c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. His home page on the World Wide Web is at http://www.agreeley.com. Or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

(UNDATED) Many years ago, at the beginning of ecumenical dialogue, the great Lutheran theologian Jaroslav Jan Pelikan asked whether there was”log”for the”dialogue”_ in other words, what is there to talk about? The same question can be asked of Cardinal Bernardin’s brave effort to persuade the Catholic Left and the Catholic Right to talk to one another.

The cardinal’s plan is a win-win idea: Even if it fails it’s worth trying, and it might succeed in helping men and women of good faith and goodwill on both sides to at least listen to one another.

There are, however, two problems the Common Ground project must face.

First, there is a lack of balance in the way liberals and conservatives in the church approach the subject. The liberal by definition is bound to listen, to consider what the other person is saying _ although obviously not all liberals in practice are willing to listen.

The conservative, on the other hand, need not listen at all. Indeed, for the conservative, to be open to the ideas of others is to abandon all convictions. If you possess truth fully, if you and you alone stand for the tradition of the church and the teaching of the Holy Father, you should not listen; you should only denounce and call for sanctions. When the support document for the project says that no one can claim a monopoly on Catholic truth, it betrays its neo-conservative agenda. The true Catholic conservative, by definition, claims a monopoly on truth.

The second problem, which I believe can be separated from the essence of the Common Ground project, is the support document:”Called to be Catholic: Church in a time of Peril.”Prepared by the National Pastoral Life Center in New York, it presents a wildly distorted and fundamentally inaccurate picture of American Catholicism.

The document comprises the perceptions of a group of New York Catholics centered around Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, the editor of Commonweal, and Monsignor Philip Murnion, director of the National Pastoral Life Center. Members of this group, once old-line liberals, have positioned themselves as neo-conservatives between the left and the right, ready to moderate between the two polarizing factions. Their document seems innocent of any familiarity with current statistical research on American Catholics. I find this disregard for the precision of research findings astonishing since Murnion has a degree in sociology from Columbia University.

Contrary to their picture of the American church, research shows that priestly morale is not low; drift away from the church is not any worse than in previous years; young Catholics are no more confused today than in ages past.

Bottom line: most Catholics are at ease in their Catholicism. I’m sorry, but the data do not suggest that the church is in peril, whatever impressions the New York group may have from talking to their friends.

The most serious error, however, is the claim that the church is increasingly polarized, with the left and the right screaming at one another and thereby tearing the church apart. This is the”culture wars”fallacy: Since elite groups are in conflict, so too is the whole church.

Let me phrase the answer to this fallacy in its most simple form: Because William Donohue’s Catholic League and Frances Kissling’s Catholics for a Free Choice are in open warfare, it does not follow that the Catholic population is also at war. With due respect to both Donohue and Kissling, most American Catholics have never heard of them or their organizations. They couldn’t care less about them or their public conflict, and they are not at all inclined to join that conflict.

Most American Catholics like being Catholic and are not about to leave the church, no matter what happens. The defection rate has not increased since 1960. They are Catholics on their own terms, and this usually means sharp disagreement with the bishops and the pope on such issues as birth control and invitro fertilization. But it is a silent disagreement and can be called polarization only by redefining the word.

American Catholics are a good deal more concerned about their individual parish, its school, and the quality of its preaching and liturgy. They are too busy with their lives, their families, their jobs, and their parish to pay any attention to the shouting among the elite.

I do not mean to say that the conflicts among the elite are much ado about nothing and that, therefore, Operation Common Ground is not worth pursuing. Rather, I mean that, on the basis of the evidence, polarization is not the problem that Monsignor Murnion and company would have us believe.

It might be more useful and more interesting to probe deeply into the religious experiences of American Catholics and discover why they like being Catholic. Such an effort, however, will not garner headlines and cannot be effectively accomplished at lunches or dinner parties with your friends.

MJP END GREELEY