I was born into a faith tradition that was much more "top down" and centralized. This had some upsides. Church buildings were built with pleasing uniformity. Catechesis was organized and normative across the board. The manuals and materials were all very professionally done. Everything was professional and quality.
In Catholicism, prevailing ideas of collegiality and subsidiarity mean that each Bishop's conference, diocese, and ultimately parish has lots more freedom in how they design their buildings, what catechetical materials they use, how they run their programs, etc. I was surprised by this at first. It seemed like a weakness. It seemed to create room for unevenness in policies and quality.
While unevenness in the negative sense can and does occur, I have since come to appreciate the beauty in this approach. It attests to the following concepts:
1) The necessity of relying on the one Spirit, dwelling in the Body of Christ. We are many, who drink from the same Spirit. Confident in this indwelling, we give each other the space to contribute in uniqueness and freedom to the Body of Christ. Decentralizing allows us to get out of the way so that the Spirit can work.
2) The Body of Christ per se. The point is not to all be the same, but to be respectively the hands, feet, eyes, etc. We are meant to contribute in different ways. Poor parishes are beautiful. Rich parishes are beautiful.
3) Our respect for nature. From this respect for nature, comes respect for the uniqueness of each culture and landscape the Church evangelizes. We want to preserve local culture as much as possible. We want parishes to grow organically, where the Spirit cultivates what is naturally there, not voiding it. We understand that the Spirit works in tandem with natural processes.
It feels good to walk into a Catholic parish. The feeling of holiness emanating from the Real Presence is there. At the same time, parishes feel "real." The carpets may be a bit worn. The statues and decorations may come from different time periods. Thing won't be perfectly "matching." The vibe isn't corporate. It appears that real people, with the limited resources they had, made the most beautiful worship space they could, over time.
This is important as a model for good living. We invite God into the concrete circumstances of everyday life. In fact, a keyword here is process. We respect the mundane, the limited circumstances, the everyday. We are patient with the "realness" of it all. Things don't have to be "perfect" before Jesus comes. We learn to see holiness in things as they are, not as they "should" be. "Catalogue land" ideas recede. Those ideas inevitably distort our relationship with reality, which is beautiful in its variety and imperfection.
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