The Parish as a Missionary Community

Extract

Colombes is a working-class district on the outskirts of Paris with a population of about 23,000. For the last five years it has been the scene of an experiment whose importance can scarcely be exaggerated, and the latest volume of Rencontres) is a detailed account of the work of the Abb6 Michonneau and the group of priests who are engaged in evangelizing a parish in which practising Catholics number scarcely five per cent, of the population. It would be impertinent to praise a document whose whole purpose is to make available to priests everywhere the fruits of day-to-day experience of the hardest apostolate of all. Much of the detail in these five hundred pages has special reference to conditions in France, but the methods described—and above all the spirit they manifest—are of the liveliest relevance for all priests at work in a pagan world.

‘The proletariat is pagan. Not because it doesn’t “practise,” but because its mentality is pagan, wholly alien to the Christian spirit, indifferent to the teaching we offer, careless of the demands of the moral standards we proclaim.’ At once, then, it is necessary to distinguish between the Christian parish, where the Church is still recognized for what she is, and the missionary parish in a pagan environment. ‘Our methods must be revised if not totally changed.’ As Cardinal Suhard has remarked, ‘We must free ourselves from every sort of narrow traditionalism and adapt ourselves to present needs.’ Hence, ‘since 95 per cent, of the Church’s children don’t come to her, 95 per cent, of the Church’s concern and activity must be directed towards them. And not only by groanings and optimistic hopes, but in reality.’

What, then, is the ‘parish’? Is it the faithful few or the apostate many? ‘The life of my parish is the life of everybody who lives in it.