Deliver Us from Evil

As Hurricane Charley finally faded up the East Coast, 2000 unhappy Catholics gathered for Mass on a soggy Boston Common, America’s oldest park.

The fours priests concelebrating were all pastors of parishes being closed in the Archdiocese’s “reconfiguration—a process which will close more than 80 parishes in the coming months. Organizers intended the Mass as a “show of strength” and a “protest” against the closings.

One participant voiced the general consensus regarding the diocesan officials overseeing the closings: “What they are doing is wrong.” Another expressed her motive for attending this way: “Our hierarchy tells us we are the Church so we want them to hear our voice. No more will we be silent.”

Such discontent was not lost on the homilist, Fr, Bob Bowers, who charged that “the leadership of the archdiocese has confused the mission of the Church with the money of the Church.” Later he acknowledged that declines in priests and mass attendance had also triggered the closings, but charged that leadership failed to address the underlying causes because “What we don’t have are bishops who have the courage to ask why.”

At the risk of overreacting, this event strikes me as a kind of prism for the splintering Church we threaten to become in North America. By now I’ve lived through several phases of American Catholic history, and I wonder: have we entered a new era of Catholic polarization?

I’m old enough to remember the 1950s, when most Catholics were blissfully complacent, content to “pray, pay, and obey” in a Church where priests acted like everyone else’s parents and lay people accepted that.

The 1960s brought a stunning confusion, as Vatican II’s reforms imposed change upon change in our worship, prayer, catechesis, leadership and art—transforming virtually the entire face of the Church. Some Catholics loved “the Changes,” some hated them, some just kept going through the motions. The numbers—priests, Mass-goers, collections—stayed stable, but almost everybody knew things would never be the same, and almost nobody really knew why.

By the ‘70s I was starting my career in parish work, and times had changed. Vatican II’s reforms were mostly in place, and people had settled into new routines for the Mass, funerals, weddings, baptisms, even religious education. But people had also settled into fixed attitudes, with some Catholic committed enthusiastically to the new ways, others grumbling and resisting, and a third group seeking alternatives like the Charismatic Renewal and Cursillo. Some flocked to “folk masses” while others stuck with the quickest quietest Mass they could find. Parishes often resorted to offering something for everyone, as polarization fragmented parish communities.

Catholic life in the 1980s centered on raising a post-Boomer generation who knew no Church but the post-conciliar Church. By now young parents emerged who did not remember Vatican II, and their children remembered no pope but John Paul II. In fact, by now a 3-way generations gap had opened: Grandparents had come of age in a Church dominated by routines and institutional authority, a Church largely unchanging over recent centuries; Parents had grown up in a Church undergoing rapid self-transformation inspired by Vatican II; Now their children were growing up in a different Church, experiencing the consequences of Vatican II but not its impact or its inspiration.

Three generations, three different experiences of Church—and a leadership unable to unite those experiences into a single, compelling vision.

As the 80s ended and 90s began, things began falling apart. The decline in priestly ordinations began to impact even the largest diocese, beginning with massive parish closings in Pittsburgh in 1989. Mass attendance kept falling, collections declined, physical plants aged. Meanwhile, internal rifts surfaced after festering for decades. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (repeating previous condemnations of artificial contraception) divided those Catholics who found it a rallying cry from those who saw it confirming their leaders’ incompetence in matters sexual. The US Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision (declaring many abortions legally protected by women’s right to privacy) opened a gap dividing Catholic values and American constitutionalism that would eventually drive many catholic to pick sides against each other.

The post-Boomer generation grew up to see their Church at odds with their country and their parents at odds with the hierarchy. The earlier splits over Vatican II’s reforms became deeper divides about catholic identity, loyalty, and authority. And beneath all these tensions lurked sex abuse and cover-up.

Bernard Law’s career provides useful illustration. Arriving in Boston in 1984 he inherited a vast diocese just preparing to pass the torch of Vatican II’s renewal to the next generation. By the time he resigned in 2002, he had reduced Boston to an imploding diocese—running out of priests and money, burdened by a deteriorating physical plant, threatened with bankruptcy, and suffering widespread mistrust, alienation and rock-bottom morale.

The legacy of Vatican II has never appeared more jeopardized, as so many US bishops have squandered their authority and divided their people. Forty years ago, the Council was halfway through its four-year schedule. Forty years later, its potential remains unfulfilled. The Mass on Boston Common gives stark testimony to how much ground we’ve lost: priests pitted against bishops, convinced “they just don’t care” about parish clergy or parishioners; people pitted against the hierarchy; even laity themselves split between those bent on “restoration” of an earlier, “purer” Catholicism and those convinced further change is essential. It’s as if, forty years later, the Catholic Church is still not sure what it said at Vatican II—or even whether it meant whatever it said.

Times like these call for visionary leadership and inspiration. We can’t avoid asking, “Where will that come from?” Who will provide it?” A new pope? A new Council? A new prophet? A grass roots revolution? The answer may well determine the shape of our Church—and even it’s size—for the next generation or more.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com