Church failed to adapt
in new era

  Everything has changed. The churches are two-thirds empty on Sunday. There is, at most, one priest in the rectory. Schools and parishes have been closed, and few, if any, new ones have opened. Seminaries and scholasticates have emptied out. Cana and CFM are moribund.

  The immigrant church should have segued to a post-immigrant era with some ease. It did not. On the contrary, it imploded, collapsed from the inside. Conservative Catholics blame the Vatican Council and would like to repeal it, as would many of the curial cardinals who are more or less running the church. But you cannot repeal a council because fighting the Holy Spirit is even more difficult than fighting City Hall.

  The Vatican Council changed the church. We had been taught that the church could not change, should not change and would not change. Then, it did change. Everything was now under question. Many of the structures of 19th century Catholicism collapsed, most notably the central role of hellfire and mortal sin to keep people in line. Many of the church's leaders thought the only way to end the chaos was to restore the old rules. But it was too late.

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  Many bishops, like all leaders at a critical time, did not do good but did the thing they do well: They made new rules and "reinstated" the old ones. They tried to restrict the sexual lives of the laity, just as they had protected the sexual lives of the abusive clergy.

  A cardinal once said to me, "If only Cardinal Meyer had not died." He was right that Albert Meyer had the intelligence, the spiritual depth, the courage, the flexibility and the stubborness to have led the church in this country, and this city, through the crises. We did not see his like again. Laity and clergy decide for themselves what is morally wrong and what is not. Bishops insist on the rules, and no one listens. There does not seem in the short run any way out of the mess, though it is patent that rules and lists of sins will not do the trick.

  There are good signs on the horizon, including the volunteer movement in which lay people practice the thesis that God is love. Another is that, while there are still many serious sins, you no longer fear the pains of hell if, for example, you take a sip of water before receiving the eucharist.

  Another is the appearance of theologians like Robert Barron and David Tracy, who point in the direction of new structures which will replace those that collapsed.

  Moreover, the enthusiasm of the young -- as manifested, for example, in the Peace Corps, Teachamerica, Notre Dame's ACE (Alliance for Catholic Education), the Jesuit and Vincentian Volunteers -- is categorically different from the limited, cautious and fearful enthusiasm of the young in the old church. I admire the new identity the laity have fashioned for themselves. I am impressed by the community loyalty of the laity, almost half of whom (in my current research on the Archdiocese of Chicago) report that their five closest friends are Catholic.

  So I rejoice in the long-term possibilities of a more flexible church and the stubborn fidelity of the laity who will not leave, nor will permit the leaders to drive them out.

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Read the Chicago SunTimes' Daily Southtown articles.