Public Life and Church

   This article is not about what you probably think it is about. It is not about the role of the Church in politics or public life. It is the role of how public life (very broadly understood) affects the life of the Church.
   We tend to think of the Church as a private institution. Religion deals with some very personal things. Churches are private institutions in the sense that they are not run by the government. But they are public institutions in that they extend beyond our personal lives or our families. Churches have culture, communications, ways of operating that need to be understood by its members. 
   In order for a church to function, people have to have some public skills. They need to be able to run a meeting, how to communicate effectively, how to work together and collaborate on common tasks, how to make a decision and then be able to carry it out without dividing the congregation into factions. 
   One of the things which hurts church life is that as a society we are beginning to lose those skills. 
Some examples: 

• How to call on the phone, ask a question or set up an appointment. Some people have real difficulty doing that.
•  Getting people together to plan a common project, being able to surface ideas and proposals, and then make a decision that people can live with and support. 
• Understanding that when something needs to be decided, it needs to be for the benefit of the entire group, not one's own personal preferences.

    A Mass is not a "performance." It is an act of worship. But in order to celebrate Mass well, the priest, the other ministers, and the congregation have to have some public skills. A preacher has to be able to do public speaking; he must be heard and understood. The choir and the musicians need to be able to sing and to play well. The people in the congregation and others who process and move around must be able to "carry themselves" well. All those are public skills, and the skills would be the same whether it's liturgy or a national political convention. There are differences, of course; they are not the same. But the basic skills would be the same.
   These are public skills. Perhaps they were some of the manners that the nuns taught us in grade school, but they are skills which are being lost to our detriment, both in the Church and in our civil\political life.
   The skills of public life are part of the foundation that builds a local church.