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Why go to the local Catholic church when you can get Calling the Church to suicide: The liberal agenda By John W. Acrea David Klinghoffer in reviewing the book, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity by Thomas Reeves has this to say: Since the 1960s and ‘70s, the mainline denominations have bled between a fifth and a third of their congregants. The liberals in charge of the denominational bureaucracies think they know why. In our “post-Christian” era, they maintain, old-fashioned Christianity repels potential churchgoers. The solution is to follow the descending path of modern culture to whatever depths it leads us. Except that it doesn’t work that way. The more heterodox—multicultural, multi-doctrinal—the churches become, the more congregants they lose, and yet they keep at it (Klinghoffer, WSJ). Some would have the Catholic Church follow in the footsteps of those mainline denominations. This would be suicide for the Catholic Church. In a recent book, The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark describes from a sociologist’s perspective the growth forces behind early Christianity. I suggest that these same growth forces are sociologically valid today. If they are, their sociological opposites in the culture today explain the bleeding to death of mainline Protestantism, and warn the Catholic Church not to follow any call to imitate such self-destruction. In this article I will first of all describe some of the sociological growth factors that Stark contends led to the growth of early Christianity. Then I will apply these to the contemporary choices the Catholic Church faces: to commit suicide, or to present a church revitalized by the same Spirit that fostered growth in the first days of its existence. Let’s take a look at the sociological factors that contribute to religion’s growth and vitality. 1. “The power of an individual or group will be negatively associated with acceptance of religious compensators for rewards that actually exist” (Stark 36). If I understand Stark correctly, this means that churches that offer advantages that can be achieved without the church will grow weaker if they concentrate on compensations that can be had in society at large. “There is little awareness that sometimes a traditional faith and its organized expression can become so worldly that it cannot serve the universal need for religious compensators. That is, religious bodies can become so empty of supernaturalism that they cannot serve the religious needs” (Stark 39). “‘Weigh the benefits’ writes Mr. Reeves: ‘Sunday with the family at the beach or in church listening to a sermon on AIDS; working for overtime wages or enduring pious generalities . . . studying for exams or hearing that the consolations of the Bible are not ‘really’ or ‘literally’ true” (Klinghoffer, WSJ). 2. “Regardless of power, persons or groups will tend to accept religion’s compensators for rewards that do not exist in this world” (Stark 36). There are many rewards that the world cannot give, for example, forgiveness, meaningfulness, peace, and everlasting life. Churches that preach and promise such rewards will be better off. 3. “New religious movements mainly draw their converts from the ranks of the religiously inactive and discontented, and those affiliated with the most accommodated (worldly) religious communities” (Stark 54). This seems to explain why the members bleeding away from the mainline denominations and the Catholic Church so frequently join the more evangelical and conservative churches. Conclusion A Those who would make our liturgies entertainment, our homilies exercises in self-help psychology, and our parish community an echo of the local country club, are marketing the Church for those rewards and compensations that can be had without a church. A mistake! Why go to the local Catholic church when you can get the same “goods” cheaper and more efficiently at the local health club? “The typical congregant of a liberal church or temple finds it increasingly hard to see why he should spend his Sunday morning or Friday night in a place where secular views are simply echoed” (Klinghoffer, WSJ). Accommodating to the worldly perspective is to make our congregations ripe for conversion to the church down the street which offers rewards and compensations not available in this life. St. Paul has it right, “If our hope in Christ has been for this world only, we are the most unfortunate of all people” (1 Cor. 15:19). 4. “Christianity served as a revitalizing movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the Greco-Roman world” (Stark 161). “I am going to argue that once Christianity did appear, its superior capacity for meeting these chronic problems soon became evident and played a major role in its ultimate triumph” (Stark 62). Conclusion B Our Catholic Church today will be a stronger church if it struggles against the social decay of our cities and rural areas. Ours is a culture of: death and disrespect, abortion, euthanasia, child abuse, spousal abuse, mindless violence, gangs, the Beavis and Buttheads, the Married with Children. Some argue that we should accommodate moralistic relativism, ethical pluralism, and judicial tyranny. A mistake! On the contrary, we have to be the counter-culture as the First Christians were. The chronic problems of society will not be cured by a lack of nerve. They will be conquered by, “What the Spirit brings: . . . love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22). 5. “By demanding higher levels of stigma and sacrifice, religious groups induce higher levels of member commitment and participation.” “At first glance it seems paradoxical that when the cost of membership increases, the net gains of membership increase too” (Stark 177-178). Conclusion C This is not the time to decrease the cost of being a Catholic. If we are stigmatized by the larger culture as foes of abortion, euthanasia, homosexual marriages, adultery, divorce, fornication, and pornography—so be it. If we have to sacrifice to live up to the Church’s call to be generous with our money, with our fertility, with our support of schools and evangelization—so be it. We will be stronger for it over time. Avery Dulles writes, “I am aware that the authority of popes and councils, with their dogmatic enunciations and legislative decrees, can seem oppressive. But in the fact of the doctrinal and disciplinary confusion currently afflicting many Christian communities, the Catholic Church stands as the chief guardian of universality and orthodoxy. A major shift toward greater tentativeness, flexibility, and local autonomy could undermine the specific strengths of Roman Catholicism.” And in regard to keeping and gaining members he states, “Far from making the Church more appealing, such measures might undercut the whole program of Catholic evangelization” (Dulles 769). 6. “Religious leaders have greater credibility when they receive low levels of material reward in return for their religious services” (Stark 174). Conclusion D This is not the time to decrease the cost of being a leader in our church. The call for a married clergy, higher salaries, more benefits, more vacations, more freedom, and being just like the congregation will only decrease our credibility with the congregants. Now is the time to sharpen the cost of being a leader in the Church, not to lessen it. Now is the time for priests to be a more intense eschatological sign of the coming Kingdom. As so often in the history of the Church, there seems to be an approaching time of Krisis, a time of momentous decision. Will the Church be attentive to the calls for mutation that make our Church like other churches that were once mainline, then old-line, and now side-lined? (Pace Fr. Neuhaus). I suggest that it is not the time to accommodate by subjecting our Faith to secular reductionism, our morals to ethical relativism, our liturgy to horizontal communitarianism, our Church to profane structural paradigms, and consequently adopt the sociological propositions that mean ecclesial decay. It is the time to hold the course that demands exclusive commitment, assent to the Word of God found in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and to build a community based on the sacrificial life of Jesus, Lord and Savior. It is the time for priests and religious to live bravely the demands of chastity, poverty and obedience as living reminders of rewards to come. In short, it is the time, more than ever, not to hide our light under the bushel, but to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the splendor of truth and the Gospel of life. Works Cited Dulles, Avery. Rev. of Imagine L’Eglise Catholique, by Ghislain
Lafont, Theological Studies Dec. 1996: 769. Reverend John W. Acrea is pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Elkhart, Iowa. He earned two Masters Degrees, one in education and one in Christian Spirituality. Fr. Acrea has had articles published in the Catechist and the Priest. His last article in HPR appeared in January 1996. |