Living on Avenida de Santa Fe in Buenos Aires is a bit of a change from living on Avenida de Red-Dirt-Road-in-Africa, where flying cockroaches buzz over your bed at night. One of the bigger differences are the posh store fronts. In Buenos Aires, I can’t walk by and count the number of phone card sellers or mango booths. Instead, I walk by and count the number of shoe stores and lingerie boutiques.
“Fourteen… fifteen… I should be getting close… sixteen… seventeen… Ah! I remember seeing that bra for sale earlier this morning… I should be home in little more than one block.”
Anther easy landmark for me to count are the number of McDonalds. There were several on the way to Mass at the Basilcia of Neuestra Señora de Socorro. If you have downloaded Google Earth onto your computer, you can view my pictorial of the Basilica by clicking here.
“Three… four… five… How many McDonalds does a city need within fifteen blocks?”
In the year 2007, it is a misnomer to say that McDonalds restaurants are everywhere in the world. It isn’t true. Pigeons are everywhere in the world. McDonalds is nearing the growth rate of pigeons, but still hasn’t conquered large parts of Africa.
It is, however, safe to say that McDonalds is in most places of the world, and has become a symbol of something referred to as “globalization.” The world has developed one single political-economy in which corporations, not countries, are the new powers. This change is threatening to some. They see globalization as an evil of sorts. It really isn’t. Human preference, not economic imperialism, is what fuels the spread of globalization. When a human person consumes a product, s/he likes to be familiar with what s/he is consuming. S/he wants to know that the product is quality.
No matter where someone is in the world, when s/he sees the McDonalds Arches, the consumer is immediately familiar with the products that will be served, and what the quality of the products will be. It minimizes the consumer’s liability. S/he is unlikely to purchase something s/he doesn’t like.
Which is a lot like the Catholic Church, if you don’t mind minimizing Catholics to being mere consumers.
Catholics can walk into any Catholic church in the world, and immediately be familiar with the products served (the Sacraments) and know the quality of the product served (eternal life.)
Sure, every one of our branch offices has a different flare, a local saint, indigenous symbols and architecture, different songs and instruments, but Catholics churches exercise that option because it has a proven tract record of increasing market share within our various constituencies. We’re kind of like Applebee’s in that regard. What is truly alarming is not that Catholicism can be analyzed by the precipice of globalization, but how little economists recognize that Catholics held global positioning before franchise globalization became the trendy thing to do. (I have often thought that Western Secularism is extremely unfair to religion, not recognizing that it is the offspring of Western Religion, but Globalization has held equal disregard.) McDonalds, Starbucks, Wall-Mart, Coca-cola, etc use brand quality reinforcement and replication as tactical approach to business, not recognizing that Catholics had already mastered the process a few centuries before.
OK… I’m done with my little parody of “Religion-as-economics.” To be fair, I must admit that Catholics aren’t the only globalized religion, and we really didn’t invent global outreach, we inherited it from the Roman Empire.
Also to be fair, I must admit that Catholicism isn’t selling a product as our friends at McDonalds are doing. I didn’t sit in the Basilica of Our Lady of Socorro today in order to receive something (though I did). I was not there to practice my Spanish (though I did). I was there to be transformed as an agent of God’s love.
Catholics refer to their worship as a spiritual sacrifice. This means that when we worship, we offer something. We offer first and foremost the work of our hands, the signs of bread and wine, and in doing so, we offer our very selves.
The bread and wine are transformed, but with them, we are as well. In the third of the four common prayers that a priest of the Latin Rite may use to celebrate the sacrificial offering, he says, “Grant that we who are nourished by his body and blood may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ.”
We go to Mass to become something different. We go to change.
We seek to be changed for a purpose. That purpose is stated quite clearly in the prayer that the priest voices on behalf of the congregation. He says, “Lord, may this sacrifice, which has made our peace with you, advance the peace and salvation of all the world.”
I just want to point out the use of the demonstrative “this.” It is a very deceptive word. What does “this” refer to, especially when it is modifying “this sacrifice?” Well if we are merely consumers, “this sacrifice” is just the stuff on the altar, but if we are participants in the liturgy, “this sacrifice” is the entire action of giving the bread and the wine, it is the commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, it is the giving of ourselves, and the prayers which are said by both the priest and congregation. “This” refers to a whole lot of things, not a single product, not a hamburger, not fries. “This” is an experience, and it is an experience which beseeches peace, it beseeches salvation, not just for those assembled, but for the whole world.
Sometimes, sitting at home in the same parish, week after week, it can seem as if the only thing important about the Church which we attend is fundraising campaign they are holding. If we listen to the words that we pray, through the ministry of the priest, we would hear something very different.
Our local experience of church is part of a global experience of the Church, but in a different way than McDonalds.
Our global initiative is not defined by what we consume, but what we offer.