The abrogation of a sense of society

The abrogation of a sense of society

“Go into all the world and preach
the gospel to every creation. (Mk.16:15)

What must concern us is to what extent the Church has become a ghetto. If its members live introvertedly and with an individualistic sense of consciousness, this will eventually ignore and ultimately abrogate a sense of community. Surely, the way modern cities and “societies” have been planned and structured has brought this result.  Correspondingly, the way we have formed our urban parishes, together with the conservative puritanism that is cultivated by many clergy, has contributed to this.

Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this development as early as 1840 in the second volume of his book Democracy in America where he states: “Each person, withdrawn into himself, behaves as though he is a stranger to the destiny of all the others. His children and his good friends constitute for him the whole of the human species. As for his transactions with his fellow citizens, he may mix among them, but he sees them not; he exists only in himself and for himself along. And if on these terms there remains in his mind a sense of family, there no longer remains a sense of society.”

To a considerable degree, we cannot deny that many members of the Church do the same thing. As a result, there is not a sense of  Church as a community of persons; a sense of the Church at large – the Church as an  event of catholicity; a sense of our evangelical mission, that overcomes the boundaries of  the “mandra” (walls) of our ego-centric and isolated “monastery”. Perhaps the tragic events of our times will arouse us to change.  

+SK
September 15, 2023

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