The current status of the Vatican II bishops’ concerns about evangelization and church practice is demonstrated in many sociological reports on the subject.
Consider a Pew report (Religion and public life: religious composition of adults in the Seattle metro area., 2020) that indicate that in my Seattle Archdiocese in Western Washington State only about one in eight baptized Catholics attend church. Or consider another Pew report, that religious practice remains in steady decline nationally (In U.S. Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace: An update on America’s religious landscape., 2019). Granted that these are only snapshots of religious practice and can vary depending on the sampling and the way questions are framed. However, overall, the trend is negative.
In a broader and neatly conceived study consider Davis & Graham’s (The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will it Take to Bring Them Back?, 2023) excellent study that included sub-sections on the whole range of denominations of believers in the United States. Of note, is the indication that Catholics have suffered the greatest declines in both attendance and belief. Further, a finding in their study was that all denominations were looking for something more even when they couldn’t quite name what they meant by either “more” or by “formation.”
As I wrote in the previous chapters, there has been no shortage of good intentions for adult formation in the Church’s official documents since Vatican II. However, the problem has been finding a means to the end, that is, something that motivates and forms the masses of those who are baptized but left their faith-practice as well as the multitude that could benefit from life as a Catholic Christian.
It’s as if we’ve been saying, “We should do something, we should do something, we should do something, but what?”
In my leader’s guide for the purgative period (Biersbach R. , Competency-Based Parish Mystagogy: Leader’s Guide: Ascent Through the Purgative Period, 2024, pp. 8-11) is listed four pages of the efforts I have participated in during the sixty years since Vatican II. I am sure readers could add the names of other efforts they have made to provide learning opportunities, writings, workshops, retreats, degree programs and much more to encourage the growth, formation, zeal, evangelization, spiritual maturity, and so on. Efforts and great intentions have in no wise been lacking. However, the most recent synodal report points toward the ongoing frustration and lack of movement toward a solution.
Into that aspirational yet frustrating situation I assert that mystagogy offers one solution. It grew out of a commission of Vatican II in a dogmatic constitution. It is located appropriately as the fourth period of a much larger process of becoming Catholic and provides an admirable structural opportunity.
The resources for mystagogy are the Bible and the Catechism. It is the practice, structure, language, and cultural considerations that could use some help. And, psychology, motivation theory, learning approaches, social processes, and much more in the field of the “social sciences” that offer renewed processes and have a lot to say about how we do evangelization and formation.
However, what’s missing is an official institutional response to mobilize believers to the great work of evangelization that remains to be continued. While praiseworthy, efforts to address the concerns of Vatican II to the present have been, for example, voluntary, intermittent, aspirational, and typically limited by the efforts and visions of their founders so that they collapse when the founders die.
Mindful of those world-wide concerns, aspirations, and hopes for spreading the Gospel that I direct your attention to consideration of institutionalism.
Deacon Ray Biersbach, PhD
February 17, 2025
