IS THE CHURCH LIKELY TO SHRINK--AND SHOULD IT?

Email | June 21, 2005 | KARL KEATING

[franky]

IS THE CHURCH LIKELY TO SHRINK--AND SHOULD IT?

The answer to that question is: It depends on where you live.

In some places the Church is growing fast--Africa, for example, where Catholics were 12 percent of the population 25 years ago but now are 17 percent. The talk in such places is not about whether the Church will or should shrink; it is about how to manage runaway growth. It is a nice problem to have.

In other places Church participation is in decline, Europe being the most obvious example, but America is in this category too. A few decades ago three out of four American Catholics attended Mass regularly. Now the proportion is one out of four. It is a little hard to brag about having 65 million American Catholics when only 16 million of them show up on Sundays.

Catholics are 23 percent of the U.S. population. If you subtract the nominal ("Christmas and Easter") Catholics and consider only regular Mass-goers, you can say that active Catholics are a mere 6 percent of the national population. Using the same formula, forty years ago they were 18 percent.

Once upon a time Hollywood feared the Legion of Decency because the studios could not afford to have priests instruct tens of millions of Catholics not to attend particular movies. There is no such fear today. There are proportionately fewer Catholics in the pews to hear such instructions, and no such instructions are given anyway.

Older Catholics can remember a time when American bishops were paid attention to not just by Catholics but by the general public, even by political leaders. If you were a politician, you may not have agreed with someone like Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, but you didn't cross him either. He had clout.

Does any American prelate have clout today? I can't think of one. They have no clout partly because they do not try to exercise any but also because to have clout you need to have a committed or sizeable constituency behind you. Six percent is not sizeable and does not suggest much commitment.

How did we come to this pass? Ironically, the Catholic Church's present-day unimportance in the U.S. is largely a consequence of a "big tent" mentality: Church leaders have not wanted to lose anyone, no matter how marginally Catholic. The result has been a Church that is big and flaccid and almost without influence. (Who pays attention to USCCB position papers?)

For the Church in this country to regain influence, it needs to shrink first, on the principle that if you want a fruit tree to grow and to produce good fruit, you must prune it aggressively.

This is precisely what Pope Benedict XVI has been quoted as saying about the Church as a whole: A smaller Church is more likely to be a "creative minority." A Church from which the heterodox take an early retirement will be internally more cohesive and can set itself some modest goals, such as getting back to the business of converting the whole world.

A smaller, more orthodox, and more cohesive Church, one relieved of the burden of people who maintain membership in it primarily in order to oppose it (as some people remain registered in a political party only so they can vote against certain candidates in the primary elections)--such a Church is free to grow. It is free to be itself. It will end up doing more good for more people than it could have while paralyzed through internal bickerings.

In last week's E-Letter I mentioned Rosemary Radford Ruether, whom admirers describe as "a pioneer Christian feminist theologian over 30 years." Her current shtick is "female divinities." Christianity, she says, was constructed for the benefit of men and therefore presents God as male. What is needed is a parallel construction for the benefit of women. She is a great fan of "goddess spirituality."

This is not new thinking--in one form or another it has been around since the sixties, and it certainly is not Christian thinking. If Ruether's theology were spread out before you, without your being told which religion, if any, she subscribed to, you would not guess that what was limned was Catholicism.

Why do people such as Ruether cling to the title but not to the content of the faith? Partly it is because of clout. What little they have is a consequence of their being thought of as Catholics. If Ruether described herself as "a non-Christian New Ager," would her writings be taken as seriously as they are? Of course not. Where is Starhawk now?

I have no insight into what Pope Benedict will do to make the Church a "creative minority." I think the Church in this country will trend that way no matter what.

Someone like Rosemary Radford Ruether may stick it out until the bitter end, but over time many nominal Catholics will conform to truth-in-advertising principles and will start calling themselves something else. They will give up pretending to be what they manifestly are not. More importantly, they will give up trying to make the Church into what it is not. They will find another sandbox to play in.

Even though things will go this way regardless, the Pope is positioned to give real momentum to the shift, and I hope he does, for everyone's sake. He could invite some people, particularly those with notoriety, to find their religious home elsewhere, but I hardly expect him to do that. I don't think he needs to.

All he needs to do is to remove their wiggle room by defining and reiterating Catholic teaching ever more strongly.

The people who attend Call to Action conferences still push for women's ordination, arguing that the male-only priesthood is a cultural artifact, not an irreformable dogma. They pay scant attention to "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" or to the later dubium, signed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, which affirmed the infallibility of the Church's teaching that woman cannot be ordained.

But what if Pope Benedict issued a decree, couched in the plain and traditional language of infallible teachings, saying that it is now and always will be impossible to ordain women, take it or leave it?

I think a fair number would leave it, and in the long run that would be good for them and for the Church. It would be good for them because they no longer would be living a lie, and there would be hope that, at length, they would wake up, see the wisdom of the Catholic position, and come home--as fully Catholic. I've seen it happen.

Until next time,

Karl

[franky]

Any opines? Discussion?

[rudyudy]

6 percent is not big enough to have any clout? Tell that to the gays.

[Jaded]

Maybe if the leaders were leading there would be more clout.

[Unam Sanctam]

I agree with B16 -- better a Church that is faithful to Christ and the apostolic teachings of Scripture and Tradition than a Church with big numbers nominally but of doubtful fidelity.

[Salvation]

In my opinion the Catholic Church is growing in the United States.

[Salvation]

Catholic Parishes Flourish in Southern U.S.

Bible-belt Catholics

Number of Catholics Rises by 15 Million (Diocesan Priests Increase; Religious Decrease)

Spanish Catholicism still very robust (3 shrines and The Sagrada Familia)

Catholics outsource praying to India

Catholic Priests in India 'Outsourced' to Meet Clergy Shortage in West

Christian Coalition head (in Ala.) becomes Catholic

Church growth continues for Catholic and Pentecostals; six mainline denominations decline

Young people turn against their parents' 'church lite'

Pope calls US Church to repentance and renewal

A father for the 11th time - Widower becomes Catholic priest

Number of Adults Who Don't Attend Church Service Doubles

Huge Christian growth shocks China's leaders

Church Attendance Increased : Protestants have now clearly overtaken Catholics in church attendance

Catholics Trail Protestants in Church Attendance [Gallup]

Church Attendance Linked to Longer Life

Church Growth and Eveangelism

Dozens of Episcopalians Follow Leader into Catholic Church

Thousands prepare to join U.S. Catholic Church this Easter

Where Have All the People in the Pews Gone?

More Than 150,000 People to Join Catholic Church Holy Saturday

Spirituality on the rise on college campuses

Analysis: Rome up, Protestantism down?

Benedict's Logic: A Church Contracting & Expanding Simultaneously

CHRISTIANITY EXPLODING WORLDWIDE; 3RD WORLD SENDING MISSIONARIES [V ENCOURAGING DOC]

Christianity taking over the planet?

Local pews straining to hold increasing Catholic population

Catholic Church is losing sway in Europe (Opinion from Ireland)

Has the Catholic Church given up the Ghost?

Statistics Reveal Africa Is (Catholic) Church's New Hope

Chicago Ordains Largest Class of Priests in a Decade

Foreign priests want to fill a need- if Americans let them

Reviving a dream: Big hopes of little congregation growing for Orthodox church

Ancient rhythm: Converts to Orthodoxy growing in America

Catholic Church Prepares for Cold War With Evangelists

IS THE CHURCH LIKELY TO SHRINK--AND SHOULD IT?

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I heard that the Mount Angel Abbey's seminary is filled. They had to turn some potential students away. The Salt Lake diocese has 12 men there, with three more potential, and they ordained four or five (I forget which) last year...Things are happening...there is growth...and a growing sense of commitment in a lot of families. Lots of young families with four and five kids at our parish.

[Salvation]

Yes, I visited Mount Angel Abbey this last month because I thought our group was going to have a retreat there. They are building a new building for dorm rooms as well as classrooms.

One thing to consider, though, is that one of the seminarieis in California closed down.

But they are, indeed, bursting at the seams. It buzzes -- and we were up there on a Saturday.

A lot of my friends go up there for vespers becuase the chanting is so beautiful.

[PAR35]

As a non-Catholic, I would have to question his numbers. There has been a huge increase in the number of Catholics in this area. Sure, many of them speak Spanish, but a few generations ago you could have made the same comment but said Italian, or before that, commented on an Irish accent.

I googled up some numbers and tables here:

http://www.frinstitute.org/southern.htm

[HarleyD]

A few years back the Moral Majority was established to bring Christians together over moral issues. We know what happened to them. They went down the tubes. (Oh, they're still around-I think.) But I remember the biggest complaints about the Moral Majority didn't come from the secular communities. It came from the "Christian" churches who didn't wish to aligned themselves with moral issues.

The decline in moral standards is a reflection on the church itself. There are too many tares and not enough wheat. Unfortunately many of our spiritual leaders could be lumped into the tares category. I say get them out of the church. The church would be far more effective going back to the word of God. It is better for the church to have God on our side then 10,000 ungodly theologians. Give us smaller but more committed churches.

Here's an interesting verse I was meditating on today:

"From the ends of the earth we hear songs, "Glory to the Righteous One," But I say, "Woe to me! Woe to me! Alas for me! The treacherous deal treacherously, and the treacherous deal very treacherously." Isa 24:16

Something to think about.

[Conservative til I die]

It's not about shrinking or growing the Church. It's about righting it and regaining equilibrium.

[kittymyrib]

Christianity has always flourished under active persecution that prunes out the dead wood, the faux Christians. The worst conditions for growing a vital Christianity are in times of lazy prosperity when worldliness takes over the church and weakens the preaching of the Law and the Gospel.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

California is often a great example of what is wrong with the AmChurch type movement...I don't know about the seminary that closed, but in the areas where the church is not encouraged to be faithful, you see things going awry, you have problems with vocations, and other things that lead people away.

I know that there are people who desparately want the church to validate their lifestyles or choices, but the truth is, that when religious groups trade in the gospel for the desire to use man as the measure, they begin the long road back into a type of paganism, as we see in a number of liberal churches whose leadership denies the divinity of Christ and even have groups in their seminaries who worship Gaia.

These groups are fading as people leave them looking for authenticity. The great interest in Benedict has been because he stands for the authentic Gospel, and is seen as a light against the darkness. The church may shed its nominal members, as the cost of living the life of a Christian begins to go up in the West, but those who stay will be committed, and good witnesses of the calling of Christ. Or so I believe!

[hispanichoosier]

I think a fair number would leave it, and in the long run that would be good for them and for the Church.

I think that a strong move on the part of B16 would cause some formal schisms, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing because de facto schism already exists. Getting the "dead wood" out of the Church would certainly help in the long run.

[Polycarp1]

As an Eastern Orthodox Christian I would be grateful for a Catholic Church that recovers its sense of being "catholic" by reaffirming its core values and getting rid of the dead weight (especially among its teachers and academics).

[RKBA Democrat]

"Christianity has always flourished under active persecution that prunes out the dead wood, the faux Christians. The worst conditions for growing a vital Christianity are in times of lazy prosperity when worldliness takes over the church and weakens the preaching of the Law and the Gospel."

Extremely cogent comment. Thanks for posting.

[RKBA Democrat]

"In my opinion the Catholic Church is growing in the United States."

As the article indicates, it depends where you're at. I think the author paints with a little too broad of a brush by characterizing the shrinkage in the U.S. as nationwide. It depends what part of the U.S. you live in.

In my area, Virginia, the church is growing. I think the reason is mostly immigration. Both from outside the U.S. and within.

In the northeast, from what I can tell the church in general seems to be shrinking. There are certainly exceptions, and I think the reasons are a little more complex. Shifting population patterns toward the south are certainly a factor. Problematic diocese are another.

Again, I think the author of the article paints a little too broadly. The issues that he comments on certainly exist and should be addressed, but you only need pay a visit to Phoenix or North Carolina to see a church that in some ways and in some geographic areas is doing better than ever.