Take Them To Mass!

One of the mortifications the Church has had to undergo during the current COVID-related restrictions has been facing its lack of influence and relevance. This is not universally the case as there are churches that run night shelters, food banks, and so on, and bishops have traditionally focused on these when arguing for politicians to continue to pay Christians attention, but unfortunately the majority of our volunteers who keep these initiatives running tend to be fall into vulnerable categories themselves, knocking them out of action. Meanwhile, the non-Christian world has stepped up to the plate: people with time on their hands have volunteered in greater numbers than required to meet the apparent need, and such needs as remain are not very amenable to good-natured phone calls or food deliveries. Bishop Philip North has had a go at clergy complaining about being shut out from their churches during lockdown and suggested they pay more attention the effects it has on the poor – something I’m aware of enough, but have no idea how to tackle from my desk.

Swanvale Halt Church’s social action tends to be in three areas: charity support, some specific initiatives such as hearing-aid servicing and bringing together carers or people on their own, and things I define broadly as ‘community-building’, such as our Quiet Garden and parish newspaper. We’ve become a drop-off point for the local food bank, along with other places. Some of these activities have had to cease, while some can carry on. But it seems so limited and I wonder what needs there are present in the community that we can barely touch, and possibly do little about even if we could. None of it is exactly like Fr Basil Jellicoe’s activity galvanising the great reforming housing projects of Somers Town in the 1930s, is it?

Once upon a time I came across a website called Frankly Unfriendly Catholics which spoofed the aloof and precious peccadilloes of the Anglo-Catholic movement (it no longer exists though WayBackMachine has an archive). The site included a quiz for readers to work out whether or not they were proper Catholics. A variety of pastoral challenges could be met with various ways of helping the people involved, of which the last (and correct) one was always ‘Take them to mass!’ It was intended as a mickey-take, but years afterwards I just happened to meet one of the masterminds of fuc.org.uk who had ended up as Dr Bones’s vicar, his parishes including the chunk of the Oxford Canal where she was customarily moored. ‘Strangely after ten years caring for my own parishes I find more and more that “Take them to mass” is just about the best thing I can offer,’ he admitted. Ex-Goth, funnily enough.

At moments of outrage, which probably don’t come frequently enough, I go back to that conversation. The absolute dignity of human beings – of all human beings without differentiation, irrespective of the divisions we create between us – rests on our common creation and is proved by the fact that the Eternal Word shared our life, being born, killed and raised for each of us. Everyone who is shut out and disadvantaged, exploited and trampled, denied and stifled, needs to hear the words of grace, as do those on the other side of the balance, we who wittingly or otherwise conspire in the wounding of our brethren. The liturgy opens a shaft of light into a different way of living, a different world, because it proclaims that our true nature is rooted in the Kingdom where Christ reigns, where that world has already come to pass. If only they would all come to mass!