COMMUNITY

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1140 It is the whole community, the Body of Christ united with its Head, that celebrates. "Liturgical services are not private functions but are celebrations of the Church which is 'the sacrament of unity,' namely, the holy people united and organized under the authority of the bishops. Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole Body of the Church. They manifest it, and have effects upon it. But they touch individual members of the Church in different ways, depending on their orders, their role in the liturgical services, and their actual participation in them." For this reason, "rites which are meant to be celebrated in common, with the faithful present and actively participating, should as far as possible be celebrated in that way rather than by an individual and quasi-privately."

The community model for the Catholic Church has always been the mass. This is where everybody belonged and learnt intellectually and emotionally and developed spiritually. Some people were faster learners than others. Believing was modeled and your questions were answered. You could have been in New York, Budapest or Bombay, but when you entered a Catholic Church you were home. Belonging leads to believing. You were part of the community. You were one of the Catholics. This no longer is the case. There are Catholic Churches that no longer show any catholicity. There are liturgies that are Catholic in name only.

“A Catholic who ceased to be an active member of the Church for the past generation and who, having decided to return to the Church, wants to become religiously active again, probably would not recognize today’s Church as the one he had left. Simply by entering a Catholic church, particularly if it happens to be of ultra-modern design, he would feel as if he had entered a strange, foreign place. He will think that he must have come to the wrong address and that he accidentally ended up in some other Christian religious community.” (The Reform of the Roman Liturgy by Monsignor Klaus Gamber - Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the preface for it)

In the sixties a new community model burst on the scene. They called it ‘Renewal’. Why they called it Renewal? Because it was designed to renew the Church; renew it through the formation of “small Christian communities.” It was no longer enough to belong, you had to have relationship. To have relationship you had to have local community. Relationships developed in the community began to be seen as the heart of the human experience. All of a sudden you belonged to and believed whatever was promoted locally. And it was not always kosher.

Professor Leonardo Boff, the controversial Roman Catholic sees the “rebirthing” of the church from the grassroots. In the basic communities the Spirit works from the bottom up. Empowerment through communication is the solution to maintain unity among the varied charismatic ministries. That’s not all of course, according to Boff the church needs to reinvent itself to the first century model, and lay coordinators should celebrate Communion just as they did in the first century and of course women’s ordination is logically tied to women’s liberation. Enough said.