A few days ago, a gentleman by the name of Conor Capplis contributed a piece to The Irish Times entitled “At the age of 22 I started going to church again - and this time it’s different.” The title certainly piqued my interest. If you are in the dwindling minority that still goes to Sunday Mass in Ireland, you will probably notice a gaping hole in the church: those between 18 and 30 are mostly conspicuously absent. So this article had me intrigued: What could have brought a 22-year-old back to the church in Ireland in 2022?
The answer, in this particular case, was not quite what I expected. It was not that this person found a Truth and a Love surpassing anything they could find outside the church, but rather, that this young man found a “community” that welcomed him “on his terms - and not those of the church.”
Initially, he “tried going to a traditional church service, the kind where the congregation sits and listens to the man at the top,” but “that didn’t do it” for him. Finally, he found a group of young adults that gave him a platform “to listen to others my own age, who I could relate to and engage with like no priest in my school days ever could.”
The reflection concludes with the following words:
Now, 18 months in to my first consensual relationship with God, I’m glad to have arrived here voluntarily in the end – without the evangelism that clearly didn’t work on me as a child. Where this curiosity will take me is unclear, but for now I feel better for the community that have welcomed me on my terms – and not on those of the church.
A few things stand out for me as I ponder this young man’s journey of faith, as he recounts it:
First, the focus is overwhelmingly placed on this gentleman’s own subjective experiences and perceptions. There is almost no mention of the possibility of a Truth or way of life that takes one out of one’s comfort zone or far transcends anything one had hitherto imagined or experienced.
Second, there is an impatience with anything that is strange, unfamiliar, or not easily relateable to one’s personal experiences and worldview. If church services were not well adapted to my existing worldview, tastes and proclivities, then clearly they were “not for me.”
Third, we see a penchant for egalitarianism, and a rejection of any form of moral or religious hierarchy. The whole notion of a “man on the top” that might have something to teach everyone else just seems out of place in a democratic era, after all.
Fourth, we find here the peculiar notion that a journey of faith must be undertaken on my terms and not on the terms of the church. If the church welcomes me, it must do so “on my terms,” otherwise it’s not for me. In other words, it is up to the church to adapt to me, not up to me to adapt to the church.
I have no reason to question the sincerity of this young man’s testimony. Nonetheless, there is surely something constricted, hemmed-in, and this-worldly about his conception of religious faith.
If Christian faith was really just about finding a community of equals with whom I could dialogue and be understood, then I might just as well join any community of like-minded individuals as become a Christian.
If I don’t like being instructed how to behave, or being confronted with an ideal that is not exactly tailored to my terms, then it is hard to see how traditional Christian concepts like conversion and repentance could even be intelligible. After all, repentance and conversion entail precisely that my existing perceptions and lifestyle, the “terms” upon which I am currently living, be fundamentally brought into question or shaken up.
A church that welcomes everyone on their own terms does not challenge them to see the world with new eyes, or see beyond their existing prejudices and preconceptions. A church that welcomes everyone on their own terms and not on the terms of the church, is a church tailor-made to the prevailing ethos of society, a social club of sorts, but certainly not a community called upon to repent and live a new, more divine, way of life.
There is obviously nothing wrong with wanting to participate in a community of equals with which to dialogue and cultivate friendships. But if that were all a church can offer its members, it is hard to see what might distinguish it from any other community of friends.
If churches were only about meeting people’s need for community bonds, then the fundamental claim at the heart of the Catholic Church, namely that it brings salvation to the world by the grace of the risen Christ, a grace that surpasses all natural goods and demands conversion to a Way of self-giving Love, would be at best a pretty story or a more or less inspiring fable.
Of course, there is no way to provide a rationally compelling proof that the Catholic Church is infused with the grace of the resurrected Christ, or indeed that Christ is alive. If one could provide such a rational proof, then it would not be a matter of faith, but of science.
But it is hard to see how someone could even begin to seriously grapple with these fundamental theological claims if their idea of church begins and ends with the idea of a community of believers welcoming them “on their own terms and not on the terms of the church.”
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Religion, On My Terms
I like to try to bear in mind that the riverbed is not the river. However tiny this lad’s trickle of faith may be, it’s still the water of living truth, and inevitably finds its way to The Heavenly Father.
And a trickle, let to run long enough, can erode the rocks of selfishness and cut a channel sufficiently wide for the slowly building torrent that may, in due course, freely flow, and which will carry with it greater truths, at a time when the intellect and soul have developed sufficiently to be receptive.
I feel catholic church need more people like Mr. Conor Capplis. Not sure that "on my own terms" means "what I want, the way I want". A lot of of catholics go to holy mass every sunday facing a "pride man at the top" Mt 23:4.