Comparing Religious Practice

This weekend was an interesting one during which I was helping out at the Augustinian parish of Los Angeles, in Panama City. The Parish Priest has gone on holiday so I was helping out there this weekend and will be doing the same next week. Essentially, this amounted to saying some of the masses and, today, taking care of the baptisms.

There are number of things that are very striking about churches in Panama. Even the very poorest ones are very well equipped in terms of the bits and pieces that are used in the liturgy. In fact, they all seem to have the very best of everything - albs, vestments, chalices, ciboria, furnishings etc. In my experience, Irish parishes are not, generally, so well supplied in this area.  However, while all of these things are taken care of very well I do notice that there is one area in which Irish parishes, again in my experience, are noticably stronger than those in Panama - that is the area of lay ministry.

Readers, Ministers of the Eucharist, Monitors, Collectors, People who Welcome - all of these are to be found in Panamanian parishes - parish councils and finance councils, however, are, I am told, not as widespread. This says something about the type of lay involvement that is to be found in these parishes - it is not part of the direction the parish is taking; it is largely focused on the liturgy.

Another thing that strikes me is that the ministers really seem to place the priests on a pedestal, and quite a high one at that. This suggests to me that the lay ministers don't consider themselves to have the same responsibility for what they are doing as the priest has - they see themselves, very much, as "helping Father". While "Father" may like to be helped, this is not what ministry is all about. I think that in many of our Irish parishes there is more of a sense of lay people taking responsibility in their parishes as part of an expression of their baptismal calling - I think the difference is that in Ireland the priest works in the people's parish; while in Panama, the people help out in the priest's parish.

I may be wrong, of course; after all, these are just my impressions and, as such, are very subjective, but these impressions are borne out by comments made by the Archbishop of Panama and his Pastoral Vicar. There is still a lot to be done in the area of lay ministry. Of course, the same is true of Ireland, where things are far from ideal, but, nonetheless, I think the Irish church is further along this particular road.

The official figures say that  28% of the people go to Mass every week. I doubt if this is accurate - in parishes of 50,000+ people, that would necessitate enormous churches and many Masses. However, those that do participate are very active participants in the celebration. They tend, also, to be very active in the life of the parish in general.

This struck me very much today when I did the baptisms in the parish of Los Angeles. There were only two baptisms, and the ceremony was celebrated in the context of the Sunday Eucharist. This was the first time that I had ever had the experience where all of those involved in the baptisms (except the babies!!!) - Mothers, Fathers, and Godparents, knew all the prayers, all the responses, and, indeed, all of the words of all of the hymns. I asked afterwards and people were surprised that I found this to be unusual. In fact, this is expected of parents who want to have their child baptised. This is not something that I have found in other places (not just not in Ireland). However, obviously, since only 28% are estimated to practice their religion on a weekly basis, it is likely that there is a significant percentage of those coming for baptism who would not be quite so familiar with what goes on in liturgical celebrations.