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EXCERPT:
A PEOPLE ADRIFT
June 27, 2003 Episode no. 643
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Read an advance excerpt from A PEOPLE ADRIFT: THE CRISIS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA by Peter Steinfels, forthcoming this summer from Simon & Schuster:
Over the last decades, bishops varied widely, as they always have, in the kind of leadership they exercised in their own dioceses. Nationally, they plugged away at a long list of pastoral challenges, from new translations for the liturgy to new plans for Hispanic or African-American or young adult ministry. But on too many big questions, as the sex abuse scandal made so painfully clear, collectively they stalled and individually they were silent. Will the hierarchy now be jolted out of that stalemate? Or will the bishops be driven even deeper into it?
The prospects, for the time being, do not look good. The end of any papacy tends to be a time for standing pat. The end of this papacy may be a time for last-minute efforts to reinforce its ecclesiastical conservatism. And the long-run prospects are not encouraging either. Tomorrow's bishops will be chosen from today's young priests, and today's young priests are a smaller pool, increasingly conservative, less inclined to conceive and favor new initiatives, indeed less temperamentally inclined toward church leadership than face-to-face priestly roles.
Leadership in Catholicism, despite appearances, has never been restricted to the bishops. Often enough, bishops find themselves responding to the initiatives of other Catholic leaders. The climate of the times suggests that Catholics, ordained and lay, will have to exercise responsibility for the vigor of Catholicism within their own sector of activity.
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Laity at the parish and diocesan level must avail themselves of all the advisory councils now called for -- and invent new mechanisms for informal or formal accountability. Catholic politicians have to do more than endorse or fend off the positions taken by the hierarchy; they must articulate theologically informed positions of their own, linking moral principles with factual assessments and prudential judgments. Catholic educators, health care administrators, and social service leaders cannot leave it to others, bishops included, to define and assure the Catholic identity of their institutions.
The liturgical and catechetical establishments and the guild of academic theologians, which have often generally assumed the defense of innovation while leaving the task of protecting continuity to the hierarchy, will have to broaden their own sense of responsibility for the whole Catholic tradition. Catholic donors are going to have to fund independent centers of serious Catholic thinking and scholarship, alongside traditional Catholic philanthropies. Finally, Catholic intellectuals who have come into their own in specialized fields of research, public policy, communications, or the arts must bring not only opinions but well-founded reflection back to their church and faith.
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Read the News Feature for more about the U.S. Catholic bishop's meeting follow-up.
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