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A recent report has shown that Church attendance has decreased and suggests this is a crisis for Christianity. Well it might be - but it might not be.  In the past there was a tendency to go to Church for cultural rather than religious reasons. It was the expected thing to do. What we used to refer to as Christendom is certainly breaking down in our secular, multi-faith age. This means that the people who do go to Church are likely to be committed Christians who want the support of a Christian community and find Church an authentic expression of their faith. This change of circumstance was foretold many years ago by a Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, who spoke of a diaspora Church, a small but faithful Church, one that would be alive in faith and service to the world. As happens with such reports people begin to look for reasons for the decline and one given was that the Church was not seen as relevant and did not speak the language of ordinary people.  I agree with this and think the Church has much to learn but my experience this Easter has been very different from the picture painted by the report.

 

In the Catholic Church the three days from Holy Thursday to the vigil of Easter on Saturday evening is called the Sacred Triduum – it’s a time for Catholics to remember and enter into the rich meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The liturgy is different from the usual Eucharistic celebrations and the symbolism gets to the heart of what Christianity is about.  The Church I attended was packed for all of these services, no decline here, and if people didn’t come early they didn’t get a seat and had to stand – as many did on Good Friday. It was heartening to join a steady stream of people making their way towards the Church. It was as though the whole area was making their way there. The congregation was made up of old, young, middle aged, men, women and children. We welcomed refugees from Syria, a couple from Uganda recently moved into the area, a newly married couple, a couple who had recently had their first baby, people grieving the recent death of loved ones – in fact we were a microcosm of the  whole of humanity with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and fears. We couldn’t be self-satisfied or feel isolated from the reality of our world which at the present time feels a very dangerous place. These liturgies were definitely communal celebrations in which the whole world was present in our hearts and prayers.

 

Part of the Holy Thursday liturgy is the retelling and acting out of the story of the Last Supper when the priest washes the feet of twelve members of the community. We’re used to seeing pictures of Pope Francis doing this, usually in a prison and this year at a high security prison for mafia informers but it happens in all Catholic Churches throughout the world.  It reflects what Beatrice Bruteau calls ‘The Holy Thursday Revolution’ when the dominating, hierarchical relationships of our society are turned on their head - when one who is the Lord turns servant, not simply to show humility but to show that those hierarchical relations don’t matter anymore. For Christians this action is seen within the context of John’s account of Jesus’ sermon before he faces his death, when he calls his disciples friends, acknowledging his intimate relationship with them. He speaks of mutual indwelling between friends as well as with the source of Life which he calls The Father – reminiscent for me of Thich  Nhat Hanh’s interbeing. We ‘interbe’ with one another, we indwell one another, we share the same life force, we love others as we love ourselves because others are ourselves. There is a mutuality and interconnectedness at the heart of life and Jesus came as one who did not just serve but also allowed himself to be served. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and an unnamed woman washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  Perhaps this mutuality should be included in the liturgy for Holy Thursday.  

 

Good Friday brings us face to face with the horror and helplessness that comes with death. Christians follow someone who was executed as a criminal for challenging the institutions of religion and politics in that he lived out his belief in mutuality, in getting to the heart of what religion is all about, in putting people before institutions.  He’s not the first or last to suffer such a fate. It’s as though society cannot cope with truth, with justice, with compassion, with selfless service, with forgiveness.  We all know the agony of bereavement, of loss so it’s easy to enter into the spirit of Good Friday which shows us that God, however we name or image God, is present in our suffering and pain. God is with us as we face the powerlessness and helplessness of powers beyond our control. We are totally impotent in the face of the emptiness of death and bereavement in whatever guise it comes. But for Christians this is not the whole story for the corollary of this is Resurrection – new life, celebrated symbolically at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Easter is essentially a celebration of new life, that new life is possible even in the most dark and drastic of situations, that we can have hope and offer it to the world.
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So the three days ended in joy and hope, in energy and celebration. It was a profound experience, one that brought us back to the essentials of Christianity – equality, mutuality, service, love, interconnectedness, self-abandonment and life in its fullness. Surely the world needs more of this. Religion might seem to be declining but it’s message is a powerful one and if lived out could lead to the transformation of society.   

What brings together the Union of Catholic Mothers, a group of enthusiastic sixth years and a motley bunch of J&P workers with their kids on a cold January morning?
In our parish it meant it was Homeless Sunday as we worked together to highlight the issue of homelessness in Scotland today. Nearly 35,000 people are homeless according to recent statistics.

Every year Homeless Sunday is organised by Housing Justice and Scottish Churches Housing Action. They encourage churches throughout the UK to better understand, and raise awareness about, homelessness and ask why people are still homeless in 2017. In Scotland Scottish Churches Housing Action speaks on the issue on behalf of twelve Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church. The most ecumenical charity in the country!

I’ve been musing on what it is about Homeless Sunday that can draw people together in a way that other justice issues don’t. As justice and peace workers we can often feel that we’re working on our own. In some cases that’s because we’re seen as dealing with justice & peace issues on behalf of the parish; in others it’s because issues of justice can appear complex and off-putting, while campaigns which require people to march or lobby can be daunting for those who haven’t done it before.

Maybe what’s different about homelessness is that it’s very obviously personal. We all know the value of having a home where we can close the door on the world, or invite others in for a cuppa. We can also imagine, in our darkest moments, what it might be like not to have a home. In 2012 Shelter Scotland highlighted that a quarter of Scottish families are only one pay check away from not being able to pay their rent or mortgage if they lost their income. A fact that can bring us all up short.
In Musselburgh, where we have recently started a Justice & Peace group, we have a number of members who’ve not been involved in issues of justice and peace before.
Homeless Sunday has been an accessible way for all of us in the group to get a handle on a fundamental issue of justice, and consider how we best respond. At the same time, it has allowed us to reach out to other groups in the parish and work together on an issue that concerns us all.

So S6 Caritas students from our local high school researched information on homelessness and made a presentation to the parish; the Union of Catholic Mothers sold their home baking and ran a raffle, raising funds for homeless charities supported by the parish; the children’s liturgy group talked about homelessness as part of that Sunday’s session; while our parish priest and readers made sure prayers for those affected by homelessness were included in the weekend Masses.

For the justice and peace group itself, while we produced soup and drinks after Mass for the congregation (with help from our kids of all ages) conversations about homelessness and justice happened, between ourselves and with parishioners. What does it feel like to be homeless? How can we accept a society that allows homelessness to exist? And what do we, as people of faith, do about it?
Small, thoughtful conversations that challenged the assumption that homelessness is inevitable and began to explore how justice issues can be very close to home.
Through its mixture of practical action, awareness raising and prayer Homeless Sunday has helped us take issues of justice and peace beyond our small group and into the wider parish. It reminds us that homelessness, like all questions of justice and peace, is personal and enables us to find common ground through our belief that all people are loved and valued by God.

 

The Just Faith pilot project that’s been working its way through the dioceses of Argyll & the Isles, Dunkeld and Paisley since 2014 comes to a close this month. The main intention of the project, a joint affair bringing together Justice and Peace Scotland, Missio Scotland and SCIAF, has been to encourage Catholics to put their faith into action.

 

The conference that Just Faith planned as this phase of the project comes to a close aimed to look to the future. We felt the best way to do that was to look again at one of the most relevant Papal documents from the past. This is the 50th anniversary of Populorum Progressio and Just Faith decided to ask what progress has been made in that half century and to explore the challenge Populorum Progressio poses for us now in a world that seems even more troubled and complex than when Pope Paul VI released the document.

 

To have more than 70 people from all over Scotland attend the conference was encouraging, but then, we had invited an inspirational speaker whose expertise in the field of integral human development is summarised in a new edition of his book Option for the Poor and for the Earth: Catholic Social Teaching. 

 

Fr Donal Dorr is a hero for many of us. Missionary, theologian, he’s a man who has spent four decades empowering grassroots activists working for justice and caring for the environment.  And he agreed to travel from Dublin to be the keynote speaker at our event.

 

I had the opportunity ahead of the conference to ask Fr Donal a few questions for the Justice and Peace Scotland website. You can hear the outcome in our podcast.

Fr Donal’s book is called Option for the Poor and for the Earth. Like Pope Francis, Fr Donal places the emphasis on our stewardship of the planet. Pope Francis’s document Laudato Si, according to Fr Donal, moves the world on from Populorum Progressio. This clearly was the challenge our event was hoping to articulate and formulate into something of value for the future.

 

As we would hear at the conference itself, when food and water – the essentials of life – are at a premium, that’s when society begins to break down. Failed crops mean higher prices across a country. The economy begins to totter, people become angry, and confrontation is inevitable.

 

The three organisations that formed Just Faith are going to be subsumed into the new dicastery for integral human development, and Pope Francis has put special emphasis on that dicastery caring particularly for refugees and migrants. Those migrants and refugees are the people fleeing from hunger and from the conflicts that hunger ignites.

 

The new dicastery will have its work cut out, as was clear from Fr Donal’s contribution to the conference, and that of Duncan MacLaren (former head of Caritas Internationalis and a former director of SCIAF). As Fr Donal told me the night before, we have to get our act together as Christians. Of course we need inspirational leadership like that of Pope Francis - but we also need to act as individuals.

 

That could be as simple as joining a campaigning website. Fr Donal believes in the power of the on-line petition, Facebook and Twitter. Social media has brought us into the present. He is not an optimist, but hopes that in another 50 years time by putting our faith into action we will have survived today’s ‘shocking realities’.

Justice and Peace Scotland is on both Twitter and Facebook. We’d like you to spread the word by ‘liking’ and particularly by ‘sharing’ our posts on getting something done about those ‘shocking realities’. Small actions can have big results. Please spread the word.