Commentary 25/06/23 Ecclesial asthma: Finding our holy breath again

[성기화 요셉]

Are we ready, individually and as a community, to be renewed, challenged, and enlivened by the breath of God?

A priest is seen celebrating Holy Mass in its traditional form according to the liturgical books promulgated in 1962 by Pope Saint John XXIII in this undated photo. (Photo: The Institute of Christ the King)

By Michel Chambon

Published: June 23, 2025 03:45 AM GMT

Updated: June 23, 2025 04:01 AM GMT

In the Creed, Christians proclaim their belief that the Church is holy. But let’s be honest: the Church is far from perfect. We see its flaws all too often. So, what does it really mean to say the Church is holy? And what does that ask of us, its members?

Holiness belongs to God alone. In Christian belief, God is the only one who is truly, absolutely holy. Yet, God invites us to share in that holiness — and He does so through the Church.

In the First Testament, God's life-giving presence is often described as a breath — a breath that flows through our throats, sustaining us. In the New Testament, this divine presence is represented by images like tongues of fire, a dove, or flowing water. All of these are dynamic, elusive elements. You can’t trap breath, fire, water, or a dove in your hands. God’s holiness is the same: it can't be boxed in or controlled. It always goes beyond us.

So, when does the Church stop being holy? When does it start resisting this divine breath that gives it life? When does it begin to suffocate? What are the signs of ecclesial asthma?

Unfortunately, this can happen in countless small ways — through the individual and collective choices of its members. But for the Church to truly choke off God's breath and lose its vitality, it takes more than just a few missteps. It takes many. It takes a multitude — a whole legion.

And strangely enough, it often begins with something as simple as not praying. How many Christians actually take just three or four minutes a day to pray? Sadly, many of us are spiritually illiterate — and we’ve never really been taught how to pray daily. We struggle to pray alone as Jesus did. We find it hard to be truly present to the One who is always present to us. And so, we end up turning Sunday Mass into our only spiritual moment, treating it as a personal devotional rather than a collective act of worship.

This is a kind of distortion. Mass is meant to be a public, communal celebration — but it’s often reduced to a private devotion. It is my moment of prayer. In my home diocese, I often saw clergy members and churchgoers insist that Sunday Mass was the “summit” of Christian life — while they implicitly dismissed other forms of Sunday prayer as invalid or insufficient.

In their mind, it was “Sunday Mass or nothing.” Their intentions may have been good, but the outcome in a changing world has been disastrous.

When you only offer mountaintop experiences, without the gentle hills or training paths to prepare people, many end up gasping for air. They burn out. And the Church begins to suffocate — its breath becomes labored, and the whole body convulses.

And it's not just the Mass that we distort — we distort all the sacraments. In a healthy Church, every sacrament is meant to be a channel of God’s grace — a source of the Church’s holiness. But even here, we resist the Spirit. Take the healing sacraments — confession and the anointing of the sick. They are deeply underused. Fear plays a role, yes, but in the end, people avoid them — and the life-giving breath they offer is lost.

When it comes to the sacraments of initiation — baptism, Eucharist, confirmation — and the sacraments of adult life — marriage and holy orders — they are often surrounded by so many rules and requirements that many give up entirely. In trying to “protect” what is holy, as if we own it, we end up suffocating God’s people. Cultural expectations and power struggles take over, and the breath of God is structurally blocked by some.

And then, ironically, when the pope and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith urge us to be more generous — when they call us to bless abundantly and generously, even those in irregular unions — some react with outrage. We hear loud, self-righteous complaints dressed up as piety. It’s as if we’re proud of our spiritual asthma.

But we must keep in mind that if the Holy Spirit breathes through the Church via prayer and the sacraments, it also does so through the head of the Church — the magisterium. For Catholics, the Spirit speaks through the pope and its formal leadership. But when we demand simple yes-or-no answers from Rome, refusing nuance or change, we shut out the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Like the Pharisees who criticized Jesus for being too bold, we push for rigid rules, and the Church becomes breathless.

So, let us be clear: Asthma is a disease that affects the whole body, but it begins in certain organs. Everyone suffers, but not all parts are equally to blame. In the body, asthma involves the lungs and bronchial tubes more than the brain.

Likewise, ecclesial asthma is often caused by those meant to help the Spirit flow — those tasked with guiding our collective life of prayer and facilitating the sacraments. When we see attitudes like “Mass or nothing,” or manipulative control over access to sacraments, or a near-total lack of instituted acolytes, or Catholic clergymen attacking the pope, we have to ask: what’s gone wrong?

To heal our ecclesial asthma, we must return to prayer, sacraments, and ecclesial obedience, individually and collectively. We need to savor every breath the Holy Spirit gives. But we must also hold accountable the “lungs” and “nervous system” of the Church — the structures that cut us off from God’s life-giving air. In our ecclesial asthma, there is a hierarchy of responsibility that must be recognized. Though the entire body is involved, it is the lungs and nervous system — not the head — that are more to blame.

In a world where Pentecostal churches are growing rapidly and Catholic vocations to the priesthood are in rapid decline, we must ask ourselves: What is the Holy Spirit telling us? Are we ready — both individually and as a community — to be renewed, challenged, and enlivened by the breath of God?

Holiness is not a fixed state. It is a living breath — something to be received, nurtured, and shared each day, by each one of us and by all of us together.

This is part two of a four-part series on four core ecclesial diseases, which will appear on Mondays. Read part one here.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.