American culture key to understanding lay shifts - U.S. Catholicism: Trends in the '90s - NCR/Gallup Poll Supplement

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 8, 1993 by David O'Brien

The NCR/Gallup Poll cannot be considered good news for Pope John Paul II. U.S. Catholics, we find, are more American (making up their own minds) and more unCatholic (less submissive to church teaching) than ever.

They may love God and Jesus and they may be more loyal to Catholicism than anyone except Andrew Greeley suspected, but they are also what Greeley called "do-it-yourself" Catholics, the kind almost no Catholic professionals, from pope to pundits, really like or respect.

So there it is. Whatever may have happened at Vatican II, Catholic still means Catholic. Being "in" means thinking as the church thinks, believing what the church believes, taking as truth that which the church teaches, adopting appropriate sheeplike behaviors when dealing with God's chosen shepherds. Catholic means doctrinal statements affirmed, clerical and papal authority accepted, moral pronouncements forming consciences, boundaries that can't be crossed, ideas that can't be expressed, changes that can't be made.

John Paul II and a few others at least seem willing to take on non-Catholics and non-Catholic culture, in Poland as well as in the United States. But most of those who love this stuff never rocked any boat that would give them a ride.

Story No. 1

So there are two stories here, one a fairly accurate story of growing Catholic voluntarism and individualism, the other a story about the lenses through which that reality is interpreted.

"Story One: The Making of Do-It-Yourselfers" has been told many times. It is the story of the unraveling of modern and American Catholic culture. Everyone knows that Catholicism was always diverse. Christopher Dawson, that great champion of unified Catholic culture, admitted that the reformation happened largely because Latin and Germanic Catholics never really got things together.

Historians of Catholic societies from Renaissance Italy to Counter Reformation Spain to New York's Little Italy to today's Haiti find popular Catholicism filled with rich mixtures of Christian and pagan beliefs and practices. Popular Catholic devotions often sharply conflict with prevailing theology. The family and the earth are filled with sacred powers more immediately significant than any found in church.

As for morals, simply listen to the preaching and prayers of almost any saint since the Council of Trent: Many people in all classes and cultures suffer greatly because of a near infinite variety of vices.

Catholic aspiration

Almost always, almost everywhere, Catholic Christianity, like any other Christianity, has been a matter more of aspiration than achievement, making and remaking cultures and communities, hoping that faith, awakened and renewed, might somehow bring love where it seems always absent.

Catholicism at its most dormant seemed static, on its surface seamless, like docile Irish villagers at Mass. Like that scene, it was deceptive, the image formed more by the needs and desires of observers than by people usually beset by deeper tragedies and more fearsome powers than their betters could imagine.

But the church so loved by opponents of "cafeteria Catholicism" was not entirely an illusion. From Trent on, Catholic reformers hoped to educate and civilize Catholics and build harmonious churches and civilizations -- at home if possible, on the missions if necessary.

Two centuries of dependence for reform on Catholic crowned heads left mixed results: ruined missions from Quebec to California, to Paraguay and across Asia, clerics at the guillotine or in exile, even the pope in prison back home, all because of persecution by Catholics or former Catholics.

Shaken by revolution, the Catholic church, led by some remarkable people, took charge of its destiny by making an option for itself. Reforming bishops reformed their priests, educating them, confining them to their assignments, making them financially dependent and pastorally responsible, and insisting they be churchmen, committed to the church above all.

Bishops and popes together centralized administration, strengthened their authority and declared their leader infallible. In implementing these reforms they gradually made themselves and their church more independent of political powers than they had been in a millennium.

Most of all, they brought as many people as possible to church. There they were taught what the church teaches, persuaded to receive the sacraments as the major way to achieve salvation, and -- in strategies tailored to diverse political and cultural circumstances -- were mobilized to defend the faith by defending and supporting their church.

Modern foundations

So the image of the church that lies behind whining about cafeteria Catholicism was a uniquely modern construction. Its sources lay in:

1. Competition, first with Protestants, later with secular and revolutionary movements. The survival of the church, and thus of the faith, depended on organizing Catholics and keeping them out of competing organizations, most of which were hostile to the church. Thus there was a clear need to make the organization important, the ordinary means of salvation, and to clarify the boundaries between the church and its competitors by emphasizing those things on which Catholics differed with others, not what united them.