My Pastoral Approach to the Post Modern Church

Pastoral is always pertaining to the people. Clerics and non-Clerics are faithful. Faithful is an appropriate term to describe the members of the church as the group of believers. By its meaning, it tells about the way of living the faith. Catholics is a word given to the baptized members of the Roman Catholic Church. The head of the church is Christ and the body is the Faithful, which the church defines clearly in this sense. It suggests the equality of everyone. All Catholics have the role in the Church through the Sacrament of Baptism. On this sacrament, all the members are commissioned for such mission as it is rooted from Christ’s threefold ministry. It depends on each member on how they fulfill their mission. I shouldn’t neglect that these members have their own visions, principles and interpretations of their faith through experiences. Furthermore, they have their ways of doing their mission. As I am saying, every Catholic has a responsibility to live their faith.  In order to understand the division which the society has been created, I would try to synthesize this division through category. The division is categorized into three.

First, the “MANY” signifies to the faithful which categorizes the majority of the church. These are the ordinary, poor and less important citizens in the society. They are usually the victims of the advantageous individuals. Second, the “SOME” are the members who have possessed the unique talents among the faithful. Their talents may consider beneficial for the universal mission of the church. I would say that they are given an exemplary talent by God. By their talents, they are given responsibility for the sakes of their neighbors and the church. Lastly, I would include the “FEW”. These are the faithful who are called and answered the life of doing particular mission. They may come from the “MANY” and “SOME”. And these are the ordained faithful who are called by God in guiding His people.

The three categories of faithful- share the same identity and origin through the sacrament of baptism. This sacrament would entangle each of them and baptism considers the ground of everything. From the start, every faithful is asked for such responsibility. Nevertheless, the responsibility would vary from each identity. It is happened that others exaggeratedly defined the term.  Somehow, they change the meaning for the justification of their purpose. Identity should pertain to the social character of every individual who possess dignity. Others might compromise this thing since they are busy of coping their own survival. I am citing an instance where this characterization is being practiced. Filipinos are known of “Palakasan System”.  This practice cultivates stratification among the faithful. It is inevitably seen and happened in the Church. Among the faithful, those can afford are given a special service by the priest. In real scenario, Fr. Cagantas confessed that he couldn’t bear a feeling of compromising the poor. He had suggested to celebrate requiem masses to any houses rich and poor alike, a fairly realization in avoiding this system.

Pope Francis shares the idea of exclusion. Palakasan system creates such a culture of security, relatively enough security is an important aspect of life to consider. However, this system safeguards a selfish agenda as everyone is predetermined to sacrifice the majority for its own sake. Exclusion occurs when there are individuals neglected of their necessities. This system doesn’t escape from this reality. Moreover, the Pope reminds the faithful of some challenges happened in the realities, like materialism is strongly effective in influencing the humanity. Furthermore, this affects the lifestyle of everyone that seemingly manipulates the entire reality nowadays, and generally everyone depends on this. They are used to be comfortable, especially in the context of the developing and urban places. It becomes an opium to some who are afraid to proceed the other chapter of life. This will be the temptation of the rich and advantageous individuals. And totally a burden to them that blinds them enough of seeking the true happiness of earning heavenly wealth. Indeed, possession is equivalent to power and security. This is also applied to the ordinary individuals, and their determination will be rooted from the mentality of the materialism. They may be perceived that success connotes money and power.

Pastoral theology offers me to reflect and ponder about this issue nowadays. Equality and justice are the realities that everyone has been clamoring for. Many are sacrificing their lives for the sake of these things. Ordinary people have started to blame the advantages individuals. On the other hand, the advantages would blame the ordinary individuals for the stagnation of the society towards development. They have lost the trust to each of them since, they had experienced injustices against with each other. Even in the church which they consider the last resort of their pleas, is already influenced by the ideologies of the two worlds. The ordinary individuals have distanced from the church, for the typical reasons; they have felt the betrayal from the hierarchies, they consider their voices were unheard and useless. The advantages may clamor of being compromised by the hierarchies. The Church is seemingly focusing to the poor. Challenges have been laid on before the ordained individuals. The hierarchical church would do some counter strikes to inculcate the real mission and identity of the church to the faithful.

Like it or not, division is inevitable. This is the way human beings defined security. The hierarchy should know his place in applying the enculturation. Everyone has its culture to be lived with. This culture may support their way of understanding the reality of life. The church should develop a skill of listening and by this skill; he may be able to look the wider perspective of life without compromising anyone. Claver suggests the appropriate way of joining the culture and faith on the level of values. At such, I usually hear from the business sector the word feasibility studies. I would like to apply this term in a pastoral way. Its main goal is looking all the possible roadblocks that may stand in the way of the cooperative’s success. It may help to evaluate such culture to be applied in a particular situation.  The church should play the role of a facilitator. She may share her culture to the community without imposition. It is depending to the people to synthesize that new culture to be coincided with their culture. And more importantly, the encouragement of the spirit of dialogue would be practiced. There is no so called “one voice”. One voice cultivates the culture of dominant and submissive. Everyone should have been given a chance to contact and communicate his/her values to the community. In their experiences, God may reveal to their realizations. The church should liberate the idea that God reveals to everyone’s life. Pope Francis shares to the Bishops that they should smell like their sheep’s. I interpret this as an awful smell of sheep. Though they belong to a same flock, their smells vary. The diversity of smells pertains to the cultures of the poor and the rich. They possess different cultures but do harmonize with the culture of Christ’s threefold mission through baptism.

Thus, pastoral theology brings me to a usual realization, “the beginning would help me to walk to the end.” There is only one question that I would like to answer. How broad my perspective in life in seeing things surround me? This would be my life long-challenge in living this world.