McGrath Institute Blog

Members of the Notre Dame community gathered in Washington Hall on Monday, September 16 to welcome Mike Schur, creator of NBC’s hit comedies The Good Place and Parks and Recreation. Along with Professor Meghan Sullivan, director of the God and the Good Life Program, and Christine Becker, associate professor of Film, Television, and Theater, Schur was tasked with answering the question:

For the past four weeks, we've published a series of articles from Echo Associate Director Katie Diltz on the importance of not just participating in parish life at a surface level, but diving deep to embrace life in one's parish community more fully and fruitfully.

As the Church celebrates the feast day of St. Pio of Pietrelcina today (1887–1968), who is more affectionately known as Padre Pio, Christians everywhere can draw important spiritual lessons from this beloved mystic’s balance of compassion and “tough love.”

The thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the Church as a field hospital after battle . . . with the mission to heal the wounds of the heart, to open doors, to free [people], to say that God is good, God forgives all, that God is our Father, God is tender, that God always waits for us . . .
—Pope Francis, Homily, Casa Santa Marta

It takes a great deal of courage and pastoral creativity to approach deep wounds, to open closed doors, to receive and speak rightly of God’s forgiveness and affection. As the Echo staff and I work to form Catholic leaders for service in today’s field hospital Church, I am particularly compelled by Pope Francis’ call to “open doors.”

In thinking about writing a series for young adults on embracing parish life, I began by informally surveying young adult Catholics in my social networks. The 85 people who responded to my Google survey represent an atypical sampling of millennials (my social networks are exceptionally Catholic-y): 80% attend Mass at least weekly, 80% are registered at their parishes, and 83.5% donate to their parishes at least occasionally. And, yet, only 55.3% of this group can definitively say that they feel like part of their parish communities. 

We go to Mass, we’re registered, we donate, but we don’t feel like we belong. What are we missing?