St Ignatius Parish

I’m fascinated as I read chapter 15 from the Acts of the Apostles. It’s the story of the first conflict within the Church and the first Council of the Church.

The conflict is about whether Christians should first be circumcised or not. And yet, it’s really not about circumcision as such. To focus too much on the physical circumcision is to take away from the real conflict and let it stand as a quaint story. It’s really the conflict within the Church of ‘the traditionalists’ vs. ‘the progressives’. This is the ongoing story of the Church even as we live it now.

It’s the conflict of inserting a Judean religion into a predominating Greek culture. What do you retain and what do you change?

Recently we had a visit by a Vietnamese Jesuit from California. He is a psychologist and was telling of some his difficulties of finding a job – as a priest, wearing a Roman collar, seeking a job in a High School. He was taken aside and asked what he thought he was doing, and eventually was encouraged to take off his collar, which for him meant a real sacrifice, because this dress was an important and intrinsic sign that he was dedicated to God. Then he talked about his visit, after many years, to Vietnam, and the shock of not being welcomed, but treated rather indifferently because he now represented an American way of life rather than an Asian way of life.

Do you recognise maybe something similar here? Something that touches our lives as we live them and our religion as we try to become faithful to it?

It seems to me that the struggle we have now is somewhat similar: the struggle between the authority of the Church, our tradition and our experience as we live it day by day. There has to be a dialogue with all these, and its something of what the archdiocese urges us precisely at this time.

We are at an interesting time in our lives, carrying many of the traditions that have been handed down, listening to the teachings of the Church, trying to square these with our experience of every day and the orientation of our world, which is rapidly losing a sense of God and awe and respect for tradition and things spiritual.

The challenge of our time is to engage in this dialogue, of our spirit, our tradition, our Church and our world. To leave it is to belittle the work of the Holy Spirit. We are now responsible for shaping the Church for our children in the future. □