The Faithful Departed
by Philip Lawler - published by Encounter Books
Philip Lawler is a journalist, author, editor of Catholic World News, an on-line service a, Harvard grad, and a fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute of Washington DC. In his new book "The Faithful Departed" (The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture) Encounter Books takes a look at the history of Catholicism in his native Boston and chronicle its rise and fall. In some way it matches up analogically with Martin Scorsese's last year Oscar Winner for Best Picture "The Departed," also set in Boston with a group of corrupt Irish-Catholic cops and organized criminals. He says "this book is a study in Catholicism in America today, and more specifically in my native Boston. If it is a harsh portrait, I believe the harshness is justified. I love the Catholic Church. But love for the Church does not mean unquestioning love for every institution within Catholicism, any more than the love for one's spouse world extend to a cancer."
The decline of the power and influence, both in the country and among its own faithful of the institutional Catholic Church over the last fifty years in the United States s one of the biggest stories of the late twentieth century. Although there are many factors involved in this decline and fall that climaxed with the sex abuse scandal in 2002-3, Lawler lays a heavy onus on the episcopate, few of which have felt themselves accountable at least to the point of resignation due to their flagrant lack of oversight resulting in untold moral damages to thousands of American Catholic families due to homosexual abuse and serial pedophilia. . Lawler chooses to examine the Catholic history of his native Boston as a microcosm of this decline. There has been a similar decline in mainstream Protestantism with the principal difference that there is no effective hierarchy with real authority as in Catholicism to stem the decline
Lawler points out "In 1950, a Gallup poll showed that three out of every four American Catholics attended Sunday mass regularly; by 2000 the figure was closer to one out of four With Mass attendance as the leading indictor, every other statistical index of Catholic practice showed a similar decline between 1960 and 2000. Nearly half of he Catholic and elementary schools closed. The number of Catholics marriages solemnized in churches fell over 30 percent, while the number of marriages annulled by diocesan tribunals skyrocketed from bout 30 a year to 50,00. The number of priests fell by about 20 percent, while the number of ordinations dropped by about 65%. Two-thirds of the country seminaries closed. Teaching nuns, who has once formed the backbone the massive Catholic educational system, nearly disappeared. The total number of women religious fell by over 50 percent, but the teaching orders suffered a dizzying decline from 104,000 in 1965 to about 800 today."
A recent survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported Roman Catholic Church "has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes." About one-third of respondents Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, "this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics." That means there are thirty million "Fallen away or non practicing Catholics." By my estimation that would make non practicing Catholics the second largest denomination after Catholics in good standing in the nation.
How did this happen? Well certainly it can in part be attributed to the forty years of at least perceived of liturgical and doctrinal chaos that followed on the disastrous misinterpretation and implementation of the documents of Second Vatican Council in the last forty years. Another major factor was the lack of effective catechesis regarding traditional sexual morality due in part to faulty teaching moral theology of future priests in Catholic seminaries. There are certainly other factors including the burgeoning affluence of the Catholic faithful, and the aggressive secularism in American society that have undermined the once rock solid faith and practice of the immigrant Catholic Church.
The high point, or should one could say the low point, most recently of this on-going decline in faith and practice was the so-called sex abuse scandal that erupted of 2002. The Church is still feeling the after tremors and will continue to do so for years to come Given the large number of t least nominal Catholics, this scandal and its aftermath, the understanding of the origins of this ongoing crisis is important not only for Catholics but all Americans as their belief and practice has tremendous percussions in the social, economic, governmental and political life of the Republic. The Catholic Church has the largest private school system, and the largest private charity and health systems in the country. The Catholic vote has played a decisive role in national elections.
Lawler's analysis of the history of the Church in Boston could just as well serve for Chicago, Philadelphia, or Chicago, St Louis, or Milwaukee where over time, sports and liberal politics seem to have a greater impact on the day to day lives of ordinary Catholics than did the Faith of grandparents.
Lawler traces the Catholic Irish immigration largely proceeding from the Irish Famine of the mid nineteenth century and the growing politics and economic clout of this population that eventually led to dominance in politics that over the former Boston protestant Brahmins' of the Cabots and the Lodges. During the greater part of the twentieth century, the Church was flourishing in the level of practice and also in an enormous educational and social work whose buildings can be still be seen scattered throughout the great urban metropoli although many have been closed and sold, in part due to the tremendous drop-off of priestly and religious vocations, and also to pay the damages due to settlements from the sex abuse scandal.
Lawler also chronicles the clerical history of Boston—most notably examinng the episcopates of three most prominent archbishops of Boston during the twentieth century: O'Connell, Cushing, and Law. While praising their some of their accomplishments particularly in institutional building, he nevertheless faults all three, and particularly the latter two for lack of courage in proclaiming, teaching and enforcing, Catholic moral and social teaching in the face of strong political and social opposition. This includes unwillingness to discipline Catholic elected officials whose positions on issues such as contraception, abortion, homosexual marriage, were clearly at odds with their putative Catholic Faith. Cardinal O'Connell does not quite fit in with his two successors but, in a fascinating chapter, Lawler recounts a famous scandal involving his priest nephew that also involves a cover-up that presages what was to follow in the decades ahead, even including a meeting with then Pope Pius XI, not dissimilar to the Cardinal Law's last two meetings with Pope john Paul II before his resignation as Ordinary the Archdiocese of Boston.
The most notable and important example of this conflict was the speech by the Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960 to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Lawler marks this as the beginning of the "personally opposed But…" cave-in that is heard from many politicians today, and not only Catholics who divorce their beliefs from their votes." As Lawler puts it "he promised that he would win the presidency he would make all decision in with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside pressures or dictate." When he promised to be guided only but his own conscience, Kennedy said that he was speaking about "birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject." He could have added government aid to private schools that he also opposed against the position of the Church. Today one could add, cloning, homosexual marriage, abortion, and for that matter. In Catholic teaching, the conscience and the subsequent are formed by the moral teaching of the Church. As for Kennedy's speech, there was nary a word from the American episcopate to point out that Kennedy ‘s view completely against the teachings of the Church on the duties of a Catholic statesman to bring his faith and his belief in natural aw that is applicable across the board in moral matters into the Public square, regardless of the consequences. Cardinal Cushing, a close family friend of the Kennedys.
This lead a decade later to Fr. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and law professor being elected to multiple terms in the House. He was best known for his staunch support for legalized abortion. Neither his Jesuit superiors nor Cardinal Medeiros, the predecessor to Cardinal Law, were capable or willing of either censuring or excommunicating the scandalous priest.
Lawler examines in detail the sex-abuse crisis particularly as it developed in New England largely on account of three recidivists pedophile priests. He nonetheless makes clear that the crisis has affected virtually the entire close to 200 American dioceses. He says "Homosexual influence within the American clergy was not in itself the cause of sex-abuse crisis. The corruption wrought by the influence was a more important factor. A very small number o priests preyed on children. A very large number of priests developed the habit of looking the other way, avoiding contact with any evidence of their colleagues' personal conduct. According the Lawler, the principal reason for the abuse was not pedophiles but rather the influence of homosexuality in the priesthood." In all their dealings with the sex-abuse crisis, the American bishops and their closest advisers have evinced the same sort of reluctance to admit the influence of homosexuality. They have shown no stomach for an investigation into the prevalence of homosexuals in the seminaries or the influence of homosexual networks among the clergy." …"The statistic. Of the John Jay Report show that the incidence of sexual abuse peaked in the 1970's s the consequence of the sexual revolution was setting in. But curiously enough, the priests most frequently accused of abuse were ordained in the 1960's." Clearly the rot was setting in even before the Second Vatican Council itself had closed.
Lawler goes on to relate in details other instances of Episcopal pusillanimity in the seventies and eighties and nineties dealing with school busing, weakness in supporting protests at abortuaries, and the cave-in on homosexual marriage where virtually every Catholic judge or legislator in Massachusetts ruled or voted in favor of what Catholic teaching is simply unthinkable—legalized officially approved sodomy. There were no disciplinary actins taken against the recalcitrant judges and legislators including the possibility of being denied communion. More recently, Catholic Charities of Boston withdrew from placing children to homosexual adoptive parents after having failed to win an exemption even though the Board was in favor continuing to place children for adoption to homosexuals." When it became evident that the Boston archdiocese would not openly defy Rome, seven members of the board of Catholic Charities resigned in protest. The disaffected trustees said that the Church's refusal to participate in homosexual adoptions" threatens the very existence of our Christian mission."
Lawler is a realist and perhaps a pessimist. "Reform cannot begin until the corruption is acknowledged." And he is not satisfied that of yet it has been on the part of the hierarchy. "But the restoration, if it does come, will not come without cost. To restore vigor and discipline to the Church" which now has o approximately only one in five members attending Mass in Sunday, "Catholic eiders will be required to make personal sacrifices and unpopular decisions—and to ask their followers to do the same."
Although it is understandable, given the central topic of the book – the decline and fall of the Church in Boston. Hat climaxed with the sex abuse scandal and the resignation of Cardinal Law and its ongoing aftermath Lawler, it would appear purposely provides few solutions or encouraging words. A more expansive look at Church History in its two millennium of existence has suffered a "thousand Crucifixions and Resurrections" to paraphrase Archbishop Sheen. The enormous growth of the Church in Asia and Africa, the pontificates' of two truly outstanding and holy Pontiffs in Popes John Paul II and Benedicts XVI, the emergence of many emerging ecclesial realities in the last half century that largely place their formational efforts on the laity which in their turn are producing notable increase in diocesan priestly ordinations throughout the world: all of these are signs that Second Vatican Council is finally bearing fruits. Whether this results in a "new evangelization a la John Paul II, or a "creative minority" as Pope Benedict XVI sees it, if the Church is indeed divine, it will perdure. If not, what does it really matter. Roma patiens quia eterna.
First appeared in The American Spectator in the May 2008 issue.
