Catholics should be more Catholic: in pursuit of true "catholicity," our church and faith must grow to welcome and embrace all of humanity. (Spring Book Section).

Looking up from the bottom of Rome's Via della Conciliazione, St. Peter's Basilica towers in breathtaking array. As you walk forward into a great semicircular colonnade, it embraces you like outstretched arms of welcome. Entering the church, I was instantly swept up by the grandeur of the space with its amazing collage of marble, bronze, and gold. Down the 200-yard nave, Bernini's bronze baldacchino towers over the high altar and tomb of Saint Peter. In the backdrop behind stands the Chair of Peter--symbol of the Petrine office. Above the chair hovers a dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit.

The vast throng of people that morning was a rainbow of humanity, many arrayed in ethnic costumes and whispering in a babel of tongues. Here in living color was the breadth universal of the church.

Standing on the tomb of the first among the apostles, the whole environment is steeped in antiquity, reminding one of the length over time of this faith tradition.

The panoply of mosaics, statues, and adornments, with their aesthetic refinement and great beauty climaxed by the Pieta, express the spiritual depth of humanity and the human reach for God.

The sacred seems palpable; the whole magnificent edifice, crowned by Michelangelo's 435-foot grand dome, bespeaks the divine initiative toward the human, the height that reaches into our hearts.

The breadth, length, depth, and height of Christian faith are all here; truly a "catholic" place!

Or is it? After a while, I began to notice signs of contradiction to catholicity.

Most of the papal statues reflect a pompous pride. Triumphal power seems more the sentiment than "servant of the servants"--an old title for the pope. To anyone who remembers a little church history, many of these monuments are a white-wash. For instance, the massive memorial to a pious-looking Urban VIII fails to capture the corrupt nepotist, who used the papacy to enrich himself and his family.

And the place reeks of patriarchy. Many of the papal statues have women lying at their feet. The guidebook says these feminine figures represent the "virtues." I wondered which ones.

Indeed, apart from decoration at the feet of popes, St. Peter's has scant representation of women. Even images of Mary seem sparser than in other traditional churches. And I found no representation at all of people of color or of the poor.

The papal Mass reflected the same exclusivity. I found myself wondering if Jesus, who founded a radically inclusive community of disciples--catholic at its best--would recognize this as his legacy?

But as often happens with Catholicism, a sign of hope emerged to offset the temptation to lose heart. I found the simple bronze relief of the bighearted and saintly Pope John XXIII. He is depicted with prison bars separating him from a group of prisoners. The guiding spirit of the Second Vatican Council requested to be remembered for visiting prisoners in Rome's jail. Typical of him!

In the crypt I discovered that his tomb is clearly the place where the most people stop with reverence to pray. Once again, the "sense of the faithful" is a reliable trustee of the true spirit of Catholicism. So though he might have to search a bit, the carpenter of Nazareth could find traces here of what he intended. For the hope endures: This church may yet become catholic.

Becoming catholic

To ask, "What makes us catholic?"--with a small "c"--really comes down to, "Who is our neighbor?" In other words: How open is our heart, how wide our concern, whom will we welcome and include?

At its best, catholicity means to welcome and love every "other." As the Irish writer James Joyce wrote in Finnegan's Wake, "Catholic means here comes everybody."

Jesus championed catholicity. He preached a love with no exceptions--even of enemies. He said that people will come from "the east and west, from the north and south to recline at table in the reign of God" (Luke 13:29), and everyone will be welcome. He taught that God will hold all people accountable for their lives by how they treated their neighbors in need (Matt. 25:31-46). And he said, "In my Father's house, there are many mansions" (John 14:2).

By contrast, the Catholic Church often sins egregiously against catholicity. Both insiders and outsiders can experience it as a hierarchical club. Its dominant culture is distinctly Western, even European parochial.

I've met a Chinese Catholic with the name Colleen who celebrates St. Patrick's Day with more enthusiasm than I do. She told me that her pastor in China was a priest from Ireland and catechized her to rank March 17 just a shade below Christmas and Easter. The pages of mission history are strewn with less benign examples of cultural imperialism disguised as Christian evangelization.

I'm convinced that catholicity is an aspiration of humanity at its best, calling us to oppose sectarianism and chauvinism of every kind and to practice solidarity and interdependence. Surely a Christian community that explicitly names itself Catholic should patently reflect this value.

For all Catholics today--myself included--catholicity remains a tremendous challenge. I see three specific challenges for our church: We must (1) grow as a truly world church and faith, (2) grow as an indigenous local church and faith, and (3) ever renew our imagination for paradox.

A world church and faith

From the beginning, one of the charisms of Catholicism has been its ability to reach across history and into every culture while maintaining a deep bond of a common identity in belief, ethics, and worship. At the same time, the late German theologian Karl Rahner recognized Vatican II as a watershed for becoming a truly "world church."

Rahner imagined "a world church, in which the churches of Africa, South America, and Asia will really be autonomous elements with their own specific character and their own importance in the whole church."

Catholicity also invites us to embrace a world faith--to experience a deep spiritual bond with all humankind while cherishing our own identity in faith.

The vision of Vatican II was that the catholicity of Christians should prompt them to promote catholicity among all humankind. For though the church, according to the council, "may ... look like a small flock," nevertheless "all people are called to be part of this catholic unity of the People of God, a unity which is harbinger of the universal peace it promotes."

Catholicity calls Christians to recognize themselves as citizens of a global village with profound responsibilities to every person. Concretely, what might this mean? Here are four suggestions:

* Foster solidarity and interdependence with all people.

Divine love is the foundation of Christian solidarity with every person. The very lifeblood coursing though all human veins is God's love in us, for us, and through us to each other and creation.

Beyond our common creation in God's image, all humanity shares in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ--God among us as one of ourselves. As Vatican II reiterated, "by his Incarnation, the Son of God united himself with all [humankind]." And the council reminded Christians that God's love and work of salvation bonds Christians with all humanity.

I'm sure it's true of other cultures, but the Irish love to sit around at weddings and wakes and figure out how we are "connected"--who and how people are related by birth or marriage. Truth is, we're all "connected"--the one human family of God.

* Render care and compassion for all people.

Christian love of neighbors must know no limits; we should be "Christians without borders." People who are suffering on the far side of the world and are a different religion from us must be equally included in our care and compassion. Some religions place great emphasis on caring for fellow members and have elaborate networks of inner support. The catholicity of Christians, however, demands care and compassion for all people. Our neighbor is everyone.

* Be open to share with and learn from all people.

Since the risen Christ gave the Great Commission, "Go teach all nations" (Matt. 28:19), evangelization has been a defining mission of the Christian community.

Recently the church has redefined the focus of evangelization away from "bringing converts in" to "bringing Christians out"--out into the world with their faith alive. Evangelization means Christians living their faith in the world with enthusiasm and credibility.

Pope John Paul II has championed this "new evangelization" for both non-Christian contexts and amidst tired old cultural faith, renewing the latter again.

Today, evangelization also calls for real dialogue with people of other religious traditions. Again, Vatican II urged Christians to engage in "truly human conversation" with all peoples of good will and "to learn by sincere and patient dialogue what treasures a bountiful God has distributed among the nations of the earth."

A catholic perspective, then, is the opposite to being closed-minded.

* Welcome and appreciate God's saving work among all people.

Every Christian community is mandated to welcome anyone who so desires into full and equal membership; otherwise it is not catholic. Jesus welcomed all into the community of disciples, with special outreach to the socially marginalized--women, people of other races, public sinners, tax collectors, lepers, and others considered unclean. Jesus went out of his way to make the point of inclusion.

The first Christian communities considered hospitality central to discipleship. The first great controversy to beset them was whether male converts could become Christian without first being circumcised according to the law of Moses.

According to the account in Acts 15:135, Peter gave a great speech arguing that God makes "no distinction between them and us," so neither should the Christian community. After what must have been a mighty struggle of letting go--comparable to any change in church policy we might imagine in our time--they decided that "Gentiles who are turning to God" would be welcome without circumcision. Thereafter, open enrollment has been the official policy of the church.

But what of people who see the welcome sign of Christian community and decline the invitation or who never heard of Jesus Christ and follow another or no religion?

Christians have long struggled to affirm the universality of God's love and saving will and at the same time their faith that "there is one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:56). The persistent Catholic proposal for affirming both the primacy of Christ and the universality of salvation has been "baptism of desire." This is the notion that all people who do God's will--as best they know it--have a virtual desire for baptism, and thus are saved by their implicit faith in Jesus.

Though other religions might hear a note of imperialism, this time-honored response affirms with some coherence the catholicity of God's saving grace. Again to quote Vatican II: "The Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God, offers to every person the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery."

A local church and faith

Each truly catholic local Christian community must be both faithful to the core of Christian faith and indigenous to its local context. This means that it lives its faith with the style and symbols of its locale rather than looking like a foreign import.

With Vatican II, the Catholic Church became aware that its evangelization often imposed a foreign culture on people in the name of the gospel.

The church also realized that there is never a cultureless Christianity. Christian faith is always expressed through particular customs of life and patterns of meaning. And by the same token, there is never a Godless culture.

A new term has emerged to describe this give-and-take between Christianity and culture: inculturation. At its heart, inculturation means people realizing Christian faith through their own culture so it expresses itself as their local church and faith.

For inculturation, the exchange between faith and culture must be a two-way street. Upon encountering a culture, Christian faith will affirm and celebrate those aspects that already reflect God's saving presence; it will challenge and change other aspects to become more life-giving, advancing God's work of salvation.

Likewise, each culture should appropriate the truths, worship, and commitments of Christian faith in ways native to this particular people, making its own singular contribution to the universal church. Each culture's unique expression of Christian faith enhances the church's catholicity.

That Christianity should be thus inculturated is the logic of the Incarnation. Jesus took on the language, mores, and ethos of a particular culture. Thereafter Christian faith should be realized and expressed in the culture native to each particular time, place, and people.

The point here is that the church be through multiple local cultures.

An imagination for paradox

All people of faith are challenged to embrace paradoxes--apparent contradictions that yet are true. But in a particular way Christians need an imagination for paradox if they are to be catholic: to welcome diversity and yet maintain unity in faith; to affirm the local church and likewise the universal church; to confess Jesus as "the one mediator between God and the human race" and yet that all can be saved; to cherish one's own tradition while being open to learn from others, and so on.

An imagination for paradox has long distinguished Catholic Christianity. Are we saved by "faith alone" or by our own "good works?" The best Catholic sentiment is that we are saved by faith, which expresses itself through good works. Does living a Christian life depend on God's grace or on our human nature? On God's grace, which works through nature. What is the norm of faith: scripture or tradition? Scripture, of course, but its original revelation unfolds through tradition. And so on, with paradoxes such as both gospel and law, both cross and Resurrection, both revelation and reason, both authority and freedom of conscience, both judgment and mercy, both marriage and celibacy.

Although an imagination for paradox is a rich aspect of Catholic tradition, some elements in the church attempt to force an either-or choice. Thankfully, the sense of the faithful holds out for both-and.

I once gave a conference in New Orleans on the Saturday before Lent began. As a test, I invited the participants to make a clear choice that year between Mardi Gras or Ash Wednesday. They responded raucously that they needed both. I congratulated them on their catholicity--both feasting and fasting. A good Puritan would be scandalized!

SPRITUAL PRACTICES FOR CATHOLICITY

The following are some specific practices to nurture a spirituality of catholicity in consciousness and commitment.

* MAKE FRIENDS AMONG PEOPLE WHO ARE VERY DIFFERENT. All of us feel at home among "our own kind." It may take an effort to engage with people who are distinctly different from us, and to do so with respect and appreciation. But catholicity invites far beyond token politeness or the reductionism of "Well, they're like us, really." It encourages us to become friends and to delight in "others" precisely as they are.

* PROMOTE JUSTICE AND COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE "FAR AWAY." Our natural instinct is to get involved in causes close to home. But surely a catholic faith demands more than local or self-interest encouraging justice and compassion for those who are "far away." Choosing a specific cause on the other side of the world and becoming involved with it will enhance catholicity. I remember my father encouraging us as children to send some of our piggy-bank money to starving children in far-off Biafra, and having us find the country on the world atlas. He was encouraging a catholic consciousness.

* PLACE NO BORDERS ON YOUR CONCERN AND PRAYERS. A variation of the previous practice, I have in mind our spiritual concern for the well-being of others. Notice how parochial U.S. news media can be; it's as if we were the center of the universe and whatever is happening elsewhere is of little import, unless American interests (e.g. oil supply) are directly implicated. I find that I must listen to the BBC news on public radio to hear what is happening in East Timor or Peru or the Congo. Every conflict and tragedy should be of concern to catholic Christians. If nothing else, we can pray for people who are suffering the agonies of war, natural or human-made devastation.

* RECOGNIZE FAITH AS AN ULTIMATE MYSTERY,' BE EVER READY TO SAY "I DON'T KNOW." There are all kinds of things about life and faith that no one can explain in human language. But faith as ultimate mystery is not "what we can't explain" but that mystery is often the explanation. The ground of all is gracious mystery that draws us ever more deeply into unfathomable love.

Catholics can have an air of know-it-all, acting as if ours is the only and completely true faith, with all the answers. Surely this is more the sin of pride than a truly catholic spirituality. Some of the hubris is encouraged by a teaching office that typically sounds absolutely certain in its pronouncements, as if faith is no longer a "leap" and all can be assured. The joke rings true that when the Catholic Church finally agrees to ordain women, the pronouncement will begin, "As we have always taught...."

Catholicity should give Christians a spirituality that knows well the leap of faith, that is humble before incomprehensible mystery. We should be ever ready to say, "I don't know" if such be the case, and yet cherish our faith as a piton on the mountainside of life.--Thomas H. Groome

THOMAS H. GROOME is a professor of theology and religious education at Boston College. This article is excerpted with permission from his book What Makes Us Catholic: Eight Gifts for Life (HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins Publishers Inc.). [c]2002 Thomas H. Groome.