One of the things I’ve heard people comment time and again during lockdown is the adventurous serendipity with which they can attend Mass online at the Vatican one day, a short 7am Irish Mass the next, or at a pilgrimage site the next. The pandemic has certainly turned us into voracious consumers, although everywhere I hear people love the familiarity of their own parish.
Trends of thousands of people signing up for Alpha or Marriage Courses at churches thousands of miles away from them geographically demonstrates starkly what had already begun to be a reality before the digital revolution of our parishes. Even putting the digital parish aside momentarily (although I think it is here to stay), Catholics have long stopped heeding territoriality – that principle whereby your parish is determined geographically. Sociologist Tricia Bruce demonstrates that it is often contradicted by American Catholics’ lived behaviour:
Territory and fixity battle choice and movement. Parish evokes propinquity, but behaviour prompts translocalism. Parishes stay. Catholics move.
Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church, p. 66
I would argue that this is now true for the majority of the Catholic Church in the west, where voluntarism has long won the day.
Why does any of this matter? It matters because relying on geographical boundaries gives rise to a “let them come to us” mentality. We have the sense of a ready-made market, all the Catholics within the boundary. Therefore, what need is there for evangelisation? Bruce writes,
In the language of organisations, territorial parishes act as generalist organisations aiming to serve all in a heterogenous market. They target the middle, accessing the highest number of ‘customers’ (parishioners).
Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church, p. 7
Two other sociologists, Rodney Stark and Laurence Iannaccone, argued in favour of pluralism and against societal religion back in the 90s, precisely because religious monopoly does religion no favours. In their words, such an uncompetitive market results in,
…an unattractive product, badly marketed, within a highly regulated and distorted religious economy.
A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the ‘Secularisation’ of Europe, p. 232
This is negative language, but I think we can turn it on its head. If Catholics are treating the parish system more and more as a “free market”, there is an opportunity for parishes to mark out what makes them distinctive, that is, to cast a vision.
Right now, mid-pandemic, we are seeing market forces play out with some ruthlessness. Parishes that have energetically pivoted, moving their ministries online and working hard to stay connected not only with parishioners, but engaging those who are seeking, seem to be healthier financially and in terms of the vibrancy of their communities.
This is a brave new world, and the ‘old rules’ no longer apply. I feel for the priests with no lay people leading around them, who continue playing the rules of the game they were trained for, and have never been prepared or trained for pivoting, changing their methods to meet the mission.
Numberless friends and relatives have told me stories of their own parishes from whom they have not heard once, except occasionally to ask for money. Missionary muscle has not been built up, resulting in no effort to get databases up-to-date, to stay connected, little online evangelising or pastoral care. The website (if there is one) looks exactly the same as it did in February 2020. Tragically, parishioners have moved online elsewhere, and may even consider never returning physically to their geographical parish.
The system that bears this kind of fruit in parishes belongs to a ‘Christendom-mentality’, where territoriality makes sense. Stark and Iannaccone’s somewhat brutal assessment is that it results in “unattractive” parishes. What is certain is that the system creates parishes that are not keeping up with the religious and spiritual landscape in 21st century Britain.
It is unclear yet, but undoubtedly dioceses will be hit devastating financial blows by the current economic disaster. Now could be precisely the time to listen to market forces: stop treating all parishes equally as “generalist” organisations and reward and nurture – not penalise – parishes that are renegotiating their identity for a brave new world.
