Posted on 04/14/2008 9:05:53 AM PDT by Incorrigible
By JOHN FARMER JR.
This week's visit of Pope Benedict XVI comes at a critical time in the history of Roman Catholicism in America. Rocked by the widespread abuse of children by Catholic priests, and unsettled by the death of the beloved Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church in America has been troubled, to say the least. But the church's problems run deeper even than the recent sex scandals. The church was hemorrhaging members before priest-gate, in large measure because the church and American culture are directly at odds.
But just as Pope John Paul II, by virtue of his life resisting fascism and communism, was the perfect choice to serve as a moral counterweight to the Soviet empire as it imploded, so Pope Benedict XVI, by virtue of his life grappling with the consequences of the Vatican II reforms and the erosion of Christianity in Western Europe after World War II, is well-positioned to address the cultural crisis of American Catholicism.
Anyone raised Roman Catholic in America in the past 50 years has had to confront this reality: The central tenets of his faith, if followed strictly, will leave him estranged from the culture of his daily life, from the films and music and art that surround him and enrich the lives of his peers.
Unlike Catholics for much of the past two millennia, whose cultural world validated their faith in soaring cathedrals, exalted music and sculpture and painting drawn straight from the Bible, Catholics of the past 50 years in America have lived in a cultural world that, when it referenced Catholicism at all, usually treated it as a joke (Sister Mary Elephant and Father Guido Sarducci still bring a smile).
Catholicism in America is a faith that extols restraint in a culture that rewards license; a faith that preaches abstinence in a culture that celebrates excess; a faith that treats reason as a path toward revelation in a culture that treats reason as an end in itself; a faith that protects all human life as sacred, even the life of a single fertilized cell and the life of a serial murderer, in a culture that, in most states, allows the destruction of both; a faith that values obedience to tradition in a culture that scorns tradition, values rebellion, and views freedom as the ultimate social good.
This has been the harsh and self-contradictory milieu of the Roman Catholic American: if her faith is right, then her culture is wrong.
This conflict has caused many Catholics to look skeptically at the dogmas of our youth. Such beliefs as transubstantiation — the belief that the wine and bread of Holy Communion become, through the ritual, the actual blood and body of Jesus — are just hard to sustain in a skeptical culture. It is also difficult for many to view the Virgin birth, the catalogues of angels, the accounts of saintly miracles, the doctrines of purgatory and limbo, the belief in demonic possession and exorcism as anything other than medieval superstitions.
Many of these stories, after all, were recorded by people who didn't even know they were breathing oxygen or that they thought with their brains, who lacked eyeglasses or wrist watches, who had no idea that stars are other suns or that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Every Catholic I know has had to address this inner conflict between faith and culture. Some have left the church entirely; others have abandoned our culture entirely. Some have left the conflict unreconciled, living tightly compartmented lives in which the spheres of faith and culture are kept separate. Most have become so-called cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing among the various tenets of the faith, selecting those beliefs that bear scrutiny and repudiating the rest.
Pope Benedict XVI, needless to say, is in an exceedingly difficult position as the head of this spiritual institution. As much as he might be tempted to adapt some of the church's more extravagant dogmas to changing times, to do so would place at risk the church's very identity. Indeed, the fact that the church has changed so little over the years — that the mass you attend is the same service attended by your ancestors for hundreds of years — is a source of great comfort to many Catholics, particularly in a world where everything else changes so fast.
Because he had served as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — in other words, as the keeper of the dogmas — many dreaded Cardinal Ratzinger's accession to the papacy. It does seem clear, moreover, that little doctrinal change is likely to occur.
But in one of his final writings before becoming pope, Ratzinger addressed directly "Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures," and hinted at the gentle persuader he has proven to be so far as pope. "The dialogue between those outside the Church and us Catholics, us Christians, is a matter of great urgency," he wrote, adding that "we must at all costs remain faithful to this basic principle of living a faith that proceeds from ... creative reason, and is therefore open to all that is truly rational."
He then made "a proposal to those outside the Church" that may hold for many Americans — not just Catholics — potential for coping with, if not resolving, our cultural contradictions.
During the Enlightenment, he pointed out, philosophers attempted to "understand and define the essential terms of morality by saying that these would be valid ... even if God did not exist." Now, the future pope argued, we have come full circle: "The attempt .. to shape human affairs to the total exclusion of God leads us more and more to brink of the abyss, toward the utter annihilation of man. We must therefore reverse the axiom ... and say: Even the one who does not succeed in finding the path to accepting the existence of God ought nevertheless to try to live and to direct his life ... as if God did indeed exist. This is ... the advice that I should like to give to our friends who do not believe."
He concluded by stating that it is incumbent on those who have found a path in faith not to impose their views but, rather, to lead by their exemplary conduct: "We need men like Benedict of Nursia, who, in an age of dissipation and decadence ... made his foundation at Monte Cassino the 'city on the hill' where, in the midst of so many ruins, he assembled the forces from which a new world was formed."
Shortly after writing these words, Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, taking the name — Benedict — of the man he so admired. How this Benedict leads his church through our era of decadence and dissipation may well determine the future of Roman Catholicism in America.
(John Farmer Jr. wrote this article for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at news(at)newhouse.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
I can condense this down to one sentence. To be a typical American, a catholic must sin.
Many are returning or just coming into the Catholic faith.
ping
Apparently the author has missed that whole Latin-to-English (or whatever the local vernacular is) thing.
Along with multiple other smaller changes.
In my lifetime.
“Anyone raised Roman Catholic in America in the past 50 years has had to confront this reality: The central tenets of his faith, if followed strictly, will leave him estranged from the culture of his daily life, from the films and music and art that surround him and enrich the lives of his peers.”
That’s true.
That’s why Jesus said that although we are in the world, we aren’t to be of the world.
Although I would have been happy to see a german shepard dog with wings and a halo also. =^..^=
You know, everytime a pontiff comes to America, someone yanks out this story about how the Catholic Church in America is about to explode...again.
...Do not cancel out the famous JPII generation.
BINGO! I strongly recommend anyone (Catholic, Christian, even Atheist) to check that site out, and also, to seek out a local meeting of CL in your area. You will not be disappointed, if the notion of "Knowing Christ exists as well as knowing anything exists" is intriguing to you!
>>The church was hemorrhaging members ... because the church and American culture are directly at odds.
OK, Catholics, here’s your chance - slime it up a bit. I know that’s worked really well in the Episcopal Church. Not.
This guy is so dumb about religion he must be the Newhouse religion reporter.
He’s got it precisely backwards. “The church was hemorrhaging members before priest-gate, in large measure because the church and American culture are directly at odds.”
No, the Church has been hemorrhaging members because the dissenters who seized the levers of power after Vatican 2 are trying to JOIN the culture.
And “priestgate” happened for the same reason, because too many dissenters joined the Sexual Revolution. By the way, the problem priests are not correctly described as pederasts, except in a very, very few cases. They are mainly homosexuals—a group highly approved by the Kultur, unless it happens to be a priest who’s doing it, when they just add a little MSM spin and blame it on the Church.
You know, everytime a pontiff comes to America, someone yanks out this story about how the Catholic Church in America is about to explode...again.>>>>
This is why it’s so comforting to know that the AmChurch is only about 6% of the Church worldwide. Yes, comforting indeed!
The Catholic Church is still growing in the US
I love this Pope.
Even worse! He's the former state attorney general for New Jersey!
Most of his columns are so poorly reasoned, that I don't bother to post them. This one just got above the bar!
I wish he would drop the “gentle persuader” routine and kick some butt (e.g. excommunications; retirement and public chastisement of disobedient bishops; wholesale disenfranchisement of the modernist wing of The Church). After the terminal butt kicking phase concludes, he should then go full bore into the “moral leader by example”.
Nothing self-contradictory about this at all. Christ Himself said on many occasions that this would be so.
Isn't this what the "narrow gate" (to eternal life) is all about?
????????????The sacraments may still be valid, but otherwise the currently offered "Novus Ordo" Mass is anything but (and I shall conclude the sentence there without going into some of the more colorful histrionics on the subject).
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