Back in February 2007 when he was still writing for the National Catholic Reporter, John Allen wrote a great article:
More Catholics on the way
They're likely to be gray-haired, healthy and rich
That article is no longer available on the NCR website, but I have a copy since I thought it was so important that I distributed it to our parish Pastoral Council (I was a member then). There was a positive reaction to the article, and the pastor did say that we should eventually get around to doing something about the growing elderly population. However, his thinking was more problem than asset driven.
The parish is very youth oriented with a vibrant parish grade school, and pre-school. Unfortunately, they could not see how my vision of how a vibrant parish retirement community would be the perfect complement to its young educational focus. The pastor recently retired without any thing much being done for the elderly even though he had a long struggle with illness before retiring at age 75.
John Allen, however, has not given up on his vision of an "Aging Bloom for Catholicism." He recently reviewed a Pope Leo address on the matter.
In my LAKE COUNTY WEAL BLOG, I have written about all this in a post
You might want to read my WEAL post for its summary of the NCR 2007 article but you will definitely want to read the entire recent CRUX article, not just my summary. IT IS NOT BEHIND A PAYWALL. YES, YOU WILL BE INVITED BUT NOT REQUIRED TO REGISTER AND CONTRIBUTE.
You might also want to read Pope Leo's original address to see how John Allen has connected all the dots of information there into the "home run" address the Leo should have made (John loved baseball analogies);
John excuses the lack of a home run with words like "hinting" and he notes the limits of a 900-word address. A comparison of the two shows how John makes his subject look good while excusing his faults.
In both articles Allen uses positive language about the elderly without laying the blame of a refusal to recognize their talents upon our prejudices against them that are just as blame worthy as those against women and racial minorities.
We are very likely to see the elderly as problems rather than assets with time, talents and treasure to solve our problems. Recently Lake County produced a study on its elderly, i.e. those over age sixty. The data in the study made clear to me that we healthy age sixty plus have all the resources to solve the problems of those who are over age sixty, probably with time, talent and treasure to take up some other county problems.
I have nothing but admiration for the elderly of our parish. They're the ones who keep on trucking, even if they come to Mass with canes or walkers. They're the Simeons and Annas who await the consolation of the Holy Spirit. I'm old enough to be them, but I'm kind of lazy and selfish, and just try to follow their example.
ReplyDeleteThe elderly will not save the church - especially those who are still younger elderly. The church focuses all its energies on the young - children because they are the future and the church loses them by the carload after high school. Young families because the church hopes the parents will be able to inculcate Catholicism into their kids sufficiently to keep them Catholic after they leave home. Yet the younger generations continue to leave, usually becoming “nones”, especially young adult women. Except for the young trads, longing for a past church that seemed simpler, one they did not know, and so idealize.
ReplyDeleteBut I have observed among my raised Catholic friends, - the older boomers - including lifelong friends from my Catholic college days, friends from big 1940s-1950s Catholic families (7-9 kids usually) , all the traditions, and 12 years of Catholic educational institutions, that older Catholics have also been slipping away in spite of the stalwarts that hang in there. Most of my Catholic friends are “once Catholic”, but no longer active. No longer in church. They are called the “dones”. - Catholics like me who finally gave up one day, went out the doors and didn’t return. They don’t complain that their kids have left, and don’t care if their kids and grandkids aren’t marrying in the church or baptizing the babies. The boomer “dones” will likely not even be filling empty pews with their gray heads when the current generation of old, old folk die. They are ignored by the church - the generation that came of age shortly after Vatican II, filled with hope that the church was opening its windows to let in some fresh air. JPII and Benedict slowly killed that Hope - the “spirit of Vatican II” - a descriptor of hope that became a favorite of Vatican IIs enemies, now commonly used as an insult.
I actually do see a lot of not-quite-so disabled elderly ministering to elderly who need help. Even have done some of it myself, though I need to do more.
ReplyDeleteThe people who help out as hospital volunteers, blood bank volunteers, and drivers for Meals on Wheels are mostly the over sixty crowd. That may not be specifically church related, but certainly are corporal works of mercy.
Most of my formerly Catholic old boomer friends are active, volunteering etc. but that doesn’t require being part of a church. Jack worked on ideas ( and apparently so did John Allen) on how the elderly could benefit the church and vice versa. But unfortunately the church mostly ignores the elderly - I’m not aware of any parishes that consider the ideas that Jack has proposed to create parish relationships with the elderly that are mutually beneficial.
DeleteJohn L. Allen Jr. died on January 22, 2026, after a lengthy battle with cancer. The legendary Vatican beat reporter and Church affairs analyst was 61 years old. He is survived by his wife, Elise Ann Allen, who is Crux’s senior Rome correspondent.
ReplyDeleteAllen was a force of nature, certainly as a journalist who was not only our principal but also a model for us, whose counsel and whose company we already and forever shall sorely miss.
Allen was a patient mentor, a generous colleague, and the consummate newsman.
Keenly as we feel his absence in the newsroom, we also mourn the loss of a man who had been our dear friend for the better part of three decades.
We recall many convivial gatherings with Allen in restaurants and at his home in Rome, where he enjoyed exercising his formidable culinary prowess and was a prodigiously gracious host.
While we treasure the memories we made with Allen at table – some of them admittedly fuzzy – we clearly remember with powerful gratitude the countless kindnesses he visited on us in secret, through more than twenty years of friendship that began in the Eternal City and will, we fondly hope, continue in happy eternity.
Leading voices from across the spectrum of opinion in the Church praised Allen as “the journalist other reporters – and not a few cardinals – look to for the inside story on how all the pope’s men direct the world’s largest church,” to say it with Kenneth Woodward.
Allen spent seventeen years with the National Catholic Reporter, during which he became “the most authoritative writer on Vatican affairs in the English language,” according to The Tablet, and “the best Anglophone Vatican reporter ever,” according to conservative biographer of Pope St. John Paul II, George Weigel.
In 2014, Allen joined the Boston Globe’s Crux team, where he served for two years as associate editor before the Globe spun Crux off, leaving Allen to pilot the organization as CEO and editor-in-chief.
Under Allen’s editorial leadership, Crux has continued undaunted and undistracted in its mission of newsgathering and reporting, amid momentous changes in the Church and in global politics.
Through thick and thin, fat years and lean, Allen tenaciously preserved Crux’s editorial independence, always with both eyes firmly fixed on the work of getting the story, getting it right, and getting it out.
“Crux does the news,” Allen would say, and he led by example, relying on a core of dedicated and capable journalists and fostering an editorial culture infused with his newsman’s ethos.
Buttressed by new and dynamic business leadership in the creation of which Allen was instrumental, Crux is equipped to carry forward its mission: to provide – as Allen liked to say – the very best in smart, wired, and independent coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church around the world.
We ask your prayers for our friend, John L. Allen Jr., for his widow, Elise, for all who loved him, and for the work he advanced with whole-hearted and single-minded devotion, work we shall surely continue.
Charles Collins and Christopher R. Altieri
The Editors
Hi David, I was sorry to hear of John Allen's death. I used to listen to his "Last week in the church" podcast sometimes. I see that some of those are available on youtube. I may try to catch some of the ones I missed.
ReplyDeleteHe was a serious journalist, unlike so much of the "influencer" culture so prevalent now.
Katherine - “ He was a serious journalist, unlike so much of the "influencer" culture so prevalent now.”. Yes, and that is increasingly rare. The “ influencer” culture is another thing that has happened that is not particularly a healthy phenomenon.
ReplyDelete