Journey To A New Pentecost

If the latest Gallup Poll is a reliable indicator of what American Catholics believe today, then our Bishops have truely lost their moral authority over the laity especially when it comes to sexual sins.  On the other hand, the right-wing, rank and file minority and most vocal in the Church today would disagree with me. These self-appointed defenders of orthodoxy are saying that the results of the latest Gallup poll is really about poor catechesis and homiletics.  While I hate to admit that I must agree with them on poor preaching – most Sunday homilies are dull and uninspiring – I don’t think you can blame everything on bad preaching or education.  One of the many tragedies of the clerical sex abuse scandal is that in the eyes of laity, the Catholic hierarchy have lost all credibility and are in no position to dictate to them about their moral obligations on Catholic life issues or social ethics. 

The latest Gallup poll results did not come as a shock to me.  Fr. Andrew Greeley (God make him well again), who has studied the behavior and beliefs of American Catholics for decades, has warned bishops for years that the laity will not accept Catholic teaching just by being ordered. Rather, they must be persuaded.  Here is snip from a Father Greeley article, “On Respecting the Freedom of the Laity” from his website.

The Catholic Church has yet to make its peace with the inevitability of the freedom of its laity. It does not like one bit the laity’s assumption of the right to make its own decisions, and of its demand that it be persuaded instead of ordered. Indeed, the Church usually works on the implicit assumption that it is still dealing with peasants of a century ago who did what they were told (usually) without question, without argument, without the demand that it be heard, consulted, persuaded. Many pastors still assume that they have the same influence and power that their role models from a generation or two ago had. Catholics, they believe, still do what they’re told.

It ought to be patent by now that this is not so. When church leaders pretend to deny that the souls of the laity are now shaped by a constant exercise of freedom or lament the passing of the good old days when there was a lot less freedom, they have turned their faces against history. Moreover, they miss the point of their own tradition which has believed that virtue is formed by the frequent repetition of FREE human acts. In any event the days of the docile peasant and the not quite so docile immigrant parish are gone and they will never return. The church must adjust to the fact that in the European and North Atlantic world at any rate, the day of the free laity who make their own decisions after reflecting on the issues, who want to be heard, consulted, persuaded, is the world in which we live and work. In the present milieu, the laity reserve to themselves the right to say on what terms they will be Catholic. Nothing will change that fact, neither orders from Rome nor hysterical ranting from the tiny fundamentalist Catholic minority.

I found it ironic that the L.A. Times recently wrote an article, “Aging of Catholic Bishops could lead to rebirth”. a few weeks after the results of the latest Gallup Poll on American Catholics was released.  Here is a snip from the article:

Church scholars say the departures of so many high-level prelates — a coincidence as well as a rarity — will open the door to a new generation of leaders unencumbered by the U.S. Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis, which has led to more than $2 billion in legal settlements.

“So much of that fresh start depends on how the successor handles the problems” in each diocese, said the Rev. Anthony Pogorelc, a sociologist of religion at the Catholic University of America. “It will depend on transparency.”

The impending change in leadership comes as the U.S. church confronts a serious shortage of priests and demographic changes that are dramatically altering the composition of the nation’s Catholics, an estimated 64 million.

The number of Catholics is shrinking in the Northeast, leading to the closing of parishes and schools, even as Catholic populations balloon in the southern and western parts of the country because of Latin American immigration.

Latinos make up more than one-third of the U.S. Catholic population and will probably become a majority in the next decade, according to figures provided by the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Immigrants from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe are adding to the ethnic and racial mix.

“The future of American Catholics is one of rich diversity,” said Matthew Bunson, editor of the Catholic Almanac.

Responding to that diversity, Bunson said, “is going to be one of the major strategic pastoral questions for the church in the 21st century.”

And more…

“A bishop is to be like a shepherd who knows his sheep and is known by them, and who does not hesitate to lay down his life for them,” he told the nearly 2,000 people packed into the church. “In this service, bishops are those who make statements, take stands against injustices — particularly of late, in the protection of the most vulnerable: those in the womb and immigrants.”………….”Anyone sitting in that chair must be able to identify with different groups and serve them,” Brown said. “If he can’t, he’s not the right person for that job.”

A new generation of bishops will not reinvigorate the Church unless they are allowed to embrace a new style of leadership.