Why the Catholic Church needs a Protestant revival


By Leon D'Souza


September 13, 2005 | For years, as I was growing up, my mother and grandmother were the spiritual chieftains in our decidedly orthodox Catholic home.

Grandma got out the rosary and sat on her favorite sofa every evening, solemnly counting beads as the clock ticked past 8, while Mum issued the clarion call: "Rosary time!"

The summons wasn't to be taken lightly.

Dad and I were to drop everything on the double and report to the living room, which meant the half glass of whiskey would have to wait until later. And there was always another hour to prep for school or an upcoming exam. This was the time for Marian worship, and it wasn't to be frittered away, period.

Thus we would begin our scripted devotional in earnest, giving praise with a kind of robotic rigor. Hail Mary. Holy Mary. Glory Be to the Father. Decade after decade, until Dad, unfailingly, committed a cardinal sin.

Somewhere between responses that became progressively unintelligible and the drone of invocations that made up the Litany, he would nod off -- swiftly and decisively.

Mum's reproof of this behavior was equally swift.

"Why say the rosary just to fulfill an obligation?" she would ask, censuring the man for his lackadaisical approach to prayer.

And on we went.

I must confess to quietly chuckling at the drama of it all. Although, truthfully, I felt for my father.

You see, he isn't the type to run from prayer. Quite the opposite. He has a certain self-assurance that can only come from an abiding sense of faith. And that faith shines forth like a prayer in motion. His life is itself an act of communion with God, and in a way, I'm sure he has an awareness of this.

Yet, he's never been the attentive sort, and during my childhood years, that turned the rosary into an endurance test.

But now, Dad tells me, everything is different. He's found just the place to charge his spiritual batteries, so to speak.

It's called "Jesus the Real Vine," a charismatic Catholic ministry that meets in a Mumbai suburb every Wednesday. Dad attends devotedly, singing and waving his praise along with about 2,500 others in a service that very nearly mimics a Southern Baptist revival -- with a Marian component.

"We recite the rosary, followed by a discussion of God's word and a healing service," Dad explains. "And it's not Protestant, but that's where they might have gotten the idea."

What a concept: Catholic theology meets Protestant oomph. Passion replaces the pedantry of the pulpit. Ritualized religion is transformed by the spontaneity of enthusiastic believers into a joyous diversion from the travails of life. The Eucharist is enriched by a fellowship of living faith.

Isn't this the way it ought to be, I wonder?

I've come to realize now that Dad's somnolence during the rosary had perhaps little to do with desire to worship and literally everything to do with formula.

Let's face it: So much of Catholic worship today is boring and nonintellectual.

Believers aren't encouraged to reflect on the sacred mysteries of their faith -- on the content of prayer -- but instead, are asked to recite their praise like children reading from an elementary English textbook in a first-grade class.

Even the language of prayer has been dumbed down by decades of liturgical reform gone awry. If Catholic worship is drama, today's church services are amateurish productions, not classic Shakespearean theatre.

As the Catholic theologian and Santa Clara University professor Frederick J. Parrella put it in a 1981 article for the magazine Christian Century, the Catholic liturgy today lacks a quality of "transcendence."

Parrella recalls a visit to a Methodist church in the San Francisco area during the early 1980s. He was immediately struck, he says, by the hymns sung during the service.

"The singing was unpretentious, personal, spirit-tilled and majestic: 'Father all-glorious, O'er all victorious, Come, and reign over us, Ancient of Days.' How splendid an image: Ancient of Days. I have heard very little like it in a Catholic church for two decades. What I have heard instead are choruses such as ‘Be like the sun and shine on ev'ry one,' sentiments more attuned to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood or Sesame Street than to an act of divine worship."

The more sophisticated hymns foster personal reflection on the sacramental act, Parrella says, adding that "transcendence must always have the quality of the personal rooted within, engaging and beckoning one to deeper levels of personal communion."

The ultimate quality of that service was, for him, unlike anything he had experienced in a modern Catholic church.

And while Parrella reaches a different conclusion than one I feel inclined to propose, he seems to agree with the essence of the liturgical reforms initiated by liberal Catholics during the 1960s: The need to "shift from boring, spectatorial, objective, irrelevant Masses to liturgies filled with relevance and sensitivity."

To this end, Mumbai's Jesus the Real Vine ministry is making headway.

The members of this group feel connected to their faith in a way most Catholics don't. There is a buoyancy about their way of believing that gives them a feeling of boundless hope and energy. Their Catholicism is alive, not stifled by the tedium of formulaic worship.

Perhaps the way to reform Catholicism then is to integrate this new brand of charismatic and meditative praise with weekly liturgical worship, producing a blend that is midway between orthodoxy and post-Vatican II secularization.

By this, I mean quite simply that it is possible to retain the rich flavor of the Mass -- or any other Catholic rite or ritual for that matter -- while infusing it with the spirit of Protestant revivalism.

This new, enlivened Catholic faith could serve as a magnet for youth, who seek an energetic and involved church, not the dull, preachy juggernaut of their parents' younger years.

After all, as the Rev. Owen O'Sullivan, an Irish Capuchin missionary, pointed out in a 1993 Irish Times article, the youth of the church haven't lost their belief in God. They have, however, "lost hope in the church."

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