American Catholicism: And Now Where? PDF
Preview American Catholicism: And Now Where?
AMERICAN CATHOLICISM AND NOW WHERE? AMERICAN CATHOLICISM AND NOW WHERE? JOHN DEEDY SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Deedy, John G. American Catholicism. lncludes bibliographical references and index. 1. Catholic Church-United States-History-20th century. 2. United States- Church history-20th century. 1. Title. BX1406.2.D42 1987 282'73 87·12765 ISBN 978-0-306-42706-0 ISBN 978-1-4899-3438-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-3438-3 © 1987 John Deedy Originally published by Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York in 198 7 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 Ali rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical. photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher For Bill Buckley, the Good W.T.B., of Worcester PREFACE THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC church is a remarkable institu tion. Its people worship in numbers that dwarf figures from elsewhere. It has one of the most vibrant of Cath olic school systems, perhaps the most vibrant. It is by and large an obedient church, some would say docile controversies of recent years notwithstanding. It is a church characterized by great loyalty to the pope and by unstinting financial generosity to Rome. Still, the Ameri can church is a church in transition. There has been ero sion in areas of church life. Yet more is likely. The vii viii PREFACE American Catholic church, in sum, is a ready-made sub ject for analysis and study. When this book project on American Catholicism was first broached, no particular time urgency seemed to be involved. In recent years, nuns and priests had ex ited the religious life by the thousands, and their ranks were not being refilled. Many seminaries and convents had been closed for lack of need, then sold off to meet the financial imperatives of the respective religious com munities. The administration of Catholic hospitals in several cities had been turned over to lay boards, and a few Catholic colleges had shut their gates. A number of Catholic publications had disappeared from view, and in many Catholic parishes, focuses shifted, often to ac tivities of apostolic inconsequence, as emphases drained away from diocesan schools, very many of which had closed for good. Still, on the institutional level, it was pretty much business as usual. The church had prob lems, but Peter's American bark was not about to keel over like some shaky ship in a rough sea. Administratively, many of the problems of the American church could be attributed to zealous, indeed reckless, overextension during the years of rectitude confirmed that followed World War II, those years coin ciding roughly with the Eisenhower administrations, a time when everything was right with America and every thing upbeat for American Catholicism. Thus, when slippage began occurring during the lat ter 1960s, it was easy enough to interpret much that was happening as part of a natural process-the laws of evolutionary selectivity translated to the ecclesiastical PREFACE ix sphere. If a few spoke of crisis, no one was pressing a panic button-at least no one high in authority was. The American church was in change, and if certain changes did not always seem for the better, at least they could be rationalized. But in Rome, the American situation was not viewed so casually-or so placidly or benignly, as the case may be. So it was that under a new pope, John Paul II, a pope from a country quite different from the United States or, for that matter, any other in the world where Roman Catholicism was strong, Rome entered upon a program to right what it saw as wrong with the church beyond the Alps, including eventually the American church. Maybe it is unfair to suggest that this was a culture-gap pope, or to suggest, as does James Carroll a in his roman clef Prince of Peace, that this was-nay, is-a pope who would rule the church as the Communist Party would the pope's native Poland. But it is not un fair to say that this was and remains a pope with a very conservative agenda, call it traditional, if you will except, of course, in Roman Catholicism, traditional pretty much translates as conservative. It quickly became clear that very high among John Paul II' s worldwide concerns was the state of the Ameri can church. In fact, as event piled on event, it was ob vious that this pope, in the phrase from a U.S. News & World Report cover story on American Catholicism, was "taking dead aim at the American church,"1 initiating disciplinary actions and setting in motion institutional re forms that, if not unique in the history of American Catholicism, were without parallel in some seventy-five X PREFACE years. In the first decade of this century, while Pius X was pope, the modernist controversies took their toll on the American church, virtually paralyzing Catholic life in the United States for decades. Milwaukee's Arch bishop Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., recalled the times and their consequences in a remarkable column in his archdiocesan newspaper, questioning the wisdom of ef forts by Rome to impose a stricter orthodoxy on the American church: "Seminaries were closed, theological periodicals were suppressed, a network of 'informers' in each diocese was organized, oaths were repeatedly taken, intellectually rigid bishops were appointed, and fear and distrust were everywhere in the U.S.A."2 Those steps in the early century were taken to cope with a heresy that history knows as Americanism, but that was largely phantom so far as the church in America was concerned. In any instance, the repressions and the in timidations accomplished little that was positive. They stifled theological creativity, stunted intellectual growth of a religious kind, and ultimately left the American church unprepared for Vatican Council H-and, as Weak land would add, "unprepared" as well for "the dramatic changes of the 1960s. "3 For Rome, the challenge to it these days does not ap per to be substantively different from what yesterday's Rome deemed it to be during the days of the American II ism'' controversy. Once again, the issues involve dis cipline, theological and doctrinal orthodoxy, and the problem of ideological separatism. Elements of the American church might want more room in adapting the church's traditional teachings to their existential religious and cultural situations, but authority belongs to Rome PREFACE xi and Rome is not about to surrender it or relax it beyond the measure already in effect. As Rome took a hard line in the early century, so it takes a hard line today. Who says history does not try to repeat itself? These are different times, however. Yesterday, Rome could pretty much control new theological and doctrinal directions-and such internal matters as it needed to simply by issuing an encyclical or an authoritative direc tive of one kind or another. Rome spoke; Catholics fell in line. Gone are the days! Rome speaks, but the words fall on many deaf ears belonging to Catholics, so many, in fact, that the Rome of John Paul II obviously feels impelled to act directly to assert control, to quash dissent in order to maintain, re affirm, and reestablish its hegemony over the 841 mil lion Catholics of the world. It will take on a whole church in those countries whose house it deems out of order. It acted firmly and decisively a few years ago in terms of the Dutch church, and soon after, it took on the Bra zilian church in the context of liberation theology. It can no longer be doubted that Rome has now decided to come to grips with what it sees as the prob lem of the American church. The disciplining of so many American Catholics, from relatively anonymous nuns to prominent priests, including even an archbishop, allows no other conclusion. Confirming the impression further are actions such as the withdrawal of the imprimatur (the church's seal of approval on a published work) from several books and catechisms that enjoyed an earlier clearance, as well as the tightening of reins generally over U.S. dioceses, seminaries, colleges, and universi ties. The pope, in the words of U.S. News & World
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