Articles by Russell Shaw
Careerism
Sep 23, 2013 / 00:00 amWell up on the list of things Pope Francis abhors is religious careerism. "Careerism is leprosy. Leprosy! Please, no careerism," he exclaimed in a talk last June to young priests in training for the Vatican diplomatic service. It's a theme he sounds often and with deep conviction.As well he might. But the problem is more complex than at first might appear. Indeed, there's another side to this particular coin, one I'll get to in a minute. But first, careerism.Anthony Trollope understood it extremely well. Trollope, who lived from 1815 to 1882, was one of that gifted group of British Victorian novelists whose ranks included such as Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot. Among the works of this prodigiously prolific writer is a series of four novels known collectively as the Barsetshire Chronicles. They depict clerical life in rural England during the middle years of the 19th century, painting a portrait that's often funny, sometimes sad, and always deeply human, with clerical careerism never far from the surface.The best known of these books is the second, Barchester Towers. At the center of the story is the memorable figure of the Rev. Mr. Obediah Slope, a young Anglican clergyman who is the very embodiment of religious careerism. Of him Trollope writes: "Though he can stoop to fawn, and stoop low indeed, if need be, he has still within him the power to assume the tyrant; and with the power, he has certainly the wish."What follows is the story of how Slope sets the placid diocese of Barchester on its ear through a remorseless campaign to fulfill that wish.To be sure, Obediah Slope is a character in a story, yet people like him exist for real. They're the ones Pope Francis is talking about – and warning against imitating – when he speaks of religious careerism. It's a problem for the clergy, certainly, but not only for them – especially not these days, when growing numbers of lay women and men pursue careers in the institutions of the Church. Self-seeking and self-promotion, cutting corners to get ahead at the other guy's expense – these things are not peculiar to people in the clerical state.At the same time, concern to avoid careerism should allow for a decent measure of ambition and the desire to do a good job. Surely it doesn't justify that other bane of religious institutions – sloppiness, laziness, a general lack of professionalism, sometimes smugly rationalized by saying, "This is a church, not a multilateral corporation” – as if that were an argument that excused bad work.In short, legitimate resistance to careerism mustn't be allowed to obscure the spiritual value of honest good work done to the best of one's ability in a religious setting as much as a secular one.Granting all that, though, how can someone take a genuinely positive approach to work and career without lapsing almost without noticing it into careerism or something resembling it?The answer of course lies in motivation: do the work for the love of God, family, and neighbor. That should be the motive for work done in any setting, but it applies especially to work done in a religious institution because of its obvious capacity to add to--or else disastrously subtract from--the institutional witness to faith.Here's a suggestion. If you haven't read it lately, take a look at the "spirituality of work" powerfully laid out in Blessed John Paul II's remarkable 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens. Nothing could be farther removed from careerism than that.
The pleasures and perils of apocalyptic literature
Sep 10, 2013 / 00:00 amRecently I read about a group in Switzerland that's agitating to remove all reference to God from the Swiss national anthem. Since the national anthem of the United States says nary a word about God, Americans are in no position to point the finger of blame at the godless Swiss. Rather, I mention this factoid from Switzerland because it's a perfect example of modern secularism in its overtly aggressive mode. This same movement to push God out of the picture can be found just about everywhere now. It isn't new. As I was reading about events in Switzerland, I also was re-reading Robert Hugh Benson's century-old apocalyptic novel Lord of the World, a chilling fictional account of the events surrounding the coming of the Antichrist at a point in the not very distant future. Benson was a son of an Archbishop of Canterbury who became a Catholic priest and wrote a number of highly readable devotional works and novels with religious themes. Lord of the World is the best known of these. Every now and then someone new falls under the spell of what its author himself called a "terribly sensational" book and offers fresh testimony to its nightmarish power. Apocalyptic literature--writing about events heralding and accompanying the end of the world--has a long history and occupies its own special niche. Far and away the best known work of this sort is the New Testament's Book of Revelation, attributed to St. John the Apostle. New additions to the genre, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have multiplied since Robert Hugh Benson's day. A very recent specimen from a Catholic author is Paul Thigpen's The Burden (Sea Star Press), cast as a series of verse denunciations in the Old Testament manner aimed at various contemporary perversions and threatening appropriate retributions for each. Thigpen captures the spirit of this sort of writing in an introduction: "We are a generation of mockers, and we face a calamitous harvest….Spiritually, socially, politically, economically, the consequences of our sin whirl around us today and threaten us with catastrophe." The message could hardly be clearer: repent and be saved while you still can. Whether The Burden and other current apocalyptic works will stand the test of time is beyond predicting. Lord of the World obviously has done that, and it's worth considering why. One obvious reason is that Benson is a very skillful writer, with a rich (some would say overly rich) style and a gift for fast-moving narrative. But there's also a larger explanation than that. He saw and described in compelling detail not only the triumph of secularism--humanism, he called it in his day--but its terrifying evolution into a new religion exalting humankind in place of God. "It was Positivism of a kind," Benson wrote, "Catholicism without Christianity, Humanity worship without its inadequacy. It was not man that was worshiped but the Idea of man, deprived of his supernatural principle." Moreover, as he depicts it, this religion without God it is enormously appealing to the already de-Christianized, secularized masses. How persuasive individual readers will find this depends on each one's capacity for the willing suspension of disbelief that works of the imagination always demand. Here's one cautionary note. Lord of the World is a powerful antidote to the mindset that celebrates things like experimentation on human embryos and euthanasia. Like other powerful medicines, though, it must be taken in small doses lest it transport the reader to those fever swamps of paranoia that lurk on the fringes of religion.
Pope on gay individuals
Aug 8, 2013 / 00:00 amTwo days after Pope Francis' now famous remarks on homosexuals and homosexuality, I heard a homily in which the homilist said Francis was giving us light "to see things in a way we never saw them before."That certainly is true. What the homilist didn't say is that in the present instance the Pope also was taking a risk--a calculated one, no doubt. It's the danger of being misinterpreted and misrepresented, whether accidentally or by design.Plainly, the Holy Father sees significant pastoral benefits in reaching out to gay people. These include the possibility of reconciling some of them with the Church and fostering a more charitable, welcoming attitude toward them among Catholics at large. These are real goods.But the potential harm involved here is no fantasy. It lies in the risk of creating the perception--or allowing it to be created--that the Pope is opening the door a crack to approval of the gay "lifestyle," including homosexual acts and same-sex marriage. Some early reactions among gay rights activists to what Francis said seemed to justify this concern.Francis is undoubtedly aware of these things. Even so, he apparently believes that, on the whole, the potential benefits outweigh the potential harms. This is a papal judgment call that the rest of the Church should respect.Seen in context, what he said about homosexuality in the course of a freewheeling July 28 news conference on the plane carrying him back to Rome from World Youth Day in Brazil was not so obscure.Speaking of priests--and by extension, it seems safe to suppose, of non-clerics as well--he found no fault with someone who has a homosexual orientation but "seeks the Lord and has good will." This, one might add, is hardly something new for a Church leader to say.Instead, Pope Francis noted, the problem is with a "gay lobby" operating behind the scenes--supposing such a thing to exist--and with those who act out homosexual orientation by engaging in homosexual acts. He made the latter point implicitly but clearly by citing what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says on the subject.All the same, it appeared at first that he'd made a serious verbal slip by repeating the familiar mantra, "Who am I to judge?"Casual observation and serious studies concur that the moral relativism expressed in "Who am I to judge?" is dominant in today's America. Non-judgmentalism is the eleventh commandment for many Americans, according to sociologist Alan Wolfe. Considered in this light, the Pope's unscripted remark seemed unhelpful.But did he say it? Look again at his words: "If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge that person?" (In the original Italian: Se una persona e gay e cerca il Signore e ha buona volonta, ma chi sono io per giudicarla?) Reports that omitted the first part failed to capture Francis' meaning. This is the difference between what would otherwise be a shrug of the shoulders ("who am I to judge?") and a necessary norm of faith ("seeks the Lord and has good will"). If there's a lesson, it's a familiar one. Don't believe everything you read and hear about this Pope. The Holy Father's off-the-cuff populism is hugely appealing to millions. But it lays him and the rest of us open to hasty reporting that ignores nuances and complexities in favor of headline-grabbing simplifications, while at the same time making it easy for special interests to exploit the results.
The phony inevitability of same-sex marriage
Jul 12, 2013 / 00:00 amClaims that something is inevitable are generally of two kinds. Sometimes the claim is simply a statement of fact ("Inevitably, the sun will rise tomorrow"). Other times it expresses a wish or perhaps a fear ("So-and-so is sure to be next president of the United States"). The claim that same-sex marriage is inevitable in the entire U.S. is of the second kind – a rhetorical ploy by advocates who hope frequent repetition of the claim will bully opponents into a defeatist state of mind. For them at least, this makes perfectly good sense. But it doesn't make any sense at all for the opponents. In meekly accepting the claims of the other side as gospel truth, they put a damper on resistance and help make the inevitability of gay marriage a fact. An instance of what I'm talking about was the dismaying reaction of a prominent prolife activist to the Supreme Court marriage decisions last month. One overturned a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act while the other let stand, on procedural grounds rather than substantive ones, a lower court ruling against California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in that state. These were indeed victories for the same-sex marriage people but by no means final and definitive ones. Yet the person of whom I speak chose to call them the "rejection of marriage in America" while likening them to the Supreme Court's action in the 1973 abortion decision Roe v. Wade. This reaction was, to say the least, a bad idea. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court asserted a constitutional basis for nationwide abortion on demand. This, however, is precisely what the justices did not do with same-sex marriage. Instead, they left the question – so far at least – up to the states. That's the point opponents of gay marriage need to be emphasizing now. There was something of the same troubling tendency to concede too much in Justice Antonin Scalia's otherwise admirable dissent from Justice Anthony Kennedy's obnoxious majority opinion in the DOMA case. Next time the question comes before the court, Justice Scalia declared, the majority can be counted on to ratchet up its approval of same-sex marriage to the level of national policy. Maybe so. But then again – maybe not. And saying it's inevitable doesn't help. One need not be Little Mary Sunshine in order to believe that this fight will go on. Thirty states have amended their constitutions to ban gay marriage, and the resistance in many of these will be fierce. Significantly, too, public opinion on the issue varies vastly on a regional basis, ranging from over 60 percent support in New England – where all of the states recognize gay marriage – to over 50 percent opposition in the eight South Central states. For the most part, despite the strenuous efforts of the media, gay marriage, while enjoying predictably strong backing in culturally liberal areas, has yet to make significant inroads in the American heartland. By religion, support ranges from over 80 percent among Jews and people with no religious affiliation to only about 30 percent among white evangelical Protestants. About 60 percent of Catholics are said to support gay marriage – but this figure obviously is skewed upward by the support of non-practicing Catholics. People looking for motivation to resist need look no further than Justice Kennedy's DOMA opinion. In effect, Kennedy told the world that opponents of same-sex marriage are hateful bigots. Of this one can only say that Supreme Court justices demean their office in stooping to name-calling to support their views.
American Church
Jun 27, 2013 / 00:00 amHerewith a column for the 4th of July.In the question period after a talk I'd given on my new book, American Church, a woman raised an important point: “If the Church in the U.S. faces as many problems as you say, why is it doing so much better here than in much of Europe?”Great question. My answer – which I also give in the book – was along these lines.“It has a lot to do with the First Amendment principle of separation of Church and State. Yes, I know – ‘separation’ sometimes is used as a club by secularists who want to drive religion out of the public square. But on the whole it's been a great blessing for the Church and for religion in America.“For one thing, church-state separation has generally kept government out of religious affairs, while also keeping clerics out of inappropriate involvement in politics. In combination with Cardinal Gibbons' wise decision to embrace the emerging labor movement in the late 19th century, this spared the Church the sort of virulent anticlericalism found in countries like France, Spain, and even ‘Catholic’ Ireland as a reaction against the political clericalism of the not so distant past.”Almost always, I might have added, clericalism breeds anticlericalism. That we've largely escaped the worst sort of clericalism in America means we've also been spared the worst sort of anticlericalism.But granted all that, the situation of the Catholic Church in America today is increasingly perilous. American Church explains why. In brief, the explanation goes like this.Nearly 40 years ago, reacting to the Supreme Court's then-recent decision legalizing abortion as well as other social and political developments, I published a magazine article with the title “The Alienation of American Catholics.”The point I was making was that American secular culture had lately shifted in directions radically opposed to central Catholic values and beliefs. Hence the rising sense of alienation from that culture being experienced by Catholics like me.What I wasn't so conscious of then was that millions of my fellow Catholics had for years been becoming part of this hostile culture – accepting and adopting as their own its world view, its value system, its patterns of behavior, even when these clashed with their Catholic faith. This was painfully apparent in matters of sexual morality, but it also applied to marriage and the family, many issues of social justice, capital punishment, abortion, and the whole bourgeois consumerist lifestyle. More and more, Catholics were becoming nearly indistinguishable from other Americans on questions like these.Looking for an explanation for what was happening, I hit upon the process that sociologists call cultural assimilation – in this case, assimilation into American secular culture – that Catholics had experienced since the 19th century and, with great rapidity and in huge numbers, especially since World War II. It's a complex, fascinating tale, not well understood by many Catholics themselves yet central to the situation in which the Church now finds itself. The subtitle of my book sums it up: “The remarkable rise, meteoric fall, and uncertain future of Catholicism in America.”There's a solution, but it isn't easy. It requires rebuilding a strong Catholic subculture committed to sustaining the religious identity of American Catholics and forming them for the task of evangelizing America. Can that be done? Perhaps. Will it be attempted? That has yet to be seen. This 4th of July, say a prayer that it is. And remember to say thanks for church-state separation. Things would be a lot worse without it.
The anticlerical Pope
Jun 13, 2013 / 00:00 amIs Pope Francis our first anticlerical pope? Technically speaking, he isn't – his two predecessors also were more or less critical of clericalism – but he is well on his way to being the most outspoken one.Consider a widely circulated quote from a 2011 interview he gave while he was still Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires. In case you haven't seen it or have forgotten it, the key passage goes like this:"As I have said before, there is a problem: the temptation to clericalism. We priests tend to clericalize the laity. We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own thing. And the laity – not all but many – ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar boy than the protagonist of a lay path…."The layman is a layman and has to live as a layman with the strength of his baptism, which enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society…not from his pulpit but from his everyday life. And the priest – let the priest carry the cross of the priest, since God gave him a broad enough shoulder for this."These are strong, bracing words. But besides the words, Francis's manner and lifestyle – unpretentious, simple, direct – constitute a kind of living repudiation of certain clericalist conventions. (Lest there be any doubt – many other good priests also speak and live this way.)The essence of clericalism in the sense in which Pope Francis (and I) use the word is a way of thinking that takes for granted that the clerical vocation and state in life are both superior to and normative for all other Christian vocations and states. From this point of view it follows that clerics are the active agents in the Church – the ones who make the decisions, give the orders, exercise command. The laity's role is to listen and do as they're told.Many lay people appear still to think this way at least as much as, and probably more than, their priests do. That's true even (or perhaps especially) of those who rebel against it and drop out of the Church. Deeply rooted and pervasive, it's an abuse that replaces the idea of a Church whose fundamentally equal members have diverse offices and roles with a caricature: clerics are bosses, lay people get bossed.America isn't the only place it exists. In a talk recently in New York, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said "strong remnants of inherited clericalism" continue to plague the Church in Ireland. "The days of the dominant or at times domineering role of clergy within what people call the 'institutional Church' have changed, but part of the culture still remains," he said.So how to proceed from here? Pope Benedict XVI more than once suggested an important dimension of what needs to be done in floating the idea of "co-responsibility."In a message to a meeting last August, he explained: "Co-responsibility demands a change in mindset especially concerning the role of lay people in the Church. They should not be regarded as 'collaborators' of the clergy but, rather, as people who are really 'co-responsible' for the Church's being and acting."Here's a thought. Reforming the central administrative machinery of the Church stands high on Pope Francis's agenda. Mightn't finding ways for lay people to have a stronger presence and voice in what happens in Rome be part of it? That could be an idea whose time has come.
Strange gods
Jun 4, 2013 / 00:00 amIn one of his typically simple, direct, and forceful homilies, Pope Francis warned recently against idols and idolatry. "We have to empty ourselves of the many small or great idols that we have and in which we take refuge, on which we often seek to base our security," he told a congregation in Rome.The chances of people today bowing to Baal or burning incense to Diana of the Ephesians are probably not great. It's a minor worry compared to everything else there is to worry about. But the Pope's words become highly relevant when you realize he meant "idols" in a broader sense.Just how broad became clear when, greeting new ambassadors to the Holy See in mid-May, Francis saw a form of idolatry at the root of the global financial crisis. In place of the "primacy of human beings," he said, "we have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal."Pope Francis isn't the only one to make the case against idolatry lately. His remarks coincide with the appearance of a book called Strange Gods (Ave Maria Press) that takes a close-up look at some varieties of idol worship in everyday life. It's the work of Elizabeth Scalia, well known to the blogosphere as the Anchoress. She also manages the Catholic channel of the popular Patheos website. Faithful readers know her as a thoughtful writer with a gift for down to earth eloquence. Her book is fresh evidence of both.Scalia describes idolatry like this: "To place anything--be it another deity or something more commonplace like romantic love, anger, ambition, or fear--before the Almighty is to give it preeminence in its regard. To become too attached to a thought or feeling or thing is to place it between God and ourselves."The problem with doing this is--or should be--obvious. "When we attach ourselves to something other than God, God's presence is blocked, unseen, and disconnected from our awareness." Something else has taken the place of God. And that something is an idol.But, you say, in no way am I tempted to do that. Don't be too sure. Idols can and do take many forms, wear many different disguises suited to our individual tastes and weaknesses. For one person, idolatry is all wrapped up in the satisfaction that comes with doing terribly hard work. For someone else, it's the different set of gratifications involved in relaxing and taking it easy (including taking it easy on the job). Scalia suggests the scope of this diversity in organizing her bestiary in chapters bearing titles like "The Idol of I," "The Idol of Coolness and Sex," and so on. There's even a chapter on "super idols"--those personalized composites of one's very own favorite ideologies that, taken together, "give us permission to hate and tell us our hate is not just reasonable but pure."As one might expect, the temptation to idolatry is both seductive and deceptive. Other people's idols are usually obvious, but our own tend to be invisible--to us, that is. Seeing them clearly so as to resist them and root them out requires help--the help that comes from rigorous, regular self-examination, reception of the sacrament of penance, and spiritual counsel from a reliable guide. For beginners and those farther along, one such guide is Elizabeth Scalia's Strange Gods.
Marriage surprise
Apr 5, 2013 / 00:00 amSurprise! Approval of same-sex marriage has risen sharply among Americans in just a few years – according to one poll, from 41 percent in favor in 2004 to nearly 60 percent now.Some surprise. The same media trumpeting this change lately worked hard to bring it about. Major sectors of the communication industry, both news and entertainment, have served as advocates for same-sex marriage, and the present situation reflects their handiwork. Don't be bashful, guys, stand up and take the credit you deserve.In fairness to the media, most of them undoubtedly think backing gay marriage is a good thing to do. When moral consensus breaks down in a society, as it has in America today, people's built-in impulse to organize life in moral categories moves them to seek new objects of moral concern. Thus we get things like the attempt to ban oversized soft drink containers by decree. For Americans egged on by media, the legalization of same-sex marriage is another, less risible instance of the same thing.The media didn't act alone. Judges, educators, and clergy programmed by ideology have joined politicians prompted by expediency to do their bit. But the media have been the loudest mouthpieces for gay marriage – shock troops of the culture war, promoting the cause relentlessly.Preceded by a barrage of coverage and commentary lecturing it on what it should do, the U.S. Supreme Court during Holy Week heard oral arguments in two gay marriage cases. Its decision will come in late June. While it would be hazardous to predict the result, no one will be tremendously surprised if the justices take a states' rights approach – upholding California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in that state but overturning the Defense of Marriage Act that recognizes only man-woman unions as marriages for purposes of federal law.But no matter how these cases turn out, that plainly will not be the end of it. Since the Supreme Court is unlikely, at least for the moment, to discover in the Constitution a fundamental right for homosexual couples to marry, pressuring the court to do so will become a priority for gay rights activists and their media friends. And if President Obama gets to name one or two more justices to the court, it could happen in just a few years.One reason gay rights groups and the media have made such progress lately can be found in the failure of traditional marriage supporters to offer a compelling account of the threat that recognizing same-sex marriage poses to traditional marriage. But consider. Statistics and everyday observation both underline the fact that marriage is in trouble in America today. Fewer and fewer Americans even bother to marry. Part of the cause is the widespread collapse of agreement on what marriage is. The traditional understanding is this: marriage is a monogamous, permanent relationship between a man and a woman, grounded in sexual complementarity and intended for the begetting and raising of children and the mutual love and support of the spouses. One or more essential elements of that definition are eradicated by society's toleration of no-fault divorce, infidelity … and same-sex marriage. This isn't to say that all those who want to enter into such unions wish to undermine traditional marriage. Most are simply seeking what everyone seeks in marriage – happiness – and who can blame them for that? But natural human sympathy doesn't justify equating an ersatz version of marriage with genuine marriage. If that isn't deeply harmful to traditional marriage in these confused times, what in heaven's name is?
Pope Francis
Mar 25, 2013 / 00:00 amThe surprising election of Pope Francis plainly was nosurprise to the people who really counted: the cardinals, that is, who swiftly chosehim on the first full day and fifth ballot of the conclave. While not a speedrecord, the timing showed the electors had no difficulty agreeing that theArchbishop of Buenos Aires was the man for the job. Here was a grievous blow to punditry. In retrospect, itshould have been obvious that Cardinal Bergoglio, a top contender in theconclave of 2005, might well be chosen Pope Benedict XVI's successor. Althoughsome thought that at 76 his age was against him, many cardinals are men intheir 70s who may not see the age question quite that way. Despite the favorable omens, however, he showed up on fewpre-conclave pundit lists. The best explanation is that journalists don't thinklike cardinals – and vice versa of course, which arguably is a good thing forboth groups. Now that he's been elected, what will he do? We are told PopeFrancis will be a "pope of the poor." No doubt, but what does thatmean? Within the limits of his new position, he will remain a manof simple lifestyle. Furthermore, every pope since at least Blessed John XXIIIhas actively championed the cause of the oppressed, and Francis will be noexception. Will he criticize the libertarian economics of the capitalist West,including the United States, as Pope John,Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI all did? And if he does,will Americans who've been saying "Isn't that nice?" about hislifestyle shut their ears to his message? How many will adopt a simplelifestyle themselves? Blessed John Paul II did pope-watchers a favor by settingout the agenda of his pontificate in considerable detail in his firstencyclical, Redemptor Hominis, whichappeared in March 1979 only five months after his election the previous October.Thereafter he thereafter largely followed its plan. Absent something like thatfrom Francis, it's best to leave the punditry aside for a while and simplywatch what our new Pope says – and, especially, does. Personnel choices will be of prime importance in the earlygoing. Beyond the staffing of his own household, the first and most importantof these is likely to be for the position of Secretary of State, the Vaticanofficial with the crucial task of overseeing the operations of the Roman Curia.It would come as a great surprise if Pope Francis chose toretain Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone in the job. But will he step outside curialranks to find a successor--and if so, who will it be? Whoever it is, the choicewill have a powerful impact upon the much-discussed issue of Curia reform.No less an open question is what approach Francis will taketo the Society of Jesus. The election of the first Jesuit pope was greeted withconsternation by some conservatives who view Jesuits with alarm. But it'sentirely possible that as a Jesuit himself, Francis will have a betterunderstanding of conditions in the Society than an outsider would have and willbe better able to address the situation. Here too we can only wait and see whathe does. The current honeymoon phase will pass quickly. The Pope'sopposition to same-sex marriage and abortion will bring criticism from gayrights and pro-choice groups, and the media will line up with them. To belabor the obvious: the story of this pontificate hasjust begun.
The Pope we need now
Mar 8, 2013 / 00:00 am“I hope we get a nice pope,” a good Catholic woman told me soon after Benedict XVI announced his resignation.“I don't care whether he's nice or not,” I replied. “I just hope he's strong.”Actually, I'd be glad if the next pope were nice, with a winning smile and a friendly manner. But vastly more important than being nice is that he be a tough-minded realist, with a backbone of steel. That's what the Church needs now.The problems that will face him are immense: the twin anti-Christian challenges of militant Islam in Africa and the Middle East and militant secularism in Europe and North America, very much including the United States; the apparent disarray within the Roman Curia that at times seemed to place it at odds with Benedict; and the continuing efforts of progressive Catholics, many operating from tenured positions of influence in Catholic academia, on behalf of their suicidal program of decentralization and decline.Unsurprisingly, there's been a torrent of chatter in the media concerning what Catholics supposedly want at the dawning of a new pontificate. Much of it, to be blunt, has been useless or worse.In that category I would place with regret the Pew Research Center's recent survey of opinion among American Catholics. Its most interesting finding – just about the only one – was that Catholics are divided in their hopes for the next pontiff, with 46 percent saying he should “move the Church in new directions” and 51 percent saying he should “maintain the traditional positions of the Church.”Significantly, support for maintaining traditional positions soared to 61 percent among Catholics who attend Mass weekly or more often. As for those who don't – consulting them on the direction the pope should take is a bit like asking someone who doesn't follow baseball who will win next fall's World Series. So what in fact should the pope do? Opinion polls notwithstanding, the answer to that one is not up for grabs. A pope – any pope – can and no doubt should do many different things, from naming bishops to flying around the globe making pastoral visits. But underlying virtually everything that a pope does or might conceivably be imagined doing is one fundamental duty: to preserve, teach, and transmit intact the body of revealed truth entrusted to the Church by God together with the body of authentic teaching drawn from and based upon that source.The First Vatican Council (1869-70) made this point with commendable clarity in saying this:“The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by his revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but that by his help they might guard sacredly the revelation transmitted through the apostles and the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it forth.”Blessed John XXIII – “Good Pope John” – offered an interesting variation in his famous opening speech to Vatican Council II (1962-65). He called on the assembled bishops to transmit the body of doctrine “pure and integral” while seeking ways to express it “through the literary forms of modern thought.” In other words: be faithful to the tradition, but teach it in ways people can understand.So by all means let the next pope be nice – and a great deal more. Let him have the charm of John XXIII, the earnestness of Paul VI, the charisma of John Paul II, the intellectual brilliance of Benedict XVI. But, above all, let him be a brave teacher of Catholic truth in the face of all the demands that he be something less.
The personal vocation of Pope Benedict
Feb 22, 2013 / 00:00 amFor the last several weeks I've been teaching an online course about the role of the Catholic laity. We'd just gotten to the subject of personal vocation when the startling news came through: Benedict XVI was stepping down as pope.Posting a question that Monday morning to get my students' discussion rolling for the week, I began by remarking that Benedict's action was "the most striking example of personal vocation that I've seen in a long time."My students, bless them, were quick to pick up on that. Calling the papal decision "a wonderful example of personal discernment," the very first of them to respond said this: "First, personal vocation is just that, personal. Not every man who is pope will retire as Benedict XVI just did. It is part of God's plan for this man, at this time, in this case. Second, it is discovered over time, in prayer and many times through the circumstances of life. The Pope says he has been noticing his strength decrease over the past few months and has been praying about this and come to the conclusion that he must retire."That rates an A-plus in my book. Too bad that can't be said of all the commentaries on the papal resignation that I've seen and heard.Some people contrasted Benedict's decision, taken in light of failing strength, with Blessed John Paul II's decision to soldier on to the end despite the inroads of Parkinson's disease. Then they cited the difference to the disadvantage of either one man or the other: John Paul should have done as Benedict is doing or, alternatively, Benedict should have died in office, as John Paul chose to do and as popes generally have done.But this misses the point that, as my student astutely put it, "personal vocation is just that, personal." Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul faced circumstances that were alike in some ways but also unalike in others. These were two different men who heard God calling them to act in two quite different ways. Note that both before and after becoming pope, John Paul II was the greatest exponent of the idea of personal vocation that we've seen yet. Clearly, he applied the idea in his own case, right up to the end. What will Benedict XVI be remembered for in the long run? The tremendous emphasis he has placed on new evangelization, no doubt, his courageous stands against things like women's ordination and same-sex marriage that set him firmly in opposition to two sacred cows of the secular media, feminism and gay rights, his equally courageous defense of Vatican Council II as a council of both continuity and reform, which brought down on his head the wrath of people seeking to depict Vatican II as a radical break with tradition--all this and much more.But it is also possible that he'll be best remembered as the pope who resigned. That might seem to be a diminishment of the man and his achievements, but it isn't. Simply as a practical matter, Benedict's action sets an important modern precedent that could continue to serve the Church and the papacy well in years to come in the face of rising longevity in combination with crises now unforeseen.Beyond that, though, I hope Benedict's decision will come to be seen and appreciated for what it so clearly was: the prayerful discernment and acceptance of a new stage in the unfolding of his personal vocation. All of us can learn from that.
Authentic Lent, Cardinal Newman style
Feb 8, 2013 / 00:00 amWhy is it that Ash Wednesday and Lent remain relatively popular even in highly secularized times like these? It's a serious question that touches on matters deeper than might at first be supposed. The popularity I speak of can be seen year after year on Ash Wednesday, when people – some of them perhaps not all that often in church – stream up the aisle to get their ashes. Not a few then return for Mass or Stations of the Cross on weekdays during Lent. How come?The answer can found in Blessed John Henry Newman's insistence on the supremacy of the “real” over the “unreal” in religious matters. In one of his early, Oxford sermons, Newman remarks that it's only insofar as people grasp the meaning of disobedience and their own sinfulness that they also grasp “the blessing of the removal of sin, redemption, pardon, sanctification.” Otherwise, he says, these are “mere words.” You might say Ash Wednesday and Lent help to make this objective reality subjectively real for us.That's not the case with a lot of feasts and festivals that have religious roots but, over time, have been drained of religious meaning. Think of Halloween. How many Americans today link this celebration of ghosts and goblins and Trick-or-Treat with the Christian dogma of the communion of saints? Even Christmas is in danger of suffering this fate – the great feast of the Incarnation all but submerged in commercialization and holiday schlock.But it's a different story with Lent. Yes, the Easter bunnies and chicks are out in force, but Ash Wednesday and Lent resist sentimentalization by the greeting card people and commercialization by sellers of consumer goods.After all, it's hard to find a bright, chirpy greeting or a slogan for hawking merchandise well suited to a season of sorrow for sin. “You'll look great in ashes”? “Be the first in your neighborhood to do penance”? It doesn't sound quite right.But the words spoken at the imposition of ashes do: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or the only slightly less apposite: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” Stark, uncompromising,admirably real. In a way, we have here a kind of paraliturgy of prudence. Prudence? Indeed yes. Prudence in the classical sense that you find in an aphorism from the Christian Middle Ages which the Thomistic philosopher Josef Pieper quotes: “A man is wise when all things taste to him as they really are.” Prudence is the virtue that confers that highly desirable accuracy of “taste”– realistic perception – in the moral sphere. It's the virtue by which the truth, the reality, of God and the world become, as Pieper says, “the measure and standard for one's own desire and action.”And this or something like it is something whose presence people intuit in Ash Wednesday and Lent and what brings them back year after year so as to “taste” – to experience – life-giving contact with the deep reality of mortality, sin, redemption, and the human condition. Not so coincidentally, such people also are seeking an antidote to the grim escapism of secular America's entertainment culture and its obsessive fixation on everything and anything except what is real.“We are all sinners,” people think to themselves as they receive the ashes or make the stations, “we are all going to die. Help us, Lord, help!” This year, like so many other years before, the season of penance promises to point us in the right direction for obtaining that help. Have a realistic Lent.
Gender
Jan 29, 2013 / 00:00 amDefenders of traditional marriage may not believe it, but the Supreme Court's apparent intention to decide two important same-sex marriage cases by midyear may be a stroke of good fortune for their side. This timing means the Supreme Court's first head-on tangle with this issue almost certainly will come before President Obama gets an opportunity to nominate another justice for the court and thereby probably tip its balance in favor of gay marriage.True, it would be foolish to predict what the court as presently constituted will do with the two cases now before it--one of them focused on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the other on California's Proposition 8 barring same-sex marriage in that state. As so often before, Justice Anthony Kennedy appears to be the swing vote, and how Justice Kennedy will swing on DOMA and Proposition 8 is anybody's guess.Still, it's at least a possibility that the court will opt for a local option solution, leaving it to states to decide this question for themselves. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the senior liberal among the justices, has said she thinks the Supreme Court erred back in 1973 in abruptly imposing abortion on the entire nation instead of allowing a consensus to jell. Ginsburg and others might well say the same thing of gay marriage today.The court will hear oral arguments in the two cases in just a few weeks. Its decision, as noted, is expected around the time its term ends in late June. Legal and constitutional considerations will naturally predominate in its deliberations. But important as these are, even larger issues are at stake.Just how large was suggested by Pope Benedict XVI in his annual pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The Pope obviously wasn't thinking only about the U.S. (same-sex marriage is a red-hot issue in France just now), but what he said does apply here as much as in France or anywhere else. The central question in this dispute, he insisted, is whether the fundamental nature of gender, personhood, and marriage is forever fixed or forever in flux.In making his argument, Benedict turned to remarks by the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, an opponent of gay marriage. Rabbi Bernheim quoted an aphorism by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), the French proto-feminist who was mistress of existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: “One is not born a woman, one becomes so” (On ne nait pas femme, on le devient). As a feminist battle cry opposing social conventions of her day, this makes sense of a sort. But as a statement of timeless fact, it's the deconstructing of gender and gender-based relationships. Here, as Pope Benedict observed, is the foundation for “a new philosophy of sexuality.”Its central premise is that sexual identity is not “a given element of nature” but a role people decide for themselves. Formerly, the role was imposed by society, but today, de Beauvoir would have it, individuals do it on their own, and the words of Genesis, “male and female he created them,” are irrelevant. “From now on,” Pope Benedict said, “there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be.” But if gender is something individuals choose for themselves, variations on the theme of marriage and family must include whatever preferences and whims suit particular individuals, with same-sex unions one. In an earlier, more clear-thinking time and place, this was what people called playing God. Does the Supreme Court really wish to join that game?
Demography
Jan 18, 2013 / 00:00 amThe disruptive results for individuals and society spawned by the revolution in attitudes and behavior regarding sex, marriage, family, and childbearing that erupted a half-century ago have become too obvious to ignore. These things were predictable--in fact, some people actually predicted them from the start--but by now their impact has grown so painfully apparent that even secular voices are being raised in alarm.The problems are increasingly visible in the United States. They include an aging population with fewer young workers to support the elderly, along with a disturbingly high incidence of disabilities among children born to parents who put off having them until their 30s and 40s and then, in many instances, resorted to drugs or reproductive technologies to achieve pregnancy.Between 2007 and 2010, the U.S. birthrate dropped 8 percent, to the lowest level since 1920, when reliable data first became available. The lifetime average of 1.9 children per woman is below the replacement rate of 2.1--the number of children needed to keep population level. Granted, some of this is due to the recession but some reflects longer-term trends.Religious sources, some of them anyway, began warning about such things a long time ago. In his 1968 encyclical condemning contraception, Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI spoke of "insurmountable limits" to what people can rightly do to and with their bodies, and of the personal and social imperatives requiring that those limits be respected. The Pope was ignored when he wasn't laughed at. But he was right.Now, in their own way, secular sources have begun to make points very much like those made by Paul VI and a few others. As fresh evidence, consider recent articles in two very different opinion journals--the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the liberal New Republic. Both are required reading for people who want to know the dismal demographic future that, barring a miracle, lies just ahead.Jonathan V. Last focuses in the Standard on the crisis in marriage. To put it simply, large numbers of Americans just aren't getting married any more.Up until 1970, Last writes, the percentage who were married at some point in their lives never fell much below 93 percent. But now 67 percent of men and 57 percent of women in the prime childbearing years between 20 and 34 have never been married, and more than half of voting age Americans are single.Over in the New Republic, Judith Shulevitz, the magazine's science editor and an older mother herself, notes that the age of first-time mothers rose from 21.5 in 1970 to 25.4 in 2010.As the age of mothers has risen, birth defects also have increased among the children of older women who postponed pregnancy and then turned to technology to catch up. (Lest you wonder: the incidence of birth defects also is higher among children of older men.) Shulevitz suggests doctors get busy spreading the word "that tinkering with reproductive material at the very earliest stages of a fetus's growth may have molecular effects we're only beginning to understand."Jonathan Last sees two large explanations for what has happened in recent decades: "the waning of religion in American life" and the shattering of the "iron triangle" that previously linked sex, marriage and childbearing. No doubt that is so. As Pope Paul VI said back in 1968, "The honest practice of regulation of birth demands…that husband and wife acquire and possess solid convictions concerning the true values of life and of the family." That was necessary then, and it's just as necessary today.
Roe at 40
Jan 8, 2013 / 00:00 amAs the pro-life movement contemplates four decades of legalized abortion in the United States and asks itself what really needs doing to halt this hideous scandal, pro-lifers should consider adding a new word to their vocabulary: ambivalence.According to the dictionary, ambivalence is the state of having mutually conflicting emotions or thoughts about something. And where abortion is concerned, that obviously is how things stand with a substantial number of Americans. They don't like abortion, but they want it to be legally available.The annual March for Life in the nation's capital will be Jan. 25 this year instead of Jan. 22, the actual date of the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion decision. Ironically, the switch was necessary to avoid conflict with President Obama's inauguration. As usual, the marchers will be signaling their determination to keep up the fight.But which fight is that? In fact, there are two fights that need to be fought, and the less obvious is also the more important of the two.One is the ongoing battle in the arena of law and public policy. For the next four years, the reelection of the most overtly pro-abortion president America has ever had reduces the pro-life agenda at the federal level to trying to prevent bad things from happening – no easy task, given Mr. Obama's views on the issue. Meantime, if there are to be any new initiatives restricting abortion, they will have to come from the states.But underlying this struggle is – or anyway should be – a more deep-seated: the battle for minds and hearts. Here, the biggest enemy is the ambivalence of a dismaying segment of the public in regard to abortion.Consider the evidence of the polls. A majority of Americans describe themselves as pro-life –that is, opposed to abortion. But last November 6 the exit polls told a different story. Fifty-nine percent of voters said abortion should be legal in most cases or all, against 36 percent who said it should be illegal.A little simple math makes it clear that a goodly number of those putatively pro-life abortion opponents also support keeping abortion legal – if not for themselves, then for those who may want it. Ambivalent, you might say. In a way, of course, this intellectual confusion merely reflects our less than perfect human nature. Abortion is scarcely the only issue where it's operative. Americans routinely say, for example, that they want lower taxes, less intrusive government, and more government-provided benefits and services. Crazy? Sure. That's how people are.Still, this ambivalence about abortion extends beyond confusion to the point of perversity. Once you say that abortion is wrong, after all, you can hardly avoid asking why. But the answer is self-evident: abortion's wrongness resides in its violation of a fundamental human good, the good of human life. In that case, though, it makes no sense to say, as some in effect do, that abortion is wrong for me but right for you (or vice versa). If it's wrong for one of us, then it's wrong for both of us, and wrong also for everybody else. For the obligation to respect and nurture a fundamental human good like life is a universal duty arising from our common humanity.In our present era of toxic non-judgmentalism, that message goes unheard and unheeded by many Americans. Since the election, there's been much talk about reassessment. Here's hoping that the good people out there marching on Jan. 25 will give thought, among other things, to how to get the message across.
Tough religion and evangelization
Dec 19, 2012 / 00:00 amMuch has been said lately about how to do evangelization. I've contributed a bit to that myself. Now I begin to think that, instead of always stressing niceness, it might be good to give tough religion a try.That idea was inspired by a reading of Eric Metaxas's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian and pastor executed by the Nazis near the end of World War II for involvement in the plot against Hitler. Metaxas's book, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson), is a tad too worshipful for my taste, but it contains a wealth of information about this iconic religious figure of the 20th century and, best of all, quotes generously from his writing.As in this description of what he found while doing post-doctoral studies in the early 1930s at Union Theological Seminary in New York: "In New York they preach about virtually everything, only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life."As that suggests, Bonhoeffer, an intellectual from a well-off, highly cultured family, was no wimp. Welcomed back to New York in 1939 before the outbreak of hostilities, he could have spent the war there safe and secure. But he chose to return to Germany in the conviction that he belonged with his people during what he knew would be their darkest hour. For the Nazis to have killed him with the end of the fighting in sight was an act of malevolence serving no purpose but revenge.The circumstances of his death aside, Bonhoeffer may be best remembered now for his scathing comments on "cheap grace." That was the name he gave to the delusory self-justification many Christians bestow upon themselves with little support for it.His view of abortion also deserves recalling today. In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer makes the point that quibbling about the personhood of the unborn is an evasion of the real issue: "The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder."As might be expected, Bonhoeffer's thoughts on evangelization are consistent with his thinking on most other things. In a paper written in 1937 he said in part: "The proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it….The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them."Well-intentioned people, Catholics included, sometimes argue that for the sake of evangelization the churches should water down the gospel: a little trimming here, a little prudent silence there, and behold--those pew-sitters who disappeared years ago will come flocking back.Maybe, but I doubt it. And even if true, how useful would this way of getting people back to church be? "The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will soon grow tired of it."I'm reminded of something that somebody else, not Bonhoeffer, said: "If any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town" (Mt 10.14). It might even be a good way to get their attention--which is how evangelization begins.
The post-election Church
Nov 30, 2012 / 00:00 amThe cardinal looked grim. “This is the situation now,” he said. “One political party is dangerous and the other is stupid.”Since that was said in a private chat, it wouldn’t be fair for me to name the speaker. But his comment expresses sentiments that probably are widely shared in the American hierarchy today, as indeed they’re shared widely by many Americans. Bipartisan disgust with politics is a sorry byproduct of our recent, toxic election campaign. If the country should actually topple over the infamous fiscal cliff, plenty of people would suppose both parties gave it a shove.The cardinal’s words also have considerable relevance for the Church, underlining something that’s now more clear than ever. While the Church is obliged to take both deeply flawed political coalitions as facts, it has no natural home in either.No cause for smugness here, though. Before lecturing the parties, the Church needs to face up to internal problems of its own, which requires recognizing what those problems are.The National Catholic Reporter, viewing reality through the lenses of leftwing Catholicism, accuses bishops who spoke out strongly during the campaign of “alienating” all but a “small choir” of the faithful who agree with them on issues.Maybe so. But maybe it’s just the Reporter and its friends who are alienated. Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson gets closer to the truth when he notes that, while 50 percent of Catholics overall voted for Barack Obama, the seven-point shift away from Obama among white Catholics from 2008 to 2012 was “one of the largest swings of any portion of the electorate.” In a close election, he adds, it could have determined the outcome.The point isn’t that Catholic voting directly mirrors what bishops say. But at least the outspokenness of some bishops seems not to have had the widespread alienating effect the Catholic Reporter likes to think it had. Still, leaving aside the parsing of the Catholic vote, it’s obvious that many American Catholics just aren’t hearing – or anyway heeding – the Church’s message on the relationship of doctrine to politics and the rest of life.At their fall assembly in November, the bishops approved a document on preaching that makes the familiar point that a typical congregation today includes a lot of people who are “inadequately catechized.” Here is a delicate way of saying even many who go to Mass don’t have a clear notion of what the Church teaches and don’t see how it applies to them. That has deeply negative implications for political behavior and nearly everything else.If Catholic teaching matters, this needs to change. The bishops should give early attention to a massive, continuing, and intellectually serious program – one not directly tied to politics and the election cycle – to educate Catholics in the doctrine of their Church, including social doctrine and doctrine on human life and marriage. Isolated statements in the face of election year passions aren’t enough.Homilies should be a part of this new effort but only part. Ongoing adult education is essential. And the Church must reach out through the use of new and old media to the dismayingly large number of Catholics who seldom attend Mass. During the Baltimore assembly, the bishops voted to create a new public affairs unit in their national conference. It would do well to make this effort a high priority. Then maybe all those newly well-informed Catholics would begin working for the reform of American politics and the renewal of the social order. I can dream, can’t I?
On losing work
Nov 16, 2012 / 00:00 amIf someone is looking for material for a book with a title like “Profiles of an Inhuman Economic System,” consider what follows to be a contribution to the cause. It’s about a man I know whom I’ll call Joe. The story was told to me by his wife. Joe is an honest, conscientious guy who, a couple of years out of school, went to work for a very large, nationally known company. He wasn’t exactly crazy about his job, and after a while he became aware that the company was systematically extending preferment to women and minorities, while people like himself—ordinary white guys, that is—got short shrift. But by then he was vested in the retirement plan, so he kept on conscientiously doing his work.Recently, after 28 years, he was let go with little notice and no severance. His performance was satisfactory—otherwise, he wouldn’t have lasted nearly three decades. The problem evidently lay somewhere else—age and money, to be precise.Joe is in his early 50s. The company is well aware that it can get somebody 25 years younger to do essentially the same work while costing it a great deal less in salary and health benefits. So, at an impossible age and in a dreadful job market, Joe was heartlessly canned.His wife says that with hindsight you could see it coming for a long time. She traced what happened to her husband back to the era some years ago when the company went public and acquired stockholders. That’s when radical change set in. From there on out, she told me, the company managers had three priorities: money, money, and money. People didn’t count for much any more. Lately, too (I’m still quoting the wife), Joe’s supervisor had begun setting standards of performance and productivity for him that others weren’t required to meet. Once again, hindsight may shed light on that: the company apparently was protecting itself against the possibility of an age discrimination lawsuit. If it found itself in court with Joe, its lawyers could say, “What do you mean, age discrimination? The problem wasn’t age, it was job performance. See for yourself – it’s all right there in the personnel file.”And so, in his 50s and with unemployment nationally pushing eight percent, Joe is stranded high and dry, out of work and looking for a job. He’s getting unemployment, and his wife says she has plenty for him to do around the house. But when all the chores are done and unemployment runs out – what then? Joe has a lot of years ahead to fill.Fortunately, his wife has a job that pays well and will keep them afloat. But if what happened to her husband happens to her, these people will be in serious trouble faster than you can say, “Food stamps.”There’s a principle of social doctrine saying that the economy is for people, not people for the economy, but companies like this one have it the other way around. Blessed John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus Annus speaks of situations where a firm is doing well financially but the human beings who are its “most valuable asset” are “humiliated and their dignity offended.” Rapacious and inhumane employers like Joe’s fit that description to a tee. The advantages of our free market system are very real, but an incident like this one shows how people can and do get hurt. If those who benefit most from the market won’t regulate it and themselves, then – unfortunately – government must.
Survey says
Aug 29, 2012 / 00:00 amWorried conservatives reacted negatively to the news that Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York had invited Barack Obama to the Al Smith Dinner in October. But the cardinal plainly believes the invitation serves the best interests of the Church – declaring war on the President of the United States by excluding him from this politically tinged festive event would hardly be helpful.That’s a reasonable position. But we need also to ask whether war has already been declared – not by the Church but on the Church and what it stands for. With Catholic institutions battling for survival in light of the Obama administration’s “free birth control” rule, this alarming possibility must be taken with the utmost seriousness.Just how alarming the possibility is was underlined by a recent Pew Research Center survey covering voters’ views. I found myself wondering whether to laugh or cry when scanning the Catholic results. Then reality set in, and the answer was clear: cry of course. If these figures are correct – and there’s every reason to think they are – the Church is in deep trouble.Some news accounts found encouragement in particular findings of the survey, but they failed to mention the finding that really catches the eye. Asked who better reflects their views on social issues like abortion and gay rights, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, 51% of Catholics said Obama, against 34% who said Romney. (For all voters, the figures were 50% and 36% respectively.)This has two explanations, neither consoling.The first, certainly true in some cases, is ignorance. Obama supports legalized abortion and same-sex marriage. As for Romney, whatever his position may have been when he was governor of Massachusetts, he’s now opposed to both, though neither he nor his campaign people have been very forthcoming about saying so. Catholics unaware of these things should know them – which is not to say they will.The second explanation, also undoubtedly true in many cases, is that Catholics who say they and Obama stand together on the social issues know where Obama stands and are speaking the simple truth.This survey was conducted for the Pew people in late June and early July. The researchers did phone interviews with 2,973 adults, including 619 Catholics. For the Catholic sample, the margin of error was 4.6% – in other words, the numbers for all Catholics could be slightly higher or slightly lower. As noted, some readers saw the results as encouraging, but except for matters already known (e.g., Catholics generally take a positive view of their local bishops), I did not.Throughout, the survey results reflected a familiar split within the ranks of Catholics, between those who attend Mass weekly and those who don’t. (Among the latter, there was no breakdown to show how often or seldom they do attend or whether they attend at all.)On the Obama-Romney question, 53% of weekly Mass-attenders said Romney better reflects where their position on social issues, against 37% who said Obama. But the results were reversed among those who don’t attend weekly, with 54% giving the nod to Obama and 31% to Romney. Since non-attenders now outnumber weekly attenders by more than two to one in the general body of American Catholics, that presumably accounts for the tilt toward Obama (51%) among Catholics overall.With more than two months remaining before the election, it’s too soon to say how all of this will play out in November, but one thing already is clear: this will be an election of singular importance for Catholicism in America.
Sunny side of persecution
Aug 13, 2012 / 00:00 amWill the present whiff of secularist persecution be a help toward healing what ails American Catholics as a Church? Leaving aside predictions, I’ll only say: it may.Cardinal Timothy Dolan has a flair for getting people’s attention. The Archbishop of New York did that recently by declaring the Big Apple “mission territory.” Many other bishops could say the same of their sees. As far back as 1943 in fact, the famous Cardinal Suhard of Paris became forever linked to the title of a book—La France, Pays de Mission?—that he’d commissioned two youth chaplains to write.In France as in New York and many another place, the fundamental problem was and is the same. Cardinal Dolan calls it “the societal crisis of faith.”In just two months a general assembly of the world Synod of Bishops will be underway in Rome wrestling with the problem implied in calling New York or Paris or anywhere else outside the third world mission territory. Its theme, chosen by Pope Benedict XVI, will be the new evangelization. And new evangelization, as nearly everyone must know by now, has repeatedly been proposed by Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II before him as a matter of the highest urgency.But for all the discussion the topic has received, there’s a large question: how do you do it? Without imagining that it’s the whole answer, I suggest that unyielding resistance to militant secularism—as in the U.S. bishops’ campaign in defense of religious liberty against secularist inroads—may be the best tool for a new evangelization presently available to the Church in the United States and other Western countries.There’s anecdotal but real evidence for that. A book I coauthored several years ago with Father C.J. McCloskey (Good News, Bad News) cites the witness of recent converts who report that, disgusted by the increasing decadence of the secular culture, they were drawn to Catholicism as the most effective bulwark against it. The continuing onslaught against the Church in sectors of the secular media is a form of negative testimony to the same reality.Something I heard not long ago helps illustrate the point.Several Catholic men had come together for an evening of conversation and fellowship. One of them was a fairly new convert to Catholicism, and someone asked him what moved him to take that step.Here’s what he said:“I’d reached a point in my life where I was puzzling over the big questions that people sooner or later do face—what’s the meaning of it all and what am I doing here and where am I going? That kind of thing.“I thought hard about all that, and after a while I came to a conclusion. In the end, there are two, and only two, real options—atheism and Catholicism. The other possibilities just can’t compete. So I thought it over some more, and I decided that Catholicism was the best bet.“And that is why I’m a Catholic now.”Not everyone will see the options that clearly. And not all who do will reach the same conclusion. But others are likely to travel the same intellectual and spiritual path as the options become ever more clear in the face of secularism’s cultural imperialism. As that happens, many will find themselves turning to the Catholic Church—or perhaps turning back to the Church they abandoned years ago. Provided that—and this is crucial—the Church keeps up the good fight for decency and faith in our confused and polarized society.