Excerpt from today's lengthy piece from the Associated Press:
. . . Across the U.S., the Catholic Church is undergoing an immense shift. Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by guitar Masses, parish food pantries and casual indifference to church doctrine.
The shift, molded by plummeting church attendance, increasingly traditional priests and growing numbers of young Catholics searching for more orthodoxy, has reshaped parishes across the country, leaving them sometimes at odds with Pope Francis and much of the Catholic world.
The changes are not happening everywhere. There are still plenty of liberal parishes, plenty that see themselves as middle-of-the-road. Despite their growing influence, conservative Catholics remain a minority.
Yet the changes they have brought are impossible to miss. . . .
Here is a link to the full article.
How accurate or insightful this piece is I have no real way of knowing, but I found it interesting. The one reactions I have seen are comments on Reddit, and they overwhelmingly viewed the article as a laughable attack on authentic (pre-VII) Catholicism.
ReplyDeleteThe local priest is "authentically" Catholic. There are several parishes in Lansing that advertise as "authentically" Catholic on their marquees. Time will tell whether their scoldy "back to preV2" approach helps Christ find his way into more hearts or not. Doesn't work for me, but that's my personal problem.
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on where you read the comments. They will be that way on Reddit, and would go the other way if you read them on the New York Times site. Unfortunately both can get pretty mean.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of variance between dioceses. We are kind of middle of the road here, but if you go five miles south across the river, you will be in the Lincoln Diocese, which is quite conservative. It's weird, but we lived there in the 1990s, it wasn't as conservative as it is now, even though the bishop in charge was Fabian Bruskewicz (not sure if I spelled it right). I understand there have been people who have moved there more recently because they were attracted to the traditional vibe, even though the present bishop is more moderate. They about drove the poor guy to a nervous breakdown and he had to go away for a while, but he is back now.
I have noticed that we aren't the only denomination which has done some self sorting. I know there are high and low church Episcopalians. We don't have many Episcopalians here, but there are at least three different flavors of Lutherans in town, each with their own congregation. Our three Catholic parishes are pretty moderate but are to an extent sorted by income and social class. There is St. B's, which is old money, St. I's, which is new money, and our parish, St. A's, which we joke is "no money". It's funny, but the Spanish language Mass is at the " old money" parish.
I think it is fine for people to have liturgical preferences. What isn't fine is if we "other" people whose taste is different from our own. I have to watch that tendency in myself. We do business with an insurance agent who attends a Latin Mass parish across the river. He and his wife have five or six kids, and homeschool them. He shared how the Latin Mass clicked with them. It got my back up a little until I thought, "You have to do you". He is a nice young man, and does a good job professionally.
"I think it is fine for people to have liturgical preferences. What isn't fine is if we "other" people whose taste is different from our own."
DeleteYes, that's my view. Different liturgical flavors in the Anglican communion were fine by me, even though I tend to "spiky." But I did notice that former Catholics in our Episcopal parish were adamantly against statues, prayers to the BVM, saying rosaries before the service, etc. It reminded them too much of what they had rejected in Catholicism. Converts in any denomination come with special baggage, and sometimes they end up weighed down and unchurched. Certainly my experience.
Raber feels the current trad priest is very scold-y, has unilaterally changed the worship space without regard for parishioners feelings, and gives too many sermons about rubrics and heresies than the Scripture at hand.
But the parish Cradle Catholics tend to ignore this because they are happy to have a priest and know that he will be rotated out in a few more years and his fan club will take their chapel caps and go with him. Lots of them sneak off to the previous priest's parish, where they go to Confession and can still get the Cup at communion.
Raber's been a faithful Catholic for 25 years now, so I try to encourage him to take a longer view of it all, endure for Jesus, and maybe visit other parishes when Fr Cassock-and-Biretta gets his goat.
On a sort of related subject, I saw this item yesterday :
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/commonweal-magazine-edits-article-after-legal-threat-bishop-barrons-word-fire
Apparently an article in Commonweal by Massimo Faggioli linked Bishop Robert Barron's "Word on Fire" ministry a little too closely to "Trumpism", and Commonweal was threatened with a lawsuit. They quickly edited the article and redacted the passage that gave offense.
I'm kind of surprised that Faggioli wrote that, usually he's a little more careful about partisan stuff. I was actually glad to see that Bishop Barron pushed back on it. Because there are some members of the USCCB who make no bones about being on board with Trumpism (that didn't used to be a term, have we invented a new philosophy?) . Good to know that Bishop Barron isn't. And maybe he would also be prudent not to give the impression that he is.
Boy, I don't know how Faggioli's comments are slanderous (or more accurately libelous since they were in print). It sounds to me like Faggioli was exercising fair comment and criticism of a public journal run by a public figure. As I understand it, the Bishop would have to prove that what was printed was a lie told with malicious intent that somehow damaged him personally. Anybody can get a lawyer to send a C&D letter threatening legal action, but it doesn't mean there's a case there. Without knowing more, it looks to me like C'weal caved unnecessarily, at least on legal grounds.
DeleteI don't think C'weal wants a fight with a high profile guy like Bp. Barron. I mean he's right leaning, but not like Strickland and some others. They might have legally defensible grounds, but decided it wasn't worth the trouble.
DeleteI read Faggioli's article prior to the correction, and noticed his lumping Barron in with the other Trump-adjacent characters, and it caused my eyebrows to rise, but I admit I didn't expect the lawyers to be brought in. I don't follow Barron, so can't say whether he has drifted toward Trump in recent years, but it's not something I would expect. From what I've seen, Barron isn't particularly conservative. He's all about preaching a Catholic version of Good News.
DeleteRe: Commonweal caving: as I read NCR's explanation, Commonweal went to the author, told him that Word On Fire is rattling its sabre, and asked him if he stands by his statement. Apparently Faggioli told them it's okay to remove it. Not sure how to interpret that; I suppose Faggioli was trying to be kind to Commonweal by saving them legal fees. If Faggioli had told Commonweal he believes 100% in what he wrote and thinks this is a hill worth dying on, I'd think Commonweal's editors would have dug in with him.
DeleteI suppose Commonweal lives hand to mouth each month (God bless them), but that they have friends in the legal community who might donate some legal fees if it really came down to a court fight.
I can imagine any number of scenarios--Faggioli admits his feelings got the better of him, Faggioli agrees to the redaction to make his editors happy, Commonweal can't afford a lawsuit, the original language violated editorial guidelines that Commonweal editors didn't catch--none of it makes Commonweal or Faggioli look very good. And, of course, it makes Bishop Barron look like a thin-skinned bully. Like Trump.
Delete"it makes Bishop Barron look like a thin-skinned bully."
DeleteIt's not the way Jesus urged us to resolve disputes.
I've seen one or two news items over the years that make me a little concerned about some of the other folks working at Word On Fire. Don't know whether the idea of getting a lawyer to write a letter originated with one of them or with Barron (or perhaps originated with the former and was approved by the latter), but it strikes me as way over the top - and, as you note, the legal merits seem a little questionable, too.
I am not sure what to think about the AP article. It presents anecdotes and quotes from a handful of people in a handful of places. Does that paint an accurate portrait of the American church as a whole? Who knows?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for that parish in Madison, WI. I don't think uber-conservative pastors should be appointed to liberal parishes, and vice-versa.
We're a big-tent church, and pastoral leaders need to learn to accommodate (or, we might say, accompany) people of many different ages, backgrounds, political affinities, races, ethnicities, etc. etc. Personally, I don't care for pastoral leaders who consciously seek to be ideological agents of change: "I'm going to force this parish to be conservative, because conservatism is what I like".
There isn't really a conservative Catholic "takeover" in my area, although there are a couple of local parishes that seem to consciously try to appeal to people who are culturally conservative. I haven't heard of anyone using Latin in a normal Sunday mass, and I can't think of the last time I saw incense at any parish service that wasn't a funeral or didn't have the cardinal visiting (and our current cardinal doesn't seem to be that into smells and bells, anyway).
At least in theory, it should be perfectly possible to be what one or two people described in the article try to be: kind, welcoming, loving, considerate people who genuinely try to live out what the church teaches. That shouldn't be considered liberal or conservative, it should just be Catholic.
"...it should be perfectly possible to be... kind, welcoming, loving, considerate people who genuinely try to live out what the church teaches. That shouldn't be considered liberal or conservative, it should just be Catholic."
DeleteJim, I totally agree with that.
Reply
I may have mentioned this before: I know of one young parishioner who went off to a Catholic college and then came back the following summer having been "conservative-ized": she had started attending a Latin mass at school, and now comes to mass at our parish with her head covered. She seemed as nice and reasonable as ever (which I can't say about every Latin mass adherent I've met over the years). I informed her that there is a Latin mass community not that far away from us, and I later learned that she has started to attend it when she's home from school. And now her mom, who is pretty active in the parish, has her head covered whenever she comes to mass. I have no issue with any of this. On the few occasions I've attended a Latin mass, I've felt the pull/attraction of that spirituality, too. I think a lot of Catholic have that gene.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the head coverings and other expressions of personal piety should bother anyone. I still listen to the chanted Latin Litany of the Saints on YouTube.
DeleteIt runs against catholicism with a small c to try to require it for everyone else. And it's likely a sin of pride to assume that adopting certain devotional trappings makes you holier than others.
They can do a perfectly legit "Novus Ordo" Mass in Latin; I think the pope even does that sometimes when there are people present who don't have a common language. But my impression is that the more "trad" people don't want to attend that. They are convinced that the Tridentine Mass is THE Mass for the ages.
DeleteI don't quite understand that. I was about twelve when some of the VII changes went into effect. There are some quite significant differences. I would say that the main one is that the old Mass utilized less Scripture. A lot less. The Gospel reading was on a one year cycle rather than a three year one like the present. Which means you were exposed to fewer Gospel readings, which repeated yearly. There was one Epistle reading. Old Testament readings were very infrequent. There was no responsorial Psalm. I think being exposed to more Scripture is a good thing, especially for people who don't do much reading of it on their own. Usually for Sundays the priest would read both the Latin and English Gospel and Epistle readings. For daily Mass you would just get the Latin. If you didn't have a daily missal or didn't want to follow one, some people just prayed the rosary or read private devotions. Don't kniw if that's what present day Traditionaliists do.
There were some quite beautiful parts if you knew what was being said. Such as "May the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul unto life everlasting" when you received Communion. It was said for each person, but it was definitely on fast forward, and I think most people didn't know what was being said.
The conservative religious movement of the 1970s & 1980s in both Catholicism and Protestantism was a big mistake for religion. It identified religion with culture and politics, and resulted in many liberal Catholics and Protestants leaving their churches because they didn't want to be associated with that sort of religion espoused by pastors or fellow members.
ReplyDeleteThe young people looking at all the moral scandals in both Protestant and Catholic churches decided that institutional religion was hypocrisy, they became spiritual rather than religious.
It looked for a while like conservative churches were growing but that was an artifact of the higher birth rates; those have fallen and so conservative churches are declining, too
The evangelical movement in Protestantism has become a personal political cult built around Trump. Not much of a religious or political future in that.
The Pre-Vatican II Latin Mass movement became a schismatic movement priding themselves as being better than others. Benedict's attempt to give them a place just made things worse.
Francis has done of good job of trying to return Catholicism to a big tent church with room for everyone focusing upon recruiting more pastorally oriented priests and bishops who listen to their people.
The News Media thrive on controversy, especially the cultural wars. It stirs up people but does nothing for religion, other than continuing to alienate people from it.
Yes, I agree, though the marriage of evangelicals to politics really ramped up with George W Bush. Some evangelicals, especially those that have large black and Hispanic congregants, have felt Trump was a bridge too far.
Deletelarge NUMBERS OF black and Hispanic congregants. Geez, Louise. The prednisolone is wearing off. Time to go back to my recliner and Muzak.
DeleteHere is Sr. Miriam James, one of the constellation of conservative Catholic media stars mentioned in the AP article. YMMV.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7naJqJtXE
Talks too fast and tends to take a haranguing tone. Guessing if you went to her with a problem she would cut you off mid sentence, tell you what your REAL problem was, and tell you not to waste her time making excuses for yourself.
DeleteNot that we don't need that sometimes.
Yeah, too much coffee, and maybe trying a little too hard to be cool.
DeleteHere is Jackie Francois Angel, another of the conservative Catholic media stars mentioned in the AP article.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngoejU2cn6M
This presentation was billed as a Women's session. The setting, a Steubenville Youth Conference, apparently targets high school kids, so the young women in the audience presumably are high school age. Most likely, some are enrolled in Catholic high schools, while others would be from parish youth groups as we have at our parish (or had until COVID; they're trying to get it restarted).
I don't know how off-putting you might find her content. It seems to be pretty standard Catholic messaging. It doesn't strike me as overtly political, but it's counter-cultural (which is intrinsic to God's kingdom). I am still listening to it myself.
I didn't listen to all of Sister Miriam's talk, but I listened to a bit of it. It seems like she would give an interesting presentation. I haven't listened to Jackie Francois Angel's presentation yet, but I probably wouldn't find it off-putting. I don't mind counter-cultural, we need some of that. But I do mind culture-war-ish, we have way too much of that.
DeleteHonestly, the media stars can be all over the place as far as how good or interesting they are. I don't think they should throw someone who was a convert literally last month (Candace Owens, for instance) immediately into the spotlight as a Catholic or Christian speaker before they have had a chance to get their bearings. That takes some time, and celebrity can be bad for one from a spiritual point of view.
I can't get past that perpetual smiling and fast-talking patter, stalking back and forth across the stage tossing out lots of cherry picked Bible verses is right out of the Protestant evangelical play book. It all seems very performative, stylized, and kind of an ego trip for the speaker.
DeleteShe also lost me when she said this is not our real home (or our real lives by extension, maybe?).
This life real, and this is our home. It is dysfunctional and sucky a lot of the time, but "all the way to Heaven is Heaven," as St Catherine of Siena said.
I guess I should listen to the rest of it, and the message might be really worthwhile but can't get past that Old Time Religion Tent Revival delivery. Plus love songs not my cuppa, but I guess you did say it was for teen girls so maybe that's appropriate to the audience.
Yes, I had some similar impressions. The constant 'Can I get an Amen?' is sort of tent-revival. From what I saw my own kids go through as teens, I think the whip-'em-into-a-religious-frenzy is one of their goals for these presentations.
DeleteA lot of her messaging, about girls respecting their own bodies, and the darkness of depression and anxiety, was quite good. I am sure a lot of what she said is out of the Theology of the Body playbook.
There was a guy speaker at the overnight retreat for The Boy's Confirmation class. They loved it for about 48 hours, then it wore off.
DeleteI think the kids fell in love with the energy and assurance; recall of the message was fuzzy. The boys were just happy that a church thing was not a drag for once. So it was hard for us to help sustain the enthusiasm because we weren't there. A couple of aged Midwestern parents can not exactly set youth on fire with their "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life never you mind what and all's I can say is that yeah the preaching is uninspired, the music is insipid, and the coffee is weak but Jesus has always been at the end of my tether."
Also, there's a danger that this evangelical shtick reads phony to some people out of the gate.
All I could think about was how much money Ms Angel makes with these gigs.
None of what I heard her or Sister say reads as "conservative" to me in a political sense.
Jean, I think you are right about the energy and assurance being appealing. For a while. We had a guy like that for our parish mission during Lent. He was also kind of manic. Honestly, I was exhausted with it by the end; it was four evenings. I was glad to get back to just plain old boring Lent
DeleteThanks. Glad I make sense occasionally. I know I can be an irritating presence on here with all my many criticisms and whining about how the RCC hasn't worked out for me, boo hoo. I need to exert more self-discipline.
DeletePsst! Open secret, things don't always make sense to me either.
DeleteJean, FWIW, I've never found you whiny. Your critiques consistently are insightful. I say, Keep it up!
DeleteAgree with Jim
DeleteThanks to Jim for posting the YouTubes. Watched a bit more of them with Raber until he couldn't stand it and made me turn it off. Like me, he found the presentations very fundi-gelical in tone and message. He said that was the type of thing he wanted to get away from.
ReplyDeleteMeantime, Fr Rad Trad at the local parish is on a series of sermons about heresies and apologetics re Crusades. While not offering outright approval for execution of the Cathars by civil authorities in the Middle Ages, he did say that it illustrated the fact that heresies damage entire communities. (I read the sermons in the bulletin.)
He has an infantile Good vs Evil understanding of the history of heresies. Most of these were academic arguments posed by sincere believers that forced the Church to strengthen its theological arguments. In many ways, dogma makes as much sense as it does because of these challenges. Burning up heretics was a manifestation of the Church's frustration at being unable to offer successful arguments against these ideas.
Anyway, I'm not sure what Father expects the folks in the pews to do with his info.
ISTM that the American Church is really in the throes of trying a lot of renewal efforts--Protestant style revivals, Coming Home Sundays, PreVat2 Traditionalism, revamps of RCIA--as it loses young people and the old faithful die off.