The culture of the Catholic Church in the USA over the last 30 years, has had seismic shifts. Several generations have come and gone, the outlook and expectations of the Church have morphed, we have had several Popes and hundreds of bishops turnover, and many other fluctuations have happened. I think the changes can be summed up by three questions that have been the primary drivers behind the changes over the last 30 years. Each decade focusing on a different question.

1990s - WHAT
In the Spring of 1993, I had a conversion to Jesus and came back to the Catholic Church. Those early 90s were quite an interesting time to be Catholic. The Church was finally coming to grips with the deficiencies in some of the ways she had been operating over the preceding generations. Catechetical formation was (in large measure) poor and most Catholics were very ignorant about what the Catholic Church actually taught. I was one of them. In response, there arose a new movement to meet the challenge. Two groups emerged to meet the challenge. First were the institutional champions who wanted to work within the framework of the existing institutions (the insiders). The second were the non-traditional champions, who worked on initiatives outside the traditional institutions (the outsiders).

The insiders included bishops who cleaned up diocesan offices, priests who were more bold about the Church’s teaching, university administrators who helped clarify the mission of their schools, and ordinary lay Catholics who started to grow in their own personal understanding of the faith. 

The outsiders included people who started movements, apostolates, companies, and organizations. This group included apologists and speakers who helped Catholics and non-Catholics understand Church teaching, authors who clarified misconceptions, media entrepreneurs who started new organizations, and CEOs who entered the Catholic marketplace with resources that were clear about doctrine.

The movement of the 1990s can be summed up in answering the WHAT of Catholicism. 

• WHAT did the Church teach?
• WHAT was misunderstood about Catholicism?
• WHAT was missing in the formation of Catholics intellectually, morally and spiritually?
• WHAT do we need to know about the Catholic faith to be a good Catholic?

Both the insiders and outsiders helped form a response to the need by providing answers to these questions in a robust and clear way. At the time, there were two main audiences: (1) Catholics who were ignorant about Church doctrine, and (2) Protestants who misunderstood Catholic teachings. Thus, the focus was on those who were most likely to engage with our teachings on some level. This leads us to the next age and question.

2000s - WHY
Around the turn of the millenia we started to firmly enter the age of the internet. Tech companies were pushing our culture into a new age. Wii, iPod / iPhone, Blackberry, etc. We had the entertainment of the world at our fingertips. In the church we started to see a wave of change too. In 2005 St. Pope JPII dies and Benedict XVI becomes Pope. We also started to see the results of the abuse scandal really make its way into the consciousness of the Church and the world. Thus, the reputation and trust of the Church begins to wane. Decline of the institutions starts to pick up rapidly. In traditionally strong Catholic areas of the country (e.g., East coast, Midwest, etc) some dioceses start planning to consolidate parishes amidst a shrinking presbyterate. Many parts of the country also see a shift in becoming more multicultural and diverse. In some parts of the country, the decline is offset by immigration and movement of people. The South is primarily the beneficiary of this movement.

In response, the Church began to grapple with not only the modern reality of what is going on, but her very identity. Leaders start to go back to brass tacks, mission, and vision. They realize that there has been a lot of management of the institutions and too little outreach and transformative ministry. They start to ask a new question - why

The movement of the 2000s can be summed up in answering the WHY of Catholicism. 

• WHY does the Catholic Church exist?
• WHY do we do ministry in the first place?
• WHY did Jesus do things the way he did?
• WHY is the Gospel, grace, the Sacraments, heaven, etc. so important?

Recapturing our WHY helped us recapture our identity as disciples of Jesus. In many parts of the Church this is still a movement that is needed today, but the question started to be asked in the 2000s. If there was one overused phrase during these years, it was “the new evangelization”. The word “evangelize” worried many Catholics because they thought it sounded too Protestant. Many Catholic leaders had to recapture the imagination for what evangelization really was (not proselytism) and that it truly was a Catholic concept. This took many years and is still an issue in some corners of the Church.

While the better order of things may have been to start with WHY and then move to WHAT, God worked to get us to answer both things and is now setting the stage for the third question that needs to be answered.

2010s - HOW
Moving into the next decade we start to see continued rapid change in our wider culture. Almost everyone now had a phone. We have a digital revolution that has us looking down at devices all the time. Words such as selfie, 4G, Instagram, YOLO, Netflix, and podcasts entered our common lexicon. The rapid rise of the Nones (those who have no particular faith) is the trend that most impacted the Church. The millennial generation and then Generation Z have fewer and fewer ties to Catholicism. The decline of our institutions speeds up. Parish consolidations spread. The number of priests continues to go down. The scandals of the Church only get bigger. We get another Pope with Francis. 

During this decade of rapid change, the Church has some great things happening. Catholic leaders and entrepreneurs continue to build out energetic, collaborative, and modern movements, parishes, and structures to meet the need. You see rapid growth of organizations that are fruitful in youth ministry and campus ministry, which help set a new bar of what success in evangelization looks like. We have more resources at our fingertips than ever before. More Catholic leaders realize the need to shift their thinking and the way in which they operate as a leader. The openness to trying something new continues to spread in Catholic circles.

The movement of the 2010s can be summed up in answering the HOW of Catholicism. 

• HOW do we help people encounter Jesus?
• HOW do we help our institutions in an age of rapid decline?
• HOW do we evangelize and then grow mature disciples?
• HOW do we do effective ministry in a culture that doesn’t trust the Church?

This HOW is the prevailing question we still need to answer. Yet, to get our HOW right, we can’t fail to get our WHAT and WHY right.

Start with WHY. Know your WHAT. Learn then do your HOW. 
The good news is Jesus has given us the basics of WHY, WHAT, and even HOW. 

WHY - To make disciples, get ourselves and others to heaven, become saints, and glorify God. You can sum this up in a mission statement “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” -Matthew 28: 19-20

WHAT - The Bible, the Catechism, and the teachings / doctrines of the Church are revealed by Jesus and given to us so we can know them ourselves and share them with others.

HOW - This is the tricky part. The Catholic Church is using the right buzzwords (discipleship, missionary disciples, evangelization, accompaniment, etc). But we still need to understand that leading someone to conversion (making disciples) is NOT the FINAL goal. The final goal is to make disciples who make other disciples who make other disciples, etc. In other words it means they don’t stop with one conversion to Jesus, but continue to work until we are all holy evangelists for Jesus who can make even more disciples. That kind of goal is much higher than just getting folks to be a bare-minimum intentional disciple. We need to talk in much bigger terms of evangelization and discipleship with leaders. We need to shoot for a higher goal - the bar that Jesus set for us. He wasn't ok with the conversion of the 12. He sent them out to make other disciples and do what he did. So, they also deeply invested in others and sent out further missionary disciples. 
*What about us? 
*Why aren't we as fruitful as we can be? 
*What is the bar of "success" in our context?
*What skills, knowledge, or ability do we need to grow in to reach others and be better leaders?
*What changes need to happen in our organizations, parishes, and dioceses?
*HOW do we do this?

This question isn’t answered by just knowing why we exist or what the Church teaches. It is an ongoing discernment of how we take the WHY and WHAT and weigh them with our current cultural reality (micro and macro levels of culture) to form a plan for success.

This kind of methodology is rarely taught in seminaries and universities. It is learned by being mentored, coached, or trained in how to do it from someone else who currently has the knowledge, skills, and ability to accomplish such things. It is also learned by doing.

• You learn HOW to evangelize by having someone evangelize you and then send you out to evangelize others, not just taking a class on evangelization.
• You learn HOW to grow disciples by having someone help grow you as a disciple and then  implementing a plan of growth with others, not just reading a book.
• You learn HOW to transform a parish by being coached by someone who has done it before, then gathering a team to do it with you.

If you don’t know where to start in learning your “HOW”, I recommend you look at TransformedCatholic.com, which is a great starting place for learning HOW.

Let us pray for one another as we all grow in our WHY, WHAT, and HOW. God bless.