Although I don't make it out onto the water too often these days, I grew up kayaking quite a bit with my Dad. I have very fond memories, for example, of launching onto Breton Bay from Abell's Wharf, exploring local creeks, and - on a couple of occasions - traveling a twenty-two mile stretch of Virginia's Shenandoah River. When I was in high school, we transitioned to Class III whitewater rafting trips on the Lower Yough River in Pennsylvania. In more recent years, I've added dragon boat racing to my paddling repertoire, leading our Youth Ministry in the annual Solomons Island Dragon Boat Festival.

All of these memories came to mind recently as I read a passage from a very insightful book, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age by the University of Mary. The short, easy-to-read book contrasts a “Christendom” culture - in which laws, moral understanding, and social norms are more or less Christian and support life in the Church - from an “Apostolic” time - in which life in the Church is profoundly counter-cultural and requires greater evangelical zeal. The book explains:

It is the difference between floating a canoe downriver with the occasional guiding push (in Christendom mode) or steering it upriver against the current with energetic strokes (in apostolic mode). What happens when the rowing stops is quite different in the two cases. Those who think the current is going their way - when in fact it is against them - will be surprised to find themselves rushing along in a direction they did not intend.

In other words, when the culture is predominantly Christian (“a Christendom culture”), it's fairly easy for Catholic parishes, schools, families, and individuals to maintain their Catholic faith. Like a paddler going downriver, all you need is a gentle nudge in the right direction every now and then to keep things moving fairly well. When the culture is opposed to the Gospel, however, (“an Apostolic time”) it can become quite a challenge for Catholic institutions and individuals to continue to thrive. Like a rowing team going upriver, you need a great deal of intentional energy, cooperation, and effort, or you'll be turned by the cultural currents.

The most obvious (perhaps stereotypical) example of “Christendom” mode Catholicism here in the United States was the 1950s. America had moved past the anti-Catholic prejudice of its Protestant roots and had begun to look at the Catholic Church with respect and even admiration. The culture had its flaws, but popular television shows like Leave It to Beaver, I Love Lucy, and Father Knows Best reinforced basic moral values, and Bishop Sheen's popular Grammy-winning ABC series Life is Worth Living explicitly taught the Catholic faith to millions of viewers. Sunday Mass attendance was at a peak, and vocations to the priesthood and religious life were booming. If you had your kids baptized and provided them with a Catholic upbringing, you had no reason to doubt that they would remain practicing Catholics throughout their lives.

When I was growing up in the 80's and 90's, the Catholic Church in America was still trying to operate in “Christendom mode.” Sure, the culture was edgier, with shows like The Simpsons, Married with Children, Seinfeld, and Friends, but the nation was still basically Christian, right? Yes, Sunday Mass attendance had declined and vocations had plummeted, but the percentage of Catholic Americans remained fairly consistent. So long as parents made sure their kids “got their sacraments” and made it to Mass every once in a while, they'd also remain Catholic, wouldn't they?

As Sherry Weddell masterfully documented in her landmark 2012 book Forming Intentional Disciples, this casual approach to handing on the Catholic faith stopped working some time ago, as many of us have seen from experience:

Only 30 percent of Americans who were raised Catholics are still “practicing” - meaning they attend Mass at least once a month. Roughly half of these are at Mass on a given weekend. Another 38 percent hold on to their Catholic identity but seldom or never attend Mass. The final 32 percent - almost a third of all adults who were raised Catholic in the United States - no longer consider themselves to be Catholic at all...

What happened? The currents of mainstream American culture shifted, and many Catholics just “went with the flow” instead of learning to paddle against the stream. We're not in Christendom anymore. What worked in 1961 no longer worked in 1991 and will certainly not work in 2021. All of us in the Church - both clergy and laity - must switch to “apostolic mode,” resisting cultural trends that are inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ. We must take to heart the words of St. Paul during his time, the original apostolic era: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

Personally, I prefer a challenging adventure on the water over a boring lazy river ride, anyway. In dragon boat racing, for example, there's a great thrill in energetically paddling in unison with your team as you try to speed against the wind toward the finish line. In whitewater rafting, there's an urgent exhilaration in paddling away from a rock or other hazard that you know will spell disaster. In our own Christian lives, we need to discover the excitement of wholeheartedly living as intentional disciples of Jesus Christ within the tumult of our Post-Christian culture. God's providence has placed us in this time, and we ought to embrace its challenges as an adventure rather than a burden. In cooperation with the Holy Spirit, we need to strive to be saints and creatively challenge the next generation and the rest of the world to do the same, even when the cultural currents make this difficult. As From Christendom to Apostolic Mission concludes:

Our task is to understand the age we have been given, to trace out how the Holy Spirit is working in it, and to seize on the adventure of cooperating with him. May we be given the wisdom and the courage to rise to the challenge of the new apostolic age that is coming upon us and to prove faithful stewards in our generation of the saving and liberating life given us by Jesus Christ.

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