Ushering in the age of the laity

...Peter the fisherman, we are told in the New Testament, was no great catch...

...So I count it a loss that young Catholic boys are no longer brought up in ways that would prompt them as a matter of course to consider the pnestly vocation My feeling has always been, let priests do well what they are called to do, and I'll do as best I can what I am called to do...

...The basic model is the mall...

...Admittedly, much of the media is in thrall to a puerile popular culture Much of our music, most of our entertainment— including sports—is crude, ephemeral, commercial, and bland More than the world of work, our world of leisure needs transformation through a reappropnation of the authentic Catholic tradition of Chnstian celebration and joy in creation...

...By temperament, I am not congregationahst...

...The problems facing the diocesan priesthood, it seems to me, are the maintenance of a sense of professionalism and of morale...

...Above all, it requires imagination to enter worlds not our own The church's great gift to all of us is our Catholic imagination...

...After all, lay Catholics pay the bills and if they don't demand from these schools sound and quality religious education then we are wasting our money...

...But then maybe this is the way it ought to be...

...There isn't a religious group, I suppose, that I haven't offended But what offends me is the romantic notion that all the ills of the church reside with the institution—so that only if we could reform it, we ourselves would be better Chnstians...

...All over the world, in every church where I've attended Mass, it's always the same guy) When journalistic colleagues discover that I am a Roman Catholic they always ask, "Are you practicing7" To which I mvanably reply "I stopped practicing a long time ago " Which is to say, I just go out and do it What is it about Roman Catholicism, I've often wondered, that takes so much practice7 I mean, it's not like learning to play the piano...

...The barriers are down...

...In a society like ours, the core institutions that form character are the family, the neighborhood, the schools, and religious organizations...

...Because of its sacramental sensibility, because it looks for Christ in all and all in Christ, because it seeks to embrace the whole— things seen as well as unseen, as Saint Paul tells us—the Catholic imagination should never be sectarian, exclusive, parochial, Puritanical, or reticent It should be critical, hopeful, empathetic—and, above all, playful Dante, a layman, is to me the patron saint of the Catholic imagination And when we try to imagine the future of the church, we would all do well to remember that life is, for all its disappointments, suffering, and moral absurdities, a Divine Comedy D...

...Recently, for instance, I attended a meeting of a new national group called "The Catholic Campaign for America" in New York City...

...That is a scandal...

...Last year, a group of political scientists sought to identify not only those Amencans who say they are Catholic, Protestant, and so on, but—what is more daring—to measure levels of commitment By their analysis, Roman Catholics compnse 23 percent of the population...

...Of course, the church is more than the sum of its institutions But no society can survive without institutions, which are not just buildings or chains of command but also patterns of behavior...

...The priesthood cannot be reduced to sacerdotal acts, with the rest of their responsibilities taken up by the laity Indeed, I worry more about the laity trying to relegate pnests to figurehead status than I worry about pnests lording it over the laity...

...That's not Catholic Yes, the Democratic party has, in my judgment, deeply offended its once loyal Catholic constituency—go along or go away has been its policy on abortion and related family issues...

...Are lay people willing to make the sacnfices necessary to take on those responsibilities...

...Why leave that role to the bishops9 But there are dangers for lay initiative in the political realm...

...This, then, is the wider context in which the priest shortage ought to be studied The issue is not just quantity but quality And, by the way, I know, from all the time I have spent in Rome, that the Vatican is suffenng from the same ailment...

...But the first has only 18,000 subscribers, the other about 36,000...

...But if you ask how many meet the most minimal standards of commitment, we find we are dealing with a mere 10 million Amencans, or 4 percent of the population Worse, I would say that Amencan Catholics born in the sixties are, as a group, severely disadvantaged They grew up at a time of immense confusion, inside and outside the church, and as a result, little of the wisdom of the church was passed on to them Like other Amencans their age, they have become ad hoc in their religious commitments, that is, they take what interests and pleases them and ignore the rest They relish their Catholic identity chiefly as a thin membrane against social anomie, something to stuff in the stocking of an otherwise undifferentiated self...

...For years I've argued for two innovations in particular...

...Why is it you never hear of a practicing Presbyterian7 Or a practicing Pentecostal7 "Observant" won't do either, as in the sentence, "He's an observant Jew " I know lots of practicing Catholics who are not ternbly observant "Born again" simply doesn't fit Catholics, implying as it does that one has been "saved" through accepting Jesus as his "personal" Lord and Savior Now I think we all need to be converted—over and over again But having a personal savior has always struck me as, well, elitist, like having a personal tailor I'm satisfied to have the same Lord and Savior as everyone else Besides, Catholics can never be certain they are saved, even if they went to Notre Dame, which is one of the reasons Catholicism is so interesting Back in the first Nixon presidency I did a cover story on Billy Graham I asked him, "Billy Graham, what's it feel like knowing you are saved7" "Ken," he said, "it's a wonderful feeling " But suppose, I 9 went on, you were to crawl into the hay with the organist What then9 "Well," Graham replied, "I just wouldn't get as high a place in heaven " I told this story to Senator Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg ), who is a devout Baptist "Ken," he said, "if I didn't know I was saved I couldn't get up in the morning...

...These churches have a ministry for every age group, several choirs, diverse Bible study groups, and not just a baseball team but entire athletic leagues made up solely of church members These churches come equipped with huge parking lots, fleets of buses, day-care centers, and literally hundreds of twelve-step groups offering therapy for alcoholics, chocoholics, the drug addicted, ex-smokers, the co-dependent, the overweight, the anorexic, the sexually harassed, the gender confused, the undersexed, women's support groups, men's support groups, teen-age support groups, and support groups for, yes, those who have become dependent on support groups...

...The truth quite often is the other way around...

...I much prefer attending Mass at a cathedral, especially dunng the week, where I don't know anyone and few people are like me or share my particular and peculiar world I like the feel I get of the diversity and catholicity that comes with that experience Now when I say that I think of the parish as a place to be with people I'd rather not be with the rest of the week, I am not being as snobbish as that may sound...

...In other words, these churches are beginning to resemble self-sufficient, "tribal" compounds—places where, above all, your needs are met Now, I don't know about you, but when anyone tells me they are here to meet my needs, I look for the nearest exit We are witnessing the arrival of what twenty years ago the sociologist Philip Reiff called "the tnumph of the therapeutic...

...First, the parish...

...But there is more to Christianity than nurture and for that "more" the parish is a poor vehicle...

...The prospect is not good...

...The entire evening was devoted to blatant political proselytizing, with abortion used as the rallying issue for securing a Catholic blessing on a narrow economic and partisan agenda...

...I must say this is a hope against hope because the synods of bishops we already have are not as open or frank as they ought to be...

...The third area is the media...

...Besides there are no more lay cardinals...

...My word to those who trumpet the future as the age of the laity is Be careful, you may get what you wish...

...V^^^L Now I have spent long days and nights at ^^HH^^A the Vatican, especially when I was study^^m ^^A ing the Congregation for the Causes of Saints for my last book...

...And much of what one finds in our two or three national Catholic newspapers is devoted to intrachurch squabbles and ecclesiastical gossip...

...Religious orders of women, who have been the unheralded strength of the church in schools, parishes, and hospitals, are dying out...

...Second, politics...

...Unless there is a rise in religious vocations—unless, that is, the gospel's evangelical counsels are encouraged and inspired by lay people in their homes—we are all in line for a very cold shower ^^^^^k t the other end of the institutional spectrum ^^K^^^ is the Vatican and its sovereign, the pope...

...Again, let's step outside the Catholic world One of the major trends in Amencan Christianity these past two decades has been the development of megachurches with as many as 30,000 members One finds 11 them especially among the evangelicals, and especially in the South and Southwest...

...The pope is a distant figure, the bishop a corporation executive, etc According to this refrain, the parish priest is the face the church wears for most Catholics...

...That requires acts of reporting, analysis, and perception, and a husbanding of language that is any culture's sinew and gift...

...After a generation or two in the suburbs, they are abandoning parish schools and high schools—the very institutions which, to my mind, have been among the most important achievements of the Catholic church in the United States...

...Catholics are influential and affluent...

...Let me add a sociological observation I think most Protestants are much better at creating community than Catholics, who think they own the patent on the term In part, that's because Protestants consider the church to be primarily local in nature...

...I'd like to see periodic synods of lay men and women—meeting sometimes separately as well as together—to advise the pope...

...The church is, among other things, a community of discourse And if the other 50 million American Catholics cannot find time to enter and support that discourse, then one has to conclude that the vast majority of presumably educated Catholics simply don't care about the future of the church in its relations with society, politics, and culture...

...The truth of the matter is, no one is getting many quality applicants, male or female, married or single, for the Chnstian ministry I'm in my fifties, and mine was the last generation in which the call to the established, mainline Protestant ministry, for example, was considered equal to the call to the law or to medicine...

...First, the Catholic priesthood...

...But just because bishops do not feel free to speak candidly in a synod, that doesn't mean 12 the laity will be so timid In the Catholic scheme of things, the parish and the Vatican fortunately do not exhaust the forms of Christian belonging, connection, or initiative As a practical matter, it seems to me that the diocese is the most underappreciated and underutilized ecclesiastical unit It is only on that wider, city and civic level that there is enough room for those lay Catholics who are eager to give public expression to their Chnstian commitments and convictions For example, one of the most interesting initiatives today is the Chicago-based Business Executives for Economic Justice I like four things about it First, it adds white to the church's historic identification with blue-collar concerns Second, its practicality it deals with difficult, specific issues that crop up within the world of business and corporate decision making, a world which is not known for fine moral discriminations...

...We know from studies that the American Catholic laity are among the best-educated people in the country They have, impressive numbers in Congress and in statehouses They are no longer strangers to corporate boardrooms...

...This is not just Dan Quayle talking himself into a run for the Republican nomination but parents who find they cannot raise their children the way they themselves were raised...

...None of the church's valued hierarchical structure would be endangered by more forums for consultation...

...Every American Catholic is concerned by the decline in priestly vocations, and the prospect of pnestless parishes The problems are real But before hastening to this or that solution, such as ordaining women or married men, we need to look beyond Catholic walls and examine the problem from a wider perspective—a perspective which so far seems to have eluded John Paul II...

...Indeed, some folks, like Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles, worry about creeping Congregationalism in the Catholic church...

...But I wouldn't recommend applying for a Vatican job today, the pay is bad and the status is worse than that of civilians who work in the military...

...That is, they are much too often purged of unwanted opinions in advance to give a false sense of unanimity...

...But identity means nothing if it does not imply the development of character—distinctive habits of the heart, of the mind, and of the will— disciplined habits of doing and of being by which we come to define ourselves and others come to know who we are Across the country Amencans are telling politicians that they are concerned about values...

...The second would be to make confirmation more than a meaningless nte of passage by actually conferring real parish responsibilities—like painting the homes of widows—on the aspiring Christian adult Bringing into the parish some adult education in religion also seems both laudable and necessary But the larger problem is obvious If Catholics want a vibrant parish life, lay people will have to make it happen...

...Consider some of the basic institutions of the Catholic church and ask what role the laity have in relationship to them...

...There is an impersonal character to the liturgy that I think is essential to its meaning and movement and that I hope even guitars and folk songs cannot altogether destroy...

...Across the board, in other words, the ministry no longer has the status that once made it a privileged profession in the United States Go to any seminary of any stripe and they will tell you—if they are honest—that they are not getting the caliber of recruits that they once did...

...USHERING IN THE AGE OF THE LAITY SOME CRANKY RESERVATIONS KENNETH L. WOODWARD I've never identified myself as a Catholic layman Just a Catholic What interests me is the koinoma, the commonality that we all share as Catholics Never, I must confess, have I given much thought to lay-clerical distinctions I recognize that these distinctions are real— especially for laity who work for the church—which may be one reason why I knew in my bones that I could never work in its employ, certainly not as a journalist I admire those who do and wonder how, seeing the fair bride of Christ up close, warts and all, they keep their faith intact I never studied theology in school—all Notre Dame offered m my era were intellectually noncalonc religion courses And although I never felt the call to the pnesthood, I am thankful that I grew up at a time when the pnesthood was regarded as a "higher calling" and one that an adolescent had to give some thought to simply as a part of growing up That may sound contradictory, but in an age when anyone who has a job considers himself a professional, I like the notion that some callings may in fact be "higher" than others A journalist, after all, is not a poet any more than Madonna is Mozart...

...Such bonding hardly exists any more So the real task of the Catholic laity is to find a way to initiate the young who were reared in the bland and narcissistic '70s and '80s into the wider vision of what it means to be Catholic in business, the professions, unions, and yes, in the worlds of th,e arts and communication I really am not much interested in whether the laity take on ecclesiastical chores Though some must, I hope their numbers are limited Amencan Catholics came of age long ago as members of the church The laity I most admire have little time for intrachurch squabbles and petty turf fights Their aim should be to confront a culture and a society that is sagging under problems, drunk on a vapid popular culture, threatened in its core institutions, and pleading for moral direction Catholics have much to contribute, but their contribution must be wise, principled, creative, and where called for, critical and confrontational On the issue of abortion, among many other issues, Catholics must realize that they are called to defend, wisely but firmly, the innocents that a self-indulgent, utilitarian society willingly and routinely destroys There are, as I see it, three areas where Catholic lay initiative is important The first is education At my own high school in Cleveland, Saint Ignatius, I have seen how successfully the Jesuit call to mission in education has been transferred to and enriched by lay teachers and administrators I think secondary education is the most critical place for the church to focus its energies Further, the laity as parents, alumni, and benefactors can and must make their voices heard in the great debate, now 13 underway, over the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities Don'f leave the debate to the specialists alone, or to the Vatican...

...was the honored guest...

...That's why we call them mediating institutions: government and society at large can't 10 inculcate character, though they can reward the exercise of virtue And all three core institutions are in senous trouble, fading m saliency and significance Indeed, by almost every measure American society is worse off than it was a generation ago when Harvey Cox invited us to celebrate the secular city The city is indeed secular and in need of a vital Christian presence, not just Christians who exhibit their Catholic identity as if it were a designer label One often hears among educated Catholics the phrase "the institutional church" used as a term of derision...

...I think I recognize the Vatican's quirky culture Quirks are what make it interesting it is the last Renaissance court...

...I trust the future of Catholicism does not lie in that direction But that is the direction in which much of American religion is headed Indeed, much of American culture and politics, too Now it may make sense, from an evangelical Protestant perspective, to transform the local church into a free-standing quasidenonunation, but I do not think that makes sense for Roman Catholics—or for most other Christians To be sure, Catholic parishes could use some reforms...

...Catholics have a rich store of theory and practical wisdom with regard to the common good It needn't and shouldn't be applied in a partisan way...

...It is only through institutions that traditions are passed on, the young brought up, the undisciplined disciplined, and society sustained—including that society we call the church I have done my share of institutional criticism...

...Second, the laity...

...Fourth, it needs no ecclesiastical sanction it is lay initiative at its best What worries me, though, is whether such groups are capable of recruiting younger Catholic men and women in business and the professions The men I know through its publication, Hard Choices, are all of a generation that gained a strong sense of mission through assorted organizations that existed in the vigorous Catholic culture of the '40s, '50s, and early '60s...

...I confess I think of the parish as a place to go on Sundays to be with people I'd rather not be with the rest of the week...

...Lay Catholics who oppose abortion ought to be careful that politicians do not use them, even as they ought to reject the selfserving apologias of politicians like Mario Cuomo...

...But we also know from studies that they are not generous in their financial support of the church...

...It is worth recalling that once laymen could be cardinals, one of them was even second-in-command as a sort of prime minister...

...But there is a real danger that because of this one issue some leaders of the church are open to political manipulation...

...And, someday I'd like to meet the naive person who said marriage is easier than the celibate pnesthood I never was an altar boy And I quit the high school sodality two weeks after I was subscripted, mainly because I couldn't remember all the mystenes of the Rosary, and I didn't much like Manology anyhow So far, no one has dared ask me to become a euchanstic minister, though in a pinch I have taken up the collection Apart from weddings, no one has ever tapped me for the brotherhood of ushers (Have you ever noticed that the usher at every Mass is always the same person...

...Mark," I replied, "if I knew I was saved, I wouldn't get up in the morning " That's a major difference in religious understanding and sensibility By the grace of God alone I am a Catholic, and if through the church he has his way with me, I may yet learn to pray with Jesus that hardest of prayers, that nub of the Gospels, "Not my will but Thine be done " That's challenge enough I can't pretend to know what the future of the church in America will be, or how the laity and clergy will rearrange themselves, but I do have some cranky observations to make on the topic...

...Cardinal John O'Connor presided and Congressman Henry Hyde (R-Ill...

...Most official Catholic journalism is fourth-rate and there simply is no reason for all these mediocre diocesan newspapers to exist, despite some quality efforts here and there...

...Catholics have at least two fine magazines that speak to public issues in a balanced, professional way Commonweal and America...

...Character is formed by communities and their institutions...

...Third, while it grows out of a Catholic social ethic, it is interfaith...

...My hunch is that what makes the Vatican work as well as it does is its male, celibate clergy And I want it to work Again, let's consider the alternatives The truth is, there aren't any Internationally speaking, the Vatican is the only religious game in town Despite its many faults, the Vatican at least provides the church with a center in which the many cultural expressions of Catholicism meet and conflict, as at a crossroads Having a center is what gives the Roman church a semblance of coherence My hopes for the future of the Holy See are these...

...Again, this is not just a Catholic problem...

...But it should be heard—and labeled—as Catholic...

...One often hears or reads that the parish is what counts among Catholics...

...So the paradox is that although Protestants are identified with religious individualism they are better at creating communities than the Catholics who believe that grace is mediated through sacraments which are communal Sociologically, the Catholic parish, except in fresh ethnic communities, is a walk-in, dnvem facility where individuals can attend a Mass Maybe the reason Catholics talk so much about community is because they expenence so little of it, especially when there is no parish school to create ongoing parental interest Moreover, the parish is structured mainly to nurture the young and succor the elderly...

...One would be to hand out pew report cards so the congregation can grade the sermon (or better, give the sermon first, as they do in China, and see how many people show up on time...

...For better or worse, the national media is our public square, and if the church is to wear a public face then it must be present in that square...

...How very American—and, sociologically, how naive—to suppose that anything of value can survive without institutions The early Christians would never have begotten a second-generation church if the charismatic first generation did not develop institutions, chains of command, and eventually a hierarchy...

...If it is to be truly a crossroads of cultures it will have to make room for a wider range of voices for the pope and his curia to hear...