BEYOND STATISTICS TO A TRAJECTORY OF HOPE

Many of us in the Church today feel like we are caught in a flash flood that is unexpected, powerful, destructive and filled with much despair. The refrain sounds all too familiar:  “Vocations are down, scandals are up. Problems are more and more complex, and demands are increasing. Complaints are more frequent and more strident.  No one is listening to us anymore. And the list goes on and on…

The media exerts a powerful influence on the thinking, the attitudes and the faith of people.   This flash flood bears down with immense force on all of us.  Some view our present situation with great pessimism and grow disheartened, depressed, and even cynical.  Some don't want to admit what is happening and go whistling in the dark, clinging to the illusion that things definitively past can be recovered and the claims of the present ignored. Others look at it all only from the data of sociology, from polls and predictions, and foresee an inevitable, almost deterministic future designed more or less by social and economic forces, a future which is dismal and dark.

For the world of sound bites, hope usually means that we make ourselves believe that everything is going to turn out all right.  We use the word hope lightly and cheaply. This is not the hope of Christians. We must be icons of hope, people with a new vision, people that learn to see the world through the lenses of Christ and the Church, and bring to the Church the lessons of the world. We can do nothing unless we choose to walk with the Church, breathe with the Church, hope with the Church, feel with the Church “sentire cum ecclesiae.” To do otherwise is simply to choose death. Polls, petitions, charts, demographic diagrams and elaborate reports are not a substitute for a new, ecclesial vision.  They are not a substitute for leadership rooted in faith in Jesus Christ and energized by the forces of biblical and ecclesial hope.

We cannot weigh the life of faith and judge the vitality of the church chiefly on the basis of sociological indicators, numbers, polls, and outside statistics, as helpful as they may appear to be.  Rather, we must shape our vision on the firm conviction in the victory of the Cross and in Christ’s triumph over sin and death.

Because we live in this xairos, the “appointed time and hour” of history, we cannot speak of the future of the Church, the future of our parish community, the future of our dioceses and seminaries, the future of our religious orders, the future of our activities of evangelization, indeed the future of anything!  The only real issue for us is Jesus and the future of the Church, Jesus and the future of our parish community, Jesus and the future of our dioceses and religious communities, Jesus and the future of our programs and activities, Jesus and the future of everything!  Too often our look at the future is purely scientific or sociological, with no reference to Jesus, the Gospel or the action of the Spirit in history and in the church.

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