The Middle

There has been much debate in the United States regarding the condition of the Catholic Church.  Certainly, given the scandals within the church such as the abuse of children by clergy and religious, the cover-up of this situation by the church hierarchy, clericalism and the lack of transparency on the part of the church has had its effect on mass attendance and on the number of people who identify themselves as Catholic.  

But for a long time, I have felt there is a deeper problem that the church has not even begun to address.  We as a church in some ways have lost our identity and forgotten that as Catholics, we are called to follow Jesus Christ.  Let me explain.

Many have seen the statistics that show the decline in mass attendance, the number of former Catholics who no longer consider themselves Catholic.  According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, only 23% of U.S. Catholics attend Mass weekly.  There of course are many reasons for this decline. 

Yet at the same time, many people who identify themselves as Catholic have problems with some of the church teachings.   This is not new.  Nor is it a reason to change church teaching.   One study found that six out of ten Catholics hold that the Church should allow priests to marry, ordain women as priests, and permit divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Communion.   Nearly half say the Church should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples.  The Church today exists in a culture where religious affiliation and church attendance are unimportant to some and where some people want church doctrine to accommodate societal trends.

Whether we believe these statistics or not is not that important.  The fact is the Catholic church today is facing a crisis.   Fewer are turning to the Catholic church for moral guidance in their lives and they are looking for other places to get that guidance.  Some would go as far as to say the Church (especially its leaders) have lost all credibility and no longer have a moral voice.   It is not easy being a Catholic priest today given this climate. 

Many of these Catholics who remain are part of what I call the “middle”.   They do not identify with the extreme, conservative right wing of the church.  Nor do they identify with the progressive, extreme left-wing of the church.   They are somewhere in the “middle” and I believe these are the Catholics the church is losing in droves.   The “middle” includes those who do not always agree with all the church teachings.  It includes young adults who look to the Church to provide moral guidance as they raise their families.   It includes older members of the church who faithfully go to mass each Sunday.  It includes those involved in the Church on a parish level.   It includes couples who are not married in the church, LGBTQ people and teenagers who look to the church for guidance at this critical time in their development.  It includes the disenfranchised and includes some who simply want the to go to mass each Sunday and fulfill their obligation.   In short, in includes all types of people who identify themselves as Catholic and most importantly stay. 

I will admit, I am somewhere in the middle. 

The question is what can be done to save the middle?   How can they be kept from leaving the church and feel welcomed by their Church and parish community?  At the same time, how can this be done without compromising church teaching and the tradition of the church?  These are big questions.  

Experience tells me that the answer is not in the past.   Most are not attracted to the pre-Vatican II traditional Tridentine mass and all the “bells and whistles” that go along with it.  In fact, most were born after Vatican II and have no knowledge or experience of this form of liturgy.  They are not looking for clear doctrine to be pronounced by Church leaders.  That is a misnomer.  They know what the church teaches and what the Catechism says!  For them, the way into the future for the church is not in the past. 

Nor are they looking for relativism within the church where anything goes and all is acceptable as proclaimed by the extreme-left faction of the church.  If this is what they were looking for they would go elsewhere as many have done.   They stay for many reasons most of all because they faithfully believe this is where they belong. 

They are looking to the Church for welcome and for spiritual guidance.  

Most people in the “middle”, who are by far most of the church are looking for a Church that will challenge them and help them grow in relationship with Jesus Christ and their neighbor. 

The “middle” are not interested in the “Cultural Wars” that are happening in the church between the left and the right.   It often is said that today these wars are mostly fueled by the Christian right on Social Media.  While I believe this is true, I can’t help but think that the strong emphasis on clear doctrine, especially in regard to sexual morality during the time of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict led to these cultural wars.  Catholics were told contraception was unacceptable, sexual relations before marriage was unacceptable.  Yet, many Catholics in the middle made a conscious decision to disregard these teachings and remained in the church.  They still do!  And they were welcomed!  More recently, the welcoming of LGBTQ Catholics, the welcoming and treatment of the undocumented and other social issues have helped to further split the Left from the Right.  

Yet, I believe there is still time to model the church around the teachings of Christ and move into the future without losing the “middle” and without causing schism in the church. 

In order to understand what can be done to save the “middle”, one must look at how the cultural wars have played out and are playing out (my knowledge is of the United States) and how it played out in other Christian churches up until now.   

Until now, the Catholic Church has avoided any type of break or schism in recent history.  Certainly, the Protestant Reformation split the church and the church underwent reform at Vatican II.  There have also been small breakoff groups such as the Society of St Pius X.    But the Catholic church has been relatively unscathed by schism in recent history.

When Pope Paul VI in 1968 upheld the church’s traditional ban on the use of artificial contraception even among married couples, he placed the papacy and its teaching authority firmly on the conservative side of the sexual revolution.  This was strongly reinforced during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, which together lasted 34 long years.

A good number of Catholics “in the middle” during those years used contraception and remained in the church.  They were not ignorant of the church teaching.  How could they be?   They made a decision and did not feel guilty about it despite the teaching of the church.  And, most times did not confess this “sin”.   They still don’t today!   In all my years as a priest (32), the amount of people who confessed using contraception have been few and far between.  So, while the left and right fought over this issue, many Catholics made a decision themselves or sometimes after speaking with a member of the clergy and did not feel guilty about it at all. 

This same dynamic played out regarding other moral issues – sex before marriage, couples married outside the church for example.  A good number received the Eucharist anyway despite the church teaching and continue to do so today.  The leaders of the Church thus began to lose their voice in regard to moral issues for many Catholics in the middle. 

It cannot be denied that the “cultural relativism” that we see today among some Catholics existed back then.   By cultural relativism I mean a person believes that his or her beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of their culture, their situation.   At the same time the church spoke with one voice when it came to doctrine.   There was clarity in church teachings when the “middle” were growing up.   Most remained silent in their dissent from church teaching.  “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is not something new.  

Others in the middle did not keep quiet and disagreed with church teaching and in fact acted contrary to church teaching and were public about it.   It is not that they did not understand or know the church teaching.  They just made a conscious decision not to follow it.  For this reason, one cannot say that the cultural relativism we see today came about because of the invitation of Pope Francis to become a more inclusive and merciful church.   Dissention happened even when there was clear teaching from the church under Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict!

A good number of the middle “payed and prayed” but they did not always “obey” as good Catholics were supposed to.   Those that were looking for new life and reform within the Catholic church could still be found but they were increasingly defensive and powerless. The Church itself spoke with a united voice against change. That made the church a powerful combatant on the right-wing side of the culture war that played out not only in the Catholic Church but in politics as well.  Because of this, there was little or no visible culture war within the church itself because the progressive, left wing of the church generally remained silent.   Only a few spoke up. 

Then Pope Francis came along.  The tide shifted.   Progressive Catholics had their first champion at the top since John XXIII presided over the start of Vatican II in 1962.   He delivered a message of mercy and compassion rather than speaking clear doctrine.    By most accounts I have heard he was elected knowing he would work to bring about reform within the church.   That is what most Catholics were looking for!  His statements like “Who am I to judge” and his encyclical “Amoris Laetitia” have clearly enlivened the right and the left in the church and set up the cultural war between them.   His preference for “synodality” was not well received by the conservative right.    

In my mind Pope Francis is not looking to make doctrinal changes.  He is merely urging church leaders to stop proclaiming and enforcing doctrines so rigidly without any mercy and compassion.   With the arrival of Pope Francis, there is no doubt that a culture war between the left and right has broken out within the Catholic Church itself because of this shift.

And social media has fueled this war.   No doubt, social media has opened up a new way of communication.   Anyone can write what they want and critique who they want.  Anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or other forms of social media can see these wars happening.    The silent minority for many years now could have a loud voice!  The middle could now have a voice.   Social media has opened up a new way of communicating instantly and in a way that invites responses and dialogue.  

Then there are the “trolls”.   Wikipedia defines a troll as: “a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses and normalizing tangential discussion, whether for the troll’s amusement or a specific gain.”  Trolls are not interested in discussion.  They are set in their beliefs.  They are simply interested in convincing the reader of their point of view.  They are not interested in evangelizing.   This behavior is not Christian and certainly is not helpful in moving the church forward.

One recent example of this is the discussions that have taken place after Cardinal Kasper came out and said that Cardinal Muller’s recently published “Manifesto” spreads confusion and division.  When the Manifesto was published it created a lot of blogging and comments on social media on both the left and the right.   Then when Cardinal Muller responded, a war broke out with both sides (left and right) getting further entrenched in their view.   Whether you agree with Muller or Kasper is not the point.    Divisiveness, such as this in public happens instantly, without any fact check and often is driven by an agenda.  This is never good for the church. 

So, where do we go from here?   How does the Catholic church avoid schism or some type of separation like happened in other Christian denominations over issues of sexual morality, the welcoming of LGBTQ people, the undocumented, the divorced and remarried, women priests or deacons and other social issues?  

My answer is: get back to the basics.   As Christians and Catholics, we are called to follow Jesus Christ.   Are we not?  By taking a look at scripture and seeing how Jesus related to the outcast, the socially alienated and the rejected, we can get a glimpse of how we as a church can move forward if we identify ourselves as Christian – followers of Christ.  We can also look at how Jesus related to the Pharisees of his day. 

In the gospels, Jesus is portrayed as always being on the side of the “outcasts” of society.   He dined with “sinners”.  He dined with tax collectors.   He touched lepers.   He healed the blind, the lame.   He spoke out against the treatment of the poor by society.  He condemned the sin of his day but not the sinner.

He also called his disciples to a life of holiness.  He did not let them off the hook.  He turned things upside-down and challenged them to evaluate how they treated the outcast, the poor, the sick.   He did not throw out the Jewish laws of the Old Testament.  He did not make big doctrinal changes to the law of the Old Testament.  He simply balanced them with mercy and compassion. 

One of the characteristics of some Pharisees in Jesus’ day was their obsession with pointing out the sins of people and what they perceived as their lack of holiness.  The woman caught in adultery and the prostitute who washed the feet of Jesus are just two examples of Pharisees exposing the sins of people and desiring they be dealt with harshly.  How did Jesus respond?  He neither condemned nor threatened them with God’s wrath and punishment. Rather, he condemned the sin but forgave both women and set them free from their accusers!

His forgiveness empowered them to love God.  It transformed them.  The Pharisees couldn’t understand how extending mercy could possibly change their lives much less their behaviors.  Yet, we see Jesus being merciful rather than rigid and unbending in the interpretation of law.  I believe the Church (the people of God as a whole) are being called to bring about a new church that is much more merciful and compassionate than it has been in recent history – especially in its teachings and proclamations.  

I suspect the Pharisees in Jesus’ day were no different to modern-day Pharisees who are quick to point out people’s sins and demand they live disciplined, “holy” lives.   A quick look at social media can demonstrate that there are plenty of modern-day Pharisees out there who are quick to condemn and alienate the “sinner”.  What did Jesus know about showing sinners mercy that the Pharisees didn’t?    He knew that if the Pharisees really knew God and understood what really mattered to God, they would not overemphasize rules or such things as ritual cleanliness, restrictive Sabbath observance, and sacrifices for sins committed.  They would be more merciful.

Some Pharisees believed that God accepts and blesses people based on their personal holiness.  Some forgot that just because you are “religious” does not mean you are a holy person!   Our faith must be lived!   Jesus knew His Father loved people and didn’t need their sacrifices to earn His favor or love.  He understood that when we connect to God in our hearts by knowing and experiencing His mercy for us, His mercy has the ability to transform us and our desires.

For these reasons I believe the way forward is to be less pharisaical as a church and more merciful.  Pope Francis is spot on when he continually calls the church to be more merciful.   This I believe can help the church get beyond the culture wars and keep the church more united.  This does not mean that there has to be profound changes in doctrine and the laws of the church.  I don’t support that.  But doctrines and laws must be balanced with mercy.  As Christians we are always called to condemn the sin but be merciful and compassionate toward the sinner. 

Moving forward most in the middle are looking for a church that is inclusive and not exclusive, merciful and not condemning, compassionate and not harsh. 

Let us always remember the prayer of Jesus to his Heavenly Father before he went to his death: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.  (John 17:20-21). Let us pray for those in the middle who in whatever way feel alienated by the church they love.   

May Jesus’ dream of unity come to fruition as we become a more merciful, compassionate church.