A FAITH LOOSELY HELD
Hoge, Dean R. & Johnson, Mary & Gonzales, Juan L. Jr. & Dinges, William
A FAITH LOOSELY HELD The institutional allegiance of young Catholics William Dinges Dean R. Hoge Mary Johnson Juan L. Gonzales, Jr. he demise of religious traditions is about the loss of the...
...Numerous studies have shown that spirituality has become increasingly disconnected from institutional religion...
...It is also clear that the church would do well to provide greater opportunities for service initiatives and a grounding in social-justice teachings, both as a means of fulfilling its public ministry and as a means of linking the young to its institutional life...
...Institutional Considerations N early half of our respondents ranked "the necessity of having a pope" and "having religious orders" as essential to their vision of Catholicism...
...Helping the poor," after all, can be driven by any number of motives extrinsic to anything uniquely "Catholic...
...It can be, and has been, argued that the figures might be even lower had it not been for these developments...
...Some of these elements of the faith may be more important to you than others...
...Mary is a central icon of the "Catholic imagination," to use Greeley's phrase, who reveals the passionate love of God...
...We do not know Commonweal | 4 July 17, 1998 whether belief sparks attendance or vice versa...
...the proliferation of Marian apparitions and devotionalism at the level of popular religious culture...
...It is also part of a tendency--evident in the historical trajectory of mainline Protestantism--to reduce religion to moral and ethical behavior, thereby diminishing its Commonweal | 6 July 17, 1998 sacramental and ritual character and reducing denominational identity to a secondary or instrumental role...
...What kinds of boundaries do young Catholics think need to be maintained in defining what it means to be Catholic...
...The American bishops in a recent document on the topic, "Sons and Daughters of the Light," also take a more upbeat view, although they acknowledge that ministry to young adults is a serious lacuna in many parish settings...
...So much for the principle of unintended consequences--with a vengeance...
...Atheists and Unitarians are social activists, too...
...This homogenization of religion has been compounded by the privatization of religious beliefs and attitudes in which much of the contemporary religious life of Americans, including among Catholics, is embedded...
...Their low rate of Mass attendance does not augur well in this regard...
...It is also not obvious that the "sacramental imagination" will continue to have any necessary connection with Catholic institutional identity, per se...
...In this context, much of the concern surrounding Catholic identity is a process of shifting priorities rather than a loss of faith, per se (see figure 1...
...and an emphasis on social-justice issues and community service in religious education over the last thirty years have done much to raise Catholic consciousness...
...In addition, the impact of tendencies toward a more horizontal and rationalist approach to liturgy and of the decline in traditional modes of Catholic devotional piety on the durability of the "sacramental imagination" remains unclear...
...Catholics are not alone in this regard...
...9 devotion to Mary...
...These responses can be interpreted as reflecting the internalization of Vatican II's emphasis on the laity as constituent of "church" and not merely adjuncts to the hierarchy, "children" needing to be saved, or a "bridge" between the church and the world...
...Not everyone agrees, however...
...Young adults--those twenty through thirty-nine years of age--now constitute nearly 40 percent of America's 60 million Catholics...
...The issue of Catholic identity is problematic today because the historical and cultural circumstances in which that identity took shape have changed...
...This conviction about helping the poor, along with the belief that "God is present in a special way in the poor," can be counted among the successes of postconciliar Catholic religious education...
...it is a problem not unlike the current concern over the fate of Jewish identity in American society...
...he demise of religious traditions is about the loss of the young, not the death of the old...
...More significant than these factors, Mary's role as a marker of Catholic identity contrasts sharply with the flattening of denominational distinctions and with the tendency on the part of young adult Catholics to deny substantive theological differences between Catholics and Protestants (see table 2...
...Moreover, in the broader American social context, "helping the poor" has become a generic norm of "good citizenship...
...Which elements of Catholicism are seen as the most central and essential, and which are seen as marginal or optional...
...Young Adult Catholic Survey T he results of our survey, as summarized in figure 1, suggest that religious identity for young adult Catholics rests on three basic elements: _9 belief that God is present in the sacraments (including Christ's presence in the Eucharist...
...With marriage and families comes a more William Dinges is associate professor of religious studies, The Catholic University of America, where Dean R. Hoge is professor of sociology...
...Modern-day believers, trying both to interpret the tradition while engaging the contemporary world (/~ la H. Richard Niebuhr in Christ and Culture), will sort out and rank various elements...
...Members of any religious tradition, especially in a period of dramatic social change, feel the need to make such judgments...
...Here, too, difficulties arise in regard to the issue of Catholic identity...
...This development has long-term implications for priestly vocations, lay ministry, the development and enhancement of spirituality outside parish communities, and the church's authority as a public witness...
...How essential is each element of your vision of what the Catholic faith is...
...The proliferation of do-it-yourself enlightenment suggests a widespread conviction that, while religious institutions may initially provide individuals with an imaginative symbolic Commonweal | 5 July 17, 1998 imagery that brings them closer to ultimate questions, these same institutions seem to have no (or very little) compelling social necessity in their lives...
...It also supports the claim (of Greeley, Tracy, Kennedy, and others) that Catholics have a "sacramental imagination" that differentiates them from Protestants in important ways and that keeps them connected to the church in spite of the discontent some may experience with its juridical and doctrinal teachings...
...Moderately important are the church's present institutional arrangements...
...These Catholics might be considered the religious version of the socalled "slackers" of Generation X--"in the church but not of it" (see Paul Elie, "The Everlasting Dilemma: Young Catholics & the Church," Commonweal, September 27, 1991...
...the "preferential option for the poor...
...This article is the first report on a study of young adult Catholics...
...Commonweal | 3 July 17, 1998 This question assumes a hierarchy of truths stemming from revelation...
...Juan L. Gonzales, Jr., is professor of sociology at California State University, Hayward...
...Only moderately high...
...Statements about the church as a distinct institution, however, yielded mixed results...
...ow high and strong are the present-day boundaries of Catholicism...
...Conclusion O ur survey was designed to get information on priorities, boundaries, and rules associated with religious identity among young adult Catholics...
...The religious hostility and (Euro-American) ethnic identity that undergirded Catholic unity and discipline throughout much of the American experience have largely disappeared...
...de N., is associate professor of sociology at Emmanuel College, Boston...
...While "helping the poor" can be viewed as essential to Catholic identity, it is not clear that it is a distinctive component of that identity...
...The continuing attachment of young adult Catholics to the church--accompanied by a relatively low level of regular Mass attendance---may suggest a "high holy day" syndrome, in which Catholic identity comes in the form of sporadic sacramental ritualization beyond which there are few attachments or commitments capable of actually sustaining a "sacramental imagination...
...Indeed, the culture seems to regard organized religion as harmful to the spiritual quest because of organized religion's penchant for control, dogmatism, and authoritarian rigidity...
...Mary is also one of the most ubiquitous icons in Catholic material culture (churches, statues, rosaries...
...It suggests the power of the physical and relational character of Catholic worship...
...James Davidson and his fellow authors suggest in a recent study, The Search for Common Ground (OSV Press, 1997), that many are less committed to institutional Catholicism, more likely to be disconnected from the church's tradition, less aware of God's presence in their lives, less knowledgeable about the church's teaching, more impoverished regarding its symbol system, more selective in appropriating doctrine and discipline, and more imbued with the American "Lone Ranger" approach to spirituality...
...These young adults are the people who will primarily transmit the faith to yet another generation...
...A second challenge is to be forthright about what is indeed essential to the Catholic faith and what is a matter of spiritual or moral advice...
...Although this "sacramental imagination" appears to rank high in Catholic identity, the question of its durability remains uncertain...
...It should not be assumed that the changes noted in our survey data are--in any erroneous post hoc, ergo propter hoc fashion--the consequences of assimilation and Vatican II...
...The first is that tolerance and assimilation may in the long run prove more lethal to maintaining a coherent Catholic identity than persecutions and the minority status of the past...
...The purpose was to get information on young Catholics' attitudes about priorities and boundaries in Catholic identity...
...Somewhat surprisingly in this regard, little attention has been drawn to the fact that in the context of contemporary multiculturalism, there is a heightened awareness of and a celebratory emphasis on differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, and so forth...
...When it comes to religion, however, the tendency has been to minimize differences and reduce religious distinctions to the lowest common theological denominator--all the while celebrating "religious pluralism" as an earmark of American society...
...For the good person, a benevolent moral orientation rather than creed, doctrine, liturgy, or institutional affiliation is the defining criterion of religious sensitivity...
...connected Catholicism (see John A. Coleman, S.J., "Young Adults: A Look at the Demographics," Commonweal, September 14,1990...
...The discernment of what is core and peripheral also addresses the problem of making absolute what is historically incidental or culturally conditioned...
...John Coleman, another sociological observer of the American Catholic scene, also attributes much of the purported detachment of young adult Catholics to the "life cycle" syndrome...
...It is also noteworthy that we found that although young adult Catholics have a weak sense of the salience of Catholic identity, they have a rather strong tendency (55 percent) to perceive that "the Catholic church demands more of its members than other Christian churches do...
...These responses suggest that many young adult Catholics are losing a sense of being different...
...9 Devotion to Mary D evotion to Mary as the mother of Jesus is a part of the Catholic tradition that has not waned significantly in the decades following Vatican II--in spite of the council's implicit diminishment of Mary in the Catholic economy of salvation...
...Catholic identity for such a person--to use a phrase currently in vogue in many Catholic quarters--amounts to little more than a matter of "Christian lifestyle...
...As part of a larger effort to learn more about young adult Catholics, our research team commissioned a telephone survey of a random sample of self-identified Catholics twenty to thirty-nine years old...
...There are mixed views on their fervor and commitment: Will they pass on the faith and how will they do it...
...Institutional rules and arrangements are ranked as less essential, and specific moral teachings even less so...
...Devotion to Mary, therefore, remains one of the few elements of a distinctive Catholic identity in the face of diminishing theological and liturgical distinctions between mainstream expressions of the Christian tradition...
...Andrew Greeley insists that there is nothing in his NORC data to suggest that the generation of Catholics who have grown up since the Second Vatican Council "are any less loyal, any less committed, any less devout than their predecessors" (The Catholic Myth, Scribners, 1990...
...That Mary remains high on the list of essential and unifying symbols of Catholic identity may be attributed to several causes: the media visibility of John Paul II's unabashed Marian piety...
...The cultural influences of contemporary American society weigh heavily here...
...Noteworthy also is the response to another item in our survey asking about specific social action affecting the causes of poverty: "Efforts toward eliminating the social causes of poverty, such as unequal wages and discrimination," ranked ninth out of nineteen...
...Teachings on abortion, the death penalty, and the right of workers to unionize are regarded as peripheral...
...Vatican II's call for a more concrete commitment to "the world...
...9 charitable efforts toward helping the poor...
...Least important are specific moral teachings and specific rules about the priesthood...
...The cult of the Virgin Mary continues to find enduring expressions and forms in various cultural settings...
...America's spiritual emporium is a wide-open one...
...Why, then, be Catholic...
...In agreement with all other research, charitable efforts were given more support than substantive social-justice efforts to improve the lives of the poor...
...Some theologians and sociologists use a "kernel" versus "husk" metaphor to make this distinction, which assumes that Catholicism is dynamic in its theological, liturgical, and doctrinal development...
...The bleakest scenario portrays many young adult Catholics as having a weak, "hollowed out," or "vague" sense of Catholic identity...
...However, other institutional measures on the scale ("Christ established authority of bishops," "obligation to attend Mass," "private confession to a priest") were ranked lower...
...From a cultural perspective, they also suggest the pervasiveness of "transdenominationalism," the postmodern view that denominational identities are essentially interchangeable or incidental to being a "good person...
...Commonweal | 8 July 17, 1998...
...Thus tradition is composed of many diverse elements acquired over the centuries...
...The present is the future...
...In addition, Mass attendance also functions as a distinctive marker of identity issues within the church: 39 percent think the prohibition against lay and non-Catholic preaching at the homily "should never be changed" (see table 1...
...For example, 45 percent believe that the prohibition of nonCatholics partaking of the Eucharist "should never be changed...
...It is also clear in figure I that weekly Mass attendance weighs heavily in the tendency of young Catholics to rank all elements as "more significant," although the causal direction of this relationship remains unclear...
...The second is that it has been precisely a number of the notable successes of Vatican II (ecumenism, engaging "the world," lay empowerment, religious tolerance, recognizing the ecclesial nature of non-Catholic Christian denominations) that have made Catholic postconciliar institutional identity more problematic...
...Mary Johnson, S.N.D...
...Essential Elements o f Catholicism A key question in the survey asked: "I have some questions about different elements of the Catholic faith...
...They also point--as have other surveys--to a weakening institutional sense of Catholic identity...
...Nearly as many (48 percent) also believe that when it comes to their core beliefs, "Catholics today are essentially no different than Protestants...
...It appears that young Catholic laity are more influenced by the individualist ethos of practicing "charity" than by calls for structural analysis of social change...
...The challenge for Catholic leadership is to convince young adults that in such a postmodern climate, there is no reason to apologize or hesitate to take measures to promote the distinctiveness and value of Catholic identity...
...Her image also serves in contemporary culture as a mother symbol or symbol of the feminine dimension of God...
...the emergence of liberation theology...
...The question of Catholic identity in the contemporary cultural context is a complex and dynamic one...
...The Mass and Catholic Distinctiveness O ur survey data (see figure 1) also indicate that Mass attendance plays a key role among our sample respondents, not only as an indicator of higher levels of attachment Commonweal | 7 July 17, 1998 to all components of Catholicism, but also as a way through which Catholics maintain their ecclesial boundaries...
...They are a large segment of the 20 million or so Catholics who appear disconnected from their tradition, that is, who do not attend Mass regularly or have no official parish connection...
...9 Charitable Efforts toward Helping the Poor C ommitment to the poor has become an important component of postconciliar Catholicism...
...The most important finding is the rank of nineteen elements telling us that young adults see the sacraments and commitment to the poor as the most essential parts of Catholic faith...
...She also remains a distinctive marker of Catholic identity given the decline in the knowledge of and perceived value of devotion to the saints...
...It is not obvious how the coherence or common understanding of the Catholic "sacramental imagination" will be sustained, given that many young adults do not have a shared historical experience or lack a significant web of Catholic social relationships and overlapping memberships that might function as "plausibility structures...
...These latter views may reflect the impact of ecumenical initiatives over the last four decades, along with Catholicism's official but belated embrace of the principle of religious liberty...
...and the Virgin's centrality in Catholic ethnic culture...
...When we ask young adults what it really means to be a Catholic today, the main answers consist of receiving the sacraments and having a commitment to the poor...
...9 God's Presence in the Sacraments T he high ranking of the belief in "God's presence in the sacraments" substantiates the common-sense observation that committed Catholics take the church's sacramental tradition seriously...
...Alterations in the Catholic class structure, the weakened authority structure in the church, and a postmodern setting marked by multiculturalism, privatization, relativism, and do-it-yourself spirituality have contributed to the problem, as has a societal decline of confidence in and identification with institutions of any kind...
...Half of the respondents do not believe that the Catholic church "is more faithful to the will of Christ than other Christian churches...
...Catholicism, however, is seen as demanding more...
...Young adult Catholics are not immune to such influences...
...The items low in figure 1 are already seen as optional by young Catholics, so educators now have a reading on present-day attitudes which need further attention...
...Although the data we have assembled do not explain what caused the changes noted, our own reflections suggest the existence of two great ironies in our recent history...
Vol. 125 • July 1998 • No. 13
