Thanks for the Homily, Father

So several times in the history of this blog I have harped on the problems related to missionary orders and missionary priests (see "Interreligious Dialogue: A Case Study of the Columban Missions" and "What's Wrong With Missionary Priests?"). And boy, there are huge obstacles out there. As far as I can tell, it all bound up with the Church's identity crisis: If we Catholics are not sure what we are supposed to be doing, how can we convincing spread our Faith to others? And so missionary priests end up as glorified humanitarian aid workers.

Today at my parish we had a missionary priest from India. I am happy to say that after years of disappointment, it was refreshing to finally here a missionary actually talking about bring people to Jesus. To talk about salvation. It was wonderful. And he wasn't a traditional order priest or anything; he was just a Novus Ordo diocesan priest. But he preached about the Great Commission. About the necessity of bringing Christ to people. About baptism. About India's great Christian traditions, both those begun by St. Thomas as well that brought by St. Francis Xavier and the 16th century Jesuits. He offered actual spiritual insights that were relevant.

I remember recently on one of my travels I heard a priest saying how he was preaching on Purgatory at this parish. And afterward a woman came up to him and said, "I never really thought about it, but I think that was the first sermon I heard on Purgatory in thirty years!" I think the same is true with the necessity of bringing the Gospel to pagans. Maybe intellectually Catholics know the Great Commission is out there, but it is so seldom preached about these days.

This is no surprise. Muslims worship the same God. Jews are no longer in need of conversion. Protestants are brethren. Orthodox are not to be expected to return to unity with Rome. Aberrosexuals  are not to be made uncomfortable in any way. Pagans are able to find God in their own rituals and mythologies. Given all this, one wonders who is left that actually needs to hear the Gospel. Mafioso and arms dealers, according to Pope Francis; but they are a lost cause because the pope has already said they are going to Hell.

The point is, you can't mentally affirm one thing but act in a manner contrary to it for forty years. You can't affirm the Great Commission is still a mandate while acting as if there is no particular class of people who actually need Christ and His Church. You cannot say the Great Commission applies to persons individually but not to the Church collectively (related: "The Great Commission is Institutional"). To purport to be able to do so is the worst form of Doublespeak, which the human mind cannot long endure. This is why, given a disconnect between what is taught and what is actually happening "on the ground", the praxis becomes dominant and the teaching fades into the background - not forgotten, but kind of ignored, as the woman noted about Purgatory. 

And sometimes it takes an encounter with the truth to shock you out of it - to hear a real good sermon on Purgatory before you realize you haven't heard one in thirty years; or to meet a regular, diocesan missionary priest who cared about bringing souls to Christ before you realize you had kind of forgotten that those sorts of priests actually existed anymore.

Thanks for the homily, Father.