Vestigial Catholicism: Universal Problem, Local Challenge

3rd Sunday of the Year

A year ago, I would have told you that I remember absolutely nothing from the one biology class I took in high school. But sometimes circumstances in life conspire to help us remember something we once knew. So, there I was in a hospital bed this past August on the other side of an emergency gallbladder surgery, praying fervently that someone would let me drink coffee, and thinking back over the lesson I learned long ago about vestigial organs and the human body.

The word ‘vestigial’ comes from the Latin word for ‘footprint’ or ‘trace.’ Sometimes we use the word ‘vestige’ to describe a mark or sign that reminds us of something now vanished or lost: ‘these ruins are a vestige a former empire,’ we might say, or ‘he is a vestige now of his former self.’ A vestige is a mark or sign of what used to exist but no longer does exist.

In the world of biology, vestigial structures are parts of the body that used to perform an essential function but no longer do. These parts of the body are there taking up space, sometimes performing some low-grade non-necessary functions, but no longer contribute to the life of the whole animal. Some human vestigial structures are well-known: the appendix, the gallbladder, and wisdom teeth are each a part of the body that used to perform essential functions but no longer do.

The language of the human body that St. Paul uses to describe the Christian life in our second reading today got me thinking about the existence of vestigial Catholics: people who are out there in the church taking up space, sometimes performing low-grade non-necessary functions, but no longer giving life to the whole body. I guess in the culture these days we use the term ‘lapsed’ to describe these kinds of ‘believers,’ but the image that St. Paul gives us today is powerful, and beautiful, and we ought to take seriously the image.

As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

We live in an age of vestigial Catholicism, and we know it. The size of the body of Christ in the world today is enormous, larger than the body has ever been, but we know that there are parts of the body no longer functioning as they should. Here in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the past two years have been consumed by two different conversations about how best to strengthen the body of Christ when many parts are experiencing atrophy, fading away, losing function, becoming vestiges of what used to exist.

The first conversation you know about: Seek the City to Come. We talked for two years about the struggles of parishes in Baltimore City to give life to the whole body, about the struggles preventing many parts of the local body of Christ from performing essential functions, and finally the decision was made to close dozens of parishes. I want to make my meaning clear: when I use the term ‘vestigial Catholics,’ I am talking about people and not parishes. The tragedy of the Seek the City process is that Baltimore City and the surrounding counties are filled with vestigial Catholics: people who still belong to the body of Christ but no longer perform essential functions. In a world in which people who ought to be living as vital parts of the body of Christ continued to believe and practice, giving life to the whole, we would not need to close as many parishes.

The second local conversation about how to strengthen the body of Christ is less known but will be publicly announced in coming days: a change to the age for receiving the sacrament of confirmation in our Archdiocese. To give you the shorter version of the story, after two years of research and discernment, the age of confirmation in Baltimore is being lowered from 14-16 years to 9 years of age. In the letter that Archbishop Lori sent to priests a few days ago, he made clear that the cause for our local change in policy is a genuine pastoral crisis: studies show that the age of disaffiliation (loss of belief and practice) in the church today now comes as early as middle-school, and that the crisis is exacerbated by parents who no longer make faith the foundation for the life of the family.

The reason for making the change to the age of confirmation in Baltimore is to give parishes and parish leadership one last best chance to engage children and families before faith and practice become less important for everyone, and another generation of the body of Christ gets lost to the forces of secular culture. You will learn more about the change in age for confirmation in the coming days, but for now what I want you to know is that we are acting as a local body because the reality of vestigial Catholics is a crisis that demands a response from us.

The image of the church as the body of Christ that St. Paul give us is dominated by two truths: (1) through baptism a person becomes a member of the body of Christ and will always remain a member of the body, and (2) the weaker parts of the body remain necessary for proper functioning of the whole because the proper functioning of stronger parts of the body is to support the parts that are weaker. There are lots of vestigial Catholics out there in the world but these men and women and children and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters remain members of the body of Christ who need the stronger parts of the body to help them function. Those members of the body of Christ who struggle with faith are entrusted to our care. There at the foundation of St. Paul’s image of the body of Christ is the reality of charity: the parts that are stronger do not function properly unless they are supporting the parts that are weaker.

Here we get to the real issue for us as a local church: How are the stronger parts of the body going to support the weaker? How will the stronger parts of our local church work to prevent other parts from becoming vestigial structures, ecclesiological placeholders, people out there in the church no longer giving life or performing essential functions for the body. The crisis of disaffiliation in the church today is a crisis of charity for committed believers: the weaker parts of the body are entrusted to our care. We have work to do.

I want to conclude by saying that the work we must do is urgent and proximate: our charity is needed now, and very close to home. There are people in our families who no longer believe or practice. What are we doing to strengthen them as members of the body of Christ? There are friends we have or co-workers who no longer belong to our parishes, no longer pray, no longer worship. When is the last time we talked to them about faith because we know that their spiritual care is entrusted to us? There are people in our parishes who practice religion from habit or custom but who need to go deeper into the life of discipleship. How are we inviting these members of the body to form a stronger relationship with Christ?

These are the kinds of questions that stronger members of the body of Christ need to keep close to the heart. The sad fact is that many of the stronger members of the body have become comfortable and casual with the reality of vestigial Catholicism. We ‘respect’ the choice to disaffiliate, or we give up hope that someone will return to the faith, or we make the practical decision that everyone getting along is better for the family than continuing with arguments over religion. I am not saying that stronger members of the body of Christ need to become culture warriors pushing truth on those who have left the church; shouting truths at one another is not going to get the job done.

I am talking about charity among the members of the body of Christ: love, service, self-sacrifice for the good of another person who is weaker than you are. The people we know who have lost faith or no longer practice remain members of the body of Christ who are given to us for our proper functioning; the weak are for the strong, the strong for the weak, the whole body of Christ animated by charity.

Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker
are all the more necessary,
and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable
we surround with greater honor,
and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety,
whereas our more presentable parts do not need this.
But God has so constructed the body
as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,
so that there may be no division in the body,
but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.
If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it;
if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.

Homily preached on Sunday, January 26th at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary