The Blue Flower

Thinking of running some kind of Christian mission, hankering for the role of a parish priest, is something like modern business and markets. When I set out to earn my living as a translator, I attended a short course in running a small business.

The elements of a successful business are simple: supply and demand. What do we have to offer? Is there a market for what we have to offer? The stages of setting up a business begin with the idea, corresponding with the work we have learned to do well (making shoes, carving statues or programming computers, whatever) and in which we have expert knowledge and hands-on experience. Then we have to do market research. Where do we find our customers? If I advertised as a translator in my village, I don’t think I would find many customers, so my market place – thanks to the Internet – is the whole world. Then we have to adequate the idea with the market. I would have liked to translate theological books from French into English, but there is only a small market for that, and publishers are generally “closed shop”. So I had to turn to technical and industrial translating, where the money is. I do it well, and it works – so that’s my slot, as a translator.

It seems cynical to compare churches with the business world, but it works the same way. The church offers “products” and “services”. If there is a market outlet, the customers will come and consume. Otherwise, the church in question goes out of business or has to move to a place where there is a market. There is also an element of competition for a market share. Who would open a small grocery shop next to a big supermarket? It might be possible if one is offering what the supermarket cannot offer. Similarly, this is the drama of independent priests and bishops, or small dissident or “continuing” churches across the street from the Roman Catholic Church or a national church of Reformation tradition. In business and trade, people go for trusted brand names, and new products and services really have to sell themselves hard.

It is a fact that the “official” churches, namely the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England over the other side of the Channel, are in decline and have been for a long time. Their market is drying up, or their products and services are no longer in adequation with the market demand. Statistics are freely available, and the reader would do well to compare different sources and ideological points of view to get some objectivity.

In the secular world, anyone out of a job can set up a business, if the idea and the market match. There is no idea of a “one true” business, though the monopoly of big business makes it difficult for anyone to get anywhere. There’s always a hole somewhere. There is a whole underworld of independent priests and bishops, who are generally spiritual seekers as well as men who believe they have something to offer to the world – and sometimes without expecting a profit. People in mainstream churches sneer at them, calling them cranks, crooks, quacks, charlatans, impostors and schismatics. Very few have any significant community or “clientele”. But, as I have already mused, there is a question of freedom of conscience.

In the business analogy, there are people who buy their products from small grocery shops, and others who go to the supermarket. The supermarket is more practical, you can park your car and transport your stuff in a trolley, and the prices are lower. But, you are generally getting factory-produced products, something standardised and impersonal. From the grocery shop, if that shop wants to survive, you can find products from the farm, of higher quality but dearer. That is the decision each food consumer has to make, and it is the same thing in churches and religion. The difference is that no one can stop being a food consumer – they have to buy food from somewhere, or starve – or grow your own. Religion is optional and most people live without it.

Are religious people seeking for family-like intimacy or the security-giving feeling of worshipping with the masses? Do we prefer a retreat at a small monastery or a pilgrimage to Lourdes where there are crowds, all singing the praises of Our Lady?

Many can no longer identify with Christianity or the Church. Most people today have not been brought up in a religious tradition, and the Church relies on them to convert. Many seek something higher than and beyond materialism, but there needs to be a kind of catalyst for them to have the courage to find a church and start attending it, often finding the people there are cold, off-putting and bigoted. Of course, you get the “cafeteria” consumers saying that they like one bit but not another. The Church would say – Here is the package, take it or leave it. Most people would leave it, faced with the humiliating ultimatum, since there is no Inquisition van outside their front door poised to whisk them away to a torture chamber! The Church in the past relied on both the carrot on a stick and the whip – constraint via the secular arm. Did Jesus need a secular arm to get disciples and Apostles? There is no evidence of such an idea in the Gospels. Rather the reverse.

There is also a question of credibility when the scandals and infighting become known to all. Nothing is hidden and kept secret any more. Indeed, the more things are kept secret, the more they are suspect. The old “brand loyalty” is fast disappearing. This is the central supposition of a tendency that was called the “emerging church movement” about twenty years ago. The trouble is that I haven’t seen too many “emerging churches” in my neighbourhood! I haven’t heard of any in Rouen either, not even near the lawyer’s office where my wife works.

I think we do need to detach ourselves from our ideological prejudices in evaluating the market. What I call fundamentalism, the English-language equivalent of intégrisme or integrismo, characterised by intolerance and conservatism, is quite appealing to those whose outlook on life favours the strong and sacrifices the weak. The charismatic communities and anything offering enthusiasm are attractive. There is a clear divide between large cities and the rest of the country. Proximity to nature does not seem to predispose people to going to church. In big cities, the criterion seems either to a cosmopolitan outlook on life rather than a parochial one, or simply on account of numbers. If only 5% go to church, 5% of a village population of 500 is 25 persons, about the average good attendance in a French village church for the once-a-month Mass. The percentage might be just the same in metropolitan cities, and that would give a hundred times that number in the churches. There are other factors like immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa and the booming of Pentecostal and Evangelical churches, so it isn’t so simple.

It would seem that we either have to adapt the product to the market or move to a city. Then we have competition with the established Evangelical communities and the Roman Catholic diocese and parishes. There is an alternative, remove the need to live by being a priest and cease to care whether we have customers! The temptation would be to try to ape the old “models” of church. How do you apply pressure on people when the civil authorities no longer care about churches? Threaten them with hell?

I have no clear answers. Historically, the Church began as a number of clandestine communities working a little like the French Résistance during the Occupation. When they got found out, they were fed to the lions or met other cruel deaths. Then one had little dioceses as attested by St Ignatius of Antioch and the monasteries in the desert. As the Church began to take on the characteristics of our modern big business and banking system, St Francis of Assisi began a whole new movement based on poverty and spirituality. Another branch of that movement against wealth and corruption evolved into the Reformation and Protestantism.

I have little knowledge of sociology or the “religious market”, but I can offer a few ideas. Stability is a thing of the past. People move around to find work and the conditions of life in which they could find fulfilment. We seem to be at a time when “mendicant” religious priests would have more credibility for people to confide in. Being a “mendicant” can mean many things – literally being a down-and-out tramp or vagrant, or living in a boat or a road vehicle so that one can be mobile. Alternatively, having a network of houses of a religious order, so that the men can be moved around as needed.

There is a certain outlet for an Internet ministry, which is a ministry of the word and teaching, if it is kept as that. In my case, I seem to put out good ideas, but I don’t get the benefit of them. Fine by me. The usual sneer brigade would say that I only blog because I have no credibility as a parish priest. It is water off a duck’s back. We have means available to us that didn’t exist in past centuries, but we live in a more cynical and sceptical society.

We have above all to keep a sense of identity. This was the famous Anglican patrimony argument in face of the movement towards the ordinariates. We need to broaden, but remain within a general idea of Catholicism. Various visions of Catholicism have become very narrow, and our purpose can reside in seeking a wider and more inclusive vision – which inclusivity can only be limited in some way. The balance has to be found between the razor-edge and the free-for-all.

I had a lot of soul-searching when I decided to use the old medieval Sarum liturgy. If few are interested in that, would they be more interested in my using the 1662 Prayer Book or the modern Roman rite or the Tridentine? Actually, the rites make no difference in terms of the religious boutique. So I identify with a form of Catholicism that seems to be more “open” than the razor-edges on offer since the late sixteenth century and especially since 1870. But it is an illusory world. What is reality? That is one further from Pontius Pilate’s What is truth? In the end it’s all about giving ideas that can benefit others, perhaps a form of prophetical vocation.

Also everything depends on whether you live in Europe, out in the country or somewhere like Paris or London, or in the USA. America too is changing as cynicism and the disillusionment with conservatism sets in. Eventually, the US will in religious and spiritual terms become like Europe and Canada. If this perspective of mobility, there are the electronic means of communications the Americans seem to like – or to which they have to have recourse because of the huge geographical distances. The idea of the “Facebook church” fills us with horror, given the superficiality of it, but we do little better with blogs.

We have to face it. Christianity as a religion of the masses is over, finished. I have a theory that human intelligence is reduced proportionately by the number of persons. How is it possible to live according to an ideal of ecclesial communion rather than individualism? Some of us are socially connected, but others who are no less virtuous are solitaries. Some like team work, and others find they do better alone. I have greatly enjoyed crewing with five other men on a racing yacht, but I find peace and joy in solitary cruising. The Church has always catered for mass pilgrimages and hermits in the desert. Some people would like that choice narrowed down too!

We are called to evangelise, and that is a difficult point where we seem to go round and round in circles. We either have to set out like businessmen, as the Americans do, using modern advertising and marketing techniques, or “sow the seeds” that we won’t ourselves reap, in a longer-term approach. We solitaries can carry on writing, and I would like to move from blogs to books. Many find the “catalyst” though a book or a blog posting that has something profound to say. That is what I try to do here. I have always been of the conviction that Christ’s love can only be transmitted by a whole experience – of human love, beauty, creation, compassion, mercy, warmth. These are the things that feed hunger for the spiritual and desire for God, not the cold application of law and dogmatic teaching.

I risk making myself unpopular among continuing Anglicans (I am still a priest of the TAC) by saying that we have to move away from our single issues. Most of the problems seem to come from issues of “clerical clubs” in churches. Clericalism is the cause of anti-clericalism, simple as that! Can we not move to other things? For example, engaging dialogue with Christian and non-Christian contemplatives and mystics. Like the so-called “liberals”, we do well to be concerned for our planet as well as the human beings who live on it. There is a non-political version of ecology that we might find good to promote.

I re-read a paper written a few years ago by a TAC priest who left us with the idea that it might be appropriate to retire from our priesthood, relinquish our vocation or illusory vocation and become a layman in the mainstream church (Roman Catholic but not necessarily). Then (or firstly), you have to find a community with which you can identify – though stability and “being settled” is an illusion. That is always a possibility, as is the idea of giving up Christianity. Each of us has his choice to make and the consequences to assume.

Another way of putting it is that we have to adapt to the market or do things in such a way as we don’t need a congregation in order to live. We have another meaning of earning our living and our priestly vocation is relieved from that necessity. Bishops sometimes might be critical of a priest who does not have a viable congregation – has not produced results – either one of their own priests or a priest from elsewhere applying to him for incardination.

I still agonise over this question of justification for being a priest, knowing that if I let it all go, I would have to pay for it in some way. My intuition points to a teaching ministry and a contemplative life, which in my case cannot be formally monastic. Resolution is an illusion. It is the lesson of Waiting for Godot. I am incardinated in a jurisdiction that does not communicate, no longer has a web site, has no synods, you get the idea… I could bring about resolution by resigning. But to what end? We have to learn to accommodate incoherence, uncertainty and loose ends. The panacea will not come, but we have to toil and labour through our three or four score years allotted to us. That’s life.

Others may be in a similar situation. It is the desert – or the sea. And here is the tabernacle of God’s presence. It is precious.

Whole libraries of books have been written about vocations, mostly since the time of the Council of Trent, when the Church wanted honest and dedicated priests instead of lazy and gluttonous parasites. The notion comes from the way biblical characters were called to their way of life. Abraham heard God’s voice and obeyed it. Jesus called the disciples generally by going to their work places and telling them to leave their nets and boats and to follow him into the unknown. The word vocation comes from the Latin vocare, meaning to call. There is the external call from Jesus, or from the Church perpetuating the presence of Jesus in the world, and then there is the internal vocation. That internal vocation is the most intangible. Perhaps it is best described as a person’s “life purpose”, what gives meaning to life, without which that person encounters real existential problems. Some feel that the vocation in question, whether it was to become a priest, a doctor, a businessman or a sailor, was inevitable, that they were meant to do that in life.

It is clear that to be a priest without a vocation is probably one of the most harrowing things one could imagine. There is no money in it, no social standing in society and little other than ostracism these days. In the Roman Catholic Church you have to stay single and the ministry rarely enables the priest to sublimate his sacrifice of companionship, love and family life. In days gone by, the Church tolerated a certain number of priests with anything less than a “pure” vocation if they did not do evil and were reasonably conscientious in their work in the parish or whatever. The way the writing is on the wall now, there is no tolerance for human weakness – whether from bishops and religious superiors or from the rarefied and increasingly polarised body of the laity. That is probably the greatest single cause of the crisis of vocations

I have been doing a lot of thinking and searching for notions on the internet – that aspect of the web that resembles a public library rather than Hyde Park Corner and the hecklers. Probably the hardest thing many of us can face in life is having thought we were in the right vocation and the bottom drops out of it, or simply we “burn out” and so much damage is done that it cannot be cured by a few prayers, a bit of will-power, a retreat and some hard and unrelenting mortification. The same thing can happen for a businessman, a doctor or a teacher. Others gradually find that they no longer love what they are doing. The invariable question is – What next?

In my own case, joining the TAC back in 2005 seemed to be a temporary fix to my vocation, the next-best thing to canonical regularisation as I thought of it then. I never had any pastoral work beyond occasional services and even a fairly regular Mass in Dieppe for a couple of Roman Catholic ladies. Why did they come to me? I have never been able to get a clear answer. Apart from that, I blogged in a perspective of some kind of teaching ministry, giving ideas (which I seem to be good at), but too sensitive to the hecklers and trolls. Something was still not fitting in place. I realise I am in need of healing. It is said that a lost vocation can never be recovered or healed, but it can return in some cases in a different form. The loss of vocation is a real loss, leaving deep scars and grief. This is something therapists cannot treat with drugs, except for perhaps certain symptoms like depression or sleep problems. It is a deep spiritual malaise that most priests cannot understand. Perhaps mediums and wise men and women, when they are genuine and not useless quacks, can be of help.

The best thing is to find the strength to turn over the page. If this transition causes psychiatric difficulties, they need to be dealt with by recourse to a specialist. I have never found the need to do that, but this site – the Depression Learning Path – can be a great help. It is necessary to break out of the circle, and nothing is ever hopeless. The important thing is to do something new and stimulating, typically a hobby or a sport. Even people in their 50’s can “recycle” and find training for a new way of earning one’s living. Even ex-convicts released from prison and who cannot find a job because of their bad record can often set up a business. I read about a reformed computer hacker who went into business designing security systems for computers. The new and honest way is related to the person’s previous skill, even when it was badly used the first time round.

It is important to honour what we have lost, never to turn bitter with a “sour grapes” attitude. A part of us will always be there. For a priest, visiting a church or attending a service may set off painful memories – but having had the experience of seminary and parish life may be helpful in other walks of life. Philosophy and theology gave us the skill of reasoning, something many people just don’t have. Also, many of us do not have a materialistic view of life and value simplicity. We are aware that the expensive and flashy car some people covet will not make us happy, but we seek finer things in life like beauty, love and the things that really matter.

Some priests might do well in urban social work, but this is by no means universal. Much of that domain is taken up by the “politically correct” brigade of moralising people who have no interest in other people’s freedom. Everything is politicised and polarised – You’re either for us or against us. There is no one way by which all must go. We have to see what we love and are good at, and then work from there.

I have designed the New Goliards blog as something of a lifeline to priests whose vocations have failed them, or the bottom dropped out and they were left either to jump onto a bandwagon (becoming a Roman Catholic layman attached to some Platonic idea of church unless they live next door to some wonderful parish) or casting off the moorings to sail to an unknown destination – metaphorically or literally. I have no pretence at counselling others, but I do have this experience.

We priests have gifts of understanding the meaning of vocation and finding meaning in work and life. We sow seeds to work towards a new future, even though we have no idea of the unknown territory where we are going. A shipwrecked mariner puts a message in a bottle and throws it into the sea – and perhaps someone in a ship may find it, tell his captain and come to the rescue, or the stay on the desert island might be very long, perhaps for life. Alternatively, the mariner might be able to build a boat from pieces of the wrecked ship and set sail – that is a positive move even if it is dangerous.

We are called in some way. Perhaps some of us are called to convert to another church, Rome or the Orthodox, or simply to convert to our own conscience and intuition, a secret tabernacle where God can reside just as authentically and truly. For some, it might be better to be done with churches and seek something similar to a monastic or eremitical style of life. The new adventure might come as a surprise, and we would find strength and wholeness.