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The Bishops' Bold Pastoral Plan

by Brian Caulfield 

What should be at the top of the Church’s pastoral agenda? To whom should the U.S. bishops and clergy, and we as Catholic laypersons, be reaching out?

Certainly, there is the problem of poverty and the poor who “will always be with us” (John 12:8). Then there are those without adequate housing or food, the reduced status of the American laborer and the pursuit of a just wage, and the whole heated controversy over the millions who are without health insurance. We also cannot forget abortion, teen pregnancy, single motherhood and the negative outcomes that result from them.

All of these important issues deserve the Church’s attention, and form the heart of what we think of in terms of Catholic social teaching. Yet the U.S. bishops have taken a somewhat different approach when it comes to the social questions of the day, and upon reflection, it makes a lot of sense.

Seeking to address the root cause of so many of our social problems, the bishops have placed marriage and the family at the heart of the Church’s pastoral agenda. After all, we all come from the union of a man and a woman, and a host of social science data (most of it from secular sources) shows that the ideal environment for the upbringing of children is within a loving marriage of husband and wife (i.e., not single motherhood or divorced parenthood).

Of course, the Catholic Church has always focused on the family – after all, marriage is a sacrament that the spouses administer to one another (according to the Latin Rite) and the ends of marriage are defined as the mutual love and support of the spouses and the begetting and education of children. How much more family friendly can you get than that?

Until recently, the Church has not had to worry much about that model of the family, which has been a self-sustaining unit, an unquestioned fact of life that enjoyed the strong support of secular laws and social convention. But a radical social agenda in the past 50-60 years, aided by easy access to contraceptives and abortion, and scientific innovations such as test tube babies and frozen embryos – as well as the acceptance of homosexual unions – have all combined to form a perfect storm against the traditional family and the natural understanding of marriage. Thus the bishops do well to turn their attention to the pastoral care of the family, because it is becoming increasingly clear that if the Catholic Church does not stand up for the family, there are few institutional voices that will.

This pastoral initiative is well designed and is available on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, under the heading “Priority Plan.” Take a few minutes to visit this page and you will be inspired. After the bashing the bishops have taken over the clergy sexual abuse scandal, it is good to know that our shepherds have not retreated to the edges of our culture. Rather they have responded admirably to the challenges of our day and developed a plan for the future, knowing that the scandals are far from the final judgment on their work as successors to the Apostles. As horrible as the sexual abuse has been, the Church still must preach the Gospel and promote and defend the truth about mankind, its dignity and its destiny. In fact, the more the bishops – and all the Church – go about this mission, the more they will recognize sin and criminal offenses within their own ranks, and the less likely there will be sexual scandals of any kind.

The additional good news about the pastoral agenda for the family is that the bishops and clergy will necessarily work with laypeople in planning it and carrying it out. This is a very healthy phenomenon, and one that I personally saw played out in the recent conference sponsored by the National Association of Catholic Family Life Ministers (NACFLM) in Cincinnati. Hundreds of diocesan and parish family life ministers gathered in union with bishops and priests to bring a message of hope for the family.

I have lived through the drought years of diocesan ministry in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when it seemed that the majority of Church personnel (both clergy and laity) were loud or quiet dissenters from Church teaching, especially over contraception. But at this NACFLM conference, everyone was on the same page in terms of Church teaching and the urgent need to get the Good News to the people in the pews and beyond.

The spirited good will of the gathering was summed up by keynote speaker Matthew Kelly, the high-energy Aussie and author of a boatload of great books on Catholic themes. He pulled no punches: the Church in America is at a crisis point, and what the Catholic hierarchy, clergy, leaders and laypeople do and decide in these days will determine for a long time whether the Church will grow outward in evangelization or retreat in confusion. He said that nothing short of a bold pastoral plan will overcome the scars from the sexual scandals and the infectious influence of secular consumerism that draws imagination and resources away from the pursuit of virtue and truth. The next generation of Catholics is woefully deficient in knowledge and interest in the faith, and we better act soon if we are to capture them for Christ before they exit the doors into adulthood.

The bishops are developing that bold pastoral plan, and we laypeople should read it, study it and implement it in our own lives, and the lives of our families, parishes and communities. 

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)