I had the opportunity to watch a recent WWII movie about the British army’s evacuation from the French town called Dunkirk, during the Battle for France. The Germans had pushed the British all the way back to the English Channel, and Dunkirk was the staging city to evacuate.

The terrible scenes of the German pilots strafing the beach with machine guns and bombs were horrifying.  The British army was almost lost, had it not been for the brave British civilians who sailed across the channel in every boat possible to pick up the soldiers. I was struck by this “last stand” location before the British totally evacuated France, leaving the conquering German army completely in control of France.

In high school, I was a bit of a World War II history buff and loved to study the maps that displayed the military movements of the various armies. D-Day was an incredible victory for the Allied forces as they secured beachheads on the French beaches of Normandy.

Omaha Beach, like the rest, was a bloodbath as many young men died to gain control of that little piece of coastline. This was the day and location that the allied forces began to retake France and the rest of Europe from the Germans. It was from those beaches that the Allied Forces flowed into France and eventually the rest of Europe.  

Each of these two beaches, Dunkirk and Omaha, were there to transport men and resources. They were identical in everything accept their perceived purpose. Dunkirk was seen as the “last stand” before leaving. Omaha was seen as the starting point through which they would spread.

As I look at the spiritual landscape of the Catholic Church, I see local parishes within neighborhoods that literally give image to one of these two beaches. They are either last stand parishes before no one else is left, or they are beachheads through which parishioners spread the kingdom of Christ in the neighborhood.

Which is yours?

For Dunkirk parishes, they see parishioners and their kids moving out of the neighborhood and no other Catholics moving in. Despite the fact that the neighborhoods are filled with new people, they see their parish’s mission as serving only Catholics.  

This is not an indictment of those parishes. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that this phenomenon has occurred. It was not their intention to get to this place, but this is where they are. Over the years, these amazing parishes barely had enough time to meet the sacramental needs of their parishioners.  Now they find themselves in a situation where the neighbors don’t want Jesus, programs or sacraments, and they have no clue what to do. The resulting perception is that it is time to get out, rather than time to dig in and figure out how to move forward.

It is for this reason that the call for the New Evangelization exists. We have lost the true purpose for the local parish. We are meant to go out into our neighborhoods and bring people to Christ. That requires a serious transformation of the local parish where the leadership (as well as their bishops) must revision the parish as a beachhead through which we go into our neighborhoods and share the good news of Jesus.

No parish will become a beachhead without having a leadership that is committed to change. This will take authentic faith!!!!  This will take a faith that believes that we have the Holy Spirit, and that it is the Spirit who is more than capable of changing hearts and transforming secular neighborhoods into Christian ones.

Each of us must make this discernment to determine whether we see ourselves as disciples who have the power to influence others or Catholics who are comfortable with the status quo. Once we see where we stand, what are we going to do about it?