By Gisèle Plantec
ROME, FEB. 28, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The West is no longer the Christian land it once was. Parishes are attended by a minority and thus, must reconsider their role, affirmed Cardinal Christoph Schönborn.
Cardinal Schönborn, who is archbishop of Vienna, explained some of the ways parishes must change to reach out to modern society in his address at a congress held in Rome at the beginning of this month. The congress, organized by the Emmanuel Community and the Pontifical Institute Redemptor Hominis, had the theme "The Parish and the New Evangelization."
The cardinal spoke of his experience with the 1st International Congress for the New Evangelization, a series of "urban missions" to bring the message of Christ to major European cities. The first ICNE mission was held in Vienna in 2003, followed by missions in Paris, Lisbon, Brussels and Budapest.
"The parish must be loved a lot," the cardinal said, "because the parish is the people of God, with all its strengths and weaknesses."
Cardinal Schönborn pointed to the changes undergone in parishes over the last 50 years: "In my childhood, the town was the parish. Everyone went to Sunday Mass." Now, he acknowledged, those who go to the parish are a minority. And, though this minority is sometimes warm and open, he said that many times there is an attitude of being closed to others.
"After Mass, we have coffee," he said, narrating the experience of some parishioners in Austria. "We are content in the parish, it's warm, but we turn our back to the outside world, and if you're not part of the circle, of the community, you don't come in."
Cardinal Schönborn noted another negative point that can arise: an unwillingness to travel for Mass. With fewer priests, smaller parishes can no longer have Mass, or not with the same frequency. "It is unthinkable to travel three kilometers to participate in the Eucharist," he said ironically, referring to the attitudes of those who want things to be the same as when the number of priests in Europe was greater.
With this problem, the cardinal lamented, a Sunday service of the liturgy of the word is too easily proposed as a substitute to Mass.
A transformation
Cardinal Schönborn hailed the effects of the urban missions in his city, five years later.
"I was very happy" when the Emmanuel Community initially proposed the idea, the cardinal recalled. "But, I said to myself: 'What are our parishes going to say, the laypeople, our priests? Will they accept this challenge?'"
The prelate remembered that he expected only 30 of the 172 parishes in the city to participate. In the end, though, there were 108.
"Miracles are these little things, that are very important because they changed perspectives," he said.
The Vienna archbishop told of some of the concrete changes.
The parishioners who drank their coffee closed within the walls of the church buildings, moved their tables outside, "and they tranquilly proved that they could address the people who passed by and invite them to have a coffee," he said. "For the first time, they had a true missionary experience: to talk to people and invite them, even though it did not directly begin with a conversation about the Gospel."
Cardinal Schönborn recalled another initiative: some 150,000-200,000 "love letters from God" distributed in metro stations on Valentine's Day.
"[Parishioners] put themselves in the place of the good God and imagined what he would write to this or that person," the cardinal explained. "This type of activity became part of the tradition of the parish. Some of the members of our parishes are not afraid to go to the metro and distribute love letters from God."
"It is a beginning," the cardinal said. "These are the first steps of a mission, but what is still missing a lot is that it become the love for Christ that pushes us, and that it become truly an evangelization."
ZE08022803 - 2008-02-28
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-21917?l=english
Coffee and Love Letters: Parishes Go on Missions
Cardinal Schönborn Recounts First Steps of Vienna Experience
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