To know me is to love me, and to love me is to accept all my stuff. Just ask any guy who has had the “privilege” of living with me—and all my junk.

Yes, I admit it. I’m a pack rat. I save stuff. My intentions are good: I always think I’m going to need it at some future time that never seems to arrive, or that I’m keeping it until I can give it to just the right person I never seem to meet.

During my recuperation last year I watched a lot of the TV show Clean House, hoping I’d learn a few things. And I did: I learned I sure am glad I’m not like those people, because they have real problems.

Seriously, I did learn that much of the clutter in our lives, whether material, mental, or even spiritual (oh, yes, we can have spiritual clutter) has to do with priorities. So often we fill our lives with stuff because we haven’t decided what is truly important to us—or because we’re so afraid to deal with the important issues that we overwhelm ourselves with minutia.

I wonder if the Church has the same problem: too much clutter and poorly defined priorities. Some people try awfully hard to bury their heads in the sand and pretend problems will simply go away: “Maybe if enough stuff piles up, no one will notice” or “Maybe if we drown people in minutia they won’t be able to see the big picture.”

When the new General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM) came out about seven years ago, the level of attention it got in some corners struck me as a little peculiar. Not that the document doesn’t deal with some important matters, but in the grand scheme of things one has to ask about priorities.

Attention was focused on this instruction booklet to the exclusion of other Church documents and issues. The country was immersed in the Church’s sex-abuse scandal, but some focused on the new GIRM’s instruction on purifying chalices, cups, and patens after Communion. Parishes were closing and merging, and some focused on whether priests should leave the sanctuary to share the sign of peace with the faithful. People were leaving the Catholic Church in record numbers and dioceses were declaring bankruptcy, and some were preoccupied with whether people should hold hands during the Our Father. That some would focus more attention on the latter issues rather than on the former struck me as a clear case of misplaced priorities.

Maybe it was an innocent mistake, as simple as being out of touch with the faithful, of not spending enough time in the day-to-day struggles of the people of God.

Or maybe it was a deliberate choice not to deal with the larger problems, to focus on minutia instead. It’s much easier to deal with whether we should kneel or stand during the eucharistic prayer than to figure out why so many of our children are abandoning the faith. It’s a lot simpler to deny Communion to a politician than to deal with the reality of why some Catholics choose to support abortion.

Either way, seven years later, attendance continues to decline, “full and active participation” is in serious jeopardy, the Vatican has launched an investigation of U.S. women religious, financial problems have reached crisis proportions, the “sex scandal” continues to plague the Church, and a crisis of trust exists among laity, clergy, and bishops.

If we but have the courage to trust in the Spirit, we have the power to face these challenges. If we but have the strength to look inward and focus our attention on the things that matter most to God, we can overcome these obstacles. All we have to do is set our priorities and trust that God hasn’t brought us this far to leave us—and that  miracles are possible.

And yet some are still rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.