Tending the New Catholic Subculture

by Russell Shaw - April 25, 2011

Reprinted with permission.

Good news. Amid statistics of continuing Catholic decline, a new Catholic subculture is visibly emerging in the United States. Unless shaped by commitment to the new evangelization, however, this emergent subculture could become a caricature of Catholicism – a rigid throwback to the days of the immigrant Church.

All that obviously needs explaining, so let me explain.

Like Pope John Paul II before him, Pope Benedict XVI has made "new evangelization" a high priority of his pontificate. Last year he created an office in the Roman Curia to promote the effort; next year new evangelization will be the theme of a general assembly of the world Synod of Bishops. The new evangelization, he explains, is needed to deal with the situation present where "nations once rich in faith and in vocations are losing their identity under the influence of a secularized culture" (Verbum Domini, 96).

Plainly that applies to European countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Ireland, where the light of faith has grown dim. But does anyone seriously imagine the pope isn't thinking also of places like Canada, Australia – and the United States?

The problem in America was spotlighted three years ago when a Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that one in every three Americans who were raised as Catholics has left the Church, either joining Protestant bodies or becoming religiously unaffiliated. Those 22 million ex-Catholics make up the third largest group in the United States identifiable in religious terms, after Catholics and Southern Baptists.

Here, as in other Western countries, secularization provides the context – though not the complete explanation – for what is happening, and there's a tendency to suppose that secularization is something new. But it's not. You can see a more than passing resemblance to the secular mentality in some of the Enlightenment men who had prominent roles in the American Revolution. Christianity has been a powerful force in America from the earliest days, but it doesn't follow that the secular mindset is newly arrived on these shores.

The stirrings of 19th-century secularization are visible in that greatest of American autobiographies, The Education of Henry Adams. Speaking of religion as he viewed it through the unexacting creed of Unitarianism while growing up a member of Boston's intellectual and social elite in the 1840s and 1850s, Adams writes:

The boy went to church twice every Sunday; he was taught to read his Bible, and he learned religious poetry by heart; he believed in a mild deism; he prayed; he went through all the forms; but neither to him nor to his brothers or sisters was religion real… They all threw it off at the earliest possible moment, and never afterwards entered a church.

Adams and his brothers and sisters were hardly alone. Many other Americans before and since have gone the same way.

For a long time, the subculture of immigrant Catholicism more or less successfully shielded Catholics ("ghettoized" them, some would say). But starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, American Catholics, instead of reforming and updating their subculture, dismantled this network of distinctively Catholic institutions and programs, organizations and movements that had served them well.

This happened partly as a result of forces no one could control (higher education, socioeconomic advancement, suburbanization) and partly as a result of deliberate choices advocated by Catholic academics and intellectuals and adopted by Church leadership cadres. The dismantling of the subculture in turn went a long way toward facilitating the collapse of the past four decades, as Catholics assimilated into an increasingly toxic secular culture.

In recent years the pendulum has started to swing the other way. Signs of a new Catholic subculture can be seen in things like a handful of proudly orthodox colleges and universities, media ventures like EWTN and Catholic radio, a growing number of websites and periodicals and a few publishing houses, and organizations and movements that work to promote a dynamic Catholic spirituality – especially a spirituality for the laity. Moreover, these things now are happening with the encouragement of a new generation of bishops and priests who have gotten the message and taken it to heart.

This is all to the good – up to a point. But note that when I speak of the desirability of a new Catholic subculture, I don't mean a self-regarding, inward-looking ghetto. And let's face it: Signs of such a thing can already be glimpsed here and there. They seem certain to grow if steps aren't taken now to prevent it.

Here's where the new evangelization comes in. It provides the rationale and the incentive to set our sights on something a lot better than a ghetto – on the creation of a new, dynamic American Catholic subculture specifically designed as a source of creative energy for preaching the gospel far and wide, with particular attention paid to former Catholics and nominal Catholics teetering on the brink.

That's asking a lot: to create a subculture able to foster and sustain a strong sense of Catholic identity without turning in on itself. Evangelization is the key. Can it be done? One thing for sure: The situation of the Catholic Church in the United States will become increasingly desperate in the years ahead if it's not.

Russell Shaw's 19th book is Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2008).