Fishing with the Thomists
The story of why I can't really hang with the Thomistic Institute but I try anyway, and what we non-academics can learn from their example.
This week I'm hoping to catch a lecture from Fr. Thomas Petri, OP, from the Thomistic Institute. Over past several months I've been dropping in on the public events at the chapter nearest me, and while quite a few of the group’s activities are run-of-the-mill Catholic nerd stuff like reading The Confessions of St. Augustine or discussing Catholic social teaching, sometimes I'd swear the founders must have had a conversation like this when they first came up with the idea:
"Hey, so you know how kids these days do nothing but TikTok?"
"You mean like college students?"
"Yeah. College students. How do we do an event series that'll get like thirty or forty of them to come sit in a classroom for an hour listening to a lecture, and then wait in line to ask questions after?"
"Um . . . I guess Aristotle, right?"
"You don't think that's too basic?"
"Well it's got to be something really arcane."
"Hey, how about this: We'll pick an obscure topic and drop into the arguments of four or five different philosophers on the subject--"
"--don’t waste their time with biographies, or explaining what their different major works were, zoomers already know all that stuff--"
"--and carefully delineate one point by the end of the night, which is either very abstract or extremely unpopular--"
"Or both."
"Brilliant. Thanks. Man the kids are gonna love this."
And the thing is: The kids do love this. Some of the kids, anyhow. For me who loves studying the Catholic faith but never has been and never will be a philosophy major? It's a stretch. Which is why I go. I was looking for something to challenge me, and challenging it is.
Works like this also challenge something else: The myth that evangelization ministries need to be broad-audience initiatives.
On an enormous campus with an overflowing university parish, forty people at an event represents a minuscule portion of the school population. The Thomistic Institute isn't always even drawing from Catholic geekdom generally; you have to hail from a very narrow subset of the Catholic nerd family for some of its more demanding lectures to be your thing.
But if it's your thing? Nothing else will do. The command is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to some God has given minds created for this. If you don't feed those minds, they'll either starve or look elsewhere.
“Evangelization and discipleship" just means the different things we do to help people grow ever more intimate in their relationship with Jesus Christ. The parish is the natural center of that work, but not every evangelizing activity is going to be, nor should be, the responsibility of parish staff.
Parish resources are limited. Beyond the bare minimum of providing the sacraments, it's reasonable for pastors to ask: Where is my time and energy best spent? What needs me the most? What needs is my parish well-equipped to handle? What are the most pressing issues facing the bulk of this congregation today?
And thus, flipped around: Who am I going to leave hanging? Who doesn't get served?
That's a question we don't like to answer out loud. It requires being honest. We have to admit that our pretty-good ministry is not able to serve every type of person. It can't be. That's not how humanity is. Human souls aren't mass produced from identical molds.
But if I can muster the courage to look reality in the face and say my work is not ideal for people who need __________, then I can be that much more grateful when someone comes along who does the work which I cannot.
All of it is precious. The huge ministries, the tiny ministries, the normal ones, the weird ones, all of it. Every soul matters to God, so every soul is worth serving.