It was a Mass that seemed meant to brighten our dimming hopes.
On holiday in Portsmouth, U.K., my husband and I found Sunday Mass at the city’s modest Catholic Cathedral of St. John and slipped into an empty pew, expecting nothing beyond what is ordinary in our weary local diocese.
When the pipe organ sounded and the (surprisingly good) choir intoned the entrance hymn, things became very different, indeed. The pews had filled with beautiful young migrant families from Africa and India, and as the congregation sang out in vibrant voice, the diversity of the parish was reflected in the 13 (!) altar servers — children and young adults reflecting the whole color palette of humanity and rendering reverent service to the liturgy.
There were bells and smells — the Novus Ordo with a smattering of Latin in the Gloria and the Agnus Dei. There was a young concelebrant and a fine, humble sermon by Bishop Philip Egan.
Mostly, there was a palpable sense of joy, responsiveness and faith-alive. Here was a parish with a future, where the noise of small children was happily viewed as a promise of tomorrow.
Understand, this is not meant as a criticism of my own diocese, but things are very different, here. In a spirit of pilgrimage, my husband and I have each month taken to visiting one of the 120 parishes around us. Sadly, we too often leave our visits wondering whether a parish will still exist in five years.
Yet halfway through the Portsmouth Mass, we turned to each other, smiling. “It’s wonderful,” my husband whispered. “This Mass is giving me so much hope.” I agreed. The spirit all around was powerful and uplifting. At Communion, I was so happy to receive Jesus in both species (a rarity at home), that I quietly wept.
Riding high on that Holy Eucharist, our shoulders nevertheless sagged as the bishop invited a young man up to the lectern and we learned that — after analyzing finances, building needs and parish participation factors — five Portsmouth parishes (rather than the planned three) would be blended into one by 2026, as part of a 10-year evangelization plan that will ultimately reduce 87 diocesan parishes to 24.
One sees the point; muscular evangelization is not helped by a plethora of crumbling church buildings and sacraments going unbestowed amid dying congregations; evangelization requires energy, and bringing young, enthusiastic believers into community together begets exactly the happy vigor needed to effectively share the faith.
Still, for a moment, my husband and I could only feel defeated. In England’s green and pleasant land we’d just witnessed a lightning flash of joyful hope, and this news dimmed it. Necessary the move might be, but it felt like too much death among the living.
We returned from our holiday to headlines of Pope Francis speaking pure truth in Brussels. Referencing the seemingly never-ending revelations of sexual abuse in the church, he acknowledged “this crime” adding, “The church must be ashamed, ask for forgiveness, try to resolve this situation with Christian humility.”
It feels like we have waited a very long time to hear that naked admission of criminality from our leadership.
That confession became part of the penitential liturgy that concluded the pre-synod retreat, in Rome, where its 368 participants also begged forgiveness for sins against peace; against creation; against poverty, etc.
If I may be so bold as to say it, mentioning the sins of criminal abuse amid the general penitential service involving a few hundred, and seen only by Catholic news junkies, is insufficient to what is needed. The global abuse of children and vulnerable adults has rocked the church like nothing else, contributing to the emptying of pews throughout the Western church. It demands a global action of liturgical penance, undertaken by the entirety of our clergy and religious — and by as many layfolk as can admit that generations of us had heard “whispers” about this priest or that bishop without speaking up.
In March of 2020, in the face of COVID-19, Pope Francis did the urgently necessary thing, bringing the world together in supplication and adoration in the shadows of an empty St. Peter’s Square.
Four years later, I respectfully beg His Holiness to undertake the next urgently necessary thing: a globally participated-in liturgy of contrition for the heinous, grotesque sins of the church — celebrated in St. Peter’s Square, and simultaneously in parishes across the world, via satellite.
If we are to be a synodal church, we must do this; we must show that the church is listening, and has heard the reverberating cries of our victims, and of those who have left the pews out of disgust for our sins, and that it is genuinely and demonstrably repentant. What could better bless the synod’s intentions than this deep, humble cleansing of the soul of the church, coupled with the cleaning-out of its ecclesiastic house?
Our Mass in Portsmouth gave evidence that there is still a faintly glimmering church beneath all our detritus. Please, Holy Father, do the necessary thing to help that light to grow!
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