Writing a letter to Fr James Martin, SJ, Francis encouraged Martin to keep working in the ministry

"I encourage you all to keep working in the culture of encounter, which shortens the distances and enriches us with differences in the same manner of Jesus, who made himself close to everyone", wrote Francis.

Francis said that one of the things the Covid pandemic has done is make us seek alternative ways to communicate, to "shorten the distances" between people.

"It also taught us that certain things are irreplaceable - among them the possibility to look at each other face to face, even with those who think differently or those whose differences seem to separate or even confront us.

"When we overcome these barriers, we realise that there is more that unites us than separates us."

Francis assured Martin of his prayers and that Jesus and the Blessed Virgin will care for him.

Source: Outreach

Martin made the comment after attending Ireland's national pre-synodal assembly this week.

"The question is — what next?

"We are still not entirely certain, but we are open to what the Holy Spirit might be saying and to a quiet and gentle renewal of the faith. We are moving from maintenance to mission.

"In order to make space for something new, we have to accept that there is no point in trying to maintain a particular form of the life of the Church which was for a different time."

The facts are clear. In 2016, people identifying as Catholic in Ireland made up 78.3 percent of the population (approximately 3.7 million people), down from 84.2 percent in the 2011 census. It's predicted the 2022 census will show a further decline.

Ireland also has an ageing clergy and few vocations to the diocesan priesthood or religious life.

Martin noted the past year's synodal conversation with people all over Ireland culminated in the assembly, which was a moment to hear the fruits of that conversation.

"One of the things that is coming across is the (pre-)synodal conversations - an awful lot of people are very passionate about their faith in Jesus Christ ... with the Church. But they want the church to be open to something different," he says.

There are some big barriers to renewal though.

Feedback to the assembly revealed "a despair among a lot of our young people, a lack of hope, and a lack of a sense of purpose" and at the same time "a belief in faith, in hope and in love". This is "what we are trying to rekindle in the life of the Church," Martin says.

His confrere, Archbishop Dermot Farrell, says clerical sexual abuse had irreparably damaged the church's reputation in Ireland. This could spell the end for Catholicism in Ireland if major changes were not implemented within the church, he warned.

He said evidence of Christian belief in Ireland today "has, for all intents and purposes, vanished" and this "underlying crisis of faith was particularly acute among the younger generations". He added, "The current model of the church is unsustainable".

Martin has a more hopeful view.

"We are moving into a new period of evangelisation, recognising that many people - even those who have been baptised in the faith - perhaps don't have a personal relationship with Jesus, don't have a personal sense of God, and indeed maybe don't have a sense of direction in their lives," he says.

"We are trying to find new ways of communicating the joy of the Gospel, which is very much a theme that Pope Francis has been revealing to the Church during his pontificate."

He stresses the importance of reaching out to young people who "are living in a very different space," suggesting the Church play an important pastoral role among an increasingly disaffected youth.

Source

• The Tablet
• Catholic News Service

A self-described "cradle Catholic" and graphic design student at Liberty University, Schneider, now 21, began using her TikTok as "@the_religious_hippie," a fun moniker her friends gave her.

She was posting casually, but had what she calls a "turning point" in her faith, and began posting openly about her beliefs.

"At first, I felt like I was the only Catholic," said Schneider, who now has nearly 90,000 followers. "But then I discovered people like me, from everywhere, with one thing in common: we all love God."

Even as its future in the U.S. remains unclear, the viral social media app continues to grow, especially among young users.

Over half of TikTok's users are between ages 10 and 29.

The app, first launched in China in 2016 before later merging with Musical.ly, showcases a newsfeed of simple, short-form entertainment videos made by creators themselves.

People can also see algorithm-selected videos in their newsfeed, based on people, trends or hashtags they follow.

For young U.S. Catholics like Schneider, TikTok is more than an app for dances, funny memes and challenges in 60 seconds or less. It's a community dedicated to evangelizing and defending the faith as well as a place for networking and recreation, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, as more young people are seeking connection and answers in a particularly divisive year.

Even religious men and women have gotten in on the trend, using the time in quarantine to start posting more content and engage openly with followers: such as "viral" priests Fr. Frankie Cicero of Life Starts Here Ministries in Arizona and Simon Esshaki, a Chaldean priest in San Diego.

Even the Netherlands-based Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart have nearly 243,000 followers; their comment sections are filled with people from other faiths thanking the nuns for their entertaining and wholesome content.

(In a @carmeldjc video from July, when a user asked, "What do you think about the LGBT community?" The nuns' simple reply was, "God loves everybody.")

"Catholic TikTok" is filled with diverse creators; they are mostly teens and young adults posting videos — church teachings and memes, real-life struggles and news takes — often with a filter, set to music or a track. Trending hashtags like #catholic and #catholicsoftiktokhave more than 380 million views.

@faithfullylanahow's self isolation going for y'all? ##fyp ##catholic ##christian ##jesus ##adoration ##eucharist ##veiling ##catholiclife ##rosary ##lovejesuschrist

♬ ricoco bicc aesthetic - Tik Toker

Those hashtags tend to attract TikTokers who identify as "rad-trad" or "traditionally Catholic," said 16-year-old Chris Karroum, who has more than 6,000 followers for his humour. Karroum said he started attending traditional Latin Mass after learning about it on the app. Continue reading

If pajamas have become the new workplace attire and the sofa has been transformed into the new desktop, where does that leave a U.S. Catholic Church yearning to stay connected with its parishioners through Zoom liturgies and Facebook Live spiritual pep talks pumped into living rooms by social media?

For Scot Landry, the Boston-based Catholic evangelist whose vocation as co-leader of Dynamic Catholic requires him to think in broad strokes, the church has a unique opportunity to step up to the challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic.

"I think the Catholic Church and every parish is going to be different because of the virus and how we've responded," said Landry, qualifying his answer because of the unknowns about how long it will take to find a vaccine or a therapeutic medicine to combat the virus.

But, "the parishes that have invested in technology and robust communication with their parishioners have done much better throughout the last eight weeks."

One of the major advances, Landry said, will be in the number of parishes who move forward with plans to offer online giving so that people can more easily "support the mission."

"Some of the parishes who have immensely struggled over the last eight weeks are the ones that relied almost exclusively on the weekly Sunday offertory," Landry told the Clarion Herald, New Orleans' archdiocesan newspaper.

"Liturgically, it's a very important part of our Mass to bring up the gifts, but it's far from ‘best' if our parishes are going to have consistent support from their parishioners."

Livestreamed Masses are here "forever," Landry said.

Each parish needs to figure out how it can distribute Communion to the homebound or those who choose to stay home.

"Most growing parishes, down the road, will continue to broadcast a lot of their liturgies and a lot of their events," he said. "It's an open question on how much parishes invest in that. Does it become a central part of their outreach or does it become just a part of their outreach?"

The massive changes in remote learning in schools also have ushered in a technological movement, Landry said.

It's going to accelerate the idea of the ‘flipped classroom,' where a lot of instruction happens on video. Then, when people gather with the teacher, it's more to ask questions," Landry said.

"The flipped classroom could be a great model for handing on our Catholic faith to people because many parishes have been challenged with (having enough) catechists."

Landry works with 61 parishes across 12 U.S. dioceses. One of the biggest questions he has had to grapple with is how fearful Catholics will be to return to Mass.

"Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50% of our regular Mass attendees on Sunday will be cautious in returning or scared to come back," Landry said, including seniors and families with younger children.

"While there is a strong desire for the Eucharist, how will every faithful Catholic look at the idea of a crowded, packed church ever again? We used to look at the Christmas and Easter crowds, if we were able to get a seat, and say, ‘Isn't that wonderful how packed it is?'

"Think in terms of the multiple platforms — who is the best target audience for that platform and how the message could be shaped slightly differently to reach the people that read that platform?"

I do think people are going to look at a packed church now and say, ‘Do I really want to be in a packed church?'"

With most dioceses across the U.S. "dispensing" Catholics from their obligation to attend Sunday Mass, Landry said parishioners may begin choosing to attend weekday Masses, when the churches will be less crowded.

The most important thing a diocese — or a parish — can do right now for parishioners is to "over-communicate," Landry said.

"It's to speak from the heart about the care for everybody individually and the care for the community when it regathers and that we want to be safe," Landry said.

"Then each parish needs to figure out how it can distribute Communion to the homebound or those who choose to stay home during this time in much larger numbers than most parishes have ever been asked to do. That would allow people to still participate in Mass and satisfy that hunger for the Eucharist."

Communication is key, Landry said, because not all age or demographic groups are reached through the same methods of communication. Continue reading

Known as the "Kiribati Commitment", the programme aims to provide young teachers in the Port Pirie Diocese with an opportunity to live and work alongside the Good Samaritan Sisters in Kiribati and to be immersed in broader community life.

Brenda Keenan, Director of Catholic Education in the Port Pirie Diocese, who has been instrumental in making the "Kiribati Commitment" a reality, said the emphasis is on mutual learning and enrichment for all involved.

She described this year's inaugural outreach experience to the village of Abaokoro, where a community of three i-Kiribati sisters run the Good Samaritan Early Learning Childhood Centre, as "an outstanding success".

"From the outset I knew that it was going to be very good, but my expectations were met one-hundred-times-fold - and I had extremely high expectations," she said.

"The outreach experience, on so many different levels, was fantastic."

The 12 teachers all conveyed similar sentiments.

Keenan said the Kiribati outreach program will continue to evolve over the coming years.

"There will be future and ongoing opportunities for staff from across our diocesan schools to travel and witness this amazing Pacific country and its people, and there will be opportunities for the i-Kiribati Good Samaritan Sisters to visit our diocese and schools,"
she said.

"Our partnership is two-ways (both ways), as we continue to cultivate and grow our cross-cultural learnings, friendships and understandings."

Source

• goodsams.org.au
• Image: goodsams.org.au

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn made his comments after allowing a gay man in a civil partnership, to remain on a parish council in Lower Austria. Continue reading

"Crossing the Threshold" is the name given to the the first stage of a national programme to help parishioners and priests reconnect friends and family.

Around a million people regularly attend mass on Sundays, but church leaders say there are many more who are baptised but do not go to church.

Bishop Kieran Conry, bishop of Arundel and Brighton, said no-shows were more likely to do with laziness and children's extra-curricular commitments than controversies surrounding the pope or clerical sexual abuse scandals.

Conry said: "We have something we're trying to market and we're just reminding people there's something that can bring you happiness, satisfaction and friendship."

"There are probably people out there who would like to come back but don't know how to go about it. There is a fear of standing out, of doing the wrong thing."

Conry said it was important for those taking part to offer a personal invitation to Catholics to reconnect.

One of the first events held in York attracted around 140 people.

Topics for discussion included how to reach out to someone and how to make "small, effective gestures in parishes."

73-year-old attendee Shelagh Preston, said "It's important to discover why people don't go to church, to listen. Most of they time they can't be bothered, they're doing other things. It's not about hating God.

"Some people do come back and they have to be welcomed back. We're not as good as we should be at that."

Evangelisation was not about standing on the corner with a Bible or knocking on peoples' doors, she added.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: Huffington Post

The study examined faith behaviour of born again Christians over a ten year period and identified a

• drop in church attendance,
• decline in reading the Bible,
• lack of faith priority in things such as volunteering

The study also found that 10% those who self-identify as Christians are less likely to be going to church than in 1991, and 31% who fit this profile have not attended church in the last six months, except for special occasions such as a wedding or funeral.

"As the number of born again adults has increased, the engagement in the Christian life seems to have waned - a common problem when a product, service, movement, or perspective gains massive numbers and velocity," Barna group founder, George Barna stated.

"In the past decade, even the proportion of born-again adults who say their faith is vitally important to them has dipped substantially," he noted.

Barna concluded his analysis of the born-again Christian segment of the study by saying that such a spiritual condition reflects the "pursuit of cheap grace," as described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Barna said the condition "fits America all too snugly today."

Ministry leader coach Scott Couchenour, founder of Serving Strong based in Ohio, said he was not surprised about the results of the study or Barna's analysis.

"I believe it's because of the tremendous wealth of distractions at our fingertips these days," he said.

Sources

• Christian Post
• Image: Nigeria Films