Here is part of our mission statement:

‘St Mary’s, Maldon stands in the catholic tradition of the Church of England. Here we try to practise the generous Gospel of Jesus Christ. Together we are exploring a way of living which is inspired by joyful worship and takes seriously the interior life. We embrace the challenges of peace-making both globally and locally. Welcome to this inclusive community of health and healing.’

We aspire to be catholic. As I understand it, we do not aspire to be high church, whatever exactly that means. I will return to that idea later.

I would like to spell out what I understand by ‘catholic’. Others may want to amplify or correct my understanding:

Catholicism finds God in the material world – ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ We meet Jesus in the bread and wine of the mass, so that the mass is at the heart of everything we are and do. The mass connects our earthy lives to the earthly life of Jesus: ‘in the night in which he was betrayed he took bread……………….do this in remembrance of me.’ We meet him in the ordinary people of the parish (the neighbourhood), especially the poorest and the most vulnerable’, and of the wider world.

Meeting God in Scripture is fundamental to Catholicism, as it is to evangelicalism. When we hear Scripture proclaimed in church, the reader proclaims: ‘Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.’

This hearing, this deep listening and obedience is fundamental to everything we aspire to. We have much work to do in taking up this challenge.

Catholicism also seeks God in the unfolding tradition of the Church. While Scripture is fundamental, the Holy Spirit continues to work out the implications of the original message in every age, sometimes in surprising ways. The Roman Catholic Church has developed an understanding of how doctrine develops in new times. The Church of England has not managed to do that, which gets us into many arguments as to what Scripture means in significant issues of our lives, especially moral issues.

We also seek to be, but do not claim that we are, radical. Radical both means ‘going back to the roots’ of our faith and seeking to understand the signs of the times. There are ‘high churches’ who live out of nostalgia – some kind of remaining in ages that, for everyone else, have gone for ever – like old people who have never changed the curtains. Let me reflect briefly on the times in which we live:

Our age is an age of bewilderment. If we offer certainty without an understanding of the bewilderment, we are not keeping faith with the people of our times. There is nothing more depressing than receiving a simple and sure answer to a complicated question. Many people today cannot make any sense of a belief in the living God. This has nothing to do with levels of intelligence. The intellectual community tends towards atheism far more than it did 50 years ago. Where they lead, others follow. It is essential that preachers, pastors and leaders of worship understand this, and seek out where the atheism of today resides, even perhaps, inside ourselves, and what it is saying to us. Preachers who feel no temptation to atheism must recognise this as a potential weakness which might cause them to be deficient in pastoral understanding. The people who are still comfortable in church or who have an unquestioning faith are not best placed to help the People of God notice this, and therefore to reach out more widely.

We live in an age of respect between the great religions of the world. Not so long ago, we might have been happy to believe that other faiths were unenlightened. Today, we know that we have got to try to understand, and to discover what other can teach us about God and the world. This is an exploration that has hardly begun. In what ways is it now appropriate to believe in the uniqueness of Jesus, the Son of God?

We also live in an age of spirituality, many spiritualities. Sophisticated people turn to the practices of Buddhism and other Eastern paths, seeking peace through meditation, without having to bother themselves with credal beliefs which get in the way. Some churches are hostile to things like yoga. We at St Mary’s wish to be hospitable to spiritual practices which enhance people’s humanity, whatever their source, but not to practices which are merely self-indulgence. How are we to know the difference?

We live in an age of huge pressures on time, financial security, family survival, mental health, including that of children. While we want to minister to people under pressure this also creates strains on us and our resources. During lockdown, busy church members have discovered the joys of Sunday morning at home. Some will not return. Potential converts are not necessarily going to be converted to regular church going. The pressures of office in the church are now huge, and it seems impossible to replace or supplement Dawn, whose job as warden is not far short of full time. We are also, led by Colin, discovering a ministry to children. I dare to believe that our current crop love choir and conversations about faith and life during Junior Church. However, I think we must accept what looks to us like unreliability, because, like everyone, these families are just trying to find their own ways to survive. A Sunday day trip unities the family. Perhaps the day will come when more people discover that the encounter with Jesus and his people at mass is essential to their search for ‘life in all its fulness’.

Of course, the internet, and the fast world it creates, with the benefits of information on tap and the horrors of online pornography, online scapegoating, etc, are part of our context in which we are seeking to be a sign of contradiction to everything that is mean and anti-life.

We are not (necessarily) high church. We are not trying to capture the ‘catholic end of the market’. It might be the case that people come to worship from beyond the parish because of our tradition, and such people are most welcome. Nevertheless, we are striving to be here for our local community. Being catholic means being ecumenical. We hope evangelicals will recognise their own faith in our community. Belonging to Churches Together in Maldon is essential to us. We are enriched by our fellow Christians who emphasise aspects of the faith where we may be weak. However, where we differ from other churches, for example in our inclusivity to LGBTQI people, we stand firmly on our own ground, without compromise.

How well are we matching up to our mission statement, and its implied desire that St Mary is good news (gospel) for the people of our parish, and with our partners, for the whole of our area, Maldon and beyond?

Our being there for the neighbourhood is present in Father John’s tireless and loving ministry through the occasional offices, especially funeral and bereavement ministry, backed up by June, Dawn, Jenny, Colin, and others. This is work that most of the rest of us simply do not observe. It is rewarding but relentless and over the years, touches hundreds of people. It helps to create the reputation of the parish and causes people to trust us.

It is there in the efforts of the same people to open up the building to individuals and groups in need and to partners who share our values, like Harbour and the other new user groups.

It is there, pre-eminently, in our worship, including the outstanding music that is on display Sunday by Sunday. We have a smattering of newish mass attenders whose discovery of God in their lives has been quickened by the depth of our worship and the style of our music and liturgy, accompanied by that fellowship and teaching that has come through Emmaus, Alpha, and most recently Encounter. We hope to repeat Alpha early next year, and, as we did before, initially with success, but hindered by Covid, encourage people without current connections to church and gospel.

However, our worship is demanding. The music is often but not always accessible and the lections often quite bookish. The Creed, and many other parts of the liturgy are not easy to understand in 2021. As well as the people who have joined because of the worship, there are others who have left because they have found it difficult. The marketplace concept of the church – go and find a church that suits you – there are plenty of different styles to choose from, is a concept that I believe we should reject as much as we can. The parish church is there for all the people, the ordinary people, ‘who are made in God’s image and after his likeness’.

How can we remain Catholic, reject dumbing down, but help people discover the God within – apparently God’s principle dwelling place in our age, and develop a style which is more popular – ‘understanded of the people’, as the English Reformation had it?

It is also the case that none of the above can be changed easily and without damage – choir, reading, lections, liturgy, all have a kind of excellence about them which we ditch at our peril. Maybe, the best we can do at this stage is make some small changes to the liturgy and trust that it is in our development as the People of God that growth is achieved in the main.

I would like to declare my own thoughts about the current state of our music. It is essential that we discuss this, nearly a year after our new organ and gallery were installed, because music is our greatest asset, and assets, unexamined, often also conceal unmentioned weaknesses.

I was not always in favour of the organ project. I thought that the positive organ worked well for a small church, and I was uncertain that it was right to spend £150,000 on this and not on other projects, which, as I saw it, might be more likely to ‘bring good news to the poor’. I do not believe that I was wrong – this is not about right and wrong in any simple sense – but I am now happy to have lost the argument. The organ and gallery are stunning. They have already aroused much of the right kind of interest and considering this has all happened in the time of Covid, we have hardly begun. I am most excited by the work Colin has done with the children, which we are all able to build on. While their time keeping is frustrating, last Sunday it was thrilling to unpick the gospel for the day with 2 eager and intelligent 10-year-olds. We seem to have 10 or more children on our books, and they are all dropped off by parents, who bring us much good will. Of course, we long for the parents to respond to the good news for themselves. I would like to run a Catholic Alpha course for them and others in the New Year, but I think it is a long step from dropping off children to beginning to think something exciting might be happening in church for them too. We need to ask recent converts now in the congregation what their journey was.

Somebody might ask me at this point why I do not just trust the Holy Spirit. Why not indeed? Cardinal Newman has an interesting aphorism on this subject:

‘The task is not to prepare converts for the church. The task is to prepare the church for converts.’

How do we need to change? I will not dwell on our need to be more joyful, loving, prayerful and convinced. Of course, spiritually, we are a work in progress. These are not a matter of engineering. But there are practical tasks to which we can attend. I have now, perhaps, reached the most controversial part of this essay, the part for reflection and debate:

How can our worship become less elitist without losing depth?

There are aspects of Anglican liturgy, or the liturgy we normally use, that are out of step with the imagination of the world where we are set (actually, in some ways, everything we do is, and the work we do on the edge of this culture clash is the frontier of mission).

The ‘all age mass’ might be more appropriate to Maldon for every Sunday, though Father John has identified to me one supposed weakness and other may well point out others. I will not push this strongly.

The Nicene Creed is, for most people, incomprehensible. There are other excellent short credal formulations. The Nicene Creed could remain in the back of the service sheet to indicate our orthodoxy and we could print, perhaps 2 others. Actually, the mass is a living and not a written event. Creeds can be posed to the congregation from time to time with nothing being written down – ‘Do you believe in God the Father’, etc.

Eucharistic prayers range in understandability. We use among the least comprehensible for most Sundays. I am not making a strong suggestion that we change. Worshippers might fear we are dumbing down, but we do need to be flexible.

Confessions could occasionally be conducted in free style, but perhaps not regularly. I take it that somewhere deep down, most people have a need for confession and forgiveness, and may be helped to make it real with a less formal approach.

All the preachers do their best to preach as understandably as we can. This is always work in progress. Relaxed preaching helps the congregation to relax, but a relaxed and attentive congregation can also help the preacher.

Sometimes, we ask the congregation what we should pray for, and this encourages people to be confident in speaking up in church. This could develop as people get bolder.

I am longing for the day for chairs to replace pews. Pews could do so much to help the worship become a ‘democratic’ and not a ‘hierarchical’ event for the democratic age in which we live (though there are aspects of hierarchy that people still deeply need for their lives, and our church, not to descend into chaos.

The music of the liturgy also needs to go in this direction, though not always, and not to excess. The fact that we have such a beautiful organ could tempt us in the wrong direction, whereby music might dominate and not serve the mass. I appeal to the generosity of the musicians. Beautiful and long sanctuses. Agnus deis and organ voluntaries do not always serve the needs of the People of God.

When lockdown ends, I think there is a need for the congregation to come alive as singers. Colin is a brilliant chooser of music, and I do not want to imply that our current congregation is not led into worship and prayer – that is, into their own relationship with the living God – by our current music.

But in music, as in everything, what is the Spirit saying to the church? Might some people discover that ‘this is personal to me’ through spirituals, charismatic choruses (some of them are profound) and things I have not thought of. Should we not sing congregational mass settings more often? I personally think we should.

I do not know whether Colin loves or hates Gareth Malone. I have often watched Colin displaying similar gifts to his. However, it would not be fair to put all this onto the musicians, and we cannot do violence to the kind of choir they already are. It may be Encounter or Alpha, and in personal friendships at church, that this all comes alive for people.

However, Sunday mass is both our heart and our principle place of encounter with the world. If the building and our hearts are to be renewed, we cannot miss the opportunity to refresh the mass at the same time.

Robert Wiggs 16th June 2021

Addendum

There is nothing in the above document about issues of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. I have always found it difficult to get into this stuff at St Mary’s as I have never felt there to be a critical mass of interested parties to take these things further. However, the Diocese is currently asking the parishes to consider two pertinent matters:

Firstly, we are all asked to study some new material around sexual identity before the Church of England makes a new statement on this issue, in 2022 or 2023, I cannot remember the date. The GAML group + any friends from within and outside the church we invite, would be an excellent group to study this material. I think the hope of the majority of the bishops is that we learn to celebrate gender and sexual difference and stop wasting our time with yesterday’s debates and move on. Actually, I suspect that we can never leave these issues, as people’s ideas of what it means to be human and sexual seems to be in constant flux, and confusion and violence bring untold distress. We must ask, where is the strong ground upon which we can give people security and love, without being ridiculously modern or ridiculously old fashioned? That is, what is ‘the Spirit saying to the Church?’ And, therefore, what do we have to say to the world?

Secondly the national church also wants all parishes to discuss racism and the values of the Kingdom, and to assess our response. Not our problem, because there are not very many black people in Maldon? I think not. I would like to approach whoever are the appropriate people in the Diocese and ask for a meeting concerning how we take these matters forward. A matter for us all and not exclusively for out group, but we are not a bad place to begin.

The gospel as Jesus lived and proclaimed it is a political/spiritual matter. The two can never be separated because everything Jesus stood for concerns the Kingdom. I would like us to turn to the weekly gospel and discover together how Jesus addresses our world, at every level of our community. Most clergy and most parishes treat the gospel as if it were spiritual and communal but only occasionally political. That is not the way of Jesus. If we are seen to be treating crucial political and moral issues fearlessly, truthfully and compassionately, maybe when young people reach the age of 12 they will no longer believe that we have nothing else to offer them. We must address this appropriately at all ages, and we can.