I am for Barron! I am for Voris!

[Many thanks to Ben from Shadows on the Road for linking to me, welcome if you’re here from his blog!]

My apologies for the lengthy blogging absence. This will be a ‘short’ post to get back into the run of things, but I hope to get up another two or three shortly. I hope that you all had a wonderful Advent and Christmas!

I mentioned previously on my post on Pope Francis that I felt that the battles over the Pope online and in print were in some way ‘proxy battles for a different polarisation’ between different camps in the American Church, a polarisation which inevitably creeps in here due to the influence America has on the English-speaking world.

These battles seem to map onto a division between the Four Camps I’m always yammering on about, specifically between the more extreme Traditionalists (affectionately known as Radtrads) and (I think) Camp B (alas, I did not devote my time away from blogging to coming up with better descriptors for the camps). These divisions are a bit different in the US, but perhaps close enough for comparison.

One thing that I noticed about this division is that the Radtrads seem to be devotees of Michael Voris of Church Militant TV fame, whereas the B-Camp seem to be followers of Bishop Robert Barron and his Word on Fire channel. There are exceptions, as always.

Hence the title of this post, which comes from a line in 1 Corinthians 3 you might be familiar with.

Interestingly enough, a short while ago my attention was drawn to a post by a former staffer at Voris’ group called Miles, who has become disillusioned with Church Militant and left. It’s a very good, charitable, but incisive post and impressive for somebody as young as he is. Fair play to him for being able to make up his own mind at that age.

But I bring this up mainly for the title of the post: ‘From Vorisite to Barronite: Why I Left Church Militant.’ Here we have these two factions within the Church summed up at their most explicit.

Many Traditionalists seem to have a beef with Bishop Barron. Steve Skojec sums up some of these here. I don’t always agree with Skojec, and I don’t think he’s right in every point he makes necessarily, but he’s right in this: Bishop Barron shouldn’t be beyond criticism, as long as it’s charitable and reasonable. There does seem to be a knee-jerk defence of Barron sometimes.

The problem I have with much criticism of Bishop Barron is that some of his critics don’t even give charity the merest of lip service (or truth, for that matter). I’ve often heard Barron denounced as a heretic from the get-go as a means of writing him off rather than engaging with his more controversial views. It seems to go into a form of tribalism.

I think that this tribalism is summed up pretty well by Mark Shea (Note Well: firmly in the Barronite camp) in this piece, which is very good. (For the sake of balancing out the Skojec article, here is a piece critical of Voris and his approach by the same Shea).

And I think that this tribalism is contributing to the problems of divisions within the Church, whether it’s the divisions between the Vorisites and Barronites in the USA or the similar-but-different Irish divisions I’ve mentioned before in the Four Camps post.

What’s very interesting about this is its similarities to certain other divisions which have been described as tribal. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of posts at a blog called Slate Star Codex. It’s written by an atheist psychiatrist working in Michigan (who incidentally studied at an Irish university) who goes under the nom du blog of Scott Alexander. Here are two key posts that deal with precisely this issue:

I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup

Five Case Studies On Political Polarisation

The first is an interesting study of how the USA is divided into two ‘tribes,’ the Red Tribe and Blue Tribe, and how while everybody believes that they are tolerant of differences etc., really they are just tolerant of diversity within their own tribe. Each tribe coalesces around a set of views that are often mutually contradictory. This summary doesn’t do the very lengthy, excellent post justice; go read it yourselves!

The ‘Red Tribe’ according to Alexander

…is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting “USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!”, and listening to country music.

The ‘Blue Tribe’ on the other hand

…is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country.”

There’s also a smaller, libertarian ‘Grey Tribe’ which he lumps in with the Blue Tribe for simplicity’s sake.

The second post describes how issues get politicised by these tribal affiliations; for example, your views on global warming or the correct response to the recent ebola outbreak almost always correlate with which tribe you belong to.

I think that we see a similar phenomenon being played out within the Church both in the USA and in Ireland.

We have a ‘Vorisite Tribe’ which dislikes Pope Francis, dislikes the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, usually follows Republican politics, favours ‘hammer-of-the-heretics’ style rhetoric and has a very rigid view of theological debate amongst other characteristics.

Then we have a ‘Barronite Tribe’ which loves Pope Francis, prefers the ‘more flies with honey than vinegar’ approach to apologetics, is usually politically Independent and so on.

(There are also sides to the US Church that also map somewhat onto my ‘Liberal’ and ‘Camp A’ axes, but they’re not quite at the heart of this particular debate)

How do we solve this problem (And it is a problem; a house divided cannot stand, especially when those divisions seem to be at each others’ throats)?

The first solution that occurs to me is for us all to try and grow in the virtues of humility and charity when debating with others in the faith. Obvious, perhaps, but so necessary. When ego, anger and self-righteousness take over we end up doing far more harm than good.

The second thing we need to is a little harder. Let me be honest. One of my personal faults is that I don’t make enough of an effort to reach out to those I disagree with in the Church, sometimes writing them off because we don’t see eye to eye. I think that I might not be alone in having this fault. But I need to get over myself and reach out, trying to build bridges so that we might understand each other and together in Christ grow closer to the truth and grow in unity. I think that many of us need to learn this. Unity is incredibly important to strive for and we have to work at it.

Thirdly, so many of these debates could be avoided or at least improved by really studying and trying to understand what the Church actually teaches and why it teaches what it does, and moreover how to know the difference between a prudential matter and a matter of dogma.

The problem of politicisation Alexander points out is a real problem within the Church, and it happens here in Ireland too along different lines. I think that those three points are a start, but I think that more must be done somehow to break out of the tribal mindset.

Because I am not for Paul or Apollos or Barron or Voris.

I am for Christ.

 

Any ideas?

Centrifugal

One of the regular posters on the aforementioned Irish Catholic Forums often uses the term ‘centrifugal’ to describe the diffuse movements, groupings, and (dare I say it) factions within the Church today.

In other words, they’re all spinning away from the centre, the centre in this instance being rationality, orthodoxy, the leadership of the Church, balance, what have you. I suppose that this is what happens when centres cannot hold.

I bring this up because I experienced a microcosm of the diverse problems we face as a Church today.

This morning, on the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, the great reformer of the 16th century, I heard a homily in which he was described as being a good thing for the sixteenth century, but now the Councils of Trent had been surpassed and rendered obsolete by the Spirit of Vatican II and all these Latin-botherers should learn to give up and just follow the Holy Spirit into the new age of beautiful uncertainty and no priests.

When I came home, I logged onto Facebook to find a Catholic of a very different stripe reposting an article written by an elderly American reminiscing about his time in 1960s Spain. This gentleman was idolising (and I mean that in the most pejorative sense of the word) El Caudillo, General Franco of Spanish fame.

This man’s piece ran along the lines of: ‘if only we could go back to an era when bikinis were banned, the state inspected women’s swimsuits to make sure that they were acceptably modest, police would arrest young couples for holding hands in public, etc. etc.’ This individual went on to lambaste Stalin and the communists and their Republican allies in Spain for their awful atrocities (no disagreement there), but the contrast is intended to provide a justification for doing the same to enemies of the Franco regime. Here I quote directly:

What interests us is that fighting the Crusade, and also the maintenance of Christian social order after the Nationalist victory in 1939, sometimes required the execution of spies, revolutionaries, and other malefactors. As commander of military forces in war and Caudillo later, Franco always insisted on reviewing the file of anyone sentenced to death, and also that he be the one who signed the death warrant. It was important to him because shooting a man is no small thing.

The article itself is here, but try not to give this kind of nonsense too much traffic. Franco was a brutal tyrant. The Church was stupid to get into bed with him, although I’ll have to admit that the Republicans managed to kill a similar volume of innocents in a shorter period.

Why do I bring this up?

We have a dying left-wing guard within the Church, which want to imitate every failed policy of our Prostetant brethren and have dug in deep, partially energised by what I can only call the Spirit of Pope Francis.

And we have a newly energised far-right wing emerging within the Church, typified by the worship of figures such as Francisco Franco, Vladimir Putin and every right-wing thug under the sun, as long as they’ll pay lip service to the Church’s corner in the culture wars.

We desperately, desperately need to articulate a strong, truly orthodox position that adheres to Christian principles over feel-good capitulation to the world on the one hand and the growing extremism that preys on a fragmented Church on the other. We need to build bridges between Catholics. Without that the extremes will be the only voices heard. And the Gospel will be lost amidst the tambourines and the stomp of jackboots.

The key problem here is the right-wing extremism, which is gathering a vicious, angry energy in many quarters, rather than the left-wing laxity, which is on its last legs anyway (even if we shall live with the consequences for a long time).

This kind of extremism preys on those who have an idea that the dominant left-wing cultural narrative does not correspond to reality, but who can see nowhere else to turn since the Church seems to have lost its preaching voice, at least here in Ireland and Europe more generally.

I think that the problems here are threefold:

1. Lack of strong leadership. We need bishops and other Church leaders to really be shepherds of their flocks, leading by example, firing up the lukewarm whilst channelling the passion of the zealous. Hopefully the new crop of bishops will provide this.
2. Lack of a well-articulated, visible, balanced and orthodox Catholicism that can attract those dissatisfied with the status quo. If we’re shut out of mainstream media, we need to find ways around.
3. Finally, and very importantly, I think that the image of a ‘centrifugal’ Church reveals something very important. We’re atomised; the normal point of contact, the parish, is often ineffective at best at reaching out to a modern generation. There are too many young Catholics out there who need the support of Catholic peers and mentors who are balanced, and there aren’t enough lines of communication and encounter to meet them. This is a big problem in universities, where it’s difficult for Catholics to coalesce and form groups, and so those naturally inclined towards the Church feel alone and are either swept away by the culture, or reject it and go into extremism, which they often encounter on the internet. And there IS a radical, extreme version of Catholicism doing the rounds and growing in strength online. We need to find new avenues of reaching such people.

I had another post I meant to write; this was a footnote that got carried away. Oh dear. I might get onto that other tonight.

I Am a Winter Christian

On a separate note, check out this interesting link from a few years back.

As the title suggests, I identify with one of these categories. But we need to steer a middle ground between dwelling on the negative and being so happy-clappy that we ignore all the problems in the world. Realism about our situation, uplfited with the virtue of Hope and the gift of Joy is the best course I should think.

Yet another division that needs to be bridged without trampling those of a different disposition.

Pope Francis and Polarisation

Something has been bothering me about the reaction to Pope Francis in the run-up to and during the Synod on the Family, particularly amongst orthodox or traditionalist Catholics.

Those in the liberal camp, and the usual media suspects, of course, are spinning this as if it’s the beginning of the Great Liberal Revolution and so on. Plus ca change, as the French say.

But amongst those who profess loyalty to the Magisterium of the Church (I’m choosing my words carefully here), there seems to be a completely polarised reaction.

On the one hand, there are those who are freaking out, big time. There is a belief in some quarters, it would appear, that the papacy of Francis heralds The End Times, the End of the World As We Know It and generally very bad things. I exaggerate to an extent, although in some cases there are those who do seem to believe this.

For example, we have:

• Maureen Mullarkey’s essay which got her kicked off First Things (warning: that link contains some violent images of ISIS atrocities)
• Or this one from Michael Brendan Dougherty, endearingly entitled ‘Does Pope Francis fear God?’
• Or this example from Fr. Z, who is somewhat more restrained, even if he wants us all to ‘be sad and scared’ about the Synod, because apparently a little bit of anxiety will help us to ‘stay focused.’
• The blogger Scott Eric has a list of cases of what he calls ‘Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome’ going back to 2013.

On the other hand, there seem to be a good number of Catholics essentially shutting down any criticism of Pope Francis as mere hysteria. Move along, nothing to see here, they seem to say. This is from Catholics who are normally quite balanced and whose views I normally respect.

• For example, here is Mark Shea dismissing all criticism of Francis with some sweeping statements directed at First Things amongst others.
• Meanwhile Erin Manning, whom I have great respect for, looks at this same divide and concludes that those who are not worried about Pope Francis the Synod in the slightest are probably the side that have the ‘right’ of it.
• Here too is Artur Rosman with a similar viewpoint.

How do we have such incredibly divergent reactions? Whatever happened to the possibility of a balanced viewpoint? Every Catholic opinion-former I can see is either laying into Francis as if he’s the antichrist or else they’re whitewashing the whole Synodal process as if the massive debates and political shenanigans involved are inconsequential and Francis is blameless.

In exasperation, I remarked to somebody close to me that I just wished that there would be more balanced coverage somewhere. They replied, ‘YOU should write something more balanced.’

Oh dear. Well, I suppose I should.

Here’s what I think.

On the one hand, as Popes go, Francis is quite good. He’s incredibly pastoral, in the right sense of that word, meeting people where they are at, actually going out ‘into the marketplace’ as the phrase goes, trying to reach out to lost sheep person to person. He has done an excellent job of reminding us that we must reach out to the poor first and foremost, rather than getting bogged down in endless culture war debates, whilst simultaneously standing up strongly for life and marriage. I’ve been informed that his Apostolic Exhortation Evanglii Gaudium is excellent on joyfully preaching the Gospel (as its title might suggest) and I’m actually dying to read it.

At the same time, he’s not perfect. Many of his off-the-cuff remarks have been ill-considered; to take an example, I know Catholic parents with large families who were quite hurt by his remarks about ‘Catholic rabbits,’ which he later apologised for. Other remarks have been wildly taken out of context by the media worldwide, and yet they have done a massive amount of damage. Our Holy Father is not always prudent in his choice of words.

Moreover, some of his decisions regarding personnel at the Synod are questionable, to say the least, particularly his decision to grant Cardinal Danneels of Belgium a position as Synod Father. Besides his outspoken support of gay marriage and allegedly pressuring King Baudouin to sign Belgium’s abortion law, the good Cardinal has also been implicated in the cover-up of Belgian child abuse scandals. Why has he been given this position then? Why has a man who defended a bishop who abused his own nephew permitted to weigh in on the Church’s response to family matters? It beggars belief.

The Synod is worrying, if only because it will cause more confusion about what the Church actually stands for, something the Church does not need right now. I am particularly frustrated at the fact that this Synod, like the last one, has been spent to a large degree waffling on about proposals that go against Church teaching when the time could have been spent actually coming up with ways to deal with the multitude of issues facing the modern Christian family: divorce, separation, trying to raise children in a hostile culture, or local issues such as polygamy in Africa and Asia or the dangerously low birth rate in many Western nations.

Here’s the thing: is it not simply possible, that rather being the personified ‘Smoke of Satan’ as I saw one writer refer to him, or rather than being yet another living Saint, as we tend to see all of our Popes of the last century (indeed, some were; I’m not questioning the Church’s judgement on this), that Pope Francis is simply a decent pastor, trying to do good work according to his own style, who like all of us has the capacity to make mistakes, even big ones?

After all, Pope Paul VI, the Pope who presided over the disastrous misinterpretations of Vatican II, was also the Pope who gave us the prophetic and courageous Encyclical Humanae Vitae.

After all, Pope Emeritus Benedict, the incredibly wise and gentle Pope who gave us so many clear, insightful teachings and genuinely tried to tear out the culture of child abuse and cover-up amongst certain members of the clergy was in the end unable to escape media portrayals and the machinations of his opponents in the curia.

After all, St. John Paul II, for all of his incredible work trying to reach out to the world, helping to bring down Communism, correct many of the excesses that went before and providing beautiful teachings on art and human love, made mistakes, including some terrible mistakes; think of his blind endorsement of the infamous Fr. Marcial Maciel, in spite of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s deep-seated concerns about the man who did in fact turn out to be leading a terrible double life. This doesn’t take away from his canonisation one bit.

I think I know what the difficulty here is. We have fallen into a particularly Ultramontane view of the Papacy. A perfect storm of circumstances, namely the collapse of much of the Church’s traditional power bases and orthopraxy (that is, the correct implementation of Church teaching on the ground) coupled with new forms of instantaneous global communication have meant that many Catholics have turned to the authority of the Papacy, the one thing that seemed to be a common bulwark against collapse, unchanging throughout the turbulence of the twentieth century, a phenomenon which has gathered pace over the course of the last few decades.

Since the Pope is looked to for this kind of leadership and stability, as opposed to local Bishops’ Conferences and priests, an expectation of perfection is placed upon a figure who is, at the end of the day, a human being. The Vicar of Christ that man may be, but he is not Christ and not perfect. When this level of perfection is not met, there is a tendency to whitewash and explain away, or else to experience a strong negative reaction.

This state of affairs can last without a collapse as long as the papacy remains relatively unchanging and the throne of Peter is occupied by a man who is both holy and wise, a tall order in most circumstances. Of course, the abdication of Pope Benedict should teach us that nothing in this world remains constant.

We have been blessed with the Popes of the last century. They have been, to varying degrees, both holy and wise.

But let’s cast our eyes back to some of the Popes from before living memory. There were the Medici and Borgia Popes, amongst others, who wildly abused their power during the Renaissance period. Their abuses (sale of indulgences and positions, shoring up their power bases by making their friends and relatives Cardinals, using Church funds to launch personal wars, fathering numerous children) led directly to the Reformation.

Let’s face it. Pope Francis may have his faults, but they are tame compared to these.

We are guaranteed, according to Church teaching, that the Pope will not make an ex cathedra statement on faith or morals that is false. That’s all. There is presumably some kind of grace of state that goes with the Papacy, but like any grace one must embrace it freely.

We need to detach ourselves from an unhealthy reliance on the papacy, because as long as it lasts it will take one Alexander VI or a Pope along those lines to knock the feet from under us. We need to have both eyes open when it comes to the Holy Father.

Similarly, there needs to be more balance, charity and respect for the position of the Pope in the criticism levelled at him.

Pope Francis isn’t the antichrist. Neither is he God. He’s a weak human being, like the rest of us, who makes mistakes. And we need to stop tearing each other apart in debating those mistakes.

We need to stop the polarisation, the frustrating, divisive, stupid battles we fight against each other over the smallest of differences!

Although the examples of blogs above are coming from the USA and not Ireland, (something I hope to address soon) I think that we may be seeing the same kind of divide we see between the different camps I mentioned before here. The verbal battles over Pope Francis almost seem like proxy battles for a different polarisation between traditionalists and liberals, Camp A and Camp B (still haven’t thought of other names for those two!).

On Hell

Many apologies for the extended absence, life took a turn for the busy over the last two months. I hope to start blogging regularly once more now that things have eased off.

I thought I would start out again with some brief reflections on a particular ongoing debate over hell and how many souls might actually end up there. There seems to be quite a back-and-forth between certain well-known US Catholic figures on the internet about hell, which might be exemplified by Church Militant’s response to Fr. Robert Barron’s elevation to the Episcopate.

(If I were to go back to my concept of the Four Camps, Church Militant and its founder, Michael Voris, seems to appeal to a certain more extreme group of Catholics who would fall somewhere halfway between Camp A and the Traditionalist Camp, whereas the newly minted Bishop Barron is an example of somebody who tends more towards Camp B)

Some startling claims are made in this article. For example, the article says that ‘Father Barron’s teaching contradicts the tradition of saints and doctors of the Church, who have said with unified voice that only a minority of mankind will be saved.’ Follow that link, however, and you will be led to a selection of quotations from about twenty-odd Saints and a smattering of Bible verses, which is hardly a ‘unified voice.’

(A unity of the Church Fathers is, I believe, a very specific theological concept, which entails that anything that ALL of the Church Fathers held to be true in faith and morals is as binding as the rulings of an Ecumenical Council; the selection of Church Fathers quoted does not prove that this is the case).

The same Saints are repeatedly quoted for good measure, and the meaning of some of their statements is ambiguous in the context.

Follow the link to Church Militant’s analysis of Fr. Barron’s Catholicism series, and you will find further criticism of his approach to hell. Key issues Church Militant has with the series are that ‘As mentioned, out of the entire ten episode series, Fr. Barron spends a mere five minutes on the topic of hell’ and that his account of hell, while portraying it as ‘deeply unpleasant’ is not ‘horrifying’ enough.

Church Militant takes other issues with Fr. Barron’s approach, namely his support for the theories regarding hell of theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who believed that there’s a possibility that nobody has gone to hell. I think that it’s quite fair that they tackle this issue, but I believe that it is unfair of them to attack him as adhering to the heresy of universalism, since there are subtle differences between the two positions and as one commentator has pointed out, Von Balthasar was not reprimanded for his theories by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, implying that it is at least an acceptable view for a Catholic to hold if not necessarily the correct one.

One thing I find particularly wearying about Church Militant is that they exemplify that tendency I spoke about in my post on the Four Camps to lay into other faithful Catholics with a sledgehammer rather than trying to reasonably debate our differences and cooperate with each other. This kind of ‘hammer-of-the-heretics’ style discourse might make a person feel good about themselves, but in the end it only leads to a house divided against itself.

A good analysis of the question of hell and salvation from several years ago by Avery Cardinal Dulles was recently reposted by First Things, presumably in response to these debates. Anybody interested in the topic should go check it out for a balanced look at the topic and what the Church has said through the ages. Although there seems to be a majority who lean towards the position that most humans will end up in hell, there is a significant minority who believe that almost all will be saved, or at least almost all Christians.

(On a side note, I wonder why the position that perhaps a majority will be saved, but a substantial minority will be lost, doesn’t seem to have much traction anywhere?)

Now, I can see why there might be a fear amongst certain Catholics about the Church taking on a Von Balthasarian position. If we grow complacent about hell, our efforts at evangelization risk growing lukewarm, and many more might be lost on account of this.

This is a key thing we have to remember: the actual number of souls is not what matters in the slightest. Each soul is a human person, loved by God, and we have to try and cooperate with God’s plan and bring His salvation to as many of them as possible. Even if 99% of all people who are alive and have lived and will live go to Heaven, the fact that 1% don’t is an unmitigated tragedy. Otherwise, why are we bothering?

But there can be too much of a focus on hell, which ultimately weakens us.

Let’s use a metaphor. A parent is right to teach their child not to stick their hand in the fire, because if they do they will get burned. But if a parent constantly, incessantly talks about the dangers of fire, and how awful getting burned is, their child will grow up with a crippling, irrational fear of fire. It is one thing to raise a child to know that they shouldn’t stick their hand in the fire. It is another to raise a child to be afraid to even be in the same room as an open fireplace. The former is common sense; the latter is a psychological problem.

So it is with an excessive focus on hell. We need to teach people to reject sin and thus avoid hell. But if we talk constantly about eternal damnation and sin, turn the focus away from God, Love, Goodness and Heaven, then we are only promoting a false image of God as a harsh judge, an image which allows scrupulosity and rigidity to fester in our souls.

Instead, without ignoring the risk of hell, we should listen to St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians: ‘Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.’

I firmly believe that one of the problems we had in the Church here in Ireland was an excessive focus on hellfire and damnation as exemplified by the infamous sermon in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Catholic guilt is a real thing, and it doesn’t lead to devout Catholics.

When I was first learning more about my faith, I was taught that there was a hierarchy of motivations to do good; the lower, ‘impure’ motivations were fear of hell and desire for reward; the highest, ‘purest’ motivation was to do good out of love for God and neighbour.

I fear that if we return to hellfire and damnation as the key instrument of encouraging Catholics to do good, then we are like a sower who goes out to sow his seed, and does so exclusively on rocky ground. So it was in Ireland; the seeds of faith sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow, as Jesus says, but as soon as the hot sun of materialism and secularism came out it withered away and died.

Instead, we need to focus on the love of God and the love of neighbour. These are the greatest commandments, and these alone will inspire a deep faith that simple fear cannot.

The possibility of hell cannot be ignored; but if we’re serious about saving souls then we need to actually take the right approach, not the easy one.

UPDATE: Some further points on this post here.

Divisions in the Church (Part III: Between the Generations)

Part three of a series on various kinds of division in the Church.

Part one, on divisions between active, practicing Catholics is here.

Part two, on divisions between all those who identify as Catholics is here.

Once again, this is a post based on personal observation and is thus to a degree anecdotal. Constructive debate is very welcome.

The type of division I want to write about now is a division of age ranges or generations, although generations might be inaccurate since some of the ranges are on the narrow side.

I have noticed certain differences between various different age ranges vis-a-vis faith issues and I am going to try and tease them out.

Under Twelves

Children are usually very open to religious belief, but here in Ireland we have developed the practice of sending them to Catholic Schools, which are places where they are inoculated from the Catholic faith by being deprived of any knowledge of Jesus Christ or His Church beyond ‘God loves you, let’s sing ‘Circle of Friends’ together!’

I’m being glib, and to be fair there are a good number of genuinely Catholic primary school teachers who are doing a heroic job of trying to pass on the faith in a way that does not dumb it down. The problem here is that they are a minority and not concentrated enough, and many of their peers, probably a majority, do not share that faith and so children get the watered-down version that puts them off Catholicism for life unless exposed to the real thing.

Teens through Early Twenties

Teenagers are often quite open to the faith to a degree, but as they get older cultural pressure makes them more cynical. Still, I have noticed that there is something of a small renewal amongst this generation, helped by diocesan initiatives and especially groups like Youth 2000.

However, this generation above all is exercised about gay marriage and peer pressure can be particularly vicious when it comes to this topic. Only very strong-willed teenagers and young adults can resist this kind of pressure. University is particularly bad and there is a need for Catholic societies and chaplaincies in colleges that can reach out, although this is proving more difficult as time goes on and colleges grow more hostile.

This issue is a big stumbling block for reaching out here, although perhaps the key is to try and get them to have an experience of God and from experiencing His love move to moral teachings, showing how they are based in love in the first place.

Perhaps one solution is offering programs of learning the faith and volunteering where they can hopefully experience living in a young, committed Catholic setting whilst getting good formation in the faith, kind of a gap year before college. Catholic colleges have been suggested too but there are limitations to what these can do.

Mid Twenties through Early Thirties

There is something of a renewal in this age bracket as well, with many of the same causes as the bracket below it. Given the slightly more mature age range, I think it’s a bit stronger generally, although again not all involved in the Church at this age are completely orthodox.

Whilst there are many in this bracket who have embraced anti-Catholicism wholesale post-college years (Source: the comments section after any journal.ie article), and a fair number like those below them in age are into campaigning for gay marriage, I think that the dominant disposition in this group is apathy towards any kind of political involvement, at least in my experience.

The problem with this group I think is getting them interested in anything that is not material.

Mid Thirties Through Late Forties

I feel very, very sorry for practicing Catholics in this age range, as they are almost alone in a wilderness. I think that this range is the one that was most heavily hit by poor catechesis because they endured the worst of poor Catholic schooling but before there was any kind of revival. Post-Vatican II problems were at their height.

There are of course some fantastic dedicated Catholics in this age range, but my impression is that it’s thinner on the ground amongst these.

I’m not quite certain how to reach out to those who are lost here; I think that cultural Catholicism has become very ingrained.

Early Fifties through Late Sixties

This generation got the last of the decent catechesis in schools, and practice is still relatively high amongst them, although I imagine that a large proportion of those who are Practicing non-Active as described in the previous post fall into this category; the faith is cultural to a large degree but there are still many others who have been faithful all this time. I can only imagine it’s been difficult keeping the faith through those tough years of the late 80s/90s/00s as adults.

Seventy +

Similar to the previous group, although with higher again rates of practice, and even if it’s cultural to a degree I feel that it’s sometimes most genuine here. When I see some of this oldest bracket in church sometimes I’m struck by how much dedication they’ve shown coming all their lives through the difficult years.

Cooperation Between the Generations

One of my main points for bringing this up is that I think that one thing that can be lacking within the Church is cooperation between generations. Obviously, cooperation implies a sense of mission, which means I’m really talking about the Active Practicing here.

Now, it’s difficult sometimes to get younger people invested in something that’s dominated by older generations. It’s partly a modern phenomenon, I think, but it’s real and it has to be dealt with.

I know that as a young child I found it difficult to go to Catholic events where the next youngest people were a married couple in their late 30s, and the next youngest after that were in their fifties. It’s not very inspiring when you think that a particular thing has nothing whatsoever to say to people your age.

But I think that there’s a crucial difference between a group that is ALL from an older generation, which doesn’t attract teenagers/young adults on account of that generation’s need for company of their age, and a group that is of all ages, young and old, as one would imagine a parish or indeed any Church group should be.

We need to be able to work with all different age ranges and we can’t dismiss any of them. At the same time it takes a degree of formation to get out of a certain modern mindset that young people don’t speak to middle-aged or older people, which is why I think that groups like Youth 2000 are right to limit their age range, if only to cater for complete newcomers to the faith.

So I guess I’m talking more at those who are already committed and involved. We need to be willing to make the effort to bridge generation gaps. There can be a tendency to dismiss the elderly, which we see in a lot of younger, liberal campaigns where they dismiss ‘old, white males’ as though being old (or, indeed, white or male) is something intrinsically sinister.

Our age can often put youth on a pedestal but we forget that it is those who have been through life that have so much experience and still have much to offer, even if it is only their prayers when it comes to the Church. I sometimes feel a bit bad when young people are put to the front of things like pro-life demonstrations and so on. I understand that there’s a need to show that the movement has wide appeal, but I can’t help but feel that it’s treating our older members as though they’re already cold in the grave.

At the same time, many of the efforts local Church groups and authorities make to court ‘the youth’ are cringeworthy or plain stupid. (I heard of one parish which hired a militant atheist to be a parish youth coordinator on the basis that she was young and ergo would know how to get young people involved). People in their teens and twenties don’t want to be talked down to and a watered-down version of the faith does not attract them.

At the other extreme I have come across parishes that have resigned themselves to only ever having the elderly attend and everything advertised in the parish is for the over-65s as though the parish is a retirement club. One problem along these lines is that most parishes have stopped offering daily Masses apart from the 10am, which only those who are retired or on holidays can attend.

I have worked before in Church groups where every generation is working together. It’s a fantastic feeling of unity, for we are meant to be ONE Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, not a bunch of ministries targeting different age groups.

That said, as I pointed out in the beginning of the post, different approaches are needed for different age ranges, if only because of differences in the cultures surrounding those generations, as well as different needs.

(ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that I should probably try to tie this into the Four Camps post somehow, but I think that there’s a relatively even spread of ages in the different camps, except that the Liberal camp tends to be older, at least amongst those who are Active Practising)

The Divisions in the Church (Part II: Amongst all Irish Catholics)

This is the second in a three-part series on division with the Irish Church. As previously stated, these posts are largely based on personal observation, although in this one I’ll inject a little hard data so as to get an idea of certain proportions.

The first part looked at divisions amongst active, practising Catholics in Ireland.

I demonstrated this using a diagram:

Diagram 1: The Four Camps

It’s time to develop this argument. I originally brought up the ‘Four Camps’ idea with a good friend in the Church and he broadly agreed with the points I had made. But he pointed out that I was missing a very, very large part of the picture. He said that the camps could be seen as extremes, and in the middle was a much larger group of Catholics who were practising but not active. They might have tendencies or leanings one way or another, but in general they do not get involved in the life of the Church beyond showing up on Sunday and going through ceremonies such as weddings and funerals in the Church. It is worth noting that like in the active practising group, there will be a number who are not orthodox.

We might now take the diamond in the diagram above and place it in a new diagram.

Diagram 2: Active and Non-Active

I’m not certain how proportionate this diagram is, as I’ve no idea of the real percentages, but I do imagine that it is a minority of weekly Massgoers who are active in parishes, movements and apostolates in the sense of actually running things and moreover attempting to evangelise and build the Kingdom of God. Reflecting on this idea, I decided to develop it further, and contrast these two distinct groupings again with another, larger grouping: non-practicing Catholics.

This brings us to a diagram within a diagram within a diagram.

Diagram 3: The Distinct Groupings Who Call Themselves Catholic on the Census

You’ll notice that I decided to include Non-Catholics in the diagram, outside the circle, mainly for completeness’ sake.

Before we look at what the point of all this categorization might be, I’ll crunch some of the available numbers, and make up some estimates where numbers are not available. The links to the data are available in this previous post of mine.

According to the most recent Census:

• About 85% of Irish citizens and residents identify as Catholic
• About 15% of Irish citizens and residents do not

Of those who identify as Catholic, an Association of Catholic Priests survey found that:

• 35% go to weekly Mass (which is roughly 30% of all Irish)
• 65% do not go (which means that roughly 55% of Irish are non-practicing Catholics)
• A maximum of 13% agree with all of the Church’s teachings that were surveyed (which is roughly 11% of all Irish)

Now, two caveats about these stats:

One, the ACP survey has a much greater margin of error than the Census, given that they polled about a thousand people and the Census polled everyone.

Two, I’m about to conflate orthodox Catholics with Massgoing Catholics, which you can’t do in 100% of cases, but for the sake of ease we’ll assume that they are the same thing, which in the majority of cases they are.

So we end up with statistics like these for the population of Ireland:

• 11% Practising, orthodox Catholics, of which an unknown percentage are active
• 19% Practising, unorthodox Catholics, of which an unknown percentage are active
• 55% Non-practising Catholics
• 15% Non-Catholics

Now, I’m going to make a wild estimate of how many of the people who show up in the pews each Sunday are active according to my previous definition. Does 1 in 5 sound reasonable? (I imagine that this grouping is weighted towards the orthodox, but that’s just my perception).

Here are some new statistics, the bold being estimates.

• 6% Practising, Active Catholics, some orthodox, some not?
• 24% Practising, non-Active Catholics, some orthodox, some not?
• 55% Non-practising Catholics
• 15% Non-Catholics

Now, where on earth am I going with all of these figures?

Simple. We now have a series of distinct groupings within Ireland as regards their relationship with the Catholic Church:

• Orthodox, Practising, Active Catholics
• Unorthodox, Practising, Active Catholics
• Orthodox, Practising, Non-Active Catholics
• Unorthodox, Practising, Non-Active Catholics
• Non-Practising Catholics
• Non-Catholics

My point is that the Church in Ireland is divided into five categories, the largest of which by far is Non-practising Catholics.

In addition to this, there is a minority of Non-Catholics, which is an entirely heterogeneous category consisting of Muslims, Protestants, Orthodox, Atheists, Agnostics and everything in between.

So in order to reach out to people and bring renewal to the Church, we need a different approach for each category.

Those who are Orthodox Practising Active form the bulk of the group that fall into the Four Camps I mentioned previously. They are the backbone of the Church, but as I pointed out face poor leadership and are divided, often over petty differences.

This group requires the building of bridges, greater unity and closer networks as well as stronger leadership, of the holy kind and not the charismatic, egotistical kind. This group also needs greater catechesis and spiritual guidance so as to grow in knowledge of the faith and personal sanctity. Encouragement too. We need to stand by each other and watch out for each other in the days t come.

You know what else what be great? More retreats, guided and non-guided, preferably in retreat houses that haven’t been swamped with New Age practices.

Those who are Unorthodox Practising Active need those of us who are orthodox to reach out to them. They obviously feel deep within themselves the need of the Church, but have left its teachings somewhere along the way.

Patience, charity and clear, informed, reasonable discussion will be key to drawing them back to the Church’s teachings. Hammer-of-the-heretics style attacks will drive this group away more than anyone else, since their bête noir is the return of more rigid days.

Those who are Orthodox Practising Non-Active need those of us who are active to encourage them, invite them, inspire them to become part of the mission of the Church, to respond to the calling that is in their hearts; we need to help them to catch fire. Beautiful, attractive communities (in the sense of communities that really practice Christian charity and strive for a true relationship with God) of the faithful will help.

Those who are Unorthodox Practising Non-Active need a bit of both of the previous approaches.

Those who are Non Practising need to be reached out to as well, although probably with the assumption that their understanding of the faith is very limited. The whole gay marriage issue will be particularly difficult here, I think; as I’ve said before we need to find ways around that particular barrier. Above all else we need people to feel welcome to come home.

Those who are Non-Catholic…well, they will need as many approaches as there are beliefs. But again, they will need those of us active in the faith to be willing to reach out, answer questions, invite, try to dialogue and understand where they are coming from.

In a way, there is a hierarchy here; the approaches needed for each group can be built upon as they grow closer to being Orthodox, Practising, Active Catholics.

This is a brief sketch, but I hope I’ve made the point; the divisions we face will need a myriad of solutions, but unity and charity amongst those of us already active is key. After all, as somebody once said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

As always, these are broad brush-strokes; really there needs to be an individual approach to each person. But we need to recognise the broad trends and where we stand to make a start, and putting the means in place and getting our own house in order will be the first step.

I’ll have the final post up in this trilogy soon I hope, on the different generations.