EDITORIAL

...In place of this a variety of religious services-home liturgies, weekday masses, vespers, prayer groups, liturgical dramas, concerts and dances, Scripture readings-could fulfill the general "obligation" and flourish as integral parts of Christian experience...

...and the people-particularly the young-are staying home...

...The word of God has a power of its own, and each generation will discover it anew and encounter Christ in spite of the obstacles the official church puts in its way...

...The Christian community will survive vapid liturgies, dull sermons and misguided bishops...

...This report is reinforced by another recent NORC survey, "American Catholics-Ten Years Later," directed by Father Andrew Greeley, which shows bow the decline in mass attendance has been accompanied by a more liberal attitude toward sexual morality, by .a poorer image of the priesthood, and a falling off in respect for church authority and papal infallibility...

...The recent "reform" of the sacrament of Penance was a mere cosmetic tinkering with the standard rite, and the would-be penitents, who perceive it as the same old "confession" are still staying away...

...American Catholics have turned away from mass, the FDLC-NORC study shows, partly because of complaints about the service itself-poor sermons, but mainly because of deeper feelings about the church...

...But it will not be the church the Spirit is trying to call into being, one which Karl Rahner has recently described as no longer a flock piously led by wise shepherds, but responsible people who, while respecting the hierarchical powers officials have received in Christ's name, have a voice in deciding the fortune and future of the church...

...If the people do not perceive, in their leaders a moral vision that corresponds to both the Gospel's radical command to love and their own realistic religious and moral needs, worship will not thrive, for there can be no public testimony to a vision that is not shared...

...The effort will fizzle and the church will have been had...

...Rather, they see themselves as alienated by the church's officially uncompromising positions on birth control and divorce, and alienated from the Pope as head of the church...

...The evidence is in the polls and sociological surveys, and before our eyes in the empty confessionals and pews...

...Less : than half of the American Catholics attended mass weekly in 1974...

...nor have they been overcome by permissiveness or secularism...

...More and more of the people of God, kicking the dust from their heels, have walked out of the church-at least in so far as they perceive it as an ecclesiastical institution -in disappointment, boredom and disgust, while those ultimately responsible for preaching the word, the bishops, have again become preoccupied in a fruitless political squabble, an ecclesiastical power play in which they will recklessly squander what little moral authority they retain...

...Last fall, a study commissioned by the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, and prepared by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, revealed that weekly mass attendance has declined by 21 percent in the last ten years...

...As Father Greeley wrote, commenting on the data, "But isn't anyone-a bishop, a cardinal, an apostolic delegate, a secretary of state, a pope-anyone going to face up to the fact that we have a crisis of gigantic proportions going on in American Catholicism and that something has to be done about it and done about it now...

...With shepherds like this, is it any wonder the flocks have wandered away...

...As it is, Sunday mass is often boring...

...But it may also mean that we are beginning an era in which our devotional practices spring less from external pressures and more from inner needs and convictions...

...Thus, the two sacraments meant to reconcile us to God and to one another and to strengthen our failing faith-Penance and the Eucharist-have fallen on hard times...

...The listeners, supposedly hungry for the word, have turned them off...

...And the Eucharist liturgy, which should be a free public celebration of shared belief, is still perceived as the Sunday "mass obligation...

...THE CRISIS Today, at the end of the Holy Year, a year after the closing of the bishops' synod on evangelization, and ten years after the closing of the Second Vatican Council, the word of God is preached no more clearly and effectively than it was a year ago...

...It seems to us that there is a real connection between the vitality of the church's liturgical and sacramental life and the quality of the confidence the community has in its official leadership...

...They have not been turned off by liturgical changes...

...The preachers, it seems, are talking to themselves...

...To foster belief and worship the institutions responsible for the spiritual life of the community, for the preaching of the word and the evangelization of the world, must themselves be believable...

...Why...

...and we support the right of religious groups to lobby for legislation that protects those human values that have a religious dimension...

...We did not approve of the Supreme Court's ruling on abortion...

...But in staking their prestige on the abortion issue, which is more and more an open question in some Catholic minds, the bishops have shown their indifference to the ecumenical dimension of this issue, raised questions about the violation of church and state laws, and-overestimating their influence with their constituents-have promised a vote they can't deliver...

...1 Perhaps part of the problem could be alleviated then if we replaced the so-called Sunday mass obligation, with a broader understanding of Sabbath observance and of Jesus' command to "pray always"-with a system that respects the freedom of believers to develop prayer styles that bring diem together without the authoritarian mortal-sin-if-you-don't arm-twisting that causes such resentment, particularly among the young...

...Meanwhile, the American bishops, rather than recognize the crisis which has grown up over their failure to deal with their people's problems with the liturgy, authority, birth control and divorce, have pulled themselves deeper into the quicksand with their plan for "citizens' lobbies" in every congressional district to work for an anti-abortion constitutional amendment...

...It is is this context then that mass attendance, which should be a free expression of both our need for God and of our dependence on the other believers, seems to have become, to many, a ceremonial loyalty oath to an institution that no longer commands wide respect...

...This will mean that the financial support of the parish will be separated from the Sunday collection, that a greater variety of people will have to assume liturgical leadership, that worship will be less priest-centered, that the liturgy may be taken out of the hands of enthusiasts who indulgently pile hymn upon hymn and prayer upon prayer as the faithful grow restless in their pews, that priests will deal with smaller groups, and that they will not be able to judge the spiritual health of their parishes by counting heads on Sunday...

...The anti-abortion amendment is a right-wing issue, and the bishops will quickly become tools of conservative so-called "pro-life" (and perhaps anti-busing, anti-"welfare chiselers," pro-arms race, pro-CIA) candidates in the 1976 elections...

...The hierarchical church, we suggest, has lost its members by refusing to listen to them, by refusing to respect the integrity of their consciences, by failing to see the degree to which the consensus of good and sincere people is itself a guide to the moral law, by refusing to listen to the Spirit when the Spirit is not saying what the curia and the chancery usually like to hear...

...A routine-a long-winded, irrelevant homily tacked onto a canon recited without feeling by a minister apparently oblivious to his congregation...

...And until this distance between preacher and listener is closed, the word of God will not take flesh in the lives of men and women...

...For Christian belief, when it is mature, is not just a leap of faith nor obedience to authority but the expression of confidence in a whole network of relationships within a community...