The Puddle

This should end up being the last post regarding my old parish, and if the previous posts didn't paint an ugly picture, this one will, as (I found out last week) it was the reason I was fired.

I can honestly (and proudly) say I was fired over The Purpose-Driven Life.

Remarkably, it started back in November - not two months on the job. In the previous weeks, I had started to hear some rumblings that our pastor was going to do a program at some point on Purpose-Driven Life (further referred to as PDL or "The Puddle"). Now, I wasn't hugely taken by it, but my attitude was one of if it's not going to impact the kids, I'll take a backseat. I should point out that most of the rest of the office was not thrilled about this either. The day of our staff meeting before it was announced, our DRE went around the office handing everyone a copied article basically titled "Why PDL isn't Catholic." And there were some very good theological objections raised about the book. I did a little bit of last minute shotgun research, and a lot of it confirmed what I had read.

Anybody that knows me knows that orthodoxy is a big deal to me. Particularly if it's in a teaching area...we owe it to everyone we come in contact with to boldy proclaim the Truth, and not some watered down feel good version. If there's one easy way to summarize the Catholic viewpoint on PDL, it's "watered down feel good."

So we go into the meeting, and as one of the last points of discussion, our pastor says "We will be doing a 6 week PDL program as our Lenten program this year." I'm not exaggerating that you could hear a pin drop it was so quiet after he said that. He looked around for a reaction, and didn't get it from anyone. Finally, he was like "any questions, or moving on?" I could tell a lot of people wanted to say something, but nobody wanted to set him off. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your view), I didn't feel that sort of restriction, so I simply asked "Well...is it orthodox?" knowing full well the correct answer is "HECK NO!" He gets an angry look on his face, looks at me and says in the most sarcastic voice imaginable, "Of course it's orthodox...it's 100% orthodoxly Muslim." I knew at that point I was in trouble, and that nothing was going to get in the way of this program he wanted.

After the meeting, he called me into his office and proceeded to lay into me about my reaction. I was expected to be excited about it, and fully support whatever I wanted to do. I told him that I didn't have enough information to support it, that the info I had was problematic, and that I need more info on his vision to understand what I'm supporting before I blindly leap on to something. He said that the program was to kick off the Small Christian Communities deal at our parish. Basically, what he outlined was a bait and switch. The parish had just started a Bible Study in the fall that was pretty successful. Groups were formed that were meeting up at the church, a lot of people liked it...until they were told that they were moving to homes for the PDL program after the study of Acts was over. At that point, a lot of people checked out, and rightfully so - they showed up for a Bible Study, no for feel good stuff.

So these small groups were to read the book, meet each week, watch a video and discuss the book. This is the program format I was given by my pastor. So I started to clarify - who does the video they will be watching? Rick Warren. Who leads the groups? Whoever signs up. What sort of training will they receive? "Training?" How are we going to make sure the program is authentically Catholic? No response. As you can see, my concerns were not allayed at all. Seriously, do the math yourself - take a bunch of Catholics at totally different points of formation, put them in a group with someone that isn't guaranteed to be properly formed themselves, have them read a feel good spirituality book reinforced by a video done by the Protestant author of the book, and have them have an open and non-guided discussion. This is something that's designed to draw people deeper into their Catholic faith? Sounds like the perfect formula for setting people up to leave the Church.

And that's basically what I told him. I stated that I felt we had a responsibility to be authentically 100% Catholic. That may not mean always using Catholic sources (although that is superior, I've read plenty of non-Catholic Christian books that aren't terribly objectionable, at least not with some minor corrections), but if we're not using those sources, it means presenting and discussing the material in a way that is completely orthodox. So I subtly challenged him on that - what are we going to do to ensure this program is done right? He said that the group leaders would be chosen and given enough training to handle the discussion. and that he would do a video to follow Rick Warren's each week discussing the "Catholic view." Not perfect, but it's a good start to at least trying to make the program work.

So about a month later, the woman in charge of coordinating the program approaches me about doing it with the teens. Now, frankly, I believed I had too much work to do (you know...completely rebuilding a youth ministry program and all) to rewrite a book to present to the kids. In addition, we had just begun doing an in-depth study of "Theology of the Body" with the teens, and if I had to make a choice between Rick Warren or John Paul II, JP2 wins EVERY SINGLE TIME. So I tried to shake it off, which got me about nowhere. She kept pressing that they were going to get bombarded with this by all of their friends at the high school and such. That really confused me, because I was thinking "If I don't do it with the kids, how are there going to be other kids up at the school doing it?" She proceeded to fill in a big gap. My understanding was that this was simply a parish program. You can imagine my surprise when she told me that we were participating in the Orlando Purpose Driven Life Experience. Never heard of it before? There's a reason - Orlando was the pilot town for this program. Basically, the "theory" was that if a whole boatload of churches in the area all did this program and people were transformed that it would have huge impacts on the town. There was going to be a mass marketing campaign to get people to participate at their parishes, etc etc.

As you can imagine, this didn't exactly thrill me. I was even less thrilled when I discovered that there were only two Catholic parishes signed on for this (along with about 100 other churches of various denominations). I was even LESS thrilled when I discovered that the other "Catholic" parish was a rouge church kicked out of the diocese by the bishop. That we were the only "real" Catholic church participating should have been an indicator.

I began to make some noise about this, and about how we needed to be properly preparing the leaders. The program was supposed to start in 2 months and no recruiting of people to lead these groups had begun. None of the materials had even been ordered yet. This was proceeding at a very slow pace.

That was until mid-January, when an annoucement was made at all the weekend masses regarding the program. Actually, annoucement is an understatement. It was more like, well, the entire homily. That's right...the homily was preached about participating in the Puddle. To top it all off, at the end of the homily, they showed a 5 minute video from, who else? Rick Warren. That they played the video was bad enough...what the video said made my chin hit the floor. Basically, Rick Warren was making the pitch for people to volunteer to be hosts for the program, to hold one of the small groups in their home. He goes on to say that no background is required, and that they won't have to receive any training, that they don't have to teach, all they have to do is open their door and have people talk. The pastor goes on to reiterate all of this, saying that there are no real problems with what the book teaches and that people don't have to know anything, just have a heart for inviting people in.

To say I was mad was an understatement. Needless to say, I had a very difficult time focusing for the rest of the liturgy. This program was heading downhill fast.

The next week I took some time to do as much research as I could on this book, what it teaches, etc. For some reason, it occurred to me to "follow the money." I think someone asked where all the cash for the books that we bought would go. The suggestion was that, if this book has really sold 25 million copies, then should we as a parish be buying Rick Warren another car? So I checked it out, and I'm not sure if the car would be worse, from a Catholic perspective. I was gratified to see that Warren has set up three foundations to which 90% of the money received from PDL go. However, I wasn't so sure that as a parish, we should be pointing people to the foundations. One foudation went to establishing Protestant churches and traning Protestant pastors in Africa. I struggled with this, wondering if a Catholic church should fund Protestant evangelism. Another foundation was for AIDS prevention in Africa. Immdiately a red flag went up as most Protestant denominations don't hold the same moral views on contraceptives. In digging deeper, I was happy to see that condom distrbution wasn't a priority. The group focuses on the ABC method - abstinence, be faithful, then condoms as an acceptable 3rd option. Again, the question came up of should we, as Catholics, fund a program that does at least peripherally approve birth control? I struggled with this and bounced it off a few people, and everyone I talked to pretty much said they didn't like it either.

In raising it with the woman who was running the program, I was told it meant nothing and that eventually the Church would have to catch up with everyone and change it's teaching. My youth ministry partner in crime got called into the pastor's office about it (I'm assuming he didn't call me in because he knew he wouldn't be able to push me around). Now, I should point out that two of her relatives had died from AIDS. He told her in no uncertain terms that a) the Church's ban was wrong, b) if her relatives died from it then they deserved it and c) if it were up to her, she'd just kill the entire continent of Africa. Any hopes of orthodoxy were dying a very quick death.

At this point, I adopted a position of passive resistance. I wasn't going to loudly object, I was just going to try and ignore it and help fix the damange after the 6 weeks was up. This all changed when a mom of one of my teens approached me and asked if I would lead a group up at the high school. I told her that I was not supportive of the program and that I could not in good conscience lead a group. I also told her it wasn't a thing since our kids were doing the Theology of the Body anyways. She goes on to tell me that they had 40 kids signed up at the high school to participate.

I was floored...how did that happen? Apparently, somebody went behind my back, against my express wishes on the orthodox direction I wanted to take our youth group, and recruited kids to sign up. This person did it on behest of the Youth PDL committee that the parish had put together - that I just found out the existence of when she told me. So there was a group designed to basically run a second youth group behind my back without even so much as asking the youth minister for a lick of input? I'm trying to not be egotistical here, but how can you have comepting youth groups, with compeltely different goals at the same parish?

Not only that, but I find out a few days later what the setup at the school is. Most of the kids are either from FCA, or they belong to a non-denominational church run at the school on Sundays, the pastor of which teaches at the school. Basically, all of these groups were being led by people from a protestant background, but under the auspices of a Catholic parish. In addition, none of the safe environment guidelines were followed - the fingerprinting and background checks for these people had not been started, let alone being cleared, which is what the diocese required for working with youth. So what I was being told is not only were they trying to jeopardize the faith, they were also jeopardizing their saftey.

At this point, I had to take a loud stance against the program. I wrote to the religious education director of the diocese (who in turn took it to the Bishop), I told my kids in no uncertain terms that I did not support the program, and that I was not going to encourage them to participate. I told them I wasn't going to ostracize them if they wanted to, but that I had serious reservations of the program.

And I was fired two days after the retreat.

My pastor's attitude was basically "Whatever I want, I get." In fact, I've been told he's adopted a new motto regarding this sort of thing - "Sheep don't tell the shepherd where to eat." It's disappointing, as he was blind obedience to heterodox belief, but refuses to give his obedience to the shepherds above him. I pray for him frequently. I pray for the kids of that parish frequently. As I've said, they're on their 5th youth minister in 2.5 years. With all of this, he has done some serious spiritual damage on some of them.

They deserve so much more than what they are being given. They deserve the Truth. So does the whole parish. In the end, I have to pray that even God can make something good out of our biggest mistakes, and hope the Holy Spirit can really transform some hearts to the Truth.