From the Director - Why is Mission so Marginal
At The Vatican Council, the Council Fathers wrote, "The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father." (Ad Gentes #2).
This is an extraordinary claim. They placed mission at the heart of the Church as its reason for existence. Yet 40 years later this declaration seems to have fallen on deaf ears. For most people in the Church mission is an optional extra. It is something the church leaves to missionaries or does after it has attended to traditional activities like celebrating the liturgy, running schools and hospitals, teaching, baptising and building up Church structures.
Why is mission so marginal? I think it has a lot to do with the word, "mission." Few words are innocent, most come packed with history - "mission" is one of those words. Today some people see missionaries as well-meaning people who have destroyed beautiful cultures and the cherished beliefs of Third World peoples. Even for the more positive, mission is seen as the church's ‘department of foreign affairs,' dealing with the exotic and peripheral. I remember visiting a number of families before leaving for Korea in 1970. They asked me "where in the Islands are you going, Father?" When I answered, "Korea" they continued, "where in the Islands is Korea, Father?" For many Catholics of that time, mission was clearly something that happened "in the Islands."
Nowadays mission cannot be contained geographically. Few would say that the Word of God is needed more in Seoul or Suva, than in Sydney or New York. In fact the new role of overseas missionaries is to build bridges between churches; this is a new understanding of mission for us in the West. The Church is a communion of sister churches and we all need each other. We are all on mission everywhere.
Fr Noel Connolly
director@columban.org.au
