Disaffiliation: Losing My Religion

The Draft of a Talk on Disaffiliation: Part 1

Hello All,

I am truly grateful to be able to speak to you today. I understand that this is valuable time spent in your classrooms and the last thing you want is another useless bit of PD time. So, I plan to make this as useful and to the point as possible. Please bear with me as I reflect on some meaningful professional and formational experiences that I encountered last month. The first was a meeting with SFNO district schools’ religious studies chairs and the second was LA Congress. Both of which had some meaningful and overlapping themes connected to Pope Francis’ recent document Christus Vivit, a gift to young people and the entire people of God. However, it seems that only adults engaged in ministry are reading this document, sadly.

My first slide yes has to with LCAP, but let me just say that this topic certainly has value way beyond LCAP, though it could be said that the district is considerate of this and that explains why such a thing was included in the process. We are here to discuss the value of Catholic identity for us all and how to expose that value to our students. Considering how diverse the definitions of Catholic Identity may be, let us work with a definition that is as broad as all of creation.

To be Catholic, while meaning universal can also be broken down into its parts according to the Greek meaning kata holos = according to or pertaining to the whole. And if we were to acknowledge as does John Paul II, that the mission of the Church, and of Christ the Redeemer “is still very far from completion.” And, in fact, he goes on to say, “ that this mission is still only beginning and that we must commit ourselves wholeheartedly to its service.” (Redemptoris Missio). So, let us know that our Catholic identity can never stand for something that is fixed in time or be described as something complete or finished, to which, the unformed must snap to. Our Catholic identity should be described in a way that describes the “on the way” nature of this mission. Accord to the Franciscan Friar, Daniel Horan our Catholicity describes our process towards “whole making.” This means that we must continue to engage with the changing reality of the circumstances surrounding our students’ lives.

And considering that our primary ministry is saving the souls of the students entrusted to our care, we should be especially dynamic and robust in our response to this “not-yet-ness.”  Looking at this quote from Papa Frank, how can we, as an agent of the Body of Christ, “above all, reflect Jesus Christ.” Especially considering how bleak some of the numbers concerning Catholic identity among young people look today.

As we look at this data, yes, the teenage years are formative period, but many young people are coming to us with a sense of disaffiliation that began as young as 5 years old.