One doesn’t wish to harp excessively about Wacky Church Things Proceeding from the Seventies, but hey, it’s cathartic; thanks in advance for bearing with the healing process.
Today’s topic is the fallout from the Sixties and Seventies-style Encounter Group. It has metastasised over the decades into “small group sharing” in the church, and shows no signs of abatement any time soon.
I loathe this activity: when I’m at a conference, workshop, or retreat, almost nothing makes my skin crawl like the announcement: “We will now break into small sharing groups.”
This is due to decades of negative, embarrassing, or just plain pointless experiences with these discussion groups.
Whenever possible, I now try to avoid church events that include them.
I remember one adult catechesis meeting where the small groups were supposed to discuss The Fall (of man, not the season after summer).
Two or three people dominated the group arguing about whether the forbidden fruit was an apple or a pomegranate.
Thank goodness the time ran out, or the debaters might have moved on to something doctrinally significant, like whether the leaves Adam and Eve sewed together were really fig or not.
Sometimes (frequently, actually), group participants reveal that they disagree with this or that Church teaching—in the olden days, that might have been called ‘leading others astray’ or ‘giving scandal’, but I guess it’s shorter and less judgemental to call it “sharing”.
When discussion groupies move beyond their own emotions and opinions, and make declarations (say, on theology or canon law) that are completely erroneous, no one is allowed to correct or contradict them, because (as instructed): “We’re all just sharing: no one is ‘teaching’ and no one is ‘learning’”. You can say that again.
Then there is inappropriate sharing, aka Too Much Information. The very first time I meet someone in a church/retreat setting, I don’t need to know that she was once on drugs, sexually promiscuous, and bore three children out of wedlock.
Or you attend a Marriage Enrichment function, and come away with the intimate details of the conjugal lives of everyone there, including the diocesan facilitators. Enrichment, not so much—more likely: mental images that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I did not attend the following women’s workshop (my friend ‘Bea’ did), but it’s just too good not to include. Not only was Bea enjoined to partake in small group sharing, but the session facilitator visited each group in turn so that participants could “speak their pain” to a hand puppet of St Thérèse of Lisieux, worn by the facilitator. Words fail.
Group therapy may have its place in specific and limited situations, but it is used far too often, and haphazardly, in church and retreat settings.
The Encounter Group mentality has baptised former evils such as idle/morbid curiosity, imprudence and gossip. In the name of counterfeit ‘honesty, openness, and inclusion’, this mentality has abetted the destruction of things like delicacy, discretion, privacy, good taste, and personal dignity.
Discussion facilitators solemnly admonish: “what is shared in the group stays in the group”. Good luck with that. Unlike your local priest—indeed every priest on the planet—Sally Sharer and Dick Blather (neither of whom you may have met before) are not bound by the Seal of the Confessional.
Indeed, here we hit the crux of the matter: as private sacramental confession declines, various forms of public confession continue to gain ascendancy.
It’s incredible that some people fear, or scorn, the former, while readily accepting the latter, even when it doesn’t include 15 minutes of TV fame and a pay cheque from Oprah.
Millions are plugged in 24/7 to social media; relatively fewer read Scripture daily, pray the Divine Office, or avail themselves of flesh and blood Spiritual Direction.
Overall, I much prefer Christ’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance to the sort of Facebook absolution that consists of nothing more than the miserable knowledge that everyone else is doing it too.
Never before has there been so much chatter and access to information, yet so little nuts-and-bolts knowledge of the faith and participation in sacramental life.
Prayer, Confession and the Holy Eucharist, the ultimate forms of small group sharing: facilitators, moderators and sock puppets not required.