CrossCurrents

CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D.

A Universal Faith

Catholics believe they hold a universal faith, a “catholic” faith of absolute meaning in value to all human beings, no matter their culture or generation. Sometimes, perhaps too often, Catholics interpret this “universal” idea to mean that Catholic life must be uniform: that it must take exactly the same forms and practices and ideas in all times and places. The nostalgic metaphor for this misconception of “universality = uniformity” is, of course, the Latin Mass which dominated Catholic worship until Vatican Council II. Those of us who remember that time can recall how any traveler, walking into a Catholic church anywhere in the world, would hear exactly the same prayers in the same language that was used at home.

Those days are long gone, of course. But even then the Latin mass was a misleading icon for the universality of our faith, because even then, the truth was that Catholic life varied a great deal from one place to another.

Last month, three priests from Paris spent ten days touring Boston and New York, with me as tour-guide. Much of their time was spent visiting with local clergy and lay leaders, learning about Catholic life in the United States. Needless to say, comparisons were inevitable—and while there are many similarities between the church here and the Church in France, there were many significant differences.

First Impressions. At first glance, our visitors noticed some obvious differences. Dioceses here are much larger, for example: the Archdiocese of Boston actually has more Catholics (2.2 million) than the Diocese of Paris (1.8 million), since “Boston” actually includes more than 100 cities and towns in five counties, while “Paris” stops at the city limits, and everything outside belongs to other dioceses. Yet parishes here are often smaller (at least in city settings) whereas French parishes can have 25,000 members or more.

Our visitors also saw right away how visibly religious America’s cultural environment is, compared to the more secularized French culture. Everywhere we went, they saw churches of all varieties and traditions, as well as synagogues, temples and mosques. They could also see that most of these churches were a lot newer than those in France. Many churches here were built by the grandparents of current worshipers, whereas many parishes in France date from as far back as the 12^th century.

But our churches, they saw, also have a lot more money than theirs. They saw recently renovated rectories, well-maintained schools, beautifully restored churches, with sanctuaries tastefully (and expensively) redesigned for modern liturgical standards. Thus their first impression: America is a very religious country, and the Catholic Church in America is exceedingly rich.

And when they went to Mass, they soon saw why: there are many more weekend worshipers here than there, so naturally the collections bring in more money. They were also impressed by the vitality of participation, especially the presence of musicians and choirs even in mid-summer.

On Second Thought. On another, less obvious, level, they saw differences over current issues that surprised and even shocked them. After seeing firsthand the dimensions and impact of the clergy sex abuse crisis, they were certain that something similar could never happen in France.

Not that priests could never have abused children—they could, and in fact they have in several French dioceses. But French Bishops have been quick to relinquish criminal matters to the official authority of the state, by reporting accused abusers to the police. Our visitors were stunned to learn that bishops here have long fought against the legal obligation to report such cases, and they were mystified by the reluctance of civil authorities to intervene. In France, the separation of Church and State means that the Church never enjoys a privileged position which might enable official silence to cover up crime. So these French priests acknowledged abuse as a universal danger, but continued to see the U.S. hierarchy’s cover up as a distinctly American problem.

Indeed, the Church here struck them as much more “Roman” in style than the Church in France, with typically “Roman” penchants for secrecy and control.

This difference of style also colored their views of the recent “reconfiguration process” by which Boston closed more than 80 parishes in less than a year. They realized the U.S. Church had never seen such a massive downsizing, but they were nonetheless astonished to witness the widespread suffering it brought to so many Catholics. (Of course, a similar process would never happen there, since any church but before 1905 is the responsibility of local government—a diocese cannot sell them to raise money).

They watched “Closed on Sundays,” the new documentary movie about Boston’s reconfiguration, and actually gasped at the scene where Fed-Ex trucks arrived to deliver closing notices to pastors. This could never happen to them, they insisted, because a bishop would never close a parish without extensive personal consultation with pastors and parishioners.

The site of bishops and archdiocesan officials turning their backs on protesting parishioners also shocked them, as did the obvious deep disconnect between bishops and parish clergy. Their own bishop, they pointed out, spends two or three days on retreat with every priest in the diocese every year, and they all possess his private cell phone number, with instructions to call whenever they want speak with him. They could only shake their heads on hearing so many Boston priests lament of unanswered phone calls and letters to their own bishops.

On the other hand, they expressed envy for the freedom priests feel here. They had read several American books by American priests critical of church policies around priestly life, and they admitted that no French priest would feel free enough to write similar books—though many French priests have similar complaints.

Beneath the surface. But the biggest differences in Catholic life were actually located at the deepest levels, where spirituality and Church teaching take root (or not) in individuals.

In France, the main pastoral challenge is faith itself, since the vast majority of French people are baptized simply because of social custom and history, yet many call themselves “non-believers.” Hence the famous saying: “Everybody here is Catholic, but nobody goes to Mass.” What these priests saw here, by contrast, was the passionately-held faith of a large Catholic population which is nonetheless going through a crisis—specifically, a crisis of confidence in the institutional Church and its leadership.

In French culture, the focus is on a spiritual life that has become highly interiorized for practicing Catholics, since the Church itself has no real public role in the life of a secularized French nation. To the degree that faith still thrives there, in other words, it thrives merely as a private and personal matter.

In America by contrast, religious faith has a visible and powerful influence in our social, cultural, and political life. Driving down a single street in Boston, our visiting friends counted two dozen storefront churches, most of them evangelical, and many of them built for Spanish-speaking or Haitian congregations—in other words, congregations of former Catholics!

There they saw unmistakable proof that if the US Catholic Church withdraws from the public realm, other churches will fill the vacuum. In other words, while French Catholics are marginalized by a national culture that reserves the public forum for secular values, American Catholics have no choice but to compete with hundreds of other churches that are committed to shaping our public life. (A footnote, though: these priests admitted change may be on the French horizon, since Islam is now the country’s #2 religion. Many Muslims are insisting on religion’s role in public life; they may yet teach Catholics a lesson about religion and culture, our visitors admitted.)

So while catholic leaders in France struggle to re-introduce their own people to personal faith, leaders here struggle to keep practicing Catholics invested in the life of the church. The fear there is that many Catholics will live faith-less lives within the church. The fear here is that many more will decide to pursue active faith-lives outside the church.

The Church in both places, of course, celebrates the same essential faith: the same sacraments, the same doctrines, the same values. But the history of the Church is quite different in each place, so the Church’s current situation is also quite different. Thus, while the Church’s mission is the same in both places, accomplishing that mission poses different challenges and requires different strategies, different skills, different resources, and different attitudes.

We are all Catholics the world over, but we must all work out our faith in whatever time and place we find ourselves. The faith we share is universal, but the way we put it into practice can never be uniform.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com