c. 1998 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. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)
UNDATED _ According to some conservative commentators, it has become too easy these days to live a Roman Catholic life.
The Catholic identity, they say, has become soft and vague, resulting in a declining sense of Catholicism as different. This, they say, is the reason for the dwindling number of priests and nuns. And the blame, they conclude, belongs to the Second Vatican Council, which they say”ruined”Catholicism.
It is certainly true that before Vatican II the Catholic identity emphasized both difficulty and difference.
It was”hard”to be a Catholic because Catholics did things differently.
Under pain of mortal sin, Catholics did not eat meat on Friday, they went to Mass every Sunday, they fasted after midnight before they received Holy Communion, they fasted during lent, they did not receive Communion unless they went to Confession, etc., etc.
Since Vatican II, however, most of that minefield has been swept away.
While the council itself abolished no sins, soon after it _ and as a result of it _ the Lenten Fast, the Friday Abstinence, and the Eucharistic Fast were abandoned. Catholics now could go to Mass on Saturday afternoon. They realized confession was required only in case of grave sins. In the wake of these changes, the laity swept away some of the other obligations on their own authority. It is, indeed, easier to be Catholic today.
Without denying these changes have occurred or that they have blurred Catholic identity somewhat, I raise four questions:
_ Does one judge the worth of a religious heritage by how hard it is or rather by how attractively it presents its own view of the meaning and purpose of life, how wise and profound its image of God?
_ Is a minefield of sins a fair reflection of either the teachings of Jesus or the Catholic heritage? Or is it rather a narrow and rigid focus on a part of the heritage _ and not the most important part either? Is fear of the Lord any more than the beginning of wisdom?
_ Are vocations based on the assumption that being a priest or nun is the best way to”save my soul”really healthy?
_ Didn’t this minefield-of-sin identity actually work to obscure that which is really hard about Christianity _ the obligation to forgive others in reflection of God’s forgiveness of us and the parallel obligation to love others even as we are loved?
Is the ideal for Christian marriage, for example, satisfied by honoring the ban on contraception or does it require constant, patient, sensitive, forgiving efforts to grow and develop in every aspect of mutual love? Which is harder?
Much has been lost in the decades since the Second Vatican Council. But much also has been gained.
Some of the loss is lamentable, though inevitable given the magnitude of”updating”attempted by the Council Fathers. I particularly lament the tragic decline of the religious orders of women.
The new Catholic identity is admittedly somewhat more generic and undefined. Teachers and preachers have not been very deep or very sophisticated about the development of identity. Fads and cliches have substituted for wisdom.
However, there are positive signs.
In a recent study done at the Catholic University of America and reported in Commonweal, the independent, lay-edited magazine, the identity of young Catholics puts less emphasis on authority and sin and more on the presence of Jesus in the sacraments, concern for the poor, the”real presence”of Jesus in the Eucharist, and devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
One can make one’s own decision about the value of this identity. But, even in the absence of comparative data from past studies, I don’t have any doubt that, despite its fuzziness and its fragility, it is far more Catholic than its predecessor.
DEA END GREELEY
