In many ways the church today is at a low point. Depleted parishes merging. The sex abuse tragedy. The laity asking for education in spirituality and how to apply their faith in everyday situations, e.g., in a culture marked by cold individualism, cutthroat competition, and deeply polarized politics and economics. People, especially the young, looking elsewhere for their spirituality. This new column will look at how we got to this low point, and then we’ll discuss how we can become effective, spiritually responsible, 21st century Catholics in today’s society and culture.
To start with, let’s go back to the 1950s, when the church was at a high point. Sunday Masses were filled to overflowing. Catholic schools were full. In Philly, where I grew up, if somebody asked Catholics where they lived, they would give the name of their parish. Most Catholics lived in “Catholic islands,” where almost everybody was Catholic and even of the same ethnic background. In these islands, they were baptized, went to school, worshipped, met for social events, played sports, danced, dated, got married and raised their families. For the most part, they left the island only to go to work. Their spirituality included devotions, sodalities, novenas, and retreats.
Then thanks to things like the GI Bill for World War II veterans and a rising economy, Catholics began to move away from their islands into neighborhoods where people of other religions and nationalities lived. Some started attending public schools, and then non-Catholic colleges and universities. They began succeeding in business, professional and technical fields. Some married non-Catholics. In this new atmosphere, their 1950s devotional spirituality began to fail them, because much of it depended on the external influence and traditions of the island they had left behind.
Increasingly, they found themselves spiritual strangers in a split world. They believed and prayed in one world, but lived, were educated, worked, socialized, married, voted, etc., in another world. In this split reality, they tried to match their new social, economic and professional successes with the faith they had learned as children. It was a bad mismatch.
In the late 1960s, our society and culture underwent a profound upheaval. The old devotional spirituality was not able to meet the challenges and needs of the new culture. Catholics began finding that the church was irrelevant to their new and pressing spiritual needs, and began walking away. Today the slow walking away has become a hemorrhage.
Recently, Bishop Joseph Galante asked the people of the Camden Diocese to express their concerns and needs. Importantly, they showed how the church has fallen short. Very wisely, they responded that they want to know more clearly and effectively how to experience God and how to live their faith in today’s terms.
In the late 1950s Pope John XXIII foresaw the people’s spiritual need. He was a mystic, which means that he was spiritually sensitive enough to “see” what is hidden from many people. St. Francis of Assisi was a mystic too. Francis was a nature-mystic; he could see God present and active in the sun and moon, in flowers and animals. John XXIII was a history-mystic; he could see God present and active in the everyday world. He saw that the church was behind the times and he wanted it to catch up. So he called a council.
Pope John knew that every Catholic is a mystic in their own way, that everyone of us can know what God is saying to us personally. He instructed the council not to add any new teachings to our faith but to take the wondrous faith we already have and explain it in language that all of us could easily understand and apply to our present-day experience of God. He wanted us to be able to “read the signs of the times,” i.e., to discern God’s intentions for each of us individually, in our families, and in today’s society and culture.
This required a new kind of church, an updated church that respects the spiritual gifts and vocations of all its members, and that understands the challenges and wondrous possibilities of today’s world. A small but powerful group of bishops and cardinals in Rome saw no reason to hold a council and update the church. And there was a great deal of history that was blocking the church’s entrance into today’s world.
In my next column, I will outline that history and opposition and show how Vatican II had a great deal of catching up to do.
Anthony T. Massimini of Woolwich holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. He can be reached at Massi6@comcast.net
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