The Coming Catholic Church by David Gibson

...The low-pressure trough, which merged the varying disgruntlements, was the recent well-publicized sex scandals...

...As for conservatives who would see any "coming" church as more of the same only holier, he finds their recommendations "as unconvincing as they are predictable...

...By 1906, Rome laid down the law...

...Over and above present excitements, Gibson has a good grasp of the mid- and long-range historical background of the American and universal church...

...The laity is restive and dismayed...

...As a reporter for the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, Gibson has been at the scene, heard the principals, and interviewed the troops...

...The underlying theme of Gibson's account is the tension between the "democratic" urges of American Catholicism and the authoritarian assumptions of Roman Catholicism...

...If the laity begins to exercise broader authority, will the coming church follow a "liberal" direction...

...For any widespread acceptance of a married priesthood there will have to be hierarchic acceptance...

...As priests have disappeared from parishes, as nuns have vanished from schools and hospitals, laymen and -women have taken over...

...Even if these converted priests are "second-class citizens" kept somewhat undercover within the large celibate fraternity of the American Catholic priesthood, there they are and they give palpable testimony that priesthood and marriage may coexist...

...Dennis O'Brien According to David Gibson, American Catholicism is caught up in a "perfect storm...

...clergy are graying and demoralized...

...bishops failed to act...

...However matters may change or whether nothing changes, I think it is safe to predict persisting unsettled weather...

...His Beatitude Gregoire III Laham, patriarch of Antioch, speaks directly to the trend to "papalize" Catholicism: "[W]ith all due respect to the Petrine ministry, the patriarchal ministry is equal to it...

...Just as a conservative pontiff will guard prerogatives, so will conservative bishops in Winnipeg or Calcutta...

...John Carroll, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, fancied a similar "independence" for a national Catholic Church...

...It is extraordinarily useful to hear the voice of Eastern-rite Catholic bishops as a reminder of how Roman/Western are our normal constructions of "church...

...He brings to his reporting two special attributes: he spent several years in Rome working for Vatican Radio and, after that stint-after mind you!-he became a Catholic convert...

...the laity was appalled at priestly immorality and episcopal cover-up...

...When you are buffeted by George Weigel and Margaret O'Brien Steinfels at the same time, you know you are in trouble...

...Gibson recounts the trials of these recommissioned priests...

...What makes Gibson believe that there will actually be significant change in the church...

...Even after a perfect storm, the sea returns to its usual choppy self...

...Converging storms in three distinct segments of the American church-laity, clergy, and hierarchy-have created an ecclesiastical superhurricane...

...Dennis O'Brien is author of, most recently, The Idea of a Catholic University (University of Chicago Press...

...He bases his view on the fact that there are already quite a number...

...The American hierarchy years ago demanded that Eastern-rite priests in the United States be celibate...

...American Catholicism will, as in the past, make waves in the Holy See...

...Local bishops do not wish to be regarded as franchises of Rome...

...While the laity might at one time have been content to follow orders, the ineptitude of many bishops in the handling of sex abuse and subsequent public scandal has seriously undermined lay trust in official church leadership...

...Rome specifies that they are not to be entrusted with "the ordinary cure of souls": they cannot pastor parishes...

...Gibson is convinced that there will be married priests...

...Contributing to the perfect-storm effect has been the lack of countervailing internal winds: conservatives, liberals, and radicals have all been severely critical of church officials...

...Will church leadership change in a "liberal" direction...

...This caution also applies to decentralization...

...This question ultimately runs all the way to Rome...

...More to the point are the 150 to 200 former Anglican married priests who have become Catholic and are now serving in parishes throughout the country...

...When he heard that the curia proposed to appoint an apostolic administrator for the country he protested directly to Rome: "The Catholick (sic) clergy and Laity here know that the only connection that they ought to have with Rome is to acknowledge the pope as the spiritual head of the church...

...While it is true that the majority of cardinals and bishops have been appointed by John Paul II and bear the "conservative" stance of this papacy, conservatism is a two-edged sword...

...Pius X declared that the "one duty" of the laity "is to allow themselves to be led, and like a docile flock, to follow the pastors...

...A step forward or a step sidewise...

...The red hats did not handle the issues, so we, the laity, had better take over...

...The conservative position, he says, is "a riff on the old real-estate line [about location]: 'Fidelity, fidelity, fidelity'-which basically means cracking down harder on anyone perceived as 'liberal.'" Gibson's recommendations-and he is not at all chary of making them-place him clearly in the "liberal" camp: relaxation of the rules on priestly celibacy, change in the method of selecting bishops, thorough re-understanding of the role of women in the church...

...Stormy conditions can create lively narratives and David Gibson is fully up to the task...

...After the present perfect storm, it is clear that the laity will no longer play the role of "docile flock...

...A perfect storm arises when a variety of disruptive weath-er systems converge...

...Priests abused children...

...Gibson records the nineteenth-century tensions between Roman and American Catholicism, for example over the role of lay "trustees" in the determination of church policy...

...It never has been the American way anyhow...

...Before we run up the victory banner for married priests or decentralization, it is well to recall that most of the conversions from Anglicanism have been in protest against the decision to ordain women in that communion...

...Gibson quotes Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, the Armenian patriarch of Lebanon: "The church of Rome is not a superchurch, and the local churches are not vicarates of Rome...

...An outsider/insider perspective helps...

...Gibson clearly thinks that a coming Catholic Church will be a changed church...

...The most significant factor for change is the lay/clerical demographic...

...bishops are tired of being a buffer between Rome and all of the above...

...Conservative cardinals and bishops set free from Vatican dictation may have an angle of vision even more restrictive than the view from Rome...

...A concluding chapter, "The Next Papacy and the New Church," offers some portents for change...

...American Catholics are vaguely familiar with the fact that there are married priests in some of the Uniate Eastern Churches...