Like many people my age I made my first Reconciliation in second grade and then didn’t make it back to the confessional for over ten years.

(Of course, come to think of it, my first Reconciliation wasn’t in a confessional. In fact, I don’t think I used a confessional until I was 24 years old!)

When I did make my way back to the sacrament I felt awkward, unsure of myself and, in my normal fashion, probably over-thinking the whole thing. This made me even more reluctant to go. In fact, it wasn’t until I moved to Michigan for a year that I finally resolved to make Reconciliation a regular part of my practice of the faith.

I’ve never liked confessing to priests that I know (which can make things difficult when you work for the Church!) so I turned to the internet for help. I downloaded a good guide to Confession, wrote down the fruits of my examination (my mind usually blanks as soon as I walk in to the confessional), and sat myself in a pew on a Saturday afternoon. When it was my turn I walked inside with my list and guide in hand, knelt down, thanked God for the anonymity of the screen, and started in with the Sign of the Cross.

I wish I could say that it was a grace-filled, holy experience. Truth be told it was a bit of an anticlimax! I launched into the list, read it off without pausing, and sighed with relief as the priest gave me my penance and recited the prayer of absolution over me.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a believer in what the Second Vatican Council calls “full and active participation.” But recently I’ve been wondering if rote participation in the sacraments isn’t sometimes a good thing. Especially for those who have fallen away from the faith, I wonder if we don’t do them a disservice when we lead them to expect that every liturgy, every prayer service, and every interaction with the Church will be a mountaintop experience. Sometimes I can barely get through Mass because I’m so distracted by kids, the lousy sound system, or thinking about what I’ll be doing that afternoon!

Fortunately the sacrament doesn’t depend on how much I do or how I feel. Even when I’m not giving 100% I can be sure that God is giving his all. We need to remind people that it’s OK to be rote sometimes. It doesn’t diminish the grace of the sacrament. Jesus is still really there! We shouldn’t expect perfection of ourselves every time — that path leads to scrupulosity. Rather, we should recognize that, at this particular time, rote participation gets us where we need to be. Better participating in a rote manner than not at all! And eventually, as we get more comfortable and familiar with the prayer or ritual, we can move towards deeper, fuller, more active participation.

Have you  had any experience with intentionally praying or participating int he sacraments in a rote manner? Have you found it helpful in your spiritual journey?

Thanks to everyone who participated! As promised, I’m including footnotes and suggestions for further reading:

Books

• The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Rick Levine, et al
• Screen Saved: Peril and Promise of Media in Ministry, by Dan Andriacco
• Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Nonprofits Impact Culture and Others Don’t, by Phil Cooke (you can also read my review of this book)

Web Resources

• Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines
• 13 Simple Ways Of Increasing Your Facebook Likes
• Social Media Strategy: Allow for Control
• How to Use Google Alerts to Generate Facebook Content
• A Facebook Advertising Experiment
• Catholic Bishops on Twitter
• Catholic Dioceses on Twitter

My friend Marc Cardaronella has an excellent post over at his blog on the need for better “sales and marketing” in the Church. He writes

In my experience, people need to hear the benefits of Catholicism to be attracted to it. And, they need to hear how it worked and is working in our own lives. Most people are attracted to something through other people.

You’re not lying when you tell people the great benefits you receive from being Catholic. You’re not trying to mislead people when you describe the peace that comes from faithfully following Church teaching. They may not experience the same thing but then again, they might.

To piggy-back on this idea, I’d say that we need to do a better job of telling our story. When I worked in Catholic health care there was a lot of hand-wringing over whether the government would revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit hospitals. The question was whether these hospitals were really giving enough back to the community to justify their exemption.

As it turns out, when (most) nonprofit hospitals ran the numbers, they discovered that they were providing a huge benefit to the community in educational programs, services to the poor, and free care to those who could not afford a massive hospital bill.

The problem was that they didn’t tell people about it! Catholic hospitals were still operating under an assumption that it would be boastful to talk about the good work they were doing, as if that light needed to be hid under a basket. Now, fortunately, many are realizing that sharing success stories is a valuable way of getting people interested in the mission of Catholic healthcare and include community benefit information in their annual reports.

And as Marc points out, just so with the Church. We need to tell people what being a member of the Church means beyond “getting right with God.” There are real tangible benefits to being a believer, and we’re not always willing to stand up and say what they are. That’s one of the reasons I like Fr. Pable’s three-step approach to sharing the faith — it encourages us to explain why the faith is important to us by sharing our stories.

How does the faith benefit you? And how have you shared that story with someone?

The Catholic school does not lay claim to superiority over another on purely secular lines, although in many cases its superiority is a very patent fact; it repudiates and denies charges to the effect that it is inferior, although this may be found in some cases to be true. It contends that it is equal to, as good as, any other; and there is no evidence why this should not be so. But it does pretend to give a more thorough education in the true sense of the word, if education really means a bringing out of that which is best in our nature.

Neither do we hold that such a training as our schools provide will assure the faith and salvation of the children confided to our care. Neither church, nor religion, nor prayer, nor grace, nor God Himself will do this alone. The child’s fidelity to God and its ultimate reward depends on that child’s efforts and will, which nothing can supply. But what we do guarantee is that the child will be furnished with what is necessary to keep the faith and save its soul, that there will be no one to blame but itself if it fails, and that such security it will not find outside the Catholic school. It is for just such work that the school is equipped, that is the only reason for its existence, and we are not by any means prepared to confess that our system is a failure in that feature which is its essential one.

- Rev. John H. Stapelton, Explanation of Catholic Morals (1913)

Last week the mayor of our town committed suicide. Implicated in tax evasion and apparently unable to account for thousands of dollars from an estate he administered years ago, he was found at his home after failing to appear for a court hearing.

This post is not about any of that.

Following the news our new ordinary, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki, issued a press release expressing his condolences and offering prayers for the mayor and his family. Three days later he issued a press release explaining why, even though the mayor had committed suicide, he was still to be given a Christian burial.

At first I was bothered by these press releases. Why was the bishop inserting himself into the story, especially when the releases did not seem to come from any media inquiry? Lots of politicians who had worked with the mayor were releasing statements, but our bishop was just installed this summer and had no real working relationship with him. Was this just a case of a nosy prelate wanting to get his name in the papers?

While I don’t yet know my new boss real well, that doesn’t seem to be his modus operandi, so I thought a little harder about it. Finally, it dawned on me: he’s acting exactly as bishops and religious leaders have acted through the ages, explaining the faith and offering words of prayer and counsel in difficult times. In that light, the releases shouldn’t be that troubling — they are just a more modern way of “spreading the word.”

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the bishop’s press releases are a form of the New Evangelization, reminding a culture that has turned its back on the faith that the Church has a place in the public square and a message that can’t be found in any secular venue. Seeing the bishop’s words of condolence in a newspaper article is another reminder that the faith continues to have a place in the lives of citizens and a prophetic role in play in the culture.

Press releases as culture renewal. Who woulda guessed?

The following are some additional resources and recommended reading:

Books

• Screen Saved: Peril and Promise of Media in Ministry, by Dan Andriacco
• Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Nonprofits Impact Culture and Others Don’t, by Phil Cooke (you can also read my review of this book)
• Treasures Holy and Mystical: A Devotional Journey for Today’s Catholics, by Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Church Documents

• Inter mirifica (Decree on Social Communication), Second Vatican Council
• Evangelii nuntiandi (Apostolic exhortation on evangelization), Pope Paul VI
• Redemptoris missio (Encyclical on evangelization), Pope John Paul II
• Message for 44th World Day of Communications (2010), Pope Benedict XVI
• “Ubicumque et Semper” – Decree establishing Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, Pope Benedict XVI
• Social Media: Friend or Foe, Google or Hornswoggle?, Bishop Ron Herzog, USCCB Communication Committee
• USCCB Social Media Guidelines

Web Sites and Articles

• What is a Facebook Page and Should Your Ministry Have One?
• The 8 Success Criteria For Facebook Page Marketing
• 13 Simple Ways Of Increasing Your Facebook Likes
• Social Media Strategy: Allow for Control

Videos

• Social Networking in Plain English
• Social Networking: A Primer for Catholic Teachers and Catechists

With over 500 million active members, Facebook is the most popular social networking site online. Chances are that many of your parishioners are already there.

Is your parish?

This free webinar will explore why parishes should have a presence on Facebook and how they can connect with their parishioners by setting up a Facebook page.

Participants will watch step-by-step as a Facebook page is set up in real time. Tips will also be shared on how to make the best use of your page once it is set up.

While I’m focusing on parish pages, this webinar would also be ideal for anyone looking to set up a Facebook page for a Catholic school or other ministry.

The webinar will be held on November 17th at 7p (Central Time). To register, go to www2.gotomeeting.com/register/806466658.

This webinar is sponsored by the Office for Catechesis of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and the National Conference for Catechetical Leadership. I hope to see you there!

Phil Cooke‘s 2008 book, Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Nonprofits Impact Culture and Others Don’t, seeks to change some of these perceptions. Cooke specializes in the intersection of faith and media and acts as a consultant helping religious organizations to better tell their story.

Branding, according to Cooke, is all about the story that surrounds a business or organization. It’s what immediately comes to people’s minds when they think of the organization. With this in mind, he challenges Christian organizations to think carefully about what makes them unique in the world so as to better share their story and help people understand who they are and what they stand for.

Cooke does an admirable job of pointing out the potential dangers in “over-thinking” marketing efforts. He devotes an entire chapter to how churches and non-profits risk losing their identity to marketing “gimmicks” and trying to chase relevancy – and how potential parishioners are turned off by such efforts. I was especially relieved to see Cooke emphasizing the personal relationship between the organization and the individual:

In a world in which few people have  close friends, expand your community and get to know people. Enlarge your network of really close friends. Perhaps it’s becuase I was raised before the digital age that I still value face-to-face communication far more than phone conversations or email.

That having been said, the book should read with some discernment. Cooke, understandably, speaks almost exclusively from a Protestant point of view. Emphasis is placed on the importance of preaching (an emphasis which is complementary to, but different from, the sacramental view of liturgy in the Catholic Church) and, as a result, puts a heavy emphasis on the importance of the leader’s communication skills.

Nevertheless I think there are some good insights for any Christian organization trying to understand how to share its passion and invite others to work with them. It will certainly challenge those who think that marketing has no place in the life of the Church to reconsider their position.

1. Listen with respect to the stories that other people share with you. This could be your cousin who has fallen away from the Church, a co-worker with a broken relationship, or even a stranger in the doctor’s waiting room. By listening you enter into a relationship with the person and demonstrate your concern and love for them.
2. Share your own story. In particular, share a time that you had a similar problem and talk about how your faith helped you. Fr. Pable suggests three phrases to use in sharing your story: “Once I was…”; “Then God did…”; “Now I am…” For instance, if you are talking to someone who has lost their job, you might say something like: “Once I lost my job during a series of layoffs. I was really scared and wondered how I would make ends meet. I asked my friends and family to pray for me, and although I didn’t find a job for a few months, knowing that I was being supported and prayed for by so many people made that tough time much easier. God really helped me make the best of a bad situation.”
3. Extend an invitation to the person. You might invite them to pray with you, to attend a parish mission or just over to your house for dinner and further conversation! The point is to encourage them to take a step towards a deeper relationship with Christ, no matter how small.

If you’d like to learn more about how to share your faith with others, Fr. Pable’s complete presentation can be viewed online courtesy of the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association (free registration required).

Some quick background: My criteria for making these decisions when acting in an institutional capacity is different than my criteria for my personal accounts, especially re: Twitter; for my personal account I’m pretty indiscriminate about who I follow, since I believe the value of Twitter is in making connections and self-limiting those connections diminishes that value.

Twitter

My decisions about whom to follow via the NCCL Twitter account are based on two criteria: 1) Who has information relevant to our members? and 2) Who has need of the type of information NCCL provides? These two categories are not mutually exclusive; for instance, Nick Senger, as a Catholic educator, both tweets information pertinent to our members and can be a conduit through which NCCL information can flow to people not directly associated with the organization. So it makes sense to follow him and hope that he follows us (which he does).

Pursuant to the second criteria, this means that I’ve tended to follow anyone in a catechetical ministry in the Church as a way of establishing a connection with NCCL. This includes DREs, self-identified catechists and Catholic school teachers.

The first criterion is a little trickier since it requires a judgment call about the needs and values of our membership. I’ve picked the major catechetical publishers with a Twitter presence as well as groups and individuals that are representative of the broadness of the Church without straying outside the folds, so to speak. Figures such as Sr. Helen Prejean, Fr. Robert Barron or Christopher West, while appealing to different constituencies within NCCL, nevertheless stand firmly (and without major controversy) within the Catholic Church. On the other hand, if Fr. Charles Curran or Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, LC, (General Director of the Legion of Christ) were to start tweeting, I would not follow them, even knowing their appeal to some members of NCCL, due to their controversy within the Church.

My final criterion for Twitter is that anyone associated in a direct way with NCCL (past or current leaders, members) gets an automatic follow. Of course, this assumes I can identify them as being associated with NCCL.

Facebook

Linking fan pages on Facebook is not as integral to the experience as following someone on Twitter. Because of the terminology in use, I’m a little more selective about linking our Facebook fan page with other fan pages. Following someone on Twitter doesn’t have the same connotation as being a “fan” of someone on Facebook; the latter implies a level of approval that isn’t present in the former.

To give a better example of how I handle Facebook, for my diocese’s Facebook fan page I have linked us to groups with whom we have an established institutional relationship (CRS, Catholic Committee on Scouting, NCYC) and the schools and parishes of our diocese. This might be a model for how to handle future Facebook links and other relationships.