MATTHEW KENEFICK: Unbanned in Boston
Lawler, Philip F.
b o o K s I n R e V I e w a valid point when he asks rhetorically, “Why in the public imagination of our time has she often been overshadowed by those whom she plainly surpassed in her own?”...
...I love the Matthew Kenefick is an occasional writer based in the Washington, D.C...
...But curiously enough, the priests most frequently accused of abuse were ordained in the 1960s...
...That is my calling...
...Born a homely German princess whose name was actually Sophia Augusta Frederika, she spoke little Russian before marrying the future tsar, Grand Duke Peter, at age 16 in 1745, becoming Ekaterina Alexeevna, or Catherine...
...Given the large number of at least nominal Catholics in this country, understanding the origins of this ongoing crisis is important for all Americans...
...b o o K s I n R e V I e w a valid point when he asks rhetorically, “Why in the public imagination of our time has she often been overshadowed by those whom she plainly surpassed in her own...
...Two-thirds of the country’s seminaries closed...
...Deja Reviews.pdf 1 2/4/08 1:41:58 PM M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 7 3...
...Her many exploits included being a patron of Voltaire, inaugurating education for women, assembling a treasure house of fine art, turning St...
...she exclaimed...
...And “understanding the origins” also lies behind Boston native Philip Lawler’s new book, The Faithful Unbanned in Boston The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture By Philip F. Lawler (enCounteR Books, 272 pages, $25.95) Reviewed by Matthew Kenefick Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture...
...I shall remain an aristocrat...
...by 2000 the figure was closer to one out of four...
...It will be read with pleasure and profit by those of us who can use a refresher course on that tumultuous, decisive period of world history—and on America’s seminal role in it...
...area...
...He recognizes their institutional accomplishments, but faults them (particularly Cushing and Law) for lack of courage in proclaiming, teaching, and enforcing Catholic moral and social teaching...
...Endowed with brains and determination, she was a romantic at heart but toughened herself at court, where Peter openly preferred his mistress...
...Based on the data, the survey showed, “approximately one-in-ten American adults are former Catholics...
...A reported that “no other major faith in th f i c i l b u P d n o i g i l e n m u r o F e P t r h e e C ent w survey o of R religious a n affiliation L by e e U.S...
...How did this happen...
...Still, this is popular history at its most evocative and colorful...
...Louis, or Milwaukee...
...But love for the Church does not mean unquestioning love for every institution within Catholicism, any more than the love for one’s spouse would extend to a cancer...
...The Church is still feeling the after-tremors, which are likely to persist for years to come...
...According to Lawler, the principal reason for the abuse was not pedophilia but rather the influence of homosexuality in the priesthood...
...To restore vigor and discipline to the Church Catholic leaders will be required to make personal sacrifices and unpopular decisions—and to ask their followers to do the same...
...The number of Catholic marriages solemnized in churches fell by over 30 percent, while the number of marriages annulled by diocesan tribunals skyrocketed from about three hundred a year to 50,000...
...M a y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 7 1 b o o K s I n R e V I e w Catholic Church...
...In such cases closer editing would have helped...
...has experienced greater net losses over the last few decades as a result of changes in religious affiliation than the Catholic Church...
...Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and law professor best known for his staunch support for legalized abortion...
...As Winik writes, “She tamed the Muslim world and charmed—or awed—the Christian one...
...Lawler rightly identifies presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1960 to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association as the beginning of the “personally opposed, but…” cave-in heard from many politicians today...
...The statistics of the John Jay Report show that the incidence of sexual abuse peaked in the 1970s as the consequence of the sexual revolution was setting in...
...LEngland (although he makes it clear that th w e N n i d e p l e v d t i l a l u c t r p a si W s, ler a ex i amin r es y in a s D etail e the o sex-abuse cri e - crisis has affected virtually every American diocese...
...Well, one factor was the 40 years of at least perceived liturgical and doctrinal chaos following the disastrous misinterpretation and implementation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council...
...Lawler is a realist and perhaps a pessimist...
...Petersburg into a city of legendary splendor, expanding Russia’s borders, and beating back the Ottoman Empire...
...Due largely to the excesses of the French Terror, democracy lost its chance in Russia...
...The high point, or should one say the low point, of this ongoing decline in faith and practice was the so-called sex abuse scandal that erupted in 2002...
...Philip Lawler is a journalist, author, editor of Catholic World News (an on-line service), a Harvard grad, and a fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute of Washington, D.C...
...But the restoration, if it does come, will not come without cost...
...And there are certainly others, including the burgeoning affluence of the Catholic faithful and the aggressive secularism in American society...
...He writes: “Homosexual influence within the American clergy was not in itself the cause of the sexabuse crisis...
...He notes that “reform cannot begin until the corruption is acknowledged,” something the hierarchy has been reluctant to do...
...Teaching nuns, who once formed the backbone of the massive Catholic educational system, nearly disappeared...
...As the number of Irish Catholics grew in Boston, so did their political and economic clout, until ultimately they usurped the dominance of (Protestant) Brahmins like the Cabots and the Lodges...
...They have shown no stomach for an investigation into the prevalence of homosexuals in the seminaries or the influence of homosexual networks among the clergy...
...He offers three answers: she was a woman, she ruled in the East rather than in our West, and her reign marked the end of enlightened despotism rather than the beginning of the democratic era...
...Winik’s tendency to go off on a tangent can be annoying, e.g., giving us a history of slavery when that comes up, a thorough description of the château at Versailles when discussing French monarchy...
...The number of priests fell by about 20 percent, while the number of ordinations dropped by about 65 percent...
...Another problem for this reader is a style that works a bit too hard at dramatizing, with purple passages that often fall into tired cliché: mountains are treacherous, deserts trackless, storms howling, while the Kremlin is full of “unfathomable intrigue...
...Lawler details other instances of episcopal pusillanimity in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, dealing with school busing, reluctance to support protests at abortion clinics, and the cave-in on homosexual marriage— the last also implicating virtually every Catholic judge or legislator in Massachusetts...
...Though his analysis is confined to Boston, it could just as well serve for Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, St...
...Roma patiens quia eterna et Ecclesia semper reformanda...
...Approximately one-third of respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic...
...Convinced he was going to depose her and marry the mistress, she led a stunning coup d’état against him and became the ironwilled ruler of all Russia...
...Today one could add cloning, embryonic cell research, homosexual marriage, and abortion...
...The total number of women religious fell by over 50 percent, but the teaching orders suffered a dizzy ing decline in membership from 104,000 in 1965 to about 8,000 today...
...The corruption wrought by the influence was a more important factor...
...Nearly half of the Catholic elementary and high schools closed...
...He describes The Faithful Departed as “a study in Catholicism in America today, and more specifically in my native Boston...
...In all their dealings with the sex-abuse crisis, the American bishops and their closest advisers have evinced the same sort of reluctance to admit 7 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R M a y 2 0 0 8 b o o K s I n R e V I e w the influence of homosexuality...
...A very large number of priests developed the habit of looking the other way, avoiding contact with any evidence of their colleagues’ personal conduct...
...How can shoemakers meddle in affairs of state...
...Encouragement must come from a knowledge of the resiliency of the Church through two millennia of scandals and periods of decline, and from positive evidence of health in the universal Church, from enormous growth in Asia and Africa, to the pontificates of two truly outstanding and holy pontiffs in Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, to the emergence of many ecclesial realities in the last half-century that are largely devoted to the formation of the laity, and notable increases in diocesan priestly ordinations throughout the world...
...Lawler’s focus is not on American Catholics as a whole, but on the microcosm he knows best, Boston...
...The silence from the American episcopate was deafening, with nary a word from the bishops pointing out that Kennedy’s view completely violated the Church’s teachings on the duties of a Catholic statesman, in moral matters, to bring his faith and his belief in natural law into the public square...
...Another major factor was the lack of effective catechesis on traditional sexual morality...
...With Mass attendance as the leading indicator, every other statistical index of Catholic practice and belief showed a similar decline between 1960 and 2000...
...If it is a harsh portrait, I believe the harshness is justified...
...Whether in the near term this ushers in a “new evangelization” à la John Paul II or a “creative minority” as Pope Benedict XVI sees it, if the Church is indeed divine, it will perdure...
...Lawler also chronicles the clerical history of Boston, focusing on the three most prominent archbishops of the 20th century: O’Connell, Cushing, and Law...
...Although initially well-disposed toward repub lic anism, the beheading of Louis XVI, news of which made her physically sick, turned her resolutely against it...
...On the ledger’s negative side is her tragic crushing of Poland’s America-inspired attempt at a constitutional monarchy by massacring its people mercilessly...
...Occupied with a local situation that is still far from robust, The Faithful Departed offers little in the way of solutions or encouragement...
...That is the mark of Christian leadership: the willingness to imitate the Sacrifice of Christ...
...Lawler sketches the “before” and “after” pictures of Catholic America: In 1958 a Gallup poll showed that three out of every four American Catholics attended Sunday Mass regularly...
...This cave-in cleared the way a decade later for the election (and re-election to multiple terms) to the House of Representatives of Fr...
...Neither his Jesuit superiors nor Cardinal Medeiros, predecessor to Cardinal Law, were willing to deal firmly with Drinan’s scandalous political behavior...
...Clearly the rot was setting in even before the close of Vatican II...
...No disciplinary actions were taken against the recalcitrant judges and legislators, and there was no effort to deny them communion...
...He describes the growth of the Catholic population in Boston, which was minuscule until the massive immigration of the Irish in response to the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-19th century...
...All of these are signs that the Second Vatican Council is finally bearing fruit...
...A very small number of priests preyed on children...
...Washington called her “the great Potentate of the North...
...As Lawler puts it, “he promised that if he won the presidency he would make all decisions ‘in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside pressures or dictate.’ ” When he promised to be guided only by his own conscience, Kennedy said that he was speaking about “birth control, divorce, censorship, [and] gambling...
...By my estimation that would make non-practicing Catholics the second largest “denomination”— after Catholics in good standing— in the nation...
Vol. 41 • May 2008 • No. 4
