They are SO annoying!
They say things like: "here injustice is overcome" or "all are welcome" or "peace, healing, kindness is found" or "the environment is protected."'
When I see a parish mission statement I need not read it, I already know there is a weakened Catholic identity. THE GREAT THING about every single Catholic parish is that it is exactly the same, essentially, as every other one. It is the physical presence of Jesus Christ: in the tabernacle, in the Eucharistic worship, in the communion in holiness with Mary and the saints, in the sacraments, in the reception of the Word, in fellowship and the life of charity. Go randomly into any parish and you know exactly what you will find. The differences are accidental, insignificant: the sameness is the presence of Christ. If you are Catholic you will never need a parish mission statement because you know the identity and purpose of every parish intuitively.
So what is a parish mission statement? It is: an exercise in organizational bureaucracy, agency, engineering; a marketing strategy; a feel-good, warm-and-fuzzy sentimentality; too many words; a reduction of Mystery to a fashionable formula; a gesture of bourgeois futility.
So, kind Reader, if you have a parish mission statement I don't want to talk about it.
I know I am a cranky, cantankerous, contrarian conservative! Since I am almost 75 I am allowed to be such.
Let's just get back to ordinary, garden-variety Catholicism: red-meat, high octane, undiluted, thick, unabashed, jubilant love for Christ...in His sacraments, priesthood, doctrine, commandments (including 6 and 9), liturgy, Word, truth and splendor! And his local parish with all its flaws, and without a mission statement!
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