Few events signaled the rapid expansion of the church in the United States in the 20th century like a groundbreaking. Church archives are strewn with pictures of prelates standing in open fields, wielding a shovel or pronouncing a blessing over new construction. The church was growing and with it the buildings and institutions that served the Catholic population.
Today the church in much of the country is contracting. Schools have closed, hospitals merged, novitiates shuttered—moments rarely captured on film. With priestly and religious vocations and Mass attendance in decline, the church can no longer do all it once did. This may seem obvious, but its corollary still provokes resistance and controversy: Still more institutions will have to close—not just parishes and parochial schools, but colleges and hospitals, soup kitchens and retreat centers. The coming decades will see growth, too, in the suburbs and in Latino communities. Churches and schools will continue to be built. Yet the growth of some ministries will come in conjunction with the closing of others. Church leaders must act from a position of humility, always seeking to discern what they can accomplish with limited resources.
In the future, collaboration among Catholic institutions will be essential. There are promising signs: universities have already made homes for schools of theology and think tanks like the Woodstock Theological Center. In New York three dioceses plan to send candidates for the priesthood to a common seminary. Yet too many Catholic organizations remain locked in a survivalist mindset. It may no longer be possible for each religious order to maintain its own retreat houses or schools. If creative ways to work together are not energetically explored, then institutions will continue to close in abrupt and haphazard ways.
Yet collaboration will not save every institution. Some ministries have fulfilled their role and will have to bring their service to an end. This will be a painful process. Catholics have strong connections to the places that nurtured their faith. When a parish or hospital closes its doors, a rich piece of Catholic history is lost. But the church is called to be a wise steward of its resources. Keeping an institution alive for the sake of tradition prevents the growth of more urgently needed ministries.
On this difficult journey, church leaders can look to two examples to guide them. Communities of women religious have spent years contemplating their uncertain future. With diminished vocations and an aging population, they have by necessity engaged in an extensive process of discernment. In the case of the Sisters of Mercy, for instance, this process led to the merger of regional communities. Other orders have chosen to close their motherhouses. These changes are acknowledged for what they are: a moment for grieving that calls for prayer and liturgical commemoration. They have also been opportunities to look back in joy at all the good work these women accomplished.
Missionaries can also serve as a source of inspiration. The Maryknoll Sisters, for example, understand mission as the foundation of their charism. Before making key decisions, they study their own experience to discern whether their work overseas is truly shaped by this founding spirit. So too must church leaders in this country be focused on their mission and on how best to achieve it. Sometimes a community may no longer need a Catholic school, but it continues to need a rigorous program of religious education. In other cases, the church may not be the most efficient provider of direct services; other religious groups, or even secular agencies, may better meet the need.
All Catholic institutions, including enterprises like America Press, are called to a period of sustained listening and discernment. In recent years much energy has been spent on fundraising. This remains a necessary endeavor. At a time when Catholic donors lag behind their Protestant and Jewish counterparts, a culture of philanthropy must be further nurtured among Catholics. Success should be measured by current accomplishments rather than past performance. Leaders of Catholic institutions must be willing to see clearly where they have succeeded and where they have failed—and to work to understand why.
Anyone who witnessed the fight over the closing of St. Brigid’s in San Francisco or the tumultuous last days of St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York knows how difficult the next few decades could be. The Catholic Church in the United States will always be home to faith-filled institutions. Yet the success of future ministries depends largely on the actions of Catholic leaders today. The church in the United States has been blessed with a vast network of Catholic ministries. To move on to a future the Spirit has prepared, it must trust its charisms will unfold in new ways.
All of the dialogue about how women can live a satisfying, moral life in modern times is taking place in the secular part of society. This dialogue is taking place without guidance from theology because the discussion cannot take place in the Church. Women in the Church are not allowed to be adults - this is enforced by the women in the church, particularly women religious. If a woman cannot be an adult in the Church, she has much less motivation to stay. Until women get some help from the clergy in forming female leaders who are themselves mature adults, who are capable of leading other adult women, the Church will languish because it cannot form a message tailored to women and their lives. Lack of a message paired with an incredible of aggression toward women who strive for adulthood is a deadly combination for the Church.
The current malaise may be the divine commentary on the last fifty years. The enemies of the Church could not have done to us what we have done to ourselves due to a false hermaneutic of the Council. This brought about massive departures from Church teaching, dancing to tunes set by the world in education, the destruction of many religious orders/congregations thinking that everything that went before the Council was no longer true or valid. Even the comment above about not doing enough for women reflects a calculus based on secular feminist canons. The Church has not done enough for men and has not even acknowledged there is a crisis among men about the practice of their religion. If you want a pictorial representation of that crisis view the Norman Rockwell painting which shows the mother and children dutifully going off to church while the father is hiding slumped down in a chair reading the papers. Real men don't do church. That's all over the place. Things will come around when a sound hermaneutic of the Council becomes commonplace and the reality that there are sectors in the Church that no longer believe what the Church teaches in dogma and morals will be squarely confronted. The solution is to become more Catholic than ever and imitate the great "crisis" saints like Athanasius, Catherine of Siena, Thersa of Avila, John of the Cross, Vincent De Paul,Maximus the Confessor, Thomas More, Peter Canisius, Ignatius Loyola and many many others.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1104663.htm
Moving forward, in an increasingly secular culture, it will certainly be no surprise to watch religious groups with secular leanings continue to lose relevance, followers, and cash.
As for the Church, Pope John Paul II used to like to slap the table and share this bit of wisdom when badgered by staff who were overly-frightened by the daily news:
Deus providebit!
And the Church he used to run continues to add 30,000 souls a day, people whose affection for the institution puts the more querulous of the cradle crew to shame.
To adapt to what I see as the coming of this new reality of religious expression, the Church must not confine itself to the old way of thinking characterized by devotion to institutional tradition and the "need for certainty," but rather embrace the global pastoral mentality exemplified by the late John XXIII (one of my heroes, I admit; a terribly loving man).
Bob #7 I love your comment.
Maybe we are just beginning to really wake up! We've been so comfortable all this time, leaving all the decisions to the higher ups. that we've forgotten we are suppose to grow up and be individually accountable and responsible adults, i.e. in terms of our faith.
I love most of the above comments, especially the ones referring to the fact that we are all called to grow up and become mature people in our faith. We are. As I like to tell those who come to my retreats, "We are all children of God. but it's time we become ADULT children of God." We are meant to mature and take on personal responsibility for our lives and our faith. But we are also still called to be community. Small faith groups is one way of doing it and so is still going to church.
I agree with Michael's (#2) comment about the fact that there ARE many vocations in the church still. I do believe the Spirit if calling and moving us to re-evaluate what that looks like and yes, married and women pastors I think are also where we are being called to move toward. It is unfortunate that the present hierarchy is so unwilling to take a look at the question of the role of women in the church. Even if our seminaries were filled with men wanting to become priests now, they would still not be enough to serve our people. I also think it is time to change from the patriarchal stance that our church has had for so long and allow the feminine stance to take a greater role in our church. It is not just "feminism" but another aspect of something that is sorely needed, not just in the church, but in society as wellLet's Hospice our Church.
U.S. parishes and dioceses which manifest an orthodox and evangelical Catholicism receive thousands of adult caetchumens into the Church each Easter, their married couples, adhering to Church teaching, provide the next generation of the Church, their members fill adoration chapels year-round, their teenagers attend World Youth Days in the hundreds of thousands and in the dead of winter participate in the March for Life in the tens of thousands. They join young, habited, religious communities in teaching and other apostolates in order to give to others what they themselves have received. Outside of the dead zones of Europe and America, the picture is even more remarkable.
The Church is not struggling, some Catholics and Catholic communities who won't think with the Church are struggling.
The vision of the Church we are becoming - precisely because of the new world in which we find ourselves - was already accepted and described (fifty years ago!) in the Documents that came from the Second Vatican Council. I'm not talking here about 'distorted hermeneutics' misinterpreting the Documents: we need to read and study those Documents, not simply interpretations of them. These were given to us by a General Council of the Church, and we are paying dearly for taking them lightly, or worse, ignoring them!
The leadership of the Church - worldwide, national and local - spend so much time shoring up the status quo in the Church that they devote scarcely any time to doing what Pope John urged us to do: discern the 'signs of the times'. He called the Second Vatican Council because he feared that "the Church is becoming a museum," and said that we must "open the windows ... so that we can look at the world ... and the world can look at us." We still have yet to honor his request! The institutional Church is more a museum than ever!
Our leadership is looking backward ... not forward! We need a healthy sense of our tradition, but we also need the openness of mind and spirit it takes to reach out to our world, to be the Living Body of Christ in the world ... the leaven Our Lord speaks of in the Gospels. We need, in short, to pray deeply, to discern honestly, and to dream boldly ... anything less is not worthy of Christ!
Lisa @ #4: there will be no dialog "about women" in this church so long as men control the agenda, the time, the place and the access.
Men should be listeners to the dialog about women held BY women, not the controllers.
Sorry, Walter, but I don't buy the attitude that "I'm right ... and you other poor souls are wrong ... not orthodox ... not evangelical!" I don't need you to decide what I am ... I leave that to the Lord. But ... believe me, Walter, there are people who may disagree with you who are deeply Roman Catholic. Our Lord also said, "Judge not lest you be judged." I'm orthodox ... I believe that.
As far as concerns the "I'm right" attitude, that's common to almost all here who take a position, really. For example, those who support homosexual marriage within the Church think, I would presume, they are "right," whereas those who oppose it likely believe they are "right." We can say, however, when referring to the Church, the position of the former is heterodox; the position of the latter, orthodox. There is of course nothing new here; the orthodox is always being challenged. even needled, by the heterodox, and vice versa. That has a constructive place, I think, in Church dialogue, especially when it remains open and civil.
Personally I see little benefit in judging anyone here, or detecting notes of this or that, but rather of dialogue, both to learn and to teach, hopefully.
Best,
Walter
It's pretty easy to see that certain kinds of contemplative retreats (check out Contemplative Outreach), meditation workshops, and wisdom schools are very popular these days. People flock to Yoga. The Centering Prayer Group that meets at my local parish church is thriving.
The bottom lines seem to be that most people hunger for genuine spiritual formation (not doctrinal imprinting) in an atmosphere of embodied practice, non-sentimental but profound mystical devotion, and open, interSpiritual inquiry that draws respectfully on the transformative wisdom of all the great spiritual traditions.
THere's a place at the table here for the Catholic Church and her contemplative tradition.
Acceptance of a smaller Church is not compatible with that vision. All of us need to do our best to make the Church the center of our lives and community, in order that others may seek God's love as well.
The standards of the community may have been a single male priest in the past but it is not so today, at least in this culture. One of the actions that the Church could take is to broaden the appeal of the Roman side of the Church to include both married and unmarried men and women.