A Confusion of Tongues

Raise your hand if you have a good understanding of what, exactly, the Uniting in Heart 2030 Pastoral Plan aims to do.  Put it into words.  Say what will go on in your parish once the plan is implemented. Anybody? 

It’s been difficult to follow. 

In the first place, this is because the explanations of it have been scattered sporadically across a 6 year period.

Complicating this, the plan itself has undergone evolution over time.

But it’s also hard to follow because our leaders have chosen a PR approach where they say a whole lot but don’t actually tell us much.   The Catholic Moment has served as the primary vehicle for this.

We’ve seen the colorful spread and the 3 Pillars and Vision statement. There’s been a lot of talk of unity and  mission &  leadership.  It doesn’t say a great deal, in the end, beyond generalities, and so seems quite innocuous.

But unless you were among the very small minority of the Faithful able to attend listening sessions or official meetings of the deaneries, unless you’ve been actively collecting information as we have, you don’t see very specific answers.

You might have been among the few who would have taken the time to dig through the diocesan website to find more detailed information. But if you try the diocesan website’s FAQ section on Uniting in Heart, where the plan is supposed to be laid out with more specificity, you’ll find the linked documents have all been pulled down. Other links–for example the ones for the information given at the United in Heart deanery meetings–now lead only to “Page Not Found” messages. So now even information previously shared has disappeared. Interesting.    Some careful PR work and information scrubbing?

So you could be forgiven for feeling that there was something going on under the surface that you didn’t understand.

And now sudden, drastic changes have begun, sending our diocese into a state of upheaval, with 80% of the clergy reassigned and what feels like last-minute shake-ups every week, a slew of unexpected retirements, and constant talk of “a new reality.”  

Are you happy about this? Do you trust decisions that have been made on your behalf?

Again, in the plethora of articles published in The Catholic Moment, concrete answers about what our parishes will look like when the dust settles are conspicuous by their absence.

Instead, our leaders have served up quite a menu of euphemisms and buzzwords.   We’ve been promised  we can create a “New Pentecost” for our diocese within the next 10 years that will require us to “step outside our comfort zones,” if we just do the Plan, and have been told we are entering “a new way of being,” a involving a “radical shift in culture and practice in the Church.”

But what does that mean, really?

A handful of individuals appear to be committed to changing the paradigm for all of us in a major way.

If the idea of radical shifts in Church culture bugs you, and you happen to love your Catholic Faith for what it is, or if you like being rooted in the things that give your spiritual life and your parish its character,  then you might be worried.

That’s too bad for you, our diocese seems to be saying.

Our diocesan leaders have told us we should embrace the change. That we should not be judgmental of the plan. They have even suggested that if we have concerns about the plan, it’s because we’re scared of the call to holiness, and not very good at listening to the Holy Spirit:

“If we are anxious about where the Uniting In Heart 2030 Pastoral Plan will take us, our first response should be to ask of ourselves where does our anxiety come from?  Let’s look at where it comes from and not deny what truly stands in our way. Has the call to holiness and discipleship awakened a fear in our hearts?  Is a source of our anxiety the realization that our post-Christian culture has succeeded in tamping down the fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives?”  

Deacon Mike Mescall, The Catholic Moment, September 22, 2019

So there’s that.

We are fairly certain that you can be open to God and striving hard for holiness while still being concerned that your leaders, who are human beings, can make missteps and errors. That type of thinking has been discouraged, as we’ll explore in future posts.

Yet the prevailing messaging, like the above, ranges from upbeat reassurance, to guilt-tripping the worried soul, to what can only be described as lyrical effusion for the wonderful, wonderful plan. We’ve been told that Uniting in Heart will be like a fine, shining gem, with a radiance that will cover the entire diocese. The plan has been subtitled with Our Lord’s words from the Book of Revelation (“Behold, I make all things new”), the words He uses to describe the parousia, His Second Coming, the remaking all of creation: new heaven and a new earth.

Some of us think associating a diocesan reorganization plan with the parousia might be a little extra.

This is all like some form of New Speak, where direct, simple answers have no place, and where you are meant to just sit tight and enjoy your large bowl of word salad:  Vitality.  Vibrancy. Embracing new capabilities. Change management capacity.  Transitioning.  Fabric of Faith.  New reality. New states of being.

“It’s difficult to say in a short slogan what Uniting in Heart has been moving us toward,” the bishop tells us.

Indeed. So it seems.

We’ve been promised a “New Pentecost,” so why does it feel like we’re getting an old tower of Babel?

We at Red Wolf have dug past the PR campaign. And we are going to be more direct than our friends over at The Catholic Moment. We think the Faithful deserve that much.

If that will help you, stick around. Comment below. It’s vital that you talk to one another. Share articles. Speak out.

Our next post, “The Code of Silence,” is coming soon.