Thanks for the insights.
Does the widespread moral failure of Church leadership make you question your faith? I guess it could, but although you believe Christ made many promises to the Church, he never promised that the Church would have worthy priests and bishops; Their individual failings don’t directly undermine Christ’s promises (I mean, that the Church has had some really bad leaders in the past is no secret). There is actually a cliche: Don’t abandon Christ because of Judas.
This never even crossed my mind.
So, sure the Church could come out and reverse its teaching on homosexuality, or contraception, or any number of other issues, and that would make a lot of cultural Catholics happy. But it is going to make the die-hard Catholics walk.
If we’re talking about the U.S., and you had to estimate, what would you say is the percent of cultural Catholics versus die-hard Catholics?
If we’re talking about the U.S., and you had to estimate, what would you say is the percent of cultural Catholics versus die-hard Catholics?
That’s really hard.
I would caution that the breakdown is a bit more complicated than a simple dichotomy. I think the other big group I would want to include would be those who view the Church principally as a vehicle for doing good works of one sort or another. Basically, they think of the Church as an NGO or charity. I’d expect them to be somewhat more engaged as a group, but I’d also expect their overall loyalty to the Church to be more fragile–after all there are lots of charities out there that could do the work if the church is ineffective.
So that would leave us with 1) the “die hard” Catholics, who believe the Church’s dogmatic claims, and who mainly come to the Church because of those claims (the true sacraments etc), 2) I’ll call them the social justice Catholics who mainly see the Church as an instrument of doing worldly good (feeding the poor, advocating for the oppressed, comforting the mourning). 3) the cultural Catholics.
I’d be interested to hear Robert’s thoughts on that break-down.
It will be hard to get a good estimate for (2) and (3), but for a rough approximation of (1), I’d look at something like the ** you do not have permission to see this link **. The headline result was that only 31% of Catholics believe the Church teaching on the Eucharist. If you drill down a bit, there are some interesting stats. If you only consider people who attend mass at least weekly, that number jumps to 63%. That suggests that something like 1/3rd of all Catholics and about 2/3rd of those who attend mass at least weekly, believe the dogmatic claims. That leaves 2/3rds of all Catholics and about 1/3rd of regular mass-goers to fall into one of the other categories.
That’s a pretty crude approximation, but I think it serves as a starting point.
the latest liberal theological trends. Much of this would be seen as absolutely heretical by Group 1)
I think “die-hard” Catholic was serviceable in the context where I first used it, but I think it is a poor term for group (1) as a whole. I think of liberal theologians like Rahner, who were absolute considered heretics by a lot of the hard-right Catholics, but who also took dogma very, very seriously; I guess I can’t read his soul and know his deepest convictions (was he just pretending to care about dogma to escape censure, perhaps even trying deliberately to subvert orthodoxy by degrees, in order to advance his real convictions which were those of group 2? Did he just enjoy theology as an intellectual puzzle, but with no real conviction? Or was he really convinced–as he appears to have been from his work–, such that a radical change of dogma would have caused him a crisis of faith?). I’ve always had a lot respect for Rahner because–despite being a liberal–he was working within the same constraints and using the same authoritative sources as I had learned to.
And you are right that in reality the borders are fuzzy. You can try to sharpen the distinction by asking under what circumstances would they leave the Church? Would a Dorothy Day Catholic leave the Church if the Church did things that were deeply and directly opposed to their social values? Would such a Catholic leave if the Church taught something that radically and decisively undermined its claims of authority? But that might obscure how close together they come.
The problems within the Catholic Church are nearly now 500 years as being irrelevant within the context of British and American government. It no longer exists politically except as Theatre and Arts much like Second Temple Judaism has now for 2000 years.
e.g. The Reformation, Church of England split from Papal Authority, Authorized English translations of the Holy Bible, The Founding of the USA, Scandals: That is the previous 500 years history of the Catholic Church losing political power to Democracy.
The Constitution of the USA forbids the Federal Government from lending any biased support financially and politically in favor of the Catholic Church despite there now being a Pope with USA citizenship and dual citizenship.
If the Catholic Church in America is ever to thrive, it will need to appeal to all four of these overlapping groups. If it only wants to survive, it will follow its traditional brand strategy, at the expense of increasing irrelevance. But it cannot abandon Group 1)
One wonders how it might be able to do this; I suppose no easy task.
The big-tent government declares itself to be the representation of God personified upon the land therein and requires annual tithe taxes paid to said government under threats of wrathful vengeance notwithstanding the aforementioned. The distinction between temporal and spiritual is not but is nevertheless called secularism and all those opposed are imprisoned for being called antisemitic and enslaved to sow and reap the fields to feed and provide shelter through destruction of the wilderness in favor of the big-tent government.
I do have a question for those raised within Roman Catholicism whatever your current relationship with the Church.
I was educated in the afterglow of Vatican II when it had its greatest influence I suppose. There were serious efforts to reach beyond the Protestant/Catholic divide. Protestants recognized the deep cultural influence of Roman Catholicism in the middle of the 20th century and there were figures who were read and respected to some degree.
I’m thinking of intellectuals and writers like Jacques Maritain (and his rather more interesting wife Raissa), and the monk Thomas Merton. The latter was hugely influential on young Protestants with cultural pretensions looking beyond their borders. (Everybody had a copy of ** you do not have permission to see this link **.) I’m interested in how this cultural/social/political movement is viewed today after traditionalism has had sort of a comeback. How are these figures viewed now? Especially Merton.
ps Raissa Maritain continues to fascinate. She was a full blown mystic and poet and her ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Among traditionalists, (J.) Maritain is very much still respected: he continues to be a very serious force in Thomism which is the bastion of traditionalist philosophy/theology (that isn’t to say he didn’t stir ongoing controversy–he had controversial positions and controversial friends–but studying him is very much in the mainstream of traditionalism and he is taken as a serious thinker who is worth studying; being able to discuss Maritain intelligently gets you street cred among traditionalists.
Thomas Merton would be viewed with pretty deep skepticism, but I think he is influential enough that reading him wouldn’t necessarily get one an intervention. Not quite, but close.
Thomas Merton would be viewed with pretty deep skepticism, but I think he is influential enough that reading him wouldn’t necessarily get one an intervention. Not quite, but close.
Care to expand on this? I do sometimes get the impression that Merton has become a sort of Protestant’s Catholic, if you know what I mean. (Respected by everyone except his own.) Certainly he was a living breathing contradiction of a man.
I’d guess there is a suspicion of indifferentism; the soft, mamby pamby existentialist spiritualism/mysticism without regard for dogma.
Yet who loved the discipline of the cloister more than Merton? Many of his secular friends couldn’t understand why he submitted to the life of the Monk, with his desire to engage with social issues and love of the literary life. And the church benefited mightily from his notoriety. As I said he was a walking contradiction, which is what made him such an interesting person. It would have been interesting to see what would have come if he had lived another twenty years.
It’s interesting as an older person to revisit the influences of youth. It was precisely because Merton reached out beyond the church to the wider culture that he attracted me and my friends. We were a generation, too young to have actually participated in the “60s”, yet raised in its afterglow, that pushed back against the idea that the church could be a totalistic environment, an escape from the world, as it clearly was for our parents. A church without social and cultural engagement was simply meaningless to us.
Those who cannot imagine a way forward always counsel retreat. The “victory” of the Traditionalists is an ultimate defeat. Or, to quote our Nobel Laureate, He not busy being born is busy dying.
“Soft” probably wasn’t the right word. I don’t mean soft in his discipline, but soft in his orthodoxy.
I don’t know him well enough to really comment, but everything you say about him checks out with the impressions I have of him.
And his being a walking contradiction is what accounts for Trads’ attitude towards him, as I’ve tried to generalize it. On the one hand he was a Trappist whose writings earned the accolades of figures like Fulton Sheen and Evelyn Waugh. On the other, he was pretty deeply into Buddhism.
If you are interested, here is ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
An interesting article, thanks. I think the most cogent criticism of Merton is that he did tend to romanticize the East and bend its wisdom to his own uses. (But since the vast majority of westerners who’ve attempted their own ‘Journey to the East’ have done precisely the same thing** perhaps we can be forgiving?) Having studied Buddhism I would say at this point that Buddhism and Christianity inhabit two different conceptual universes. Yet there is an admirable humility present in reaching out to another with curiosity and not condemnation.
…but as a Christian I also know that one need not look beyond Christianity to find it [compassion]…
Yet, “What do they know of England who only England know?”
Interesting to be reminded that Merton was a convert. Perhaps this accounts for his early fervor? And the inevitable return of earlier modes of thought in his later monastic life.
As one who currently stands outside I find the breakdown of Merton’s writings into classifications like “Recommended” and “Read with Caution” somewhat humorous. One should always read with caution, writings that agree with our opinions especially! (Only those who disagree with us can teach us anything.)
** Many westerners are quite taken aback when they find out that the Zen schools in Japan supported the Emperor, and thus the war, in WW2! And that “self” that westerners are trying to improve when using eastern techniques of meditation is precisely the thing that Hinduism and Buddhism are trying to annihilate.
that “self” that westerners are trying to improve when using eastern techniques of meditation is precisely the thing that Hinduism and Buddhism are trying to annihilate.
That is (has been for some time) one of the main Catholic criticisms of eastern meditation and mysticism. Whatever similarities there are between the traditions, they are diametrically opposed in some foundational respects.
I think the other big one would be undermining the importance of Christ as the sole mediator and redeemer.
You can find a lot of Catholic material that, for those two reasons, regards eastern religion as literally diabolical: It looks good, but at heart, it undermines the heart of Christianity. There are lots of conservative Catholics who have serious moral objections to Yoga (even when practiced without any religious or spiritual content, just as a way of stretching).
Robert, Raissa tells that story in her memoir Les Grandes Amitiés, which has been translated. She was the daughter of Russian Hasidim who emigrated to France when she was ten. By her own admission her upbringing deeply informed her poetry and mysticism even after her conversion. At this point in my spin around the sun Raissa is a lot more interesting to me than her husband. Attention traducteurs!
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