to make Church relevant without losing its identity? We can envisage two modes of disseminating the gospel values in view of the two different types of people who might be interested in leading religious life according to Christian principles.
One approach would be in view of the people who prefer to be at the frontier of Church and make a difference in the society by practicing Christian virtues. I think, there would be, in the coming decades, a considerable percentage of Christians who don’t like to permanently adhere to the Church structure and her activities. At the same time, they would prefer to be enriched by the resources supplied by the Catholic faith. In such a case, the perception of Pierre Bourdieu is worth mentioning for a Christian engagement in the world. To him, religion can be used as a social capital in a secularized world. It means that Church can influence the society by translating the Christian values in the form of living culture. We can call it “a culturally dominant Christian presence.” Following this approach, Church authorities cannot demand that such believers strictly obey her rules and regularly fulfill Christian practices. Instead, they let the believers adhere to Church according to their needs. To put it frankly, if the believers show laxity in fulfilling the organizational obligations the Church may not take any disciplinary measure. The strategy of the Church would be here to allow believers making use of the Christian capital in their social and religious living. The language of the religious heads has to be rather religiously universal and inclusive, which is appropriate to those who live in the peripheries.
Another method would be to begin with the civic values and reach up to the spiritual values. This is in view of those who are antagonistic towards religion and its agents. Here the priority is for the transmission of religious values within a secularizing world. Rather than selecting a particular theme, symbol or sacred text of Christianity, this model begins with some secular events and problems related to humankind or as such they are portrayed in literature, science, cinema, media, sports, etc. Then, the issues are analyzed and interpreted using the tools of human and social sciences. It will help Church to understand reality from the viewpoints of the secularized people. Subsequently, the subject is to be discussed from the moral perspective. Finally, the deliberations are to be complemented with the spiritual capital emerging from different religions, cultures and secular resources. This “from down to top” approach is incarnational and missiological: starting with reflection on the anthropological situations through an inter-disciplinary approach we proceed towards understanding and experiencing the Divine immanence in history and ends up by motivating people to respond pro-actively to the divine call, and thereby, to build up God’s reign on earth.
The clergy and the parish have no other option but to face the challenge raised by the postmodern culture and the pandemic Covid-19. If they don’t take up the challenge they will be side-lined by the faithful and the society. Subsequently, the laity will fall into either religious indifferentism or anti-clericalism. Hence the priests and Christians must seriously think about new programs and new ministries, new relationships and new forms of leadership, new symbols and new rituals and new ideas and new practices. Definitely, some roles usually attached to priests and parish will be lost in the post Covid-19 period but they will inherit new roles and new missions that translate the compassionate love of God in order to keep Church alive.
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