It appears based on the book that they have seemingly made their Catholic identity an afterthought in their ministry because it is not seen as being "seeker friendly". This leaves me a lot of questions about when their parishioners are being fed the "meat" of the faith. There seems to be the creation of a "Catholic lite" atmosphere because seekers do not want "Catholic deep".

Modeling themselves on modern Protestant ministry and non-denominational mega-churches they have in some areas given up the language of the Church to appeal to as many people as possible. After reading the book the first time I set out to a popular Catholic youth forum and without giving any hint to my thoughts on the parish, asked Catholic youth to tell me if the church is, based on its website, Catholic or non-denominational. The majority responded that they had figured out it was Catholic, but only with great difficulty. Many thought they were Protestants. There was a very real level of discomfort among these discipled Catholics. One person even said they probably would have never converted if this was the parish they were exposed to.

So we know that while they remain faithful to the teachings of the Church, a deep Catholic identity can be seen as a liability. This is similar to my experience in mega-churches and their approach to identifying themselves as Protestant Christians. Social outreach and comfort are seen as primary driving evangelistic opportunities. Neither of those are necessarily bad ways to evangelize and I will look at incorporating some of their ideas. My concern: How do you wean the unchurched off of the milk into a mature spirituality, not just service? How does this play into the liturgy as well which they have "tweeked" for seekers.

I have been in a similar parish in my own diocese that had become "seeker friendly" and transformed the parish & liturgy, as much as they were able to along these modern lines. Greeters, information booths, coffee houses, hobnobbing with your pew neighbors during Mass, high tech A/V systems and a pastor who did his best to be "hip". It was immensely difficult to pray, and impossible to pray deeply (think about that and the long term consequences). There was a complete loss of the sense of the sacred. Yes, the Mass remains a sacred act, but the atmosphere proper to the Mass, sacred space, and sacred time, was gone. Since I have not been in the actual parish the authors describe, I don't know if it would be the same experience, I am just wondering.

The authors themselves admit, contradictory to other great works such as Denis McNamara's Catholic Church Architecture & the Spirit of the Liturgy, that they do not believe beauty plays an indispensable role in the liturgy or evangelization (see the chapter on Pretty Churches and Other Lies) - infusing modern technology and as one reviewer put it "rock & roll" does. Yet, beauty remains a transcendental and one of the three natural attributes (with truth and goodness) that attract people to the faith, so there we disagree. I believe a parish can be steeped deeply in our rich Catholic heritage and tradition and still draw in seekers. There does not have to be a discontinuity here. Our family was drawn to the beauty of the Church when we converted. Fr. Robert Barron explains this well in the Catholicism series.

There is a lot that is not answered in the book. One of my questions is what happens when the congregants and the formally dechurched start to get bored with the new trends? This goes along with who they are trying to reach - the "de"churched (a term that needs to be better defined). It happens all of the time in the modernized Protestant churches, including the one I came from. People get bored with the "style" and start to church hop. Most of those teens that were part of the busy youth ministry at my Baptist church have long since left the faith. There is no developed interior life and relationship with Jesus keeping them there. Perhaps, because this is unique experiment in infusing Protestant elements in a Catholic parish, the Sacraments will be enough to keep people there when the trendy is no longer trendy. Or perhaps their staff will be equipped enough to keep up with the trends and change fast enough to keep the attention of their consumers. That is a priority that they list for their staff. I wonder how the work that they are doing now correlates with trends to be seeker friendly in the 70s. How much this work is an updated version of that?