Change is tough by Denise Morency Gannon

"The moment has come to acknowledge the signs of the times, to capture the opportunities and look afar." St. Pope John XXIII 

Today is the first feast day of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pope John XXIII. His feast day was chosen on October 11 to commemorate the opening of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962. St. Pope John XXIII was canonized on April 27, 2014. The Roncalli Center considers him our patron saint. 

Pope John XXIII recognized a church whose windows needed to be opened wide after hundreds of years of remaining closed to change, allowing a breath of fresh air that allows the Spirit of God to break into our hearts as well as into our minds.

Change is tough. Contrary to what you might think if you didn't live through the Second Vatican Council, many of the liturgical changes were not immediately and fully embraced by Catholic Christians. I can recount a time in one parish where a pastor was made to retire after 30 years. He had to be told to turn the altar around to face the people several times by his bishop. After refusing to do so, he was 'retired' and replaced by an incoming pastor who embraced Vatican II and hired me to work with him and the new DRE to start from the bottom up with the pastoral work of the parish.

Among the many stories of the angst and drama as a result of being part of the 'enemy' of change, I think the one that stays with me the most is finding that my car had four slashed tires and a broken windshield with a note on the windshield wiper,  "Go home. We don't want you here," after a late night choir rehearsal. (Women were banned from the adult choir until I arrived. Half of the twenty-year member all male choir quit when I opened up the adult choir to women.)

In another church, I moved a piano into the music area next to the organ. A few weeks passed. As I was walking up through the church, a woman was saying her rosary. "Say one for me," I smiled, just by way of saying hello and being what I thought was, you know, friendly. "You certainly do," she retorted, turning her head away. "We don't need nightclub singers in our church." (Sigh) Just a tip of the iceberg of stories when change enters the picture. 

Change is tough. The people who introduce change suffer. And no one experienced that or sufferred more through changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council than the man who launched the changes, St. Pope John XXIII. Make no mistake: Pope John did not suffer through the changes alone. Many of the concilliar authors were theologians and academics who were light years ahead of their time in their way of thinking with regard to liturgy, sacraments and ecuminism. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, some of them saw their writings banned because they were considered contradictory to doctrinal teaching. History does repeat itself quite often; some of the finest post-modern day theologians are experiencing similar events. 

The word aggiornamento (bringing up to date) became a kind of buzz word for the Second Vatican Council, which began with Pope John's magnificent and optimistic address Gaudet, Mater Ecclesia and the words "Rejoice, Mother Church!". In his opening address to the Council (you can read more about that event on the front page of this website and see some actual footage of the opening of the Council), Pope John XXIII urged the participants to consider listening to the voices of the past as they informed the present and the future.

One of the highlights of Pope John's opening address continues to echo in this time and place. particularly as the Synod of Bishops continues to meet to address the hot bed issues of post-modern Catholic church.   

"In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse and they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty.

We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world was at hand."

Since 1962 and even prior to the Second Vatican Council, a polarized church has developed voices to the right, center and the left. Thanks to the wild world web and globilization, we can read, hear, discuss, write and give voice to our opinions. But has anything changed? For all of our reading, hearing, discussing, writing and offering our opinions, who's listening? Are we preaching to the proverbial choir? Where have we affected change?

As the Synod of Bishops continues to meet and converse, listen, pray and discern surrounding topics such as LBGT, divorced and remarried Catholics and the very definition of marriage, where will the outcome of these conversations lead? As the people of God, we've been asked to weigh in on these issues; we've come a long way from a do-as-I-say approach, thanks to current leadership. We've been asked not only to weigh in with our opinions, but to act on them as well. How do we preach, pray, sing from our places of worship? As we're blessed and sent from worship, how will people know we are Christians by our love? Or will they know us as prophets and voices of doom and gloom? "Without some holy madness, the church cannot grow," Pope John once said. Suffice to say that Jesus was hung from a tree for such a holy madness. Are we willing to go out on just a bit of the limbof that tree and go a bit mad for the sake of the Gospel? How far will we go to create change? To do that, you have to give the biggest part of yourself away - your heart. What is yours telling you? And how much courage will your heart need to step up, out and forward on behalf of that Gospel? Change is touch. 

In 2013, Pope Francis I echoed Pope John's words in a homily delivered to Brazilian bishops for Inter-religious dialogue: "Perhaps the church appears too distant from people's needs, too cold. Perhaps too caught up with itself, a prisoner of its own rigid formulas. Perhaps the world has made the church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions." 

As the Synod of Bishops continues to meet, discuss, listen and discern where the Spirit of God is leading the Church, are we acknowledging the times, capturing opportunities and looking afar with new vision as we pray for open-minded pastoral leadership? May merciful outcomes to these conversations and decisions give so many people a reason to shout to the heavens, Rejoice Mother Church! May it be so.

When Pope John knew that his life would end before the end of the Second Vatican Council, he said, "I have launched this great ship. Others will have to bring it into port." Acknowledge this time in our world so that the message of the Gospel may be seen, heard, experienced by and through the people who profess their faith in the living God. Capture the hundreds of millions of opportunities at our disposal as Christ reveals himself again and again and again in the faces and places of everything around us. Look afar with vision at what we want the world to be, not only in the future, but here, now, in this time and place. Where is the Gospel living and breathing right in front of you? 

Change is tough. Pray for us, St. Pope John XXIII. Feast day blessings.