The Great Reset: The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Catalyst for Advancing the Church or Closing its Doors?
By Jared H. Bryson, M.Div., D.Min. (Co-Founder, Firebrand+, LLC & Blogger at Emmausjournal)
On March 27, 2020, in a place where thousands usually gather to catch a glimpse and hear words of hope from our pontiff, stood a solitary figure in St. Peter’s square. Pope Francis, grappling with the conditions of a pandemic, offered prayer and supplications to God on behalf of humanity. Millions watched and joined in prayer, all virtually.
The experience of this prayer service was moving and a stark contrast to most papal liturgies. It was a defining moment for the future of the Church.
Even as some churches begin to re-open to resume public Masses, we must recognize that the Church is not getting back to normal. Churches that are focused on “getting back to normal” will be the churches that are missing one of the biggest revelations of the “The Great Reset.”
The Great Reset is a call to truly create a paradigm shift in missionary discipleship, that is, the people who follow and share Jesus. While this call existed prior to the current pandemic, this pandemic has uncovered new opportunities, new questions, new audiences and new hunger. Like Pre-Covid times, Church communities that are not focused on missionary discipleship will falter and eventually cease to exist. However, in the new context, that timeline has been accelerated.
There have been many studies pointing to the decline of in the US Catholic population while the global Catholic population continues to increase. The concern for the US Church is the decline in new entrants and the demographic shifts in age and retention, all of which could be accelerated in the Covid and Post-Covid environment. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) says it this way on their blog 1964:
Understanding the decline in new entrants is essential. This is a dynamic that is happening at the level of the family where it meets the parish community. Something is disconnected. Trends in retention rates are also troubling. The median age young Catholics are leaving the faith is 13 with about half joining another religion and the other half having no affiliation.
Is this all the canary in coal mine? No. Globally, the Church continues to grow and the United States represents less than 6% of the world’s Catholics. What I have described above is the best current view of the data we have in this country. I’ve presented a few hypotheses. There are many more. It is also easy to think these changes are related to something that the Church specifically is or is not doing. Yet many other affiliations are experiencing much more significant declines. Generally speaking, these trends are also likely to be related to broader shifts in popular culture, the economy, the family, and to bring it back to the iGen—technology.
The global pandemic continues to shift culture, the family, economy and technology. The framework I propose in this article is the same one mentioned by CARA only I emphasize a different priority of ordering, while all are intertwined, one is having more of an effect on the others that requires listing first.
- Technology
- Culture
- Family
- Economy
Maintaining focus on these four categories for our Church’s response to the current pandemic and the call for a shift in paradigm, first we must better understand what we are called to be as Church.
CHURCH: Shift from Notional Assent to Real Assent
This global pandemic has affected every aspect of humanity. No matter if we ourselves contracted the Covid-19 virus, know someone who did, someone who recovered or someone who has died from it, the Covid-19 pandemic has “altared” our relationship with others. This pandemic has offered us up a moment of transformation for all of humanity. It has led us to a real experience of community through our loss of community. It has provided a new experience of sacramentality without access to sacraments. Ultimately, it led to new expressions to embody the faith through virtual and/or digital expressions.
The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) reminds us that the nature of the Church is “sacrament—a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and the unity among all.” (Lumen Gentium, 1) Pope Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, reminds us that the journey of missionary discipleship begins with our encounter with Christ. A moment that offers us up and transforms our lives. “For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?” (Evangelii Gaudium, 8)
Dominican Father Paul Philibert, OP relays in his book “The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to Living Church” a helpful conceptual tool of St. John Henry Newman. The distinction between the “notional” and “real.”
For Newman, the notional assent is superficial and abstract—little more than assertions made out of habit. Newman contrasted this notional assent with real assent. If notional assent means saying yes to an idea, real assent means a saying yes to something we have actually experienced.
The global pandemic has provided an experience to make the real assent for the future of advancing the Church. With this context in mind, let’s go back to the four category shifts presented by CARA to briefly highlight some ways in which the future of the Church will continue to define our faith experience going forward.
Technology
Heidi Campbell in her article “Distancing Religion Online: Lessons from the Pandemic Prompted Religious Move Online” references three ways that churches moved online;
- Transfer –Attempted to replicate what they do in person and put it online.
- Translation —Adapted certain elements of their worship to respond to their own constraints, creating challenges in building community and engagement.
- Transformation –Embraced what the technology could facilitate to build community, “true connectivity over feelings of isolation,” meeting the needs of their people practically and engaging with them.
We see this lived out by priests having “theology uncorked” or “Fireside Chats” on Facebook Live & Instagram, where they fielded questions not just from their parishioners who submitted them in the chat, but from people around the US, Catholic, Protestant, seekers or nonbeliever.
Recalling the moment of Pope Francis standing in St. Peter’s Square alone leading and praying on our behalf, priests and bishops joined in a Virtual 40 Hours, welcoming the faithful into their home chapels and churches, giving inspiration and joining in prayer and adoration. Leaving the theological question alone around virtual adoration and the understanding of community for now. What was clear was the witness of virtual adoration led to a greater sense of community and communion. It also led to an inside look into the riches of our Tradition.
The use of the virtual environment was an afterthought for clergy and lay leaders in most Catholic Churches prior to 2020. What the pandemic has revealed to us is the call to embrace technology as a digital-first strategy to encounter and evangelize.
Evangelization involves hearts, hands and heads, but most importantly it involves providing access to our way of life. It involves a new way of encountering and connecting. The digital world is a visual space which allows us to reveal the beauty of our faith to the fringes; a way to effectively reach the unaffiliated Hence, the shift to a digital-first mentality is foundational to the future of our efforts of pre-evangelization, evangelization and re-evangelization; not transferring or translating our faith to the world, rather allowing it to do what Christ came to do: transform our world.
Technology call to action:
- Notional Assent: Develop a framework for new means of Social Communications that sees virtual/digital means of social communication as an avenue for pre-evangelization, evangelization and re- evangelization. Theologically reflect on the lived technological experience.
- Real Assent: Develop curated pathways, utilizing all means of social communication to develop a personalized approach to the pre-evangelization, evangelization and re-evangelization audiences in a way it is overtly personal and leads to community.
Culture
Those of us that grew up in an era prior to cell phones and the internet had to find our news from printed newspapers, radio, televisions with limited channels or our neighbors. We were limited to the geographical community where we lived. Most of our news was a broadcast method and not necessarily a self-tailored newsfeed.
The move to digital, while helpful to providing new ways for information, outreach and community building, also ushers in a growing cultural shift., which is not necessarily to a more individual one. The shift that is occurring is the broadening of our understanding of the age-old Gospel question “Who is my brother and sister?” The shift in community is less geographic. People build communities in new ways, some completely virtual.
The shift in culture moving to a virtual setting gives an opportunity to develop a more contemplative spirit. This is also an opportunity for the Church to again tap into the riches of our tradition and help people in the journey of a life of contemplation in action.
Why be silent? Even in this moment of my writing I realize I am creating noise. It is my hope that from this writing, which comes from my moments of silent contemplation, may come an invitation for you to create opportunities for silence today. Our world has gotten so noisy that we cannot hear the depths of our heart. We cannot hear the voice of God, the cry of the poor, the love of the beloved or the call of our lives.
To be in silence is to not just be quiet, but to also not respond to the sounds/thoughts from within. To be silent is to search the heart. In silence there is the opportunity for God to speak in a way that we can hear. Silence and solitude will be the answer to our world’s needs, yet it is the thing our world fights most against.
“The Great Reset” is an opportunity to rethink our lifestyles. Once we have experienced the inner silence, we are drawn at the same time more closely to serve the needs of others and to increase in that silence. Issues that we have previously ignored have been there before, but our shift to silence and solitude in this crisis has forced us to confront those issues.
A few months of empty churches has enlivened the Church. We are experiencing a resurgence of people seeking spiritual direction/spiritual companionship, many through virtual means, including the growth in virtual retreats and faith formation groups. Increased silence and contemplation is presenting a growth in spiritual questions, spirituality, examination of meaning and purpose and the contemplative life which continue to increase dramatically.
Culture Call To Action:
- Notional Assent: Frame a theological understanding of community in the absence of physical presence. Write and create studies around the spiritual and health benefits of silence, contemplation and prayer.
- Real Assent: Develop online, virtual and digital tools to aid in creating spaces for silence, contemplate and prayer. Develop tools to help people address the spiritual questions that are arising for them. Utilize the richness and beauty of the tradition while letting the spiritual questions from the person in front of you direct your development versus creating programs that you want to deliver that may not seek a new audience.
The Family
In his Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, St. Pope John Paul II reminds us that “the future of humanity passes by way of the family.”
The continuing shift in family life saw both growth and development as well as major setbacks during this pandemic. Many families saw parents either work from home, lose jobs or enter the workforce under precarious conditions. Single parents wrestled with all of these challenges and many more, with greater intensity. Either way, with all other outside activities halted overnight, life slowed down for most. As families have been able to spend more time together, they were able to grow and develop spiritually, build community and work through relationship challenges.
If anything, the pandemic has enabled families to develop their Domestic Church, an issue that we have previously ignored. As the world begins to re-open, what will that mean for this recent progress? Will families allow themselves the space to continue this path of domestic growth, or will they rush back to normal? Perhaps it is not all worth rushing back to.
Digital Discipleship and Missionary Discipleship is also about truly enabling others to live into the Christian life as a primary community. While previously we measured the growth in the Church through metrics of Baptisms and Marriages, these metrics are no longer the sole measure of success of our ministry. We need to develop new metrics of engagement, how relationships are transformed and how we provide value to all the ways the Domestic Church exists.
The value described here must be a value provided by the needs of the communities we serve and not by what we want them to know and do. So, the move online has allowed us a greater opportunity to truly understand the needs of our people and the communities we live in. This can be seen through the developmental needs-based survey growth, digital date nights and Facebook groups to help people with resources for their daily and spiritual life.
The Family Call to Action:
- Notional Assent: Come to understand the needs of the family, no matter what the family looks like or is structured. Create theological dialogue in understanding the life and structures of today’s families.
- Real Assent: Develop tools to enable the growth in the Domestic Church based on the needs of today’s families. Provide a Virtual/Digital Domestic Church first outreach strategies versus making programs that require people to come to a church building participate.
Economy
This pandemic has shifted everyone’s encounter with the economy. How we provide a living for ourselves and our families continues to shift and change. What the workforce of the future looks like and what the work of the future looks like will accelerate the “gig” economy and remote work. These shifts in work can be very positive in enabling people to find a better integration of work and life that aligns with their overall vision of happiness.
However, this pandemic has shown the vulnerability in our economic models, especially for Catholic organizations. How parishes, schools and other ministries will survive and/or thrive during times of economic challenge must be addressed. How we come together and support our communities is the foundation of our ministry outreach in the United States. The Catholic Church is the largest charitable outreach ministry in the United States. The loss of our traditional funding and fundraisers has presented a great challenge.
I am mindful that the growth in education, health and social services in the United States were at one time the practical outreach of the Catholic Church in our communities. They were founded to take care of “the poor and vulnerable.” Yet over time, there have been shifts in who has access to these outlets.
The Great Reset is a prime opportunity to go back to our roots, to work together thinking systemically and reset our operating and economic models for our ministries. This can be seen in the new models of operations that have been exhibited by secular workplaces in order to survive and in some cases thrive. We have witnessed this in the ministry world by the creativity to replace traditional fundraisers and in parishes that engaged in social media to far exceed their fundraising goals, but this was driven by only a few leaving much opportunity for growth.
The Economy Call To Action:
- Notional Assent: Create new operating economic models for our schools and ministries that allow all people to be served regardless of their ability to pay.
- Real Assent: Work to create an economy that lifts those on the margins and makes available Catholic education, healthcare and other ministries to all people. Create opportunities to close the income inequality and racial gaps.
Next Steps
The purpose of this post is to begin a dialogue to create a vibrant future for our Church and to provide a commitment to a real assent in advancing the call of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium. Please join us in conversation, leave us your comments about this post. With that in mind, I look forward to our dialogue together leave another jumping off point for the dialogue with the words of our Holy Father, Pope Francis.
In our day Jesus’ command to ‘go and make disciples’ echoes in the changing scenarios and ever new challenges to the Church’s mission of evangelization, and all of us are called to take part in this new missionary ‘going forth.’ Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the ‘peripheries’ in need of the light of the Gospel.” (EG, 20)
I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: ‘All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion’” (EG 27).
The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility; it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. If it proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.’ This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed cluster made up of a chosen few. (EG 28)
Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way’” (EG 33).