CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times
Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D.

A Tale of TWO Generations
“How can you stay in the Church?” Since the sex abuse crisis, a lot of people have been asking that question.
Sometimes it’s a Catholic, heartsick and confused, asking the face in the mirror. Sometimes it’s someone on the outside looking in, wondering how Catholics can stay Catholic after all they’ve learned about their leaders. Sometimes it’s one Catholic asking another, trying to make up their own mind. Often, of course, it’s an adolescent or young adult asking their parents, “How can you stay?”
This question rings very differently for Gen-Xers than for Baby boomers. Most Boomers (born between 1946-1964) are old enough to remember Vatican Council II (1962-1965), or at least its aftermath. They may even remember what the Catholic Church was like before Vatican II. For many of them, Vatican II was a life-defining event. For some, in fact, Vatican II was as much a part of their ‘60s experience as Vietnam, Civil Rights, JFK or the Beatles!
For their children, everything is different. I recall the young adult who, asked to identify the Beatles, replied, “That’s Paul McCartney’s old band, right?” For many younger Catholics, Vatican II was something that happened before John Paul II became the Pope. Just as many Boomers grew up hearing (but not really appreciating) how big an impact the Great Depression had on our parents, these younger Catholics hear about Vatican II without really registering its impact. If 9/11 is their Vietnam, JP II is their Vatican II.
For them, walking away from the Catholic Church may cost very little in personal terms, whereas for Vatican II Catholics, the emotions of a lifetime are at stake. Vatican II gave such hope, such great excitement, such great expectations, that giving up seems a tragic option. They are agonized by the question “How can you stay?” because for them, the alternative—going—would entail dreadful loss.
Both generations might be a little surprised to realize that the question itself is not new. James Patrick Shannon was living proof of that, until his death last month at the age of 82.
Shannon was the “wunderkind” of the Catholic Church in Minnesota in the 1950s and 1960s, moving from ordinary parish priest to a Yale doctorate in American studies to the Presidency of the College of St. Thomas at the age of 35 before becoming an auxiliary bishop in Minneapolis-St. Paul in time for the final session of Vatican II in 1965. By the time he become the official spokesperson for the US bishops conference, he was universally regarded as a rising star of the Church in America, and already a champion of liberal Catholics euphoric over Vatican II’s reforms. (At this point, the reader is excused for asking, “why have I never heard of this champion bishop?” Read on.) Everyone expected the next step was for Shannon to be made the cardinal-archbishop of a major diocese—(Chicago, Boston, LA). Then came 1968.

1968!
For most Boomers, 1968 is the one year that represents the entire decade—or, at least, the culmination of the entire decade's momentum. It seemed like everything broke loose that year: The Tet offensive in Vietnam; Martin Luther King’s assassination; Eugene McCarthy’s “Children’s Crusade” for President; The “Prague Spring”; the May Revolt in Paris; Lyndon Johnson quitting; the assassination of Robert Kennedy; the Police Riot at the Chicago Democratic Convention; the Soviet invasion of Prague; the US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong; the election of Richard Nixon; the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve “Earthrise” flight around the moon. It was almost as if there was too much to squeeze into a single year, so the moonwalk and Woodstock had to wait ‘til the next summer.
But for Vatican II Catholics, 1968 was also the year of Humanae Vitae—Pope Paul VI’s “birth control” encyclical that rejected reform in the one area that touched most Catholics most personally: their sex lives.
Several national bishops conferences had already gone on record favoring reform because, they said, family planning decisions belonged to couples, not to the hierarchy. The issue wasn’t sex as such, it was authority—and so it fit squarely into the whole crisis of the 1960s, which at bottom was always a crisis over authority.
For James Shannon, it was the beginning of the end of his career. He was already under attack from LA’s Cardinal Macintyre for narrating an NBC TV special on “The New American Catholic”—in fact he was being charged with heresy! His own brother bishops deserted him, and the bishops’ executive board censured him. Now he found he could not, in good conscience, support the new encyclical or its teachings. After a heartfelt letter to Paul VI and a Vatican attempt to exile him to a foreign country, he finally decided the only option was to resign as bishop.
Once his decision was made, he never looked back. He married, and was technically excommunicated until the 1983 revision of Canon Law allowed him back as a Church member in good standing. He pursued an academic career, became a lawyer, then moved on to philanthropy and foundations, including Minnesota’s General Mills Foundation. Near the end of his life he also helped found the James P. Shannon Leadership Institute.
And all this time—35 years—he remained a church-going Catholic.
It is said that over the years countless people asked him “Why do you stay?” It’s the very same question, except it applied to a man of a previous generation whose great potential contributions to the Catholic Church were cut off at its very peak by his church’s inability to come to terms with contemporary knowledge of human sexuality. For him, the Church’s stand was as wrong as its stubborn refusal to believe in the solar system even after Galileo’s findings.
Of course, Shannon’s dismay at how Catholic clinging to obsolete conception of sex could spoil the promise of Vatican II would gradually be shared by many other Catholics in the next 35 years—until by now, in the wake of the latest scandal, millions are asking the question he faced in 1968: “Why do you stay Catholic?”
James Shannon’s answer was always the same, from 1968 until his death. The answer is at once profound and profoundly simple. For my money, it is the right answer, the best answer, and the answer I will give to anyone who asks me. For his answer contains both the explanation the asker seeks and the challenge the asker needs.
“The Catholic Church is my spiritual home,” he always said. And that’s really all we need to hear. If it is our spiritual home, we are not going to be pushed out by anybody else, nobody how unjust their actions. And if it is not our spiritual home, then the next question is obvious: what is? Both his answer, and the question it provokes, are timely ones for both the boomers and their children.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2003

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.
Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and the University of Chicago. His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy. A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children