The church possesses a wealth of post-conciliar experience to assess and translate into lessons for the future. There is undiminished hunger for authentic faith, spiritual experience, and moral guidance, but many of the traditional supports for distinct religious identities--or for the institutions that convey them--have disappeared.
Meanwhile, positions of leadership in the ministries of the church are passing to those with little exposure, for better or worse, to the sharply defined institutional Catholicism of earlier decades. Still younger Catholics, many with absolutely no experience of that pre-conciliar Catholicism, come to the church with new questions and few of the old answers.
The church's capacity to respond to these changed conditions may be stymied if constructive debate is supplanted by bickering, disparagement, and stalemate. Rather than forging a consensus that can harness and direct the church’s energies, con-tending viewpoints are in danger of canceling one another out. Bishops risk being perceived as members of different camps rather than as pastors of the whole church.
Unless we examine our situation with fresh eyes, open minds and changed hearts, within a few decades a vital Catholic legacy may be squandered, to the loss of both the church and the nation.
II
There are urgent questions that the church in the United States knows it must air openly and honestly but which it increasingly feels pressed to evade or, at best, address obliquely. These issues include:
- the changing roles of women.
- the organization and effectiveness of religious education.
- the Eucharistic liturgy as most Catholics experience it.
- the meaning of human sexuality, and the gap between church teachings and the convictions of many faithful in this and several other areas of morality.
- the image and morale of priests, and the declining ratios of priests and vowed religious to people in the pews.
- the succession of lay people to positions of leadership formerly held by priests and sisters, and the provision of an adequate formation for ministers, both ordained and lay.
- the ways in which the church is present in political life, its responsibility to the poor and defenseless, and its support for lay people in their family life and daily callings.
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- the capacity of the church to embrace African-American, Latino, and Asian populations, their cultural heritages and their social concerns.
- the survival of Catholic school systems, colleges and universities, health care facilities and social services, and the articulation of a distinct and appropriate religious identity and mission for these institutions.
- the dwindling financial support from parishioners.
- the manner of decision-making and consultation in church governance.
- the responsibility of theology to authoritative church teachings.
- the place of collegiality and subsidiarity in the relations between Rome and the American episcopacy.
As long as such topics remain inadequately addressed, the near future of American Catholic life is at risk. Yet in almost every case, the necessary conversation runs up against polarized positions that have so magnified fears and so strained sensitivities that even the simplest lines of inquiry are often fiercely resisted. Consider, for example, just two of these topics.
On every side, there are reports that many Catholics are reaching adulthood with barely a rudimentary knowledge of their faith, with an attenuated sense of sacrament, and with a highly individualistic view of the church. Some of us are tempted to minimize the seriousness of this situation out of an attachment to young people and an appreciation of their generosity--or out of loyalty to those who work, often with insufficient resources and scant rewards, to provide religious education. Others among us rush to reduce complex questions of pedagogy, theology, limited time, turnover in teachers, and the pressures of an aggressive and pervasive youth culture to some single factor--and some simple solution.
The practical realities of our young people's needs are quickly lost amid accusations of infidelity to church teachings, reflexive defenses against criticism, or promotion of pet educational approaches. It is an atmosphere unlikely to generate the massive and creative effort required to meet today's crisis of religious illiteracy or link it with young people's search for a sense of participation and belonging.
Or consider the church's public prayer. The faith thrives where the Eucharist is celebrated worthily, drawing the Christian community into its mystery and power. |
