What Those Catholic Priests Fail to Mention

Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This is a line of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, a central prayer that unites most all Christian religions, dating back to biblical times. Prayers like this are part of a sizeable set of symbols used by a number of Christian denominations to celebrate their common values as church community. This specific line of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ is supporting evidence for the argument that the organized religion (Christianity in this case) prevents its members from looking at societal problems objectively, and promotes narrow socialization. Rather, its central focus would be to perform what they see as ‘God’s will’ as dictated by scripture and high-ranking religious leaders. Christian churches have played a prominent role in the history of Western civilization and in historical times, the church and the state were viewed as a single institution.

Though Canada is a country with religious pluralism, most Canadians claim adherence to the Christian religion (if any). However, the 21^st century has marked a shift in which the practice of religion is being pushed to the margins of society. Religion is a social institution that it seems to be increasingly marginalized as the world becomes more dependant on logic, science and technological advancements than on faith in a higher power. Because of this apparent shift of society away from religion, sharing of religious beliefs in popular culture is often seen as discourteous, pushing the religious societies into the realm of ‘subculture’.

Being raised in a Roman Catholic household, my religious beliefs were instilled early on by one of the most influential social agents-my family. My parents are both practicing Catholics, my father only converting to Catholicism after marrying my mother. As my mother, her mother, and innumerable ancestors before her, I experienced the sacrament of baptism as a mere infant. I started elementary school in the public school system. In my time in the public system, it appeared as if free expression of religion was not encouraged. It’s not that we would be penalized for religious expression as would be the case in countries without religious pluralism, but it was taught as a sign of courtesy. For example, each winter, they would encourage us to say ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than ‘Merry Christmas’ in order to keep the greetings of the season free of religious connotations. Because of my mother’s desire catholic institution she thought it best to move my brother and I into the Catholic school system.

Such a system sounded ideal to my mother: growing in both faith and education, and being taught by teachers who really saw the value in bringing up children in the Christian belief. However, upon moving to the Catholic schooling system, my mother was surprised with just how little of a difference there was. Though we now had freedom to express our religious values and had mandatory religion courses for every grade, Christian values were not viewed to be particularly important in life. In my experience, the majority of people in the Catholic school system were either atheist or altogether indifferent about religion. Of those who were Catholic, a very small percentage were what the church would deem ‘actively practicing’ their faith by attending weekly service. Religion classes were often times to goof off, watch movies, and spend time on projects that had little education (or religious) significance. It was not until the grade twelve-level religion course that we really had an in-depth study of theology and what sort of practical applications our religion can have in one’s life. When it came to high school, the so-called “Christian values” in which we were raised did not seem to make a difference in terms of deviance in our school community. Our school’s drug trade was as pervasive as any neighbouring public high school and physical and emotional bullying were major issues that still faced our student population. A school with students that were truly following the Catholic ‘Will of God’ would have seen a decline in the amount of deviant behaviour.

In the early 2000s, the once small and community-oriented St. Thomas More Parish moved locations and expanded it’s ministry by thousands. Being the church that my family has attended for most of my life, I was been able to see this metamorphosis of the parish, seeing it become so large that the only practical way for it to be run is in a way that is fairly bureaucratic. Instead of having members of the community volunteer for certain ministries as in the past, Office staff and committee leaders were hired for pay, some of them without a background in Catholicism. There is a high turn-over rate of priests in these sort of large parishes, meaning often don’t make the effort to reach out to parishioners because they know their time at the church will be minimal.  I feel a sense of disenchantment is felt in a parish of this size, along with feelings of isolation among the hoards of new faces

Organized religion is often criticized for the fact that it promotes a lack of objectivity when evaluating issues in a society-religious conscience in a believer is hard to ignore. It also is viewed to promote a narrow style of socialization in which the standards and expectations of the community are emphasized. For this reason religion is being increasingly marginalized in society, which marks a drastic change from its role in early societies.