By Myron J. Pereira
EVERYONE seems to have an opinion on the demographic changes taking place in our societies. At the same time, another transition seems to have escaped public notice.
We are moving steadily to making our neighborhoods (the original meaning of the Greek paroikia, parish) more humane, more concerned and more God-centred, precisely at a time when urban society seems to be sliding towards greater deterioration.
So, what are the challenges that parishes pose to families, to social workers, and to ministers of the faith?
I’d like to reflect on the situation from the viewpoint of human communication.
A sharing of meaning
Can meaning — religious meaning, that is — be shared? What are the implications?
Most people have a rather “linear” understanding of communication, that is, they conceive of it in straight lines of transmission, of the “sending of messages” in much the same way as a TV or radio station beams its messages to their homes.
Is this the way pastoral messages — of preaching, of the liturgy — are sent along a one-way track? Is the “good news” proclaimed to all and sundry, regardless of their capacity to receive?
Hardly so. Genuine communication occurs only when meaning is shared. And meaning comes in layers, like the peels of an onion. The metaphor is not so much straight lines, as circular relationships.
Take the typical crowd in church at a Sunday Eucharist. It is usually a very heterogeneous group, composed of young and old, educated and those less so, with not everyone coming willingly or attentively.
What meaning does each one take home from this act of Sunday worship? Does the community seated in the pews follow the homily delivered by a tired preacher, through an imperfect sound system? Or perhaps many resent the fact that he comes from a strange, foreign background?
Only an understanding of this will tell one what actually has been communicated.
This “sharing of meaning” asks us to grasp the interior disposition of those we work with and insists that pastors become more aware of what others are “saying” — the others being the poor, the sick, the marginalized, youth and women, and many other religious groups within the parish area.
Evangelization is only genuine communication when it “shares meaning.”
Technology has a role
To share meaning through information and persuasion presumes some role for media technology.
Could it be otherwise? Today the media have given rise to new “languages” which call for as much skill as learning a foreign tongue. Preaching is a skill, and while few are born preachers, almost anyone can become an effective preacher through assiduous practice.
Audio-visual language, journalistic techniques, and understanding pop music are all vital areas for pastors. Because for most of our peers — not just youth — life is interpreted, and “meaning is shared” not only through family and church, but increasingly through media exposure.
Thus newspapers, TV and video, and pop music make sense of the world around, even when that sense is at variance with the “good news” proclaimed from the pulpit.
The place of other religions
I live in an urban parish that is seeing a steady increase of Muslims in the neighborhood. This is not something that most Catholics view with equanimity, having not grown up with dialogue.
Dialogue is something left to scholars, not for men and women who have to raise families in tough and dangerous neighborhoods. If religious dialogue is important, it is also increasingly difficult.
So, the parish must continue to remain a valid religious symbol in a society that is being rapidly “communalized,” that is, perverted by bogus religious symbols created by political parties for their own devious purposes.
Communication now means “sharing meaning” with groups that may not share one’s framework of values or a common perception of interests.
The parish is a community of believers. True, but it is also a structure of institutions in a locality, and this institutional presence may play an even stronger role than individual Catholic families.
How can we mold religious symbols that do not threaten but rather accommodate our Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist contemporaries?
What are the kinds of “religious meanings” we communicate through buildings, rituals and public ceremonies, pageants, music and iconography?
Like other minorities in this pluralistic nation, the Catholic community too is searching for its identity — less aggressively perhaps than others — and one key area where this identity will be forged and displayed is the urban parish.
Like the trenches in World War I, parishes are a ragged frontline, exhausting in their attrition, calling for our silent and dogged presence. – UCA News
