What's Right with the Catholic Church Today

This question was put to the following men and women with surprising and heartening results. Like themselves, their answers range from the long and the short and the tall. Faith has been defined as the substance of things hoped for, suggesting the close link between the grace of faith and hope. These responses from faithful Catholics are full of the third theological virtue, charity, as well. See how these Christians love one another.

Father Kenneth Baker, S.J.

Often I have been asked how I can be such an optimist when there are so many problems in the Church and so much confusion. My answer has always been that God is in charge of His Church and He allows these things to happen for His own good reasons. It is not for me to question why God does what he does. He asks me to be faithful and to do what I can each day to build up the Kingdom of God. That is what I have tried to do and still do.

There has been much negativism in the Church. I assume that Ralph McInerny wants to try to counter some of that by being positive in this issue of Dossier. Therefore he has asked me to write a few pages on "What's right with the Church." I am happy to oblige him, since I see many good things for which we can be grateful and happy.

Change oriented Catholics have labeled me a conservative, and I suspect they have paid the same compliment to Ralph. One positive thing that I see happening now is the disappearance of the old "left" or "liberal" or "modernist" Catholics. Since their view of the Catholic Church is basically sterile and contraceptive, they have very few young followers. Yes, they are in control of the power positions in dioceses, religious education, schools and religious congregations, but they are getting older and will soon fade away. So the future belongs to the "right" or the "conservative" or the "orthodox" Catholics.

This is evident from the thinking and attitudes of the younger priests and seminarians in this country not all of them, of course, but it is true of a growing number of them.

Recently I have been approached by a number of seminarians, Jesuit and other, praising the work of the Homiletic & Pastoral Review, and urging me to keep printing more excellent articles. They say the magazine helps them survive in their vocation when they have to sit at the feet of modernist and pope-bashing priests and teachers.

Yes, I am optimistic about the future of the Church. The Church has gone through periods of decline and confusion in the past, especially after the great councils of the Church like Vatican II. Those periods have lasted about thirty years. It has been thirty-two years since the closing of Vatican II. There are signs that the "silly season" of the Church is coming to an end. At least, we are seeing the beginning of the end.

In order to prove my point, I would like to call your attention to some of the good things that are going on:

1) New congregations of priests and sisters are being established at a rapid rate. I personally know four priests who are trying to start new orders; there are many others I do not know.

2) New publications that are faithfully Catholic: I do not have the space to list all of them, but I will mention this very magazine, Dossier, plus Catholic World Report, Inside the Vatican, Culture Wars, Ignatius Press, Sophia Press, and so forth.

3) The appointment of solidly orthodox bishops like Archbishop Francis George of Chicago, Archbishop Charles Chaput in Denver, and others.

4) Increase of vocations to the priesthood in some dioceses, such as Arlington, Bridgeport, Fargo, Lincoln and Peoria.

5) Mother Angelica with her EWTN cable network and her WEWN short wave radio. She is feeding many other radio and TV stations with her 24-hour programming. Believe it or not, finally, some new Catholic radio stations are being started, as was reported in a recent issue of the National Catholic Register.

6) Growth of the Latin Mass movement. Over a hundred dioceses now have regularly scheduled Latin Masses for those who love the ancient tradition of the Roman Rite.

7) The Legionaries of Christ and the Fraternity of St. Peter are both growing rapidly. They have many vocations and their seminaries are full. The Fraternity started their own theologate this past September in Elmhurst, Penn.; the Legionaries of Christ will soon open their own new theological school north of New York City.

8) Closing Catholic schools is not the only thing happening. The Archbishop of Atlanta is building two new high schools. Small lay-run Catholic schools are starting up across the country. They are financed and operated by parents who want a truly Catholic education for their children, free of doctrinal errors and so-called sex education. You can find them in California, Missouri, New Jersey, Virginia and many other states.

9) Let us not forget the phenomenon of home schooling, which is growing; many Catholic families have decided that this is the way to go so that their children will learn the basics in all areas, including Catholic catechism.

10) Catholic pro-life groups of all kinds, including those informal groups which gather, often on Saturdays, outside of abortion clinics to pray the Rosary and give witness to respect for all human life, no matter how fragile.

11) Many Catholic scholars and intellectuals are working hard to defend the faith. You might not hear much about them in the secular or Catholic press but they are out there. One organization which has done stellar work for almost twenty years is the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars which was founded by Msgr. George A. Kelly, with the assistance of several friends across the country.

It is not my intention to list everything of a positive nature that is going on. That would be impossible in any event. You can see, however, from the above, that there is much to be happy about. The basic reason for my optimism is my conviction that the Lord is with his Church (Matt. 28:20) and that He rules her through His Holy Spirit.

What is incumbent on all of us is to be faithful to our duties in life, to pray for the Church and for her shepherds, to ask our Lord to raise up more fearless leaders like Mother Teresa of Calcutta. We do not need bigger computers and more bureaucrats. What we need are more holy bishops and priests, in short, more saints.

No, all is not dark; there are many bright spots in the Church. It is up to each one of us to light a candle in the darkness and to be Catholics filled with hope. God has done it before; He is doing it now; and He will do it in the future.

Father Baker is the editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review.

Father Anthony Bannon, L.C.

I'm going to have to cheat here, instead of answering the question "what is right with the Church today" and possibly getting embroiled in matters beyond me while attempting to sit in judgment, let me just take the worm's eye view, (the view from the trenches rather than academe) selecting only two of those major shifts that shout out to us that the Holy Spirit is here and at work in and through the Church, perhaps today more than ever, speaking in a human way.

Firstly, there is a noticeable, major shift from the search for change to the search for truth. No Richter scale can measure the energy that this has released, that will be history's job, and we will have to make that history.

It is no wonder. The human spirit can only be entertained for so long. Sooner or later it yearns for substance and will hound it out. Empty and contradictory dogmas as the Communists found out won't stand the test. Superstacked store shelves as our bloated West seems to be discovering won't either. Neither will a painless, crossless Christianity, as our youth is telling us with their feet, marching to Manila, Denver, and Paris. Much less will the pagan regurgitations of the New Age deliver what they don't have Ñ the crunch and substance of a truth that is truly liberating.

Where can you see this? All over. Not just in the youth. To me it seems a reaffirmation and a reward granted by God for not losing faith in his promise.

You see, we have been under plenty of pressure for a few decades now to accept in practice that God has abandoned his Church Ñ on the one hand because it has said no to the change the Holy Spirit throughout the world is calling it to (witness Humanae Vitae and rejecting women's ordination), and on the other because it has given in to the world by its progressiveness (witness the New Liturgy and Ecumenism). Both sides have said we must reject the center if the Church is to survive. But they are fragmenting and the effervescence, the new life is at the center, personified in the Holy Father. God is nothing if he is not faithful.

And people will not only go out to hear the one who speaks the truth with authority, they are moved to pass onto others what they themselves have freely received. Which brings us to a second great change, a real earthquake: the major shift from passivity to activity.
A sense of mission is growing in the laity, and re-emerging in the clergy too. God has not sent us to find our niche in a pluralistic world but to preach the Gospel to all nations, in word and in deed, and in fine to set the world ablaze. To say the word and then show with our lives how it applies.

I think just a short time ago we tended to complain more, because we saw problems and thought, somebody mustn't be doing his job. Now we realize that that someone is us. The first shoots of the springtime of evangelization prophetically announced while the rest of us could see no further ahead than our fears are now becoming evident. That it is a work of the Holy Spirit is clear given the breadth and variety of the new life that is emerging in the Church: new movements, new religious families, old ones rediscovering their roots . . . There is a marked absence of flightiness in most of these trends. There is a rediscovery of conversion, of substance, of prayer and penance, personal transformation, and of apostolate. It seems to me that St. Paul would thrill to be around again today. His message would not have to change: you are now creatures in Christ, walk worthy of it; do not follow the way of those who have not yet known Him, but in your lives lead others to discover Him.

The above two points I have considered deal with shifts, changes. But I don't think that what is right with the Church today can be limited to changes. That would be tragic, if it were possible, for it would mean that at some point the Church had stopped being, albeit briefly, what it is. No, though in recent times there has been much destruction and devastation caused from outside and within, the Church has never ceased to be Itself   the sacrament, the efficacious sign of salvation.

Not all the difficulties are behind us Ñ that would be against the laws of nature, history and the supernatural but the fact that we are approaching a new springtime and not the demise of the Church and evangelization tells us a wonderful story of fidelity. God's we take for granted; man's is the true miracle. Countless prayers, countless individual options that must have been taken against enormous doubt and temptation; countless parents, teachers, priests who explained and passed on the faith; hidden religious and lay-people in the hundreds of thousands who practiced Christ's charity without so much as a thank-you for it, so much personal suffering for the cause of truth; the list could go on, but we are a "debtor Church" in debt to those who have been faithful and whom we have received it from.
What we have received from them is "what is right with the Church," the Church itself as God meant it to be: the instrument of our salvation, the place of meeting with Christ, the message to be brought to all people.

Am I emphasizing this bridge with the past so as to return there? No. It's a one-way bridge. True, all we have received has come across it, but now our task is not the comfortable one of going back and slaying the dragons of yesteryear with the gift of hindsight. Our call is to bring out of this treasure things old and new, in order to face the challenges that are already upon us, to the benefit of this world in which we now live and the better one we must leave to the next generation.


Father Anthony Bannon is Territorial Director of the Legionaries of Christ in the United States.

Jody Bottum

A faithful Catholic, considering the question of what's right with the Church, is required by faith, logic, and even good manners to start with something like this: What's right with the Church is its institution by God, its espousal by Jesus Christ, and its illumination by the Holy Spirit. What's right with the Church is the deposit of its magisterial teaching, the intercessory prayers of the saints in Heaven, and the faith of its people. And against all this Ñ this rock, this sure and solid thing, this abiding reality, this Ñ it Ñ the gates of Hell shall not prevail.

On the other hand, one has to admit that for the last few centuries or so, Catholics have felt from time to time like those same gates of Hell were doing their share of prevailing. And it's hard to say that they were entirely wrong about the Church in America during the 1960s and '70s. We can go too far in describing the unique nuttiness of those decades. The Roman Catholic Church is a big, big thing  the biggest thing the world has ever seen Ñ and in every era of its existence it has had, rattling around in the corners, its full allotment of nuts, just as it has had in every era its full allotment of saints and sinners and heretics and publicans and pharisees and tax collectors. But it's fair enough to say that it felt in the '60s and '70s as though the nuts had managed to take over the asylum.
What's wrong with the Church in America today is that many of them are still around, a lot older than they used to be but still claiming to run the place. What's right with the Church in America today is the fact that nobody pays much attention. Many of the premier positions in the theology departments of Catholic universities, the editorial staffs of Catholic publications, and the bureaucracies of Catholic institutions belong to the generation formed in those wild days. But those premier positions aren't what they used to be, and their holders certainly haven't managed to teach the American Church much more than to ignore them.

Abortion is, of course, the contemporary test of the Church in this country. And it's true that some polls suggest American Catholics have abortions at the same rate as the general population, just as it's true that the fight against partial-birth abortion has not thus far produced legislative fruit. But those same polls reveal that American Catholics at least know in overwhelming numbers that abortion is very, very bad, and what started as a lonely stand by the Church against abortion has both persuaded the evangelical Christians who were inclined at first to ignore the issue and brought those evangelicals into serious dialogue with the Catholics whom they once feared and denounced. The collapse of last-ditch nutty efforts like "We Are Church" Ñ together with the explosion of traditionalist Catholic book and magazine publishing, the success of the handful of seriously Catholic colleges, and the increasing national prominence of conservative Catholic intellectuals Ñ demonstrates that on a host of issues, the energy and the ideas and the moral force is all on the side of those who agree with the current pope.

That suggests, however, a shorter way to say what's right with the Church today. Rather than five-hundred words, one can do with three: John Paul II. All the rest is commentary.

Jody Bottum is an associate editor of First Things.

Mark Brumley

It is often said that Christianity is about hope, not optimism. Despite the many grave obstacles facing the Catholic Church of our time, there are reasons for us to have both. Here are but a few:
1. John Paul II's vision for the Church. The present Holy Father has been criticized as reactionary and anti-Vatican II. The charge can only be made by people who are either ignorant, malicious or both. No one familiar with the substantial body of his writings could reasonably hold such a view.

Of twentieth century popes, John Paul II has the most coherent and consistent vision of the Church and her mission to the world, a vision formed by the Second Vatican Council. From his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis through his recent letter On the Coming of the Third Millennium, it is clear that he sees Vatican II as a "gift of the Spirit to the Church of our time."

Based on his understanding of Vatican II Ñ an understanding derived from his participation in the Council as the Archbishop of Krakow Ñ John Paul II has addressed at length some of the leading pastoral issues of our time: problems in catechesis, liberation theology, dissent in moral theology, women's ordination, the family, abortion and the culture of death, Catholic universities, priestly celibacy, religious liberty and ecumenism. He has overseen the formulation of a number of major documents touching the institutional structure of the Church, including a reorganization of the Roman Curia through Pastor Bonus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the revision of the Code of Canon Law, and Ex Corde Ecclesiae to regulate Catholic universities.

In this respect, he has laid a rock-solid foundation for 21st century Catholicism.

2. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Few questions were more difficult for the man-in-the-street to answer following Vatican II than "What does the Catholic Church teach today?" Not, of course, because Vatican II radically revised Catholic doctrine. But because the clergy and others responsible for presenting it were sometimes silent, ambiguous, dissident or simply drowned out by the deafening cacophony of conflicting views pushed by the media. The Magisterium might issue its various documents, but the media and the dissidents could always put their own spin on them. And who has ready access to magisterial documents, anyway? Even if they wanted to be sure what the Church taught, how many ordinary Catholics would know where to look?

Then came the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the post-Vatican II document par excellence. So great was the hoopla over it that not even the spin-doctors could marginalize it. Probably most Catholics now realize the Catechism is the place to go to for what the Church teaches. And, judging from the millions of copies sold, many people have their own copies to thumb through. Obviously, that hasn't Ñ and won't Ñ solve all our catechetical problems, but it's a start.

When the Catechism of the Catholic Church was published in English, I was working for the Diocese of San Diego. Bishop Brom reminded the staff that it was not "the new Torah." Those who expected a compendium of radical or innovative theology would be sorely disappointed, he warned.

The bishop was right, of course. But theological radicals weren't the only ones disappointed. Orthodox Catholics with no axe to grind against the Church's teaching were too. The Catechism, claimed some church bureaucrats, wasn't intended for the laity, but for religious education professionals Ñ bishops, pastors and parish directors of religious education. And even for them it was supposed to be merely a reference book (read: dust collector on the shelf). Those parts of the Catechism (and they were legion) disliked by the bureaucratic establishment were ignored or dismissed as insufficiently "nuanced" or "pastoral."

Now that's changing, due mainly to some courageous bishops. There is a growing awareness among many in the episcopate of the wide divergence between Catholicism as presented by the Catechism and how it's represented in many catechetical materials used in Catholic schools and parish religious education programs. At last June's NCCB meeting in Kansas, Archbishop Daniel Buechlein of Indianapolis, head of the bishops' Ad Hoc Committee

on the Use of the Catechism, dropped a bombshell. He reported that the committee had found "a number of doctrinal deficiencies common" to catechetical materials widely used. And he called for fidelity to the Catechism in revising them.

Identifying the problem is not the same as fixing it, of course. But it is the first step. Those familiar with catechisms have already noted a change, with publishers now attempting to "beef up" their materials long bereft of serious doctrinal substance. We have reasonable grounds for hope that, if the bishops and a solid core of the lay faithful continue to stand for the truth, the 21st century may see a renewal of authentic catechesis.

Mark Brumley is managing editor of Catholic Dossier.
Anne Husted Burleigh

A genuine renaissance is quietly transforming Catholicism in America. It is small, to be sure, but mighty Ñ mighty because many of those who are most involved in this renaissance are not only intensely faithful but also are exceptionally gifted and well prepared.

The striking characteristic of this cultural flowering is that its movers and shakers are one with the heart of the Church. As a result, they, like Pope John Paul II, their inspiration, are young, exuberant, and optimistic, regardless of their age in years. One cannot but contrast their creative energies with the stale weariness of the dissenting standard-bearers of the sixties, who now are edging toward retirement age, perhaps lamenting that their efforts to remove some of the pillars of the Church caused Catholic culture to become both secular and childish. The old dissenting culture, ill-founded in the first place, is dying away; an energetic new one is springing up to replace it. This new culture, still in infancy, gives every sign of being not only more genuine but also more aesthetically pleasing than the old one. If we follow Christopher Dawson's theme, it should be more genuine. As Dawson taught, culture emerges as a response to religion. Thus, the more perfectly a culture responds to authentic religion, the richer and more authentic the culture is bound to be. The new cultural flowering, because it is so earnestly an effort to respond authentically to the truth of the Catholic faith, is showing a remarkable maturity and vibrancy.

Moreover, it is gaining momentum. It seems that those who love the Church and want to create beautiful, substantial things as an outpouring of their love are no longer floundering in frustration, waiting for the adolescent cultural phase to pass. Instead they are quietly changing things themselves, often with such finesse that they have gained acceptance and prestige in circles where a decade or so ago they would have been ignored. Sound-thinking Catholics may not be loved in all circles; they are, however, now respected, no doubt because the Church has emerged as the only institution to offer real solutions to the modern moral dilemma.

These participants in the renewal are missionaries of a sort; in their various ways they are evangelizing the communities in which they work. I offer a few of my favorite examples of the accomplishments of these quiet evangelists.
Catholic publishing is central to the renaissance. Without serious books and periodicals there would be no cultural flowering. Ignatius Press, surely by anyone's standard, stands as the giant of Catholic publishing enterprises. Fr. Joseph Fessio, courageous and tenacious, has brought us classical Catholic works by Von Balthasar, Pieper, and Chesterton, all handsomely produced. He likewise publishes the best of current Catholic authors, such as Peter Kreeft and Fr. Benedict Groeschel. Now, to the delight of our family, he is publishing the novels of a Canadian artist, Michael O'Brien. Strangers and Sojourners, the first of a trilogy O'Brien has in process, is an exceptionally fine novel, the poetic and mythic story of the spiritual journey of a British Columbian woman and her family.

Parents should note, too, that Ignatius markets Bethlehem Books, an excellent collection of novels and saints' biographies for young readers. Bethlehem Books, incidentally, are only a small part of a resurgence in good books for children. Ignatius Press also is now energetically marketing outstanding videos.

Sophia Institute Press, though not as large as Ignatius, publishes beautiful, dignified books Ñ the prayers of St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, and an anthology of Christmas poetry, edited by the poet Johann Moser. Furthermore, Sophia also offers lovely, tasteful art reproductions of the works of old masters such as Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, as well as a wood replica of the Oberammergau crucifix.

The Catholic periodical business is flourishing. Crisis, First Things, Dossier, Envoy, Inside the Vatican, Sursum Corda and Catholic World Report are all fruits of the Catholic renaissance, each with its own niche, and all no more than fifteen years old.

One of the happiest developments in Catholic publishing is the revitalization of the National Catholic Register. Always a newspaper with considerable potential, it is taking off under the leadership of Fr. Owen Kearns, L.C., and is as close to a national Catholic newspaper as anything we have seen in many years. It is professional and stocked with good things. I particularly like the front-page interviews, the education page, the editorials, and the book and movie reviews.

In addition to publishing, there are countless other examples of a burgeoning Catholic renaissance, such as the growing and salutary influence of lay apostolic movements. Legatus, an organization for Catholic business executives and entrepreneurs, is thriving. The Knights of Malta, an ancient order that had grown a bit lazy, has undergone a vigorous rebirth and is hard at work tending the poor and sick.

We rejoice, too, over the birth of home schools and solid private Catholic schools. In higher education there is an indispensable core of loyal Catholic schools such as Thomas Aquinas, Franciscan University of Steubenville, University of Dallas, Christendom, Thomas More, and Assumption.

A Catholic renaissance is no longer a hope. It is a reality.

Anne Husted Burleigh lives with her family on a farm overlooking the Ohio River in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky.

Margaret Carberry

Aside, of course, from the Mass, it seems to me to be an almost perfect religious ceremony. It has majesty and mystique. It is both uplifting and comforting. It is friendly to the heart, sweet to the soul. It draws us close and holds us. It embodies a touch of the eternal.

As you can guess, the ceremony is Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament which unhappily now seems to be disappearing, frequently being left out of the schedules of worship.

In the parish where I grew up, the last Mass of Sunday morning was always concluded with Benediction. In what we might call the Novena Years, the prayerful pre-Vatican II decades, it usually followed those powerful litanies to the hopefully caring saints. And, of course, it was central to Forty Hours Devotion, the grand opening procession of which provided another spiritual occasion to justify the purchasing of all those not-inexpensive First Communion outfits.

On every Friday of Lent at Holy Angels parochial school in Gary, Indiana, we closed the school day with the heart-breaking Stations of the Cross, followed as well by Benediction with its simple and succinct Divine Praises and the grandeur of the blessing with the monstrance-enclosed Host. It was our light at the end of the tunnel of sorrow.
Years later, the edge-of-Sunday-evening Benediction in the beautiful chapel of Trinity College in Washington, D. C. drew us young women students safely "home" from sunny afternoons under the cherry blossoms or on the Potomac. And many a young man from Georgetown or Catholic University or elsewhere promoted his ultimate romantic intentions and earned trust and approval by asking to attend with us. It was always a good way to end a date.

Benediction, I find in a mini-Catholic "encyclopedia" I have handy, was introduced and gradually extended in the West as a churchly ceremony over the 16th to the 18th centuries. Recently during a lectures series I attended on the liturgy of the Mass, the priestly speaker noted that Benediction became more and more popular as layfolks Jansenistically began to develop feelings of unworthiness regarding frequent personal reception of the Eucharist.

Whatever the origin, it is a lovely ceremony and truly a ceremony of love. It was retained and continued, approved, alive and comforting, after Pius X got us back on the right track with personal Communion. It is beautiful alone Ñ perhaps fifteen radiant minutes of prayer, incensed adoration, the "Blessed Bells" and those still dearly familiar hymns, 0 Salutaris, Tantum Ergo, and Holy God We Praise Name. It also seems to be so very right to complement and conclude many other in-church occasions.

Over the past several Lents, however, I have heard more than one complaint about Friday evening Stations not being ended traditionally with Benediction. I have attended missions and other church-located events that seemed somehow incomplete and terribly flat when the presiding priest simply walked off the altar with clumping heels and that was that. Not even an altar candle or two to snuff out, let alone a Holy God to sing robustly in happy unison before departure.

A lot of us are asking why is this happening? What is wrong in the rectories that Benediction is no longer being scheduled for religious occasions when it would have almost automatically been included just a few years ago? Are the pastors overly enamored (or perhaps overburdened) by the liturgy committees that are now de rigueur all over the landscape, unfortunately energized sometimes to produce too much "now" stuff (and I write stuff unapologetically) to replace what is much loved and traditional?
This is one of the ways in which we seem to be in danger of losing another thread in the sense of continuity that can be vital in the preservation of faith over the generations and between the generations. I think of a grandmother I know who is still in shock that an eighth-grade granddaughter didn't seem to know anything about Benediction which was Ñ surprise, yes, surprise Ñ to be the finale of a May-crowning ceremony last year. All those years in a Catholic school, and the youngster had somehow missed becoming happily aware of this poetic and holy blessing custom.

There must be a way to stop the slippage, to retain a ceremony that can only enhance the in-church experience. Who decides these things anyway without bothering to take a serious measure of the feelings of the parishioners in the pews? I have never heard anyone say it would be fine to do away with Benediction as we head into the Third Millennium. But I have heard any number of fellow-Catholics asking sadly why it seems to be so rarely celebrated these days.

Truly there is nothing quite as satisfyingly sanctifying sometimes as a Benediction break. We really ought not to lose that.

Mary Margaret Carberry, known affectionaly as "the Cranky Catholic," lives and writes in suburban Chicagoland.

Louis Chammings

Here is my own account of what is right in the Catholic Church.

First, my feeling is that the Church, 2,000 years old, is young. This fact is not obvious, because no purely human society could stay that long; that is the reason why so many people think of Church as virtually dead. Moreover, the Church is often established in countries like Italy, France, Spain, etc. which are effectively old. These countries constitute the birthplace of the current civilization, which is in a critical state. The world around us is in many respects collapsing, and some temporal clothes of the Church are involved in this collapse. But the very Church, in its own soul and spirit, is still young and living.

We do have a sign of it in the person of the Pope. John Paul II is physically old, ill and weary; but his spirit is clear and young, and he loves the youth, as we can have seen this summer in Paris, during the Youth World Days. I have personally heard in a TV report a young American wondering at that strength of John Paul II as a kind of mystery. In fact, this is the very mystery of the Church.

The second most important thing in the Catholic Church, in my opinion, is the Holy Mary's apostolate. Both apostolate of Mary and for Mary. The world rejects God and is heading for disaster. The world does not listen to the voice of Gospel any more, so God sends Mary to warn us. Faith, Conversion, Prayer, Fasting: such has been the message of the Holy Virgin in Medjugorje for 16 years, and in other places too. Mary is the Great Sign in the Heaven told of by the Book of Revelation. All those who hear the voice of Mary are called on to become the apostles of the Last Times, according to Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort. (The Last Times do not mean the end of the world!) Where Mary is welcome, loved and believed in, there a new life is beginning. Unfortunately, that happens only in the faithful heart of Church, not everywhere.

Maybe the third most important thing in the Catholic Church is the doctrine. The doctrine of love, of course, because God is Love, and love is the very meaning of human life. But love is concrete, and we need theological and ethical doctrine to know who and how to love. Usually people think that an expressed teaching is opposed to love and freedom. In actual fact, doctrine does not restrain freedom, but rather contributes to its exercise by giving it its matter. The Catholic Church is a place where the knowledge about God, man and ethics is reliable, and accessible to everyone through the teaching of Popes, Councils, saints' lives and writings, etc. I am grateful to the Church for that.

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Matt 24: 35).

Louis Chammings is president of the Cercle d'etudes Jacques et Raissa Maritain and lives in Paris.

Steven Cortright

I. On the Question
I must confess that the Editor's question strikes me oddly. I imagine it taking its place in an interrogative litany: What's right with the Catholic Church? What's right with the family? ... with life in the bonds of political community? ... with the university? ... with ...? I want to respond Ñ all too obviously Ñ that, in the first instance, what's right with fundamental human institutions Ñ let alone those of divine provenanceÑis that they are: their existence frames a world in which the question "What's right with ...?" can be meaningfully posed; their vitality Ñ or the reverse Ñ measures whether the human cause presently flourishes or languishes.

Of course, the Editor's question points to the latter consideration, to "What's right?" in the sense of "What are some signs of vitality?" Still, in order to grasp that question clearly, one's ear should be attuned neither to, nor simply against, the pitch of our skewey times, but to the pitch of hope. That pitch is sounded in the fact that the Church is, that it stands on the Lord's promise: the gates of Hell neither have prevailed nor will prevail; whatever "issues" dog the Church, the Issue is not in doubt. Again, in order to frame and pursue the question rightly, one should also recall that the signs of hope are as like to correct human wishes as they are like to confirm those wishes, however devout.

II. Ubi Petrus ...
The promise which grounds the question in hope is, of course, inextricably linked to the Lord's prefatory dictum: ... tu es Petrus ... That is to say, the Petrine office is ordained to be a sign of hope, just as it is fated to prove the locus of many fears.

Indeed, the Holy Father has himself summed up the meaning of his pontificate in Christ's repeated exhortation, "Be not afraid," and in his (the Pope's) own formulation of that exhortation's obverse:

It is very important to cross the threshold of hope;
not to stop before it, but to let oneself be led.

"Let oneself be led," viz., out of every form of servile fear, and into that fear of God which is "... filial concern in order that the will of God be done on earth," and which issues in the works of unconditional love. Servile fear prompts us to entanglement in our own anxious wishes; hope prompts us to filial fear and to the clarity of religious duty.

It is thus of note that John Paul's has been a pontificate rich in disappointment for those whose fear of the Church, of its improbable witness to improbable holiness, prompts the wish for "reform" or "renewal"Ñin morals, practice, doctrineÑthat can be entertained only while one is, in the phrase of the peasant of the Garonne, "kneeling before the world." The apostles of spurious renewal have enjoyed the satisfactions of being loudly and publicly "unedified" by Veritatis splendor, "dismayed" and "wounded" by Ordinatio sacerdotalis, left "cold" by the "traditionalism" of the Catechism of the Catholic Church ... all the while fitfully picking over the treasures of the social encyclicals. Likewise, John Paul's has been a pontificate rich in disappointment for those whose fear for the Church in its contemporary travails prompts the wish for decisive, ubiquitous, juridical intervention against the "progress" Ñ evangels' march through the Church's own institutions. John Paul's has been, in a word, a pontificate emphatically "of" the Second Vatican Council, that Council which at once strove to give the catholic truth ecumenical expression and issued no anathema.

What's right with the Church, thirty years after the Council and twenty years into John Paul's papal ministry, proceeds from the multiplication of Catholics who have joined the Holy Father across the threshold of hope, leaving behind both fear of the Church and fear for the Church, abandoning their wishes in order to discern Ñ in hope Ñ the present, needful thing, and Ñ in love Ñ simply to do it. John Paul has called this movement "qualitative renewal," and it requires just two things: that seven channels of grace continue to flow Ñ like water from the rock on the day of Meribah Ñ owing to the Mercy and despite the errors of flailing ministers; that the truth entrusted to the Church be insistently sounding, as it has sounded from our present Pope of Witness.

So, I have in mind the courage of homeschoolers, who take up the whole sacred burden of teaching and catechizing their children; I have in mind the zeal of Human Life International, the serene work of Opus Dei, the persevering love of the Missionaries of Charity ... and the witness of every one who has withdrawn from what has, essentially, been a misplaced political struggle and is instead busy planting Ñ in whatever simple way Ñ the Cross before the world. For this work, and for those who offer it through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father, grace and truth suffice. Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor, pray for the Church; pray for us.

Steven Cortright teaches at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California.
Father Michael J. Dodds, O.P.

My present work as teacher and student master for the Western Province Dominicans in the United States gives me a chance to see some good things that are happening within the Church.

The "good things" I see are the good people who are entering the Order to be Dominican priests and brothers. By the numbers, we have seventeen students and eleven novices this year. But the numbers don't tell the personal stories of each man and the reasons for hope that they bring to the Province and the Church.

Some of them like myself at age 46 are "approaching" middle age. Others are younger, just graduated from college. Some have had successful careers for a number of years. A social worker, an engineer, a doctor of philosophy, a veterinarian, a journalist all have been called to follow Christ in a special way, much as the fishermen and the tax collector were called long ago.

They have seen a good deal of life. One was a "boat person" from Vietnam. Another worked as a migrant farm laborer in California. Some come from broken homes; others have experienced the tragic death of a family member. They have known sadness, but also joy. And somehow they have come to know the powerful and loving presence of Christ in their lives. This is the gift they come to share.

They are eager to serve the Church and conscientious in preparing themselves for that service. They are serious about prayer and study. (Some even take Greek, though this is no longer required.) They want to know the Lord better in their personal lives and to learn the truth of the Catholic Faith so they can be preachers of the Word in the Dominican tradition.

During their time of study, they find various opportunities for ministry. Some have worked with AIDS patients; others with inner city kids. Some visit prisons; others seek out the sick, the elderly, the poor, the shut-ins. A good deal of my own work is simply discovering the good things they want to do and then giving them the freedom to follow their heart.

Of course, we don't live in mindless bliss all the time. There are times of disagreement, frustration, confusion, disappointment and loneliness. A process of growth is never without pain. But through it all, there is a genuine love of the Lord, a desire to serve the Church, and a concern for one another.
When I was appointed student master, I received both congratulations and "commiserations" from members of the province. I suppose the commiserators considered themselves more realistic. After two years in the job, through, I think the congratulators came closer to the truth. At a time when the shortage of priests and religious is becoming ever more evident, the presence of men of quality, eager

to give their lives to this calling is truly a sign of hope, and the chance to work with them to achieve that goal has been a genuine blessing.

Father Michael Dodds teaches at the Dominican House of Studies, St. Albert's Priory, in Oakland, California.

Jude P. Dougherty

Etienne Gilson once remarked, The trouble with us Catholics is that we are not proud enough of the faith.Ñ And that reminds one of St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) who sought an empirical proof for the existence of God and found it in the beauty of the Church. His reasoning was from effect to proper cause. He argued that such a noble and uplifting institution, so fruitful in the lives of individuals and even of nations, could not be the product of human intelligence but could only be the result of the act of an omniscient and omnipotent God. That Church exists today with an increased beauty, one amplified by centuries of thought and material accomplishment, one embellished by painting, literature and architecture, undreamt of by St. John Chrysostom. Metaphors abound to describe the Church, but no metaphor is needed to point to the intellectual and moral guidance it provides to all who are willing to listen, to the sacraments which mark the important passages of life, restore the fallen and provide a personal union with Christ in the Eucharist.

It must be admitted that through the ages not all who have professed the Catholic faith have been exemplars of her wisdom and moral virtue. But saints are not rare. some few are canonized because of their public manifestation of heroic virtue, but most of the blessed are husbands and wives, maiden aunts and others who have lived dutiful lives in ordinary pursuits. Members of the great religious orders whose deeds are chronicled no doubt have been their models as they sought to imitate Christ.
We need not look to the past for effectsÑ which a contemporary Chrysostom could appreciate. The Holy Father himself is the foremost moral spokesman of our day and a world leader, universally appreciated. The specter of a million persons in attendance at his Mass at Longchamps outside of Paris is certainly bracing. The outpouring of appreciation for the work of Mother Teresa points not only to goodness perceived but a latent goodness in the many who are able to appreciate ability in others. Moral witness still bears fruit even in a world imaged by a jaded media.

Those who have been exposed to a Catholic intellectual life can name dozens of scholars, novelists, poets, sculptors and other artists whose work has exemplified the faith in its depth and complexity. My life has been enriched by the writings of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Christopher Dawson, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, John Henry Newman, Dietrich von Hildebrand, DŽsirŽ Mercier, Leo Ward, G.K. Chesterton and countless others. I should mention to, novelists such as Franois Mauriac, George Bernanos, LŽon Bloy, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Maxence Van der Meersch.

Great prelates like Francis Cardinal Spellman, Denis Cardinal Dougherty and Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle remind us that genius is not confined to the literary world. The Church as patron of the arts may have something to learn from the past. Sparsity of architectural achievement may reflect the drift of contemporary theology rather than absence of commitment on the part of the faithful. While few architects have gained notoriety in the service of the Church, one can appreciate the beauty of many newly erected parish churches. Opportunities to create on the scale of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages are rare. One exception, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, is a source of pleasure as well as devotion to countless pilgrims. Sculptors like Reed Armstrong of Silver Spring, Maryland, may go unnoticed even while creating museum-quality religious artifacts.

The contemporary Catholic can take pride in the papacy, in the vast network of schools which continue to advance the faith, in newly created journals and institutes which seek to recover the lost, and in Mother Angelica's EWTN. One can detect a renewed intellectual interest in things that pertain to the faith. There is a new generation of Catholic intellectuals who are poised for success. But most of all one is encouraged by the remarkable attendance at daily Mass which one finds from coast to coast. The Church is alive and well, in the words of Chrysostom, Thanks be to God.

Jude Dougherty is Dean of the School of Philosophy at Catholic University of America.

Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR

Among the tragedies that have befallen Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular in the last decades of the twentieth century, the most disturbing is the general collapse of structures created to recruit and support deeply committed disciples. There are always those who feel drawn to a more dedicated life, a more fervent following of the Gospel, a more generous service of the needy. In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and occasionally among Anglicans, this call to greater Christian perfection is expressed in the ancient tradition of religious life, with its vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, its disciplines of common life, frugal life-style, liturgical observance and serious attempts at prayer and spiritual growth. In the Protestant world this call is perhaps less obvious and structured, and is largely restricted to evangelists, lay missionaries and groups like the Salvation Army whose founder so much admired Saint Francis. Across the board this genuine search for a more explicit and personally committed Gospel life has greatly declined in recent decades.

It is true that the institutions hold on Ñ like deserted buildings in mill towns after the mill has closed. Thousands of Catholic religious, especially those who entered religious life in the minor age of faith following the Second World War feel now that they were either cheated or betrayed. Orders and congregations that in 1960 looked like they were going to last for the ages are about to breathe their final gasp. Many members have been dispensed and have memories that range from nostalgia to horror. Many remain but are deeply wounded. Large numbers of women religious appear to be angry or at least disappointed. Religious priests tend to seek their identity in the priesthood and pastoral work. This alternative is not available to religious brothers, and these often remain struggling like the women religious to keep the embers of the home fires burning. A reaction called in social psychology anomia, or the feeling of having lost one's purpose in life, is observed everywhere. There are of course those hardy souls culled from that rare breed who are the last people off a sinking ship. These keep on going despite all and give in many ways an admirable but lonely and unappreciated witness. Every fair-sized community has its Sister Mary John the Baptists or its Brother Jeremiah the Prophets who offer some relief to the scene which without them would resemble more than anything Becket's Waiting for Godot. In such a large, and varied phenomenon as religious life, there are always exceptions; a few older orders that retain their identity despite all, like the Carmelites of Alhambra and the Norbertines of Orange, both in California. These are the exceptions, usually made possible by exceptional people.

The temptation is to assign blame and there are lots of easy targets. But my impression is that the dismal malaise is larger even than the Catholic Church. It has struck the religious orders of other denominations as well. It has hit the Protestant churches reducing the numbers of fervent souls leading dedicated lives as missionaries or evangelists. When everyone's farm gets hit with the same blight, we will accomplish little by assigning responsibility here or there and by identifying more egregious examples of irresponsibility or nonsense. Let's look for some trends in society that generated this terminal response in the widest range of institutions Ñ from cloistered nuns to missionary brothers, from Anglican communities to the Salvation Army.

When one decides to do armchair social psychology and anthropology, one is not only going out on a limb, but in danger of slyly presenting one's own hurts and peeves in a more intellectual form. Aware of this danger, I will try to be careful not to present my own list of gripes. I defer here gratefully to the careful analysis done by Father Gerald Arbuckle, S.M., an Australian anthropologist who attempted a very incisive analysis of the chaos in religious life, about ten years ago (cf. Strategies for Growth in the Religious Life, Alba House, 1987). He developed a less successful prescription for the ills of religious life Ñ a process of refounding or of returning to the original purposes of the existing congregation in an honest and prayerful way (cf. Out of Chaos, Paulist Press, 1988). Sadly this refounding appears to have been largely unsuccessful because in most cases I have observed, it became only window-dressing and lacked any real sense of personal conversion Ñ an element I consider essential (cf. The Reform of Renewal, Ignatius Press, 1990).

When we get to the good news part of this article, we will hear about many new attempts at starting religious life over, but the vast majority of these new communities are canonically separate from their original foundations. But first we must try to discern the general causes of the collapse. In my opinion the single greatest cause for the collapse is secularism and worldliness, in other words an often subconscious but determined refusal to limit one's desires for fulfillment and enjoyment in order to become a better disciple of Christ. In the Gospel Our Savior emphatically calls for daily conversion, confrontation of self and the carrying of the Cross. Unfortunately a widespread misunderstanding of the scope and purpose of biblical criticism led those who were already all too willing to decide that "Jesus really did not say or mean that." A new social ethic of selfism, really a form of epicureanism has spread like a virus in the Western industrialized nations, bringing with it the conviction that our first obligation in life is to fulfill all our desires and activate all of our potentials (cf. Daniel Yankovich, New Rules, Random House, 1981 for an excellent analysis of selfism). Vocational advertisements of religious communities send just this message: "Join the Brothers of Inimitable Penance and Do Your Thing!"' or "Get everything you ever wanted in the Daughters of Divine Discontent." (I can document this for those who object.)

The bug of selfism dug into rich soil. The old Latin proverb, "The corruption of the best is the worst," has proved to be terrifyingly accurate. Many communities had large patrimonies of property and liquid assets because generations of religious had led frugal lives and built big abbeys, friaries and mother houses. The despoliation of this patrimony is something that should make a lot of people who can now see the end of the road through their bifocals worry about their questionnaire at the Last Judgment. Vast resources given by the faithful and preserved by good religious for the spread of the Gospel were dissipated or just given away against the will of those who had donated them. How many hod carriers or cleaning ladies who were generous with their hard-earned money will be there at the Judgment to ask what happened with their dollar? This must be a perennial problem because even Saint Francis felt it necessary to protest, "I was never a robber of alms." Living high off the ecclesiastical hog is one of the time honored anti-traditions of religious orders.

What about the immediate past? Without a strong spirituality, religious life in midcentury was often dull and oppressive. Don't tell me Ñ I was there. There were many great religious then but these exceptional people often beat this oppressive system which was already closing in on itself. Congregations founded to teach the poor busied themselves teaching the rich and getting worldly in the process. The possession and care of real estate became an excessive preoccupation and concern for financial security impeded many apostolic endeavors even in missionary orders. All this would leave a lay person and even a diocesan priest puzzled. How did all these good people follow one another down the path of destruction? Incredibly there were communities that held on, keeping up their apostolates and identities for decades amid the general collapse, and then proceed to follow the exact path that lead everyone ahead of them to destruction. Some communities of women religious are doing this right now. Imagine Ñ walking purposely into a mine field filled with decaying bodies. What is the explanation?

My guess is that the answer is to be found in the old vice of presumption, a deception born of pride and self-adulation. There is an unspoken prejudice Ñ really an institutionalized deception in religious organizations. This is the assumption that what those in charge decided to do is necessarily wise and correct and even pleasing to God. This is a misunderstanding of religious obedience and although the spirit of real obedience is almost gone this stupid prejudice remains. It is the presumption of infallibility.

Religious superiors, be they solitary abbots or democratic provincials, presidents or coordinators, all have the responsibility of deciding in various ways for those in their care. This responsibility to determine and direct comes from the Natural Law, from the nature of any organization that intends to function coherently and also from the freely taken vows, promises or commitments of the individual members. It is an obligation that religious have freely taken upon themselves. In the Catholic Church obedience is also linked to the canonical requirement of any recognized religious community of either diocesan or pontifical jurisdiction. The spiritually motivated religious will accept the decisions of those in charge as part of the providential will of God who desires our love, devotion and growth in holiness. The wise religious knows that canonical superiors are in charge but they are not infallible, even if these officials delude themselves into thinking that they are. Whether liberal or conservative, avant-garde or traditional, it is my observation as a psychologist who is a religious that those in charge often assume that they are infallible, and that those who elected them expect them to be infallible. All this is childish. Infallibility is reserved in the Church to a very limited range of responsibilities in preserving the deposit of faith. It is given to the Petrine Office in conjunction with the bishops of the world and has never been thought to guide even the practical decisions of the Holy Father himself. Has anyone ever thought that the selection of bishops was infallible? In fact diocesan priests have never thought that their bishops were infallible, although at times they may have expected them to be.

Not only did religious superiors and especially the chapters of religious communities held periodically delude themselves by the presumption that what they decided was the will of God, but what was worse, they often invoked the name of the Holy Spirit on decisions that violated the Natural Law, the divine positive law (the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount for example), and even canon law, human rights, civil law and the traffic code because they said a few distracted prayers as they assembled in the general direction of the Holy Spirit. They assumed that what they were doing was right and that God would bless their decisions. If there is anything clear about the history of religious life in the past three decades, it is that God has not blessed what's going on. He had little to do with what was going on, and this is because there was a general assumption that the nature of religious life was determined by those who belonged to it Ñ and not something that flowed naturally from human nature and an authentically lived Christian experience. The nature of religious life is, in many respects, determined by the laws of anthropology. Religious life has existed long before the Church and exists in many flourishing ways outside the Church, especially in the Orient. The precise dimensions of Christian religious life have been determined by tradition and canon law and these are usually quite anthropologically valid and accurate. This entire tradition was swept away by the presumption that religious could change the nature of religious life, its goals, purposes and application at will. In fact, if someone were to write a history of the decline of religious life in modern times I think the best title would be, "Growing Figs From Thistles." If that's too strong, what about "Blind Guides"?

The final piece of bad news which has to be recognized is that institutions find it very difficult to reform themselves. Even a superficial reading of the history of religious life will show that, for the most part, genuine reform has come at times of decline only by starting new religious institutes, canonically independent of the original foundations. This is because confusion and laxity become institutionalized. Even very good religious who have had to find for themselves a cleft in the rocks or a kayak to survive are not anxious to participate in any real efforts of reform of their communities. They've lost too much already and have managed to find some place to be safe and lead a devout Christian life as individuals. "Why get involved in trying to save the Titanic? Get into a lifeboat." And that's what they have done.

For this reason Church history makes it eminently clear that most reforms must start afresh even though the reformers explicitly and purposely adopt the aim, purposes, goals, and writings of the founder and the early pioneers. This is obviously true in the Benedictine and Franciscan traditions. The spirit of these two founders has led to innumerable new, canonically independent foundations. Unfortunately some religious communities are so constructed that it is very difficult to try to refound them. I would hesitate to speak for the Society of Jesus but will merely quote one of its more distinguished members who told me that St. Ignatius' mistake was that he had made obedience so tight that reform was virtually impossible. In order to have reform you must have appropriate dissent. Dissent theoretically is cause for dismissal from the Jesuits, I am told. Obviously this rule is applied unevenly, because there are many dissenters but few have been led out the door. As a rule, those who have dissented in favor of tradition are most likely to find themselves on the steps. Some other communities make the boast that they have never been reformed. This might not be a compliment if you reflect upon it. The possibility of being reformed is something that is, in fact, very important.

In my own book, The Reform of Renewal, written almost a decade ago, I tried to give a call for reform. I had hoped that people more capable than I (and who were in positions of influence) would use this book as the opening wedge of reform in religious life and in the Church. I have received a very wide range of positive correspondence in response to

this book but almost none of it has come from people who are in a position to effect reform. I could not even get a reply to a personal letter to the editor of Review for Religious, suggesting they might like to hear from the other side. I had hoped that some learned theologian or some movers and shakers in religious life might have picked reform up. Now I realize that reform almost always starts anew. New religious reforms succeed, as did the Capuchin order to which I belonged, and they pull in their wake the older institutions. Once the people in the older institutions realize that the boat has left without them, a new generation will then pursue reform within the older institution. This has happened in the Benedictines and the Franciscans over and over again, and it appears to be happening even now in a few places.

This brings us to the good news. And the good news in religious life is that in the midst of the burned out forest there is a new fresh crop of vegetation; little saplings, plants, flowers, moss, are growing up right beside the burned out tree stumps. There is, in fact, a second spring.

This phenomenon of new communities is especially noticeable in France. To mention just a few, the Community of St. Jean, the Community of Emmanuel, the Community of the Beatitudes and the Jerusalem Community bring all kinds of new interpretations of religious life along with very fervent, devout Catholicism. Loyalty to the Holy Father, devotion to the Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin flourishes along with imaginative apostolates which gather in large numbers of young people. The same is true of Taize, an ecumenical community. I was not at all surprised by the tremendous turnout of youth to join the Holy Father in Paris, since I had recently visited a number of the sparkling new dynamic French communities. There are enthusiastic young adults everywhere. Outside of France there are two older communities which prove that tradition works Ñ the Missionaries of Charity and the Legionaires of Christ. Although rather different in spirit from the newer communities, they illustrate that well identified religious life is still a realistic possibility. Two women's communities seeking reform, the Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Eucharist and the Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan are already Institutes of the Pontifical Rite.

What happens in France usually happens in the United States about ten years later and that's precisely what is going on. Most people are totally unaware of it but there are well over one hundred new communities in the United States. I hesitate to even start giving a list because many are making noble struggles and a number are now growing rather rapidly. Perhaps the fastest growing of these communities along with our own is the Sisters of Life, founded by Cardinal O'Connor in the New York Archdiocese to work with all aspects of the struggle to protect human life. Every one of these new communities I have met is attempting to observe the basic elements of religious life including the wearing of a religious habit which is anthropologically a necessity. Anyone familiar with the study of liminal entities (cf. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process, Aldine, 1965) knows that religious garb, a plain uniform dress which is identifiable, and a clear commitment to the purposes of the community, are necessary for identity. There are serious attempts at experimental communities which do not fit the canonical requirements because they include women and men, or because they include married consecrated members. Two of the most promising were founded by Father William McNamara O.C.D. and John Michael Talbot. These communities are more properly called associations of the faithful based on the religious life. Another new community which includes sisters and brothers is the Teresian Carmelites found by Brother Paul Henry.

It was said in the recent past that the wearing of religious garb was unimportant. It's interesting to note that every new community that I am aware of wears religious garb or wants to. The Fellowship of Emerging Religious Communities (Box 499, Ft. Covington, NY 12937) is one of the few groups that attempts to bring some of these new groups together for dialogue. There is youth, enthusiasm, devotion, prayer, dedication. It's predictable that many of the new communities will not make it, often because of opposition from ecclesiastical representatives who have their own personal reasons for being opposed. It's a persistent complaint of members of new communities that they particularly find opposition from vicars of religious or others assigned by bishops to deal with the concerns of religious. Although this has not in any way been the experience of the Franciscans of the Renewal who have met with enthusiastic support and help, it is a persistent complaint in many areas in the United States. Institutionalized failure is often a curse in a highly structured organization.

Because we live in a success oriented society, the startling growth of new communities in France and occasionally in the rest of the world will gradually lead people to buying into that which succeeds. Often this may be done in a mindless way based on the false assumption that success is an infallible sign of God's blessing. Nonetheless, it will cause the institutional framework of the Church gradually to make room for new communities. In the past almost all new communities that succeeded had stormy times. The Capuchins were at the point of being suppressed more than once by the highest authorities of the Church. The first Capuchin saint, Felix of Cantalice observed (when the Holy See was contemplating suppressing the reform) that prostitutes plied their wares in the streets of Rome but the Capuchins were being punished for saying their prayers.

The experience of the Franciscans of the Renewal is probably typical of new communities. Despite the advantage of starting with eight finally professed religious and the support of Cardinal O'Connor, we had our ups and downs. At this present writing we have more than fifty friars including a large number of novices. Several priests have joined our community, swelling the ranks of those who can participate in the formation program needed for such a large number of recruits. A smaller community of our sisters makes its way along despite the effects that radical forms of feminism has had on women's vocations.

The best piece of advice our community received was given to us by Mother Teresa the day we began: "Decide what it is that God wants you to do and stick to it." We decided that we should do evangelical preaching and live and work with the poor as the early Capuchins had done, since our goal has always been to follow the spirit of the early Capuchin reform. The real observance of religious poverty and all the vows was made of paramount importance, a life of Christian prayer focused on the Mass as sacrifice and presence was made the Foundation of our community. A loving devotion to Our Lady and the saints was spontaneously observable in all those joining the community. A comprehensive psychological screening process was used. In fact, the community would be larger if this had not been done. The wearing of the religious habit at all times is assumed. It is not surprising now to meet people from the huge city of New York who tell you that they saw friars walking the streets of this very secular city. The appearance of religious garb by men is almost universally met with a pleasant response and even enthusiasm. We have proved that it is not what is on your back that frightens people but what's on your face. The friars are encouraged to smile and be friendly according to the advice of St. Francis. Even though distinctly attired we are met by a large number of people with friendliness and enthusiasm, especially non-Catholics.

The good news is that religious life is not dead. It's just sick. It is my own guess, (and I am not an optimist) that soon the larger, well established religious orders will wake up like Gulliver from the sleep of secularism and worldliness which has caused them to be so deeply bound. Some of the prophetic voices in these established orders are beginning to be heard although a number of solemn high funerals may be necessary before reform is real. But funerals inevitably do take place. As someone who was responsible for beginning a new reformed community of an established tradition, I must admit that it was the most painful and difficult thing I ever did in my whole life. It was done only in response to a conviction that we were morally responsible to do something, since we could rely on the firm backing of a resolute Cardinal Archbishop along with the support of many informed religious and clergy and with an enthusiastic response of an immense number of laity. We are in less than ten years prepared to petition to be canonically established as a formal religious community. This is a rather short time to pass from the preliminary stage of public association of the faithful.

The good news is that this is going to start happening in many places. If I am blessed enough to look up over the battlements of purgatory after I depart from this world, I expect to see the Catholic Church in the United States strengthened by the restoration of religious life. Wherever the Church has been religious life has existed. This will not change.

Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR is one of the founding members of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in the South Bronx. This is a reform community in the Capuchin tradition. He is director of the Office of Spiritual Development of the New York Archdiocese.

Helen Hull Hitchcock

We don't have to look far for good news. The throngs at the recent World Youth Day in Paris approximately quadrupled what been forecast. In spite of widespread and woeful deficiencies in Catholic teaching for more than two decades (a fact now openly acknowledged by the American bishops' committee for implementation of the Catechism); in spite of the weaknesses of the "liturgical reform"; in spite of "modern" theology which has pushed the living Christ to the dimmest margins of history; in spite of bad example given by the older generation of Catholics on everything from belief in Christ and practice of the faith to the entire spectrum of moral behavior Ñ the good news is that millions of young people are still looking eagerly to the Catholic Church for the truth Ñ The Good News.

But this is really old news. As St. Augustine, writing more than a millennium-and-a-half ago, observed, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Yet a more contemporary statement of grounds for real hope could not be uttered. And he might have been addressing the millions of "restless hearts" who gathered in Paris when he invited his contemporaries to accept Christ, and the only peace and the only freedom worthy of the name:
You, too, come to Christ . . . Don't think of the long journeys. . . . One reaches Him, the omnipresent One, through love, not by seafaring. Yet, since the floods and storms of manifold temptations are common enough on this voyage, too, believe in the Crucified One so that your faith is capable of climbing onto the wood. Then you will not sink . . .
(Sermo 131.2 [PL 38.730], quoted by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in A New Song for the Lord, Crossroad [1996], p. 12)

Climbing onto the wood. The rugged wood of the Cross. This image reminds me of a picture in my great-grandmother's house that fascinated me. It was a night scene of a raging storm at sea, with lightning, roiling clouds and fearfully high waves. In the midst of this frightening storm was a woman stranded on a small rock surrounded by the stormy waters. Her long hair was drenched and flying in the wind; her wet clothing torn as if in a struggle. The woman was clinging for dear life to the Cross planted firmly in the rock, her eyes cast heavenwards. It was a disturbing picture. If she lost her grip for an instant she would sink beneath the angry waves and drown. Could she hang on until daylight? Until the storm was over? Would she be rescued? "Who is she?" I asked. "What will happen to her?" "She's a soul Ñ and she's still holding on after all these years," my great-grandmother smiled.

There's genuine comfort in that Ñ as Charles Wesley observed two-hundred and fifty years ago in his great hymn:

Jesus, Lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high;
Hide me, O my Savior, Hide, till the storm of life be past;
Safe into the haven guide, O receive my soul at last.

And John Henry Cardinal Newman, writing a hundred years later:

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on;
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

Ad astra per aspera. Felix culpa. No Cross, No Crown.
All these images have represented the paradox of faith throughout the ages Ñ from the disciples who worried in a tempest while Jesus slept, to Peter sinking in the water, to the sons of Zebedee whom Jesus calls to drink from the cup He drinks, to be baptized as he is baptized, to the millions of youth in Paris this summer similarly called by Christ's Vicar to recall the meaning of their baptism and to embrace the Cross.

That we are surrounded by a "culture of death" is a fact we must acknowledge. That the living Christ, embodied in His Church, is the scorned and mocked "sign of contradition" to this stormy and dangerous world is also a fact. But this same "stumbling block" to the world is also the source of our hope and the rock of our salvation.

Can we withstand being buffeted by constant waves of bad news, when problems seem insurmountable and the struggle futile? It is wearying and difficult to "climb onto the wood" and stay there. We worry not only about our own lack of courage and faith, but even more about our children. Temptations to succumb Ñ to relax our grip Ñ seem nearly irresistible. We are not the first generation to suffer doubts and temptations. Think of Moses, Job, David, Elijah, Isaiah, Peter, Thomas, Paul.

Still, even in this there is refreshing good news. There is the true consolation of friendship with many others with whom we share the vocation to follow Christ and to imitate His love. Unlike the struggling lady in the picture, we are not alone. And we are not our own Ñ we belong to Christ. We know his voice: "Be not afraid, for I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

There is something else, too. "Jesus calls us, o'er the tumult", in the words of another old hymn. God has called us into being at this time in history, not another. We have been asked to serve Him now, in a world of confusion and tumult, when the Good News of salvation is obscured by the deafening tempest about us, and when the souls of men are in graver peril than ever before. We, and not some other people of some other time, have been given the very great privilege of bearing His liberating message Ñ and His Cross Ñ when we are needed most. And this is truly good news.

Helen Hull Hitchcock is the founder of Women for Faith and Family, and editor of the liturgical journal Adoremus Bulletin.
Russell Hittinger

Speaking only in human rather than in supernatural terms, I say three things are right about the Catholic Church.

First, since the pontificate of Pius VII (1800-1823), the Catholic Church has been blessed with good popes. Pius VII was persecuted, humiliated, and finally kidnapped by Napoleon. Twenty years later, the Pope used his office not only to plead for mercy when Napoleon himself was held captive, but also to give refuge to the Bonaparte family. His thirteen successors up to our time have been in the same mold. They have been men of good, and sometimes saintly, moral character. Whatever their personal or cultural limitations, the modern popes have unselfishly defended the integrity of the Church. It is the best run of popes in history.

Second, the Catholic Church is perhaps the only international institution that has refused to submit (at least intellectually) to the moral relativism and nihilism of modern times. From Leo XIII's encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum (1888) to John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor (1993), the Catholic Church has held together Law and Gospel and reason and liberty. The disrepair of the liturgy today is a terrible problem. Who hasn't been embarrassed to take non-Catholic friends to Mass? But the simple and honest virtue of the Church's fidelity to moral truth is cited by converts as one of the main things that attracted them to the Church. Sociologists tell us that the Church's moral teachings alienate the suburban middle-class. But in every case with which I am familiar, parishes that teach and preach the moral doctrine have plenty of customers on Sunday and a long line of converts at Easter Vigil.

Third, the Catholic Church is universal. It is not a religion tailor made for a particular class. If one goes into a cathedral in any major city in the United States, he will find the homeless and the rich, the under-educated and the over-educated, the ugly and the beautiful, political liberals and conservatives. When I was a student at St. Louis University, I often had occasion to marvel at the array of different persons lined up at the confessionals in the Jesuit church. Unlike so many other institutions of western civilization today, for whom "inclusivity" is a public relations slogan, or worse, a dreadful ideology, the Catholic Church really does transcend class, ethnicity, and individual lifestyle choices. Even soccer moms have to admit that Catholicism is bigger than the suburbs. But, most of all, the Catholic Church is still a home for the weak and the vulnerable. However much Catholic social gospelism tends to distract attention from the deeper interior virtues, its habit of solicitude for the down and out is a healthy instinct. It's one of the things that's right about Catholics on the Left.

Russell Hittinger is the Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa.

Monsignor George A. Kelly

Years ago a reform-minded big city mayor marveled at the Catholic Church: "I'd be a better mayor for the people if I had as many political clubs around the city as the bishop has parishes; and, if I

could pay my professionals as little as he pays educated priests and nuns; and could find as many zealous volunteers for service to the community as pastors regularly unearth from their neighborhoods."

The average Catholic takes his parish for granted, never seeming to realize that the American parish system is one of the wonders of Christianity Ñ 20,000 of their kind in every nook and cranny of the continental United States.

At the turn of the 20th century, one Church historian called the parish system "the highest achievement of the American priest."1 In 1975 social observer Gerald Shaunessy, S.M. (later a bishop), wrote a book called Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith?, the opening lines of which read: "Dedicated to the American hierarchy, American priests and the American people who under the guidance of the Holy See built the Church of the United States better than they knew."

By the time of my birth in 1916 the American Church was very good indeed, five topflight priests living in our rectory, 2,000 children in our parochial school, staffed by Christian Brothers and Sisters of Charity, Sunday Masses filled to capacity, upstairs and downstairs. Five churches abutted each other in that part of Yorkville, each pastor a legend in his own lifetime, in part because each had served the same congregation for 26 years or more (one for 44). The confession lines on Saturday were full, so were four weekly Missions during Lent, practically all school children attended the nine o'clock Mass on Sunday, while the Catholic laity began rising to well-paying positions in business, labor, and government, once held by Protestants. My home parish boasted one, two, or three new priests every single year from 1918 through 1946.

After my ordination in 1942, I was assigned to a nearby parish with 5 more good priests in attendance and 19 School Sisters of St. Francis, half of whom had a Master's degree. They taught 850 children at a cost to the parish of $50 per child per year, graduates going on to high school, very few of them ever married without a priest, few parting short of death. During my eleven years there, at least 8 priests celebrated their first Mass. The nuns had no money except what belonged to the Community, and the priests received about $150 a month.

This was the World War II period, when Catholic sociologists were discovering that 70 percent of all married Catholics attended Sunday Mass regularly, as did 80 percent of teenagers, the better practicing Catholics being the better educated, who were also the ones with the larger families. Parish life was more than statistics, however, even more than the sacraments, socials, and funerals. Thirty-five hundred churchgoers expected to be called by name by someone on Sunday morning, and they were. A priest who never drank helped cure a good many local drunks, another saw to it that poor families were visited each week to make sure that they had enough to eat. One priest, though celibate, became "a father" when several of his prayers to St. Gerard Majella proved positive for sterile wives; "a physician" when his Extreme Unction demonstrated that doctors occasionally needed God's helping hand; and "a parish policeman" when he cleared the streets of the school-age children by 9 p.m. The nuns did not like to face drowsiness in their early morning learners.

Would you expect less of a parish where at least two priests made it their business to cover every wake, every house party for a baptized child, every wedding banquet all year long? Do you realize how many people they come to know when priests do that regularly for ten years? And why it is easy to make 50 converts a year? Would you expect less from a parish that helped civilize James Cagney?

No wonder the big city mayor wished he could bring Catholic parishes under his jurisdiction.

Johnny-come-lately put-downers of the parish system are many, not infrequently those who never built or maintained a parish. Or those who object to any "little church" that is subservient to the Big Churchman. They write as if parishes are dying or as if the Catholic priesthood, as defined, should be. They hardly ever attend to the fact that dysfunction is always the downside of a highly functional system, unhappy or incompetent priests becoming a problem for bishops. Sex in those days was not the great priestly sin. Sloth was. The system worked so well that lazy priests did little harm.

The first American bishops took over a disorderly Church two centuries ago. Influential Catholic critics today are driving the Church back in that direction. Rome made John Carroll the first American bishop after twenty-four priests in this New World cried out to the Pope for help: declining membership, a shortage of priests, unruly priests and a lack of money. Early on, Carroll told the Congregation on the Propagation of the Faith that practicing Catholics were few (though often wealthy), and that "you can scarcely find any among the newcomers who discharge this [Easter] duty of religion." He was shocked by "the general lack of care in instructing children," most of whom "were very dull in faith and depraved in morals." Said he to the Roman authorities: "It can scarcely be believed how much trouble and care they give the pastors of souls." A generation later things had not improved, as Church historian Peter Guilday describes: "The Church here during this period of its infancy was sadly hampered by priests who knew not how to obey and of laity who were interpreting their share in Catholic life by non-Catholic systems."2

This reminder only renders more fatuous the silly suggestion recently made by a Dominican exegete, who opines that, if St. Paul was alive today, he would break large parishes into communities of 40-60 people.3 Tell that to the pastor who, given a parish in his fifties, retired thirty years later, leaving behind crowded Sunday Masses, and a combination of elementary, high and commercial schools that educated 4,000 youngsters daily, 100 of whom became Dominican Sisters. Not every pastor is an Arthur Scanlan, but it was his likes, not dreamers or specialists, who made the American Church a marvel for Pius X, Pius XII, John XXIII. Tell that to John Paul II with his 1,000,000,000 constituents on five continents.

In spite of the common assumption of the Church's "progressive" forces that Vatican II ordered the declericalization, decentralization, and deromanization of the Church, the fact is that the Catholic system worked better in the United States after John Carroll than before him. This was due to the ingenuity of American bishops making Rome's design and directions work better here than their counterparts in Continental Europe. They were free to be American. They knew, too, that Catholicity works better with the pope, than without or against him.

Of course, certain latter-day iconoclasts think that all systems are intrinsically evil. The present attacks on the parish structure are not about system, but about who manages the system. At this point the debate comes down to Catholic faith. Into whose hands did Christ place the teaching, sanctifying, ruling offices of the Church? Certainly not into the hands of baptized Scribes. Here we meet questions about apostolic succession and the centrality of the Eucharist and sacraments to the Catholic Church.

At base root, the present argument about the parish system is a polemic against the priesthood, even that of Christ. Hostility to a truly Catholic priest as authentic spokesman for Christ is not uncommon anymore. Debates over the priesthood often end up raising questions about the content of the faith itself.

Why was the mission of the Catholic Church in the United States so effective? Because bishops "under the guidance of the Holy See," eventually, if only by and large, ordained priests full of faith, priests educated to expound and defend the Church's faith when organizing or maintaining a Catholic community, priests obedient to their bishop and to the pope. All this took time. But by the end of the 19th century a number of vital Catholic staples were firmly in place:

1. Seminaries, adequate for their role, especially in large dioceses, were careful in their selection of candidates, and uniform in the inculcation of discipline. The methodology and rules were weird at times but, if the graduates were the test, the system worked.

2. The doctrinal nature and role of the priest was made clear to everyone, especially to the priest himself. He was an alter Christus. Expectations of heroic performance by him were high, on that account alone.

3. The Catholic community acknowledged his status, and he was esteemed everywhere. The general piety of the faithful was the result. In the good metropolitan parish there were scores of lay apostles pursuing justice, charity and peace within their own countries, long before Vatican II.
4. He was a man of authority. He knew it and he knew his parishioners, and they recognized him for who he was. Pastors ran their parishes and the malcontents were comparatively fewer than they are now.

5. Priestly fraternity was noticeable everywhere, although not all priests were as enthusiastic as the one who regularly closed a priests' meeting with a toast of water or of anything: "Here's to the greatest fraternity in the world!"

6. Priests were subject to correction by their bishops, and with exceptions, they accepted correction with grace, or silently.

Such is the well-endowed patrimony of our predecessors in the faith Ñ to be treasured, enriched, surely to be defended.

Monsignor George A. Kelly, the founder of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, is the author most recently of A Pastor's Challenge: Parish Leadership in an Age of Division, Doubt and Spiritual Hunger (Our Sunday Visitor Press).

End Notes

1. John Talbot Smith, The Catholic Church in New York, Hall and Locke, 1906, Vol. II, p. 470.

2. History of the Councils of Baltimore, Macmillan, 1932, p. 85.

3. See Fr. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's press interview in Catholic News Service, August 18, 1997.

Father C. J. McCloskey III

First, what is, by definition, right with the Church ? Most importantly we have to remind ourselves that the Church is the immaculate Body of Christ "without stain or wrinkle." It is a divine Person with a human nature. The Church stands alone in the world as a moral authority, bloody and sometimes bowed like our crucified Lord, but also glorified like his Body in heaven. All of us who strive to be faithful Catholics, with all our so human weaknesses, are on the winning side, sure victors after the Resurrection. The clear remedy for pessimism, besides the sacraments and prayer, is to gain perspective by simply reading the history of the Church (try Warren Carroll's magisterial work). After two thousand years, here we are ready to enter another "springtime of the Church," whether we see it from below here on earth or from an infinitely better vantage point (binoculars provided) from heaven.

The only thing wrong with the Church is that on this earth it is made up of sinners. To be shocked, scandalized, or otherwise disappointed by the reality of the human element of the Church here on earth before the Second Coming would reveal an angelic view of human nature worthy of Rousseau. I asked him if he had changed his mind about human nature when I visited his tomb in the Pantheon of Paris last August, but he refused to answer. I suspect he has, however.

What is right with the Church at the end of the twentieth century is that after the uncertainty and confusion which historically often has followed an ecumenical council, we are now more ready to apply the teachings of the Second Vatican Council to the Church and the world. Vatican II's essential message concerns the baptismal call to holiness of all the faithful and the inherent necessity of all in the Church to be evangelizers. In other words, the Church is about "person" and not about "structure." It is about the "sincere gift of self" of the Christian in and to the world and not about power plays or gender wars inside the Church. As John Paul II reminds us in Christifideles Laici: "holiness is the hidden source and infallible measure of her apostolic activity and missionary zeal." This is not an easy message for people of a certain generation and pre-Vatican II formation to absorb, whatever their degree of faithfulness to the Church and its teaching. However, the message is what lies at the heart of the mission of John Paul II, as reflected in his writings and his world-wide trips.

It is why the Holy Father has spent his pontificate in a positive manner, teaching, and watering the healthy seeds and plants of the Church, some of them still underground or just emerging. He did not waste precious energy in disciplining those unfaithful who would not obey anyway. The Pope sees further and deeper into the future of the Church and the world than we, and has acted unswervingly according to this vision, assisted, we trust, by the Holy Spirit. The Pope, with a supernatural outlook, thinks in terms of decades and centuries as should we who are also immortals.

A snapshot of what is right with the Church as we end this millennium and begin another was the closing Mass on Sunday, August 24th of the World Youth Days in Paris. This was the largest Mass in the long history of France. A million young people, double the number expected, gathered together, in the most stifling heat Paris has experienced in this century, to endure discomfort, lack of sleep, and thirst in order to praise God and worship him in the Eucharist. One out of every thousand Catholics in the world was present at this Mass. They no doubt represented millions more in their adherence to the Church and its teaching as represented in the person of the Roman Pontiff.

Many tens of thousands of these young people would not have been there ten years ago. They came from Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and so on, countries that had been under the yoke of Communist domination. They were drawn by the charismatic figure of a man described in a French newspaper as "precarious (in) step, shaky (in) voice, features riddled with weariness, struggling pathetically with a merciless Parkinson's at the end of an exhausting Pontificate." In short, these young people recognized the holy features of Christ in his Passion in one of the greatest Popes in history.

Among the crowd one could count tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of young people associated with the new institutions, religious congregations, and lay movements which the Holy Father has so strongly encouraged during his pontificate. He relies upon them for the spiritual energy directed towards building "the civilization of love and truth" that he foresees for the next century. Many were from the largely secularized West, including North America, and most notably, France and Italy. These are the young people he counts upon now and later to effect "the re-evangelization of the West," another central theme of his pontificate.

Also present were some 7000 priests and 500 bishops from all over the world, who concelebrated Mass with the Pope. In many cases they spent the week in catechizing in Parisian churches and living together with the young people in hostels on the Ile de France. The great majority of these priests were noticeably young themselves, no doubt products of that constant annual 10% increase in vocations that has been universal (excepting in the decadent West) during the Holy Father's pontificate. These priests are the future pastors, seminary teachers, and vocation directors in the dioceses of the world. They will help to insure that what is right with the Church will only get better. The present Pope has appointed perhaps a majority of the bishops present, and all the active cardinals. In them, we also see so much that is good in the life of the Church. Think of Cardinal Lustiger, the amazing story of his conversion, his re-opening of the seminary of Paris, and all that he has done to serve the Church. While we pray for many more years of life for our exceptional Holy Father, could it be that this Jewish convert, at the side of the Holy Father during all of those glorious days in Paris, might be his successor? I wouldn't bet against it.

In the austere, cold Church of the Dome in Les Invalides I wondered what Napoleon thought as he watched French helicopters ascend and descend right in front of his tomb bearing the Polish Pope preparing to march a million of his "troops" into Paris and then marching them out again into the third millennium. What did he think of his countrymen St. Therese of Liseux, a contemplative nun, being proclaimed a Doctor of the Church and Frederick Ozanam, a pioneer of the lay apostolate in France and an outstanding statesman, being beatified at Notre Dame where once the Goddess of Reason was worshipped? Did Napoleon remember that moment a little less than 200 years ago when he boastfully crowned himself Emperor in front of the Pope in Notre Dame, or later when he sacrilegiously imprisoned the Vicar of Christ to further his own grandiose ambitions? Perhaps he asked himself, "What is right with the Church?" and answered himself at last from Scripture, "Upon this Rock I shall build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."

Rev. C. J. McCloskey III is the chaplain of Mercer House, a center of Opus Dei in New Jersey located near Princeton University, and is the U.S. Representative of the Pontifical Atheneum of the Holy Cross in Rome. His e-mail address is Frcjm@aol.com

Douglas Mosey, C.S.B.

On September 6, 1997 the Rev. Timothy J. Fitzgerald, C.S.B. was ordained to the priesthood. This by itself is not so unusual as to indicate what is "right about the Church," but the circumstances surrounding the event manifest a most hopeful sign of the "new springtime" promised by the Second Vatican Council.

Father Fitzgerald was born into a wonderful New England Congregationalist family on September 4, 1964, during the time of the Council. Receiving a solid moral and Biblical formation at home, he nevertheless drew apart from the church. But he maintained an intellectual and relational zeal for the truth which led to an interest in philosophy during his undergraduate years. He came under the mentorship of Roger Duncan, Ph.D., an eminent Catholic philosopher on the faculty of the University of Connecticut. At the end of a directed study course, while discussing the format for the final exam, Timothy glibly remarked, "What do you want me to do, become a Catholic?" Little did he realize how prophetically he spoke.

Dr. Duncan did invite his young student to attend Mass with him at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT, where the Latin sung Mass of the Novus Ordo is celebrated each day. Without conscious understanding, the future priest was penetrated by the power and intensity of the Holy Sacrifice, and a compelling encounter with the Eucharistic Christ had taken place. Within a contemplative community of Benedictine nuns, a vocation to the Catholic priesthood was conceived.

But an embryonic life must be contained, nurtured, and nourished. The nuns at the Abbey introduced Timothy to a young mother of a growing family who also assisted in a catechumenate program of study. Shared work experiences on the Abbey land were provided and soon a formal context for the study of the Catholic Faith emerged. Timothy was confirmed and received his First Communion at the Easter Vigil in 1987, ten years before his ordination. What had been conceived in monastic holding had now been born through the power of the Holy Spirit as assisted by Mrs. Joan Gilbert, wife, mother and teacher of the faith.

As a new Catholic, Timothy desired continual growth and specification of mission within the Mystical Body of Christ. He requested to live with the Basilian Fathers in Meriden, CT, an apostolic community of priest-teachers, while working as an apprentice tool maker at HOB Industries, Inc. of Waterbury, CT, a shop founded on the principles of Catholic social teaching expressed particularly in the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens. A unique appointment within the shop was that of Catechist, a position held by a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist, of an apostolic community whose Motherhouse is located in Meriden, CT. The collaboration between the Basilian Fathers, the Franciscan Sisters and the laity of HOB Industries proved decisive. Out of the experience of complementary ministry between priests, religious and laity at HOB Industries and in other settings came the maturation of a vocation.

Father Timothy left Meriden in 1991 for postulancy, novitiate and seminary formation with the Basilian Fathers. Yet he took with him, and now brings into priestly ministry, that strong spousal capacity to be a priest in complement with religious and laity within a dynamic, relational Church. He has certainly been enriched by his academic, spiritual and pastoral formation these past six years, but it is a formation built on the solid rock of nuptial capacity for self-gift and communion.

The Church has a bright, mature, dedicated young priest. But she also has a priest capable and eager to lead and assist her into the new millennium, not individually but corporately. As the late Cardinal de Lubac wrote in his classic work, The Splendor of the Church, "God relates to us individually, but not separately."

Many new religious communities and societies of apostolic life emphasize collaboration between priests, religious and laity. Such a drive and fulfillment of baptismal consecration holds great promise for the new evangelization called for by Pope John Paul II. Father Timothy Fitzgerald, C.S.B. understands this well, and is now preaching, teaching, and administering the sacraments conformed to the Bridegroom Christ in relation to His Bride, Mater Ecclesia. Let us rejoice and be glad!

The Very Rev. Douglas L. Mosey, C.S.B. is President of Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.

Father Richard John
Neuhaus

I think it a fair paraphrase of Lumen Gentium, the Council's great constitution on the Church, to say that the Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ most fully and rightly ordered through time. Coming into full communion with the Catholic Church later in life has its advantages, and its frustrations. The advantage is in being regularly

surprised by the vitalities of contemporary Catholicism; the frustration is with Catholics, both on the left and the right, who seem blind to those vitalities.
I have occasion to speak in parish settings around the country, and am consistently edified by the numbers of the faithful and their palpable piety. Of course one encounters horror stories of liturgical atrocities, but for the most part the devotion, especially the devotion to the Eucharist, is striking. But I have had this experience: After a Mass with hundreds of the faithful Ñ old people, married couples, and children galore Ñ I chat with the pastor in the rectory and he tells me how things are going to pot, nobody cares, if only I had seen the parish back in its glory days, and on and on. More than once, I have been tempted to grab priests by their lapel and ask whether they had been where I had just been Ñ with the Church of Jesus Christ vibrantly alive and eager for pastoral leadership in discovering a deeper and more radical following of the Lord.

I've checked around in recent years with people who should know, but nobody seems to have very precise figures on the number of adult converts coming into the Church in the United States. The best estimate would seem to be that there are more than two hundred thousand each year, and that has been the pattern for the last five years or so. The remarkable thing is that few people seem to be excited by, or even aware of, what must be one of the most vigorous periods of conversion and growth in the Church's experience. What is happeni