Latest / The Catholic Current / A Parish with a Death Wish? (Hunter Swogger) 7/21/26

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A Parish with a Death Wish? (Hunter Swogger) 7/21/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Matague.
0:04
And you know, as I'm scrolling through this website and I'm told
0:08
something's in the air, revival, and I said I
0:12
smell something differently. But you know what's not referenced?
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Confession. I don't know how you have a
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Eucharistic revival without reference to
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confession. As they always say, Father,
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The health of a parish is not determined by the lines for communion,
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but for the lines for confession.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of
0:37
the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ
0:40
to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station
0:44
of the Cross Studios, your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile
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app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
0:51
As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the
0:55
Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of St. Ignatius Loyola,
0:58
we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit
1:02
of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command. Well, friends,
1:06
it's a timely Tuesday. You know what that means? We have a hot topic and
1:09
a very lively guest. And today's title may surprise
1:13
you. It's called A Parish with a Death Wish. And you might say,
1:16
well, gosh, Father, how can that be? Because for most people, the parish they go
1:20
to is the most convenient place to go to Mass.
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If you have a death wish, that means you're going to be inconvenient, and nobody
1:27
wants that. And for Father Cheerful, who's the pastor
1:31
of St. Typical's, you don't want to have the parish with a death wish
1:35
because you need the Sunday Mass because that's where the collection is taken.
1:39
Yes, I'm sounding a little bit cynical, but that's, that's where I'm at
1:43
at the moment. Here is, is my concern, that sometimes
1:47
we become such creatures of habit that that we don't
1:51
see the dangers that we're in and we don't see the opportunities
1:55
that are coming before us. And as I was thinking about that,
1:58
I happened upon an article from Catholic Culture called The Parish
2:03
That Prefers Death to New Life. And we have the author with us now.
2:06
He's a Catholic husband and father, and he's the president of the largest
2:11
young adult Catholic organization in Michigan and a writer for the Saginaw Confessor.
2:16
Hunter Swager, welcome to The Catholic Current. Thank you, Father, for having me
2:19
on. Hunter, I wanted to tell you a story. Years ago, I was at
2:23
a meeting for male religious, and we were talking about how we have ever so
2:27
much to learn from women's religious communities. And they're
2:31
10 to 15 years behind of the men's communities. And this was about
2:35
15 or 16 years ago, or 17 years ago, actually.
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And, um, they, you know, they are going through, uh, the grace,
2:42
the grace of diminishment, and eventually they'll experience
2:47
the grace of completion. And I said, well, what can we learn about from
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the women's communities that are growing? You know, the Sisters of
2:54
Life, the Nashville Dominicans, the Ann Arbor Dominicans, etc.
2:59
And the presenters looked at each other rather nervously,
3:02
and then one said, well, if we listened to them, we'd have to change our
3:05
theology. Next topic. And then we were off to the races
3:09
again. So, it seems to me that religious people aren't
3:13
always good for reading the rooms or the signs of the times. Is that
3:17
why you wrote your article for Catholic Culture?
3:20
Yeah, it started, you know, with some personal experience of
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experiencing this up close and personal, this very unfortunate
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and sort of bewildering experience of you're at a parish
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that is one of the lucky ones. It's having new
3:38
life breathed into it. In our case, it was the establishment
3:42
of the Latin Mass at this parish that was about to close.
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Beautiful, historic, you know, a parish that had been built
3:50
by the lifelong labor of poor French immigrants,
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and it was on death's door, and then they gave
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it a Latin Mass, and, you know, instantly it became this
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lightning rod, and families, devout families that had been struggling
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and thinking that they were kind of like, you know, on their own island
4:13
living this Catholic faith in this era, came together,
4:17
and you could cast a radius of about 30 miles around maybe
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60, and everyone was drawn to it. And it was beautiful. And then
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we're told, you know, you should get involved in the parish life more,
4:28
get on these committees and whatnot. And so we do. And you're
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expecting, like, knowing the state of the Church at large and this
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church in particular, you know the demographics, and you know what
4:40
is in store for them if they do not have this, you know,
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these families come in. And you'd expect on some level to
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be to be received as a grace. You know,
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we've been waiting for this for so long. We haven't had families
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and children crying in our pews for decades. But it turns
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out, like you kind of just said here, they would
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really like young families and children perhaps
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on their terms. And the terms means that
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the character and the lived experience of church that they've become
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accustomed to for the last couple decades has not
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changed. And so you're right, like the theology, the liturgy,
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whatever it is that they've grown accustomed
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to, habituated to, as you're saying, that cannot change.
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And if, you know, that's gonna be the cost of bringing
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in young families, sadly, I think a lot of them would
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just rather the parish die with them. I wanna draw an
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analogy. My parents were relentless creatures of
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habit. You know, the only reason the sun came up in the morning was the
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night before they had dinner at exactly 5
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o'clock, which they did every day for 53 years of their marriage, except for
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Sundays when you had dinner at exactly 1 o'clock.
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And they sat in the same pews in the same church
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for 40 years. And when some interloper would show
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up at Christmas or Easter and sat in their pew,
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they'd have to take to their bed for, for 3 days because it involved—
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gasp— change. I think there is
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something wrong with human nature that we get kind of into this comfort
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zone. Uh, we've always done it this way,
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uh, for better or for worse, and we don't see
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that growth is hard. And as you said, growth is unpredictable,
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growth is, is messy. Um, if you're a Mari
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Koppa open to life and you take Lumen Gentium paragraph 51
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seriously, you're family has some unpredictability
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to it, and there are people who don't like that.
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Could we say that if we're really inviting God into
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our lives, into our parishes,
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and into our worship, there's going to be
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some unexpected— certainly unexpected challenges,
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unexpected graces, and there's a human inclination to
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say, no thank you, we're fine the way we are. Yeah, and it's,
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you know, I want to be careful here because it's obvious that
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there is a generational divide and some form of generational
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animosity, both in, you know, secular culture at
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large and then in the church as well. You don't want to add to that
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best we can. There is something right
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about, you know, this elderly instinct
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for constancy that they You know,
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they are not going to be as blown to and
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fro by the latest thing. You know, they prefer what endures.
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They love traditions and family traditions. And it's like,
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I think if you have a healthy community with all the range of human
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life, that tendency for that
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which endures is counteracted beautifully by
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the children coming, the grandchildren being born,
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and they are providing this sort of organic can slow newness,
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freshness into the community. Then make
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sure that that tendency for constancy does not become a genuine rigidity.
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So then what do we have in our parishes?
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Famously, and everyone knows this, that the demographics
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of our parishes have been largely 60-plus club for the last couple
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decades. And so it has become a place that does not have
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the experience of the new families coming in, the new child being born,
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the crying, snot-nosed distraction of the child in the pews,
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that, you know, we who are in this stage of life,
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we view it as a grace. Thank God that child is here.
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Praise God for this new life. But instead, you start hearing
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comments about that child being distracting,
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about, you know, the mess they're making.
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The very signs of life, the unavoidable messy signs
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of life are are thought of more as curses than
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as blessings. Right. There is a wild card in that.
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I know there is enormous and heated
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discussions about cry rooms and things
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like that. So, you know, and there are people who said
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to me wisely, you know, whenever a child screams during Mass, that's an indication
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the parish has a future. And I'm really grateful for that.
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And I want to make clear to the audience that our conversation isn't about
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what to do about noisy kids at Mass.
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But the question is, how do we view our
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parish and our time of worship? Number one, is our worship focusing
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on ministering unto God? And secondly,
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is the parish just the place where the Mass
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is, where I meet my weekly obligation, where I update my weekly subscription
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to anti-hell insurance in exchange for a couple bucks in God's tip jar?
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Or is the parish the place where the life-giving,
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sacred, soaked in the blood of the martyrs Catholic wisdom and
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tradition is handed on from generation
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to generation? And my fear is that what we've
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allowed to develop, at least in my lifetime, is a consumerist
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approach to Catholicism. Just like we might
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all go to the same 7-Eleven but have no stake in each other,
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we all go to the same place to meet our Sunday obligation and
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have no stake and investment in each other either. I think
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that's very destructive, and I think communities, if you can call them that, who have
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that sensibility don't have much of a future.
10:54
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Hunter Swager.
10:57
He is president of the largest young adult Catholic organization
11:01
in Michigan. We're talking about parishes that may have a death wish.
11:05
Remember, our rallying cry here at The Catholic Current is Christus Mundo, Mundus Christo,
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
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faith. On this timely Tuesday, we've got an odd topic
12:58
called A Parish with a Death Wish. My guest today
13:01
is author Hunter Swager, who wrote about that recently for
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Catholic Culture. Hunter, I want to tell you a story.
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Some years— this is going back, oh gosh, almost 20 years
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ago now, so I had less gray hair than I do now. And I was
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at a parish Mass, and I did what I always do. And this was a
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Novus Ordo Mass, and it was versus populum, faces the people,
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etc. And I included
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things like the Agnus Dei and the Sanctus, etc. And I was astonished
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assaulted after Mass, metaphorically speaking, by a gentleman
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who was, let's just say, more obviously a boomer than I
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was, and he described me as a member of
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the Latin Taliban. You know,
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typical post-Vatican II priest inserting his own preferences
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into the Mass, like Latin, when we all know that Latin
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was expressly forbidden by the Second Vatican Council.
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I talked to a colleague of mine about being a younger member of
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the Latin Taliban, and he said, Father, if you're with the Latin Taliban,
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then I'm Osama bin Ablative. So that always stuck in my mind.
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My point is this, that there seems to be an inclination
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to have a death grip on the parish, and we see
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this in liturgy, we see this in catechesis.
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You know, Mrs. McGillicuddy is a disaster in the classroom, but she's been
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teaching 7th grade 35 years,
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so therefore. I know a lot of good
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priests who brought significant reverence to
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the way they worship and were literally driven out
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of the diocese as a result. I have friends who work for the Knights of
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Columbus that has become kind of an old man's drinking club, and the
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idea of saying, hey, you know, we have something to
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do other than to hang out and be entertained,
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there seems to be a hitting of a wall there.
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I think that's part of human nature. How do faithful
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Catholics break through that? You're hitting it right on the head. I think something we
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talked about is what is a club versus
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a faith community, like, and the mentalities
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that go with which. If you're in a men's club that
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meets every month for cigars and bourbon, that is about—
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it is primarily about your, you know,
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anthropocentric relationships. It's social
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primarily, and that's a good thing. And that sort of club
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is right to be a little exclusive about who joins it.
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Like the guy who shows up one month with his wife and kids,
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it's, it's right for the other members to be, you know, annoyed by that
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because it changed the character of this thing that, that they were doing
15:50
together. What is obvious is that a parish can't
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be that, you know. First, as you said, like the parish has
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an end that is beyond all of us. It is the end of
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right worship of God. So it cannot be primarily about the
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social, and it has to also be considering and hopefully considering
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how is this transmitted and passed on. That cigar
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and bourbon club, it would be silly in some senses for them to be like,
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how are we going to pass on this cigar and bourbon club to the next
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generation? It's like, no, the kind of the point of it is just, it's just
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a gathering of men of a certain love for each other.
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The parish can't be that. It has to be, you know, it has to be
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something where we are going somewhere outside of all of us. And I think
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because of the way that the church has shrunk, and these
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people in these kind of inner circles, these parishes, for decades
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they have just seen their churches decline,
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and they've kind of had this core, an inner core that
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they love socially. And it has become their version of
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the Elks Club or something of that sort. And they don't want
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to see that change. They don't want to see the character of this thing,
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their lived experience of it dramatically changed all of a sudden.
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Unfortunately, I think where we're going is there's no other
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choice. It's either the church dies,
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or this does have to change. I think
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back to a friend of mine, a really noble
17:18
religious sister, and she's a bit older than me, and they
17:22
were having their big meeting of their
17:25
community. And the sisters assembled resolved that
17:29
they would admit no candidate to their community who had, and here
17:33
I quote, a pre-Vatican II spirituality.
17:36
And when I heard that, I thought to myself, well, the Gospel and
17:40
the Rosary predate the Second Vatican Council. I mean, that's— so it can't be that
17:43
bad, right? So she pointed out, we're talking about
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who we're not going to admit. Who's applying? She said, we haven't
17:50
admitted anyone to our community in over 25 years.
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Can we have a conversation about that?
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And the answer was no. And so
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they went from the grace of diminishment to the grace of completion,
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as a number of communities are doing, mostly women's communities, where they're just
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agreeing to die. They're shutting the lights out and
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they're, you know, they're, they're, they're gonna, they're gonna die off. So I don't
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know if they're gonna be followed by the grace of oblivion, etc.
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And there doesn't seem to be any curiosity about
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what is being handed on from one generation
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to the next. And I was very fortunate in my novitiate. It was not only
18:34
novitiate, it was a retreat house, but it was also an assisted living community for
18:38
older Jesuits who couldn't quite work full-time anymore. And I
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was a young Jesuit, and I got to meet heroes who had come
18:46
back from decades in the missions,
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and they had amazing stories to tell and were
18:53
obviously heroic characters of, of great sanctity.
18:56
And I think some of them were mystics as well. And I
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got infused with that and was thrilled to
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have the sense of, I can't wait to wear this uniform as they have
19:08
as well. I don't spend a lot of time in parishes anymore. You can
19:12
tell me, Hunter, but most parishes don't feel like that, do they? No, and this
19:16
is what's been identified is there is this wave of
19:20
conversions going on right now, particularly amongst, I'd say,
19:24
like intellectually curious, disaffected young
19:28
men, you know, primarily because you're living in
19:32
a really like a postmodern scape that I could barely even
19:36
describe how desolate it is, especially intellectually.
19:41
And then all of a sudden you're perhaps exposed to the
19:45
Catholic faith and it becomes like this exhilarating intellectual
19:49
journey. You know, you start, you find Father Robert McTeague
19:53
on the radio and then Bishop Barron video on YouTube and
19:56
all of a sudden you're exposed to Aquinas and Augustine and it's like,
20:00
it's euphoric. It's like, it's this real feeling
20:03
of I have encountered something ancient and true with a capital
20:07
T. And then famously, you go to your parish,
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like your local parish. I can't believe I found the source of all truth.
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And you walk in and it's, it's sort of stunning how
20:18
no one here is taking this seriously, it seems.
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And I, you know, I, I think that really is
20:25
the only demographic we have that's even— and
20:29
young women as well, but there is no segment of the
20:33
populace who are, you know, under the age of 50 who
20:37
would be Catholic if only the Church got more progressive.
20:41
Like, that is population zero. Those people who desire
20:46
that out of their institutions view the Church as archenemy number
20:50
one of progress and all mankind.
20:54
They are not interested. The only ones who are interested
20:58
in the Catholic faith are those who are desperately seeking eternal
21:02
truth. They're seeking God. And, um, and it
21:06
is dispiriting, to say the least, I think, to,
21:09
to have had that intellectual conversion and then to go into your,
21:13
your local parish and, uh, and it's not adding up. It's,
21:16
it's a— on its face, it's a dissonance. My, my sister taught
21:20
at an art school, and one of her students was a, a gentleman.
21:24
I'll call him Jed. And Jed was a former Navy SEAL,
21:28
and, and he looked the part. I mean, he looked like Clancy Brown
21:32
when he played the Kurgan in Highlander, with scars up his arms,
21:35
and he was 6'6 and had a deep voice and would,
21:39
would smoke 2 cigars at the same time, etc. And so I would
21:43
look at parishes and I would give them the Jed test. If Jed
21:47
walked into the banners and the felts and, and the power guitars of
21:52
Let There Be Peace on Earth and Grandma in her charming Christmas sweater
21:56
handing out Holy Communion to all and sundry. Would this man
22:00
who went into combat expecting to die and being
22:05
willing to die for his brothers take this seriously?
22:10
And if the answer is no, if it fails the Jed test,
22:13
then I think we need to have, have a conversation,
22:17
uh, about that. I read something recently, Hunter, I want to get your take
22:21
on it. That the bark of Peter, you know, the church, the great ship of
22:25
the church, is meant to be a battleship, and we've
22:28
let it become a cruise ship, and the war
22:31
is starting to heat up again, and we might have to lose some
22:35
creature comforts and learn how to fight for our faith.
22:38
What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, fighting age young men, right?
22:42
That's— and that is kind of famously the bane.
22:46
I have a beloved a relative, one of these lifelong sort
22:51
of liberal Catholics who's given a good chunk of her life
22:54
and energies to the church and who will express a disappointment in
22:58
the fact that her kids don't practice and she wishes more people did. But then
23:02
she all of a sudden left her parish of 30-odd
23:06
years a couple years ago. And when we asked her what happened, she kind
23:10
of blurted out before she could stop herself that there all of a sudden are
23:13
a bunch of young men there with beards bearded young men had started
23:17
showing up. Yes. And it was, yeah. And that was, that was a problem.
23:21
Like that was it. And you can sort of understand on some level, like that
23:24
was a harsh change from what she had expected
23:28
and had experienced for a while. But that's totally true. And you see
23:31
this broadly. I mean, who has been the one who has succeeded in captivating
23:35
the minds and hearts of young men more than a Jordan
23:39
Peterson in the secular realm, who is absolutely not giving
23:43
them some sort of pat on the back and you're doing all right, kid.
23:46
It's, it's a challenge. It's throwing down the gauntlet.
23:50
And clearly that is what young men are responding to.
23:53
We, we have lived in a world where we're like, I don't know whether it's
23:56
like this, this fancy for the world perhaps
24:01
had come from for, for maybe some more better-off generations
24:05
before us. But I can tell you that my generation is, is in a world
24:08
where we are struggling and this is not a
24:12
joyous place. Even the Zoomers, the younger ones famously,
24:15
they don't love that they're in an internet world. They despise it.
24:18
They don't love the short attention span we're living in. They despise it.
24:22
And like, that is what— if we're going to come to a faith,
24:26
it has to be serious. If there's one thing that our
24:30
generation raised on corporate advertisements is allergic to,
24:34
it is anything that sounds like a car salesman,
24:37
as Shia LaBeouf Yes, that's exactly
24:42
right. And I have, I've had conversations with a
24:45
young friend who's a Zoomer, and she said the best thing that God could ever
24:49
do for her generation is to have all Apple phones catch fire.
24:53
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Hunter Swager.
24:56
We're talking about a parish with a death wish. What does that
25:00
mean and what can we do about it? After the broadcast today,
25:04
go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list,
25:07
download our audio podcast. So if you can find audio, you can find us.
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Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star review.
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We need to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations get the attention
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they deserve. Everything you need to take us to your family and friends, we give
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to you. Together, let's take it around the world. We can do it with you.
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We cannot do without you. Let's do this good work together.
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Let's work hard to be so, so very much more than just
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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thestationofthecross.com. We're talking today with
26:54
author Hunter Swagger. We're talking about, do parishes have a
26:59
death wish. Yeah, Hunter, I, I've told my listeners I'm a recovering
27:03
academic. I'm a long-term professor of philosophy and theology. I'm going to be
27:06
professorial for a moment. We judge something's effectiveness
27:11
by seeing whether or not the form is suited to
27:15
the end. And very often parishes will
27:19
pass out surveys to the parishioners,
27:22
kind of a how are we doing And I've always been scandalized
27:26
by it because it seems to be more a customer satisfaction
27:31
survey. I remember there was a prominent archdiocese several years ago
27:35
where the bishop was told that the Mass attendance had dropped
27:40
off by 10%— excuse me, 40% in 10 years, and his response
27:44
was, oh well, I guess we need better music, i.e., we need to be more
27:48
entertaining. So my proposition is this: we've got
27:52
to ask, what is a parish for?
27:55
And then we can talk about whether or not we're achieving that. And so here's
27:59
the image I want to use, and I want your take on it. Around the
28:03
time of the martyrdom of James the Apostle, uh,
28:06
the first martyr to be— first martyr among the apostles,
28:10
there was a Roman coin, and it showed
28:14
an oxen, and before him were options of, uh, of a field
28:19
and an altar. And it said in Latin,
28:22
paratus ad utrumque, ready for either. So the
28:26
lesson was that the ox was ready to be sacrificed
28:30
and die in a moment, or set out to work
28:35
in the field for the rest of his life. So I describe this as the
28:38
red martyrdom option and the white martyrdom option.
28:41
So James the Apostle took the red martyr
28:45
option, and his brother John the Apostle was
28:48
given by God the white martyrdom option. And I think
28:52
that's what parishes are meant to do,
28:56
to learn how to live and die for God,
28:59
either all at once or over the course of
29:03
a lifetime. But I think that image has been obscured by a
29:07
consumerist model where we hand out customer
29:11
satisfaction surveys instead and ask, how we doing?
29:15
What are your thoughts on that? Oh, so many. That's, that's exactly
29:18
right. And I'll start here with, I feel like one
29:22
of these forms of white martyrdom, honestly, I feel like is, is the priesthood.
29:25
It is seminarians. If you're producing,
29:29
if your parish is producing seminarians, you're producing young
29:32
men who are willing to give their entire lives for Christ. There can be no
29:36
better, I think, barometer of how your church is doing.
29:39
Baptisms lag, weddings lag. We all know
29:43
that the money and the pew counts are not
29:46
an indicator of health. Like the amount of seminarians you're producing, the amount
29:51
of priests you're producing out of your parish, that feels like we're now preparing you
29:55
for something. And you see this, how like in most dioceses, it's like 1 or
29:58
2 parishes that are producing all the seminarians. And instead of learning from those
30:03
parishes, They're sort of like kind of
30:06
cast off as like the odd one. Something's going on over there, we're not totally
30:10
sure. But there's one of these up in Michigan here, and it's the
30:14
most beautiful parish you've ever seen in your life. And it's tiny in the middle
30:18
of nowhere, and it's produced, it's gonna produce, I think, 7 of the 11 seminarians
30:22
in the entire diocese. And I asked the
30:26
priest, 'cause he'd been there for 19 years, I was like, so did you just
30:29
stumble upon like a collection of devout families who are ready to
30:33
rock? And he said, no, when he got there, The parish was terrible,
30:37
that it took 5 years of fighting every single
30:41
day to transform his parish. And in
30:44
those 5 years, the number of people in the pews decreased
30:49
and the amount of money being received in the collections
30:52
was declining for 5 years. But he had such a
30:56
supernatural faith and he had such a clear end of what
31:00
this is all for. He was able to see through those 5 years and
31:03
now see the dramatic, you know, now the place is overflowing.
31:07
Yes, the money is even through the roof and the seminarians
31:12
left and right. It feels like we have to be willing to
31:15
do that. So this is a very Christian thing that you have to go through
31:18
Good Friday to get to Easter Sunday. This is— we're going to have to go
31:21
through this period in order to find the growth. And that is not going to
31:25
be reflected if we are looking at the satisfaction surveys because they're going to show
31:28
for perhaps a half decade dissatisfaction until
31:32
we actually rewrite our course. Right. We have
31:36
to ride the storm out. Now, a story I'd like to tell. Listeners heard me
31:40
say many times, I was fortunate, very, very blessed for several years to
31:44
be part of a First Saturday Mass community.
31:48
A group of families would get together, and it was everybody from, from infants
31:53
to grandparents, and we pray
31:57
the rosary together. I'd hear confessions, we'd have Mass, and then we go to a
32:00
family home and have a picnic or a barbecue. And the young
32:04
kids grew up seeing this
32:08
is normal. This is, this is what we do.
32:12
And a couple generations of kids learned how to serve
32:15
Mass there, and, and little girls learned how to put on
32:19
a chapel veil, and carrying the rosary with you at
32:23
all times was normal. So there was an
32:27
intention to hand on the faith,
32:31
and kids got to see that it was normal for there
32:35
to be Catholic fellowship and for people to have long,
32:39
friendly, animated conversations,
32:43
including disagreements, without losing
32:47
charity. And that's normal as
32:51
well. And it seems to me that with our
32:55
customer service model, what we have here
32:59
is an efficiency. It goes something like this.
33:03
The people will show up on a Saturday or Sunday
33:07
for no more than 55 minutes, and they'll put a couple of bucks in God's
33:11
tip jar on the condition that there's no challenge in the
33:15
sermon and that they get their liturgical proof of purchase,
33:20
Holy Communion, or as their kids call it, the thing.
33:23
And Father will put up with banal music and crazy
33:27
behavior as long as he gets a sufficient
33:31
collection. And so it really doesn't matter what Father
33:35
says from the pulpit or what he does or doesn't do or what he
33:39
does or doesn't say at the altar, as long as those criteria
33:43
are hit. And along the way, kids are watching
33:47
and they figure it out that nobody really thinks this
33:51
is important. Now contrast that to the changing of the
33:55
guard at Arlington Cemetery at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
33:59
You could arrive from Mars and
34:03
you would know that this is important. You're, you're a
34:07
father, right? You, you've got kids. Haven't they figured out whether or not you take
34:11
math seriously? It didn't take them very long, did it? 100%. Um,
34:15
and they exactly— that conversation you had with,
34:18
um, it was Rebecca Hoppersberger last week about this
34:22
is how kids learn, obviously, and they will call you out on your inconsistencies.
34:26
At an incredibly early age. My 4-year-old will let
34:30
me know if she sees dissonance here, that, Dad, you're saying this is
34:34
so important. Why aren't you doing— why aren't you doing Y?
34:38
Yeah, I really think that at the end of the day, it's kind
34:41
of trying to— a phrase I'm trying to coin in some senses here,
34:45
which is, it's the liturgy, stupid. And based
34:49
off James Carville's It's the Economy, Stupid, is sort
34:53
of tagline for Bill Clinton's campaign, which was a successful campaign because he might
34:57
be wrong about most everything, but he was absolutely right to identify that
35:01
as the core thing. You know, the fact that families
35:05
want to be able to provide for themselves and put food on the table was
35:09
the core thing that moved the needle as far as the electoral
35:13
process went. With the Catholic faith, it has always
35:17
been the liturgy. I mean, it's the liturgy that
35:21
so befuddled the pagans, thought it was a cannibalistic ritual.
35:24
It was the liturgy that medieval villages were designed
35:28
around, the music, the art, everything was for the liturgy.
35:32
And Pope Benedict was very clear about this in his pontificate, that he thinks the
35:35
reason, the proximate cause for the decline in
35:38
the Church was the change in the liturgy. It was not because some
35:42
lines in Dignitatis Humanae confused some people. Like, that is,
35:46
that's for the academics, you know, to sort out. What actually,
35:50
you know, Catholicism is, for all intents and purposes,
35:54
the liturgy we experience on Sundays and hopefully
35:59
during days of the week. That's what the faith is, and kids know that better
36:02
than anyone. They are not up to the,
36:06
you know, whatever the distinctions on religious freedom or
36:09
whatnot. That is not in their ballpark. What they are
36:13
imbibing and what they're soaking up is the liturgy
36:17
and is this serious? Right, because I would
36:21
tell people, you know, from the pulpit, I say, look, there are folks
36:25
here who are striving mightily to raise their
36:29
kids in the faith and tell them Mass and worship is important. And when you
36:32
as adults show up wearing your SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirt,
36:37
and when you arrive late and leave early and without shame let
36:40
your phone ring, and some people have even taken the call during Mass,
36:44
I've seen that too. When people applaud for the
36:48
musicians after Father has taught them not to and begged them not to,
36:53
young children, other people's children, get the idea
36:57
that this isn't important. And I've seen
37:01
this repeated from priests all over,
37:04
and it seems to not move the needle. So I
37:09
agree with you, the First Commandment is the first for a reason.
37:13
Above all, our primary duty, even in the natural
37:17
law, is to give right worship to
37:20
God, and the only worship pleasing to God is the presentation
37:25
of the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary.
37:29
Somehow that got obscured. We've got about 2
37:33
and a half minutes left. Tell us how to fix it.
37:37
I think, uh, there is no replacement for strong
37:43
masculine pastoral leadership from our pastors.
37:48
And if they don't, because I've seen good Orthodox
37:53
priests come into these parishes and they suddenly develop a mentality of,
37:57
I'm here to cater to this flock, you know, this flock
38:01
does not actually desire these, you know, traditional liturgical things
38:05
you're talking about, this flock, they're not about that. And it reduces
38:09
their role from a shepherd who is tasked with leading
38:13
these people somewhere definite to someone who's
38:17
just sitting by and catering to their existing desires. It has
38:21
to be someone who is strong and brave enough to lead them
38:25
and to take perhaps 5 years' worth of pain
38:29
to do it. And I think that can only come from the
38:33
deepest supernatural faith, the enduring supernatural faith.
38:36
I am not here on an anthropocentric mission. I'm here to lead
38:40
this flock that I have been blessed with to our Lord and
38:45
ultimately to heaven. And it is not just feeding them what they
38:49
perhaps presently want. As we close up, I just want to add that A.W.
38:53
Tozer said that a congregation unwilling to worship will demand
38:57
to be entertained, and a pastor unable to call them to worship will offer
39:02
to provide the entertainment. And I think we have seen that all
39:06
too often. Our number one job as human
39:09
beings and a fortiori as Catholics is the
39:13
worthy worship of God. And if we don't get
39:17
that right, then everything else is going to be out
39:21
of place. Uh, Hunter Swager, thank you for an enjoyable conversation.
39:25
Uh, God bless your, your very good work, and I hope we might have another
39:28
conversation before long. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Father. I'm Jesuit
39:32
Father Robert McTeigue, your host every day of The Catholic Current. It is a Timely
39:35
Tuesday. You know what that means. It means you want to stay
39:39
with us for the rest of the hour, because coming up next, Timely Thoughts,
39:42
you and me reflecting on what we've heard today. You know, my favorite form
39:47
of exercise is to leap from soapbox to soapbox, to arrive at my menagerie of
39:50
pet peeves before me, and I've got a lot of peeves I've got
39:54
to wrangle in the next segment, so you don't want to miss that. After the
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40:01
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40:19
Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations,
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40:26
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40:29
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40:31
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40:34
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41:01
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41:13
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41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:31
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim
41:34
the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. It's the
41:38
last section of a Timely Tuesday. You know what that means— you and me sharing
41:41
family thoughts reflecting on what we heard today. My guest was Hunter Swager,
41:45
and we were talking about the future of parishes and whether your parish
41:49
has a death wish. I think one of the questions
41:53
we don't ask often enough— and when we
41:57
don't ask the question, it means we don't get the answer— is, uh,
42:00
what is a parish for? Now,
42:04
the more cynical among us would say that, you know, according to Father Cheerful,
42:07
who's the pastor of St. Typical's, Well, you know,
42:11
the parish is— that's the place where you have Mass
42:14
so you can take up the collection, and that's, that's what it's for.
42:19
And for other people as well, the parish is— that's where
42:23
Mass is so that you can meet your Sunday obligation.
42:27
And they kind of work together and in an unstated
42:31
way say, look, we're selling anti-hell insurance
42:35
by subscription. And you've got to renew your subscription
42:40
every week. And the deal is, if you give God as much as 55
42:44
minutes of your time on Saturday or Sunday and
42:48
you throw a couple of bucks in God's tip jar, then God owes you heaven.
42:53
And if you get hit by a bus that week, then God will send
42:57
you to heaven because you allowed him the unmatched
43:01
largesse of interrupting your weekend.
43:06
Your weekend. And so we want it minimalist,
43:10
we want it quick, we want it over and done with. We don't want
43:13
it memorable, we certainly don't want it disturbing, we don't want it to be inconvenient
43:18
in any way. And along the way, we tell our
43:21
children the Eucharist is the source and summit of our lives, and they don't believe
43:26
us because by our behavior we make
43:31
it clear that we don't believe it either. I was reading recently,
43:34
um, the classic work on social psychology and
43:38
social organization, and he said— the author said the purpose of
43:43
a system is what it does. Now compare it with the mission
43:47
statement. So if you go to any parish, odds are it's got
43:51
some kind of glorious grand mission statement,
43:55
welcoming and inclusion and social justice and
43:58
God and all sorts of great stuff,
44:03
but that's not the purpose of the parish. Remember,
44:06
the purpose of a system is what it does.
44:10
And what I hear from lots of
44:14
people, from clergy and laity alike,
44:17
some religious, and my own observation for whatever that's worth,
44:21
whatever you make of that, is that The parish
44:25
exists to get the Sunday obligation out of the way
44:30
and to take up the collection. A friend of mine called
44:33
me in distress, in tears, late Christmas morning several years ago. She went
44:38
to St. Typical's for Sunday Mass, and the pastor announced
44:42
at the very crowded, you know, Christmas morning Mass, my Christmas
44:47
gift for you is a very short homily because you've all got better
44:51
places to be. And everybody laughed and cheered and clapped.
44:55
Wasn't Father clever? And didn't people feel
44:59
heard? And what did the children conclude?
45:04
You see where I'm going with this? We have set up
45:07
a system that declares and communicates,
45:11
and that people believe, is that a parish exists
45:16
to get the Sunday obligation out of the
45:19
way as effortlessly and as painlessly
45:23
as possible. And along the way, some busybodies
45:28
are going to say participation, and they want to do
45:32
laps around the sanctuary while wearing an alb and handling
45:35
the sacred species, and someone else wants to do power
45:40
cords and Pete Townshend windmills during his
45:44
own personal rendition of Let There Be Peace on Earth.
45:47
And where's God in all of this? Where is
45:50
God in all of this? Well,
45:53
he's kind of the backdrop. He's kind of the excuse.
45:58
He's this vague, distant power that has to be placated,
46:03
but he's, he's not someone that you take
46:06
with you. He's not a presence who should be dominating
46:10
our minds and hearts at every moment,
46:13
and he's not really, really, really something
46:17
we're committing to hand it on. Oh, you know, we want to have the kids
46:20
photographed for First Communion and
46:25
for Confirmation. Now, First Communion is a major photo
46:29
op for grandparents, and you can't have that without baptism, and Grandma will disinherit
46:33
us. If we don't get the kid baptized. And then
46:37
for confirmation, well, there's some vague sense of maybe it's
46:40
harder to get married in the church, uh, if you're not confirmed.
46:44
And so, you know, you want to have a church wedding because otherwise Grandma
46:48
will disinherit us and it'll look better in the pictures. And somehow,
46:52
somehow there's this vague sense that
46:56
by raising our children with minimalism Catholicism,
47:01
with an absolute indifference towards God.
47:04
Somehow, somehow, somehow these youngsters are
47:08
going to produce really good and grateful Catholic grandchildren somehow.
47:13
And we know demographically and financially that none of this is working.
47:17
It's a complete illusion. So again, I come back to
47:20
what is a parish for? Well,
47:24
before we get to that, there's probably some illusions that we need to be,
47:27
you know, disillusioned from. First of all,
47:31
Mass is not a communion service.
47:35
Mass is not the place where youngsters at St. Hippolyte's have
47:38
told me, that's the place where you go get the thing, you know,
47:42
Holy Communion. The existence of the parish is to worship
47:46
God because that is the right thing to do,
47:51
and the only way to worship God worthily and
47:55
he's made this clear, is through the Holy Sacrifice of
47:59
the Mass, where the one act of worship on
48:03
Calvary is made present again.
48:07
That is why the parish exists,
48:11
full stop. And because it is the right thing to
48:15
do and it is the best thing that we can do, then we give
48:19
it our best. And if
48:23
we participate worthily,
48:27
there's also the extra fruit of receiving Holy Communion.
48:32
And we need to be sustained morally
48:36
and spiritually and socially in
48:40
our commitment to worshiping God rightly in the midst
48:45
of a sick and sickening culture. That doesn't
48:48
want us to do that and works against it.
48:52
So the purpose of the parish is not to be our religious
48:56
cruise ship. It's to be the battleship.
49:01
It's where we're prepared and strengthened for war.
49:04
It's where we learn how to fight for our children
49:08
and our families and our Catholic culture and civilization.
49:13
But to do that consistently, we'd have to confront sin,
49:17
and that would make people uncomfortable. And maybe,
49:21
just maybe, they wouldn't say it in so many words,
49:24
at least not initially. That might mean a hit to
49:28
the collections for a while. So, I think I
49:33
agree with the statement, the purpose of a system
49:38
is what it does. It's been my privilege to get to know a particular women's
49:43
religious community where they love our Lord so
49:47
much that they want to worship him. I think
49:51
we should build parishes like that. What do you think? Let me
49:55
know at thestationofthecross.com/askfather. I'm Jesuit
49:59
Father Robert McTaggart, host here every day of The Catholic Current. Join us tomorrow,
50:03
tomorrow for another lively round of
50:07
the Catholic Current. Great topic, great guest, great conversation. That's how we roll here at
50:10
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50:14
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50:41
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50:45
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