I became Catholic
at age 9, one fine May morning in 1956. In the manner of the pre-Vatican
II church, my parents, my sister and I gathered around the baptismal
font in the back of the little parish church in Grangeville, Idaho,with
only our various godparents in attendance. One by one, we each
leaned over the baptismal font -- my younger sister and I standing
on a little stool -- as Father Lafey poured the blessed water
over each of our foreheads and spoke the ancient words -- in Latin,
of course: "I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit."
I have been gratefully
Catholic ever since. I am not like Larry, my best friend from
high school, who hasn't been near a parish church in about 30
years. I never even went through an adolescent "lapsed Catholic"
phase. During four years in the U.S. Navy I rarely, if ever, missed
Mass on Sunday. There were times when I attended daily Mass for
weeks on end, too. My affection for being Catholic was such that
I majored in religious studies at a Catholic university and later
earned a master's degree in theology at yet another Catholic university.
Along the way, of course, my understanding of the faith became,
I like to think, more adult, my ability to reflect critically
upon my faith more acute.
Because I love being
Catholic, and I love the church -- its many warts and all -- I
always feel regret when I hear of people who, like Larry, choose
to distance themselves from the church, for whatever reason. Doing
the research for my book It's Not the Same Without You: Coming
Home to the Catholic Church (Doubleday, 2003), I collected
stories from hundreds of formerly and presently alienated Catholics.
According to the
empirical research of sociologist Father Andrew M. Greeley, in
the United States most people born and raised Catholic choose
to remain in the church. This amounts to about 25 percent of the
U.S. population, or some 60 million people. At the same time,
it appears that about 15 percent of those who grew up Catholic
no longer choose to think of themselves as such -- they are, in
other words, alienated from the church. Greeley concludes from
his research that this defection rate has not changed much since
1960. This means some 9 million or so U.S. citizens are alienated
Catholics.
Doing the research
for my book, however, it became clear to me that being alienated
from the church is a question of degree. Most Catholics are alienated
from the church at one time or another in their lives and to one
degree or another. The recent clergy sex abuse scandal has, I
suspect, alienated a great many more Catholics, even if they continue
to think of themselves as practicing Catholics. Indeed, being
alienated from the church doesn't necessarily mean one stops participating
in the life of the church.
For example, a Catholic
may be alienated from the church when it comes to certain official
church positions or teachings. If polls and surveys are accurate,
the vast majority of Catholics are alienated from the church on
the level of the official teaching that prohibits the use of artificial
contraceptives. In Why You Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful
Catholic, Father Philip S. Kaufman, OSB, wrote: "Never in
papal history [has] there been such negative response to a papal
teaching" as there has been to the 1968 encyclical Humanae
Vitae, which condemned artificial contraceptives. While research
has shown that more than 90 percent of U.S. Catholics dissent
in good conscience from particular, nonessential, church policies
or teachings, many continue to practice the Catholic faith.
Alienation from the
church also may be ideological. Both liberal and conservative
Catholics may be alienated from the church, believing it either
bends too little or too much. Even middle-of-the-road Catholics
may feel alienated on specific issues. "It drives me nuts," one
woman told me, when a parish priest "turns the opening part of
the Mass into a 'hi-how-are-ya' kind of thing." The result is
Catholics who feel alienated from the church for all kinds of
reasons but who don't leave the church.
We might view alienation
from the church along a spectrum, with complete estrangement at
one end and a "my-church-right-or-wrong" position at the other
end. Most Catholics are someplace between the two extremes and
continue to participate in the life of the church. Those who leave,
however, do so for various reasons, from theological-ideological
issues to mere apathy.
Today's middle-age
Catholics, who spent the first18 to 20 years of their lives in
the pre-Vatican II church, often attained adulthood with an idealistic
image of the church as a near-perfect society. In later years,
when the church's imperfections became all too evident, such Catholics
sometimes felt that they had no choice but to leave the church.
"We couldn't get a priest to come to Grandma's bedside when she
was dying. If that's the way the church treats people, I want
nothing to do with it." "Priests sexually abusing boys tells me
that something is terribly wrong with the church as a whole, so
I no longer go to Mass."
Catholics who are
already on the fringes of the church often choose to distance
themselves entirely when a priest or parish lay minister responds
in what strikes them as a legalistic manner. "You must attend
these classes, or we won't baptize your baby." "You must participate
in the marriage preparation program, or you can't be married in
the church."
I was startled when
a Catholic who described himself as "lapsed" explained that it
made no sense to him to "tell your sins to another human being,"
and he couldn't believe in a church that said that if you missed
Mass on Sunday just once you were "condemned to hell for all eternity."
I can only conclude that there are more alienated Catholics like
him who have erroneous understandings of various things Catholic
and have never bothered to learn if their understandings are correct
or not.
One of the most common
reasons Catholics become alienated from the church involves church
policies related to divorce and remarriage. Some Catholics still
believe that divorce in itself means a person is either excommunicated
or may not receive the sacraments. So, once divorced, they stay
away from the church. Those who want to remarry sometimes don't
understand the church's annulment process. Others feel that it's
an unreasonably difficult or painful process and are unwilling
to cooperate.
More than a few "lapsed"
Catholics are adults who drifted away from the church during their
high school or college years and simply never drifted back. The
power of a culture that is, at best, religiously indifferent,
negative headlines about the Catholic church, and the simple habit
of being a non-churchgoer, should not be underestimated.
At the same time,
it seems that more often than we might think alienated Catholics
choose to come back to the church. When I began work on my book,
my goal was to find people who had left the church and then, later
in life, returned. I wanted to learn more about why they left
and why they came home again. I also wanted to hear from Catholics
presently alienated from the church to learn what caused
their alienation.
I asked a dozen of
the biggest circulation Catholic newspapers in the United States,
plus a few in smaller dioceses, to publish my invitation to Catholics
formerly or currently alienated from the church to share their
stories. I wasn't prepared for the deluge of e-mail responses
I received. I lost count, but the hundreds of stories I read convinced
me that if the percentage of "lapsed" Catholics is more or less
constant, coming home to the church is a frequently unnoticed
phenomenon today. I was unable to find any empirical studies that
track how many people come home to the church each year.
The accounts I received
fell into a few general categories. Some told of adolescent rebellion
that extended into adulthood through indifference. I read stories
from people who drifted away from the church during their high
school or college years, then returned in their 30s, 40s or later.
Joe (all names have been changed), for example, recalled attending
a Catholic high school in the 1960s, followed by two years at
a Catholic university. There, conflict with the faculty adviser
to the student newspaper over a Catholic moral position led him
to transfer for his junior year to a state university.
"After that, I didn't
go near a Catholic church for 30-some years," Joe recalled. "My
wife was Presbyterian, so sometimes I went to church with her
by default more than anything else. Then a few years ago, I realized
that I just wasn't happy with that." Then Joe saw an ad in his
local newspaper inviting lapsed Catholics to come home to the
church. "Something clicked. I realized that I wasn't happy with
being away from Catholicism. So I attended an informal evening
meeting at a nearby parish, and the following Easter I formally
returned to the church. My wife joined me and became Catholic,
too."
The cause for alienation
from the church that came up more frequently than any other involved
divorce and remarriage. Mary is a returned Catholic in her mid-50s.
"For years," she said, "I thought that if you were divorced and
remarried that was the end of the road for you as a Catholic --
which, when you think about it, doesn't say much for the church
when it comes to embodying the forgiving and reconciling presence
of Christ. Fortunately, I found out about the real meaning of
the church's annulment procedure, which was a difficult process
for me. But in the end it was a very positive and healing experience
-- not only for me but, surprisingly, for my ex-husband, who is
also Catholic."
Michael told of attending
a Jesuit high school as a non-Catholic, then receiving a scholarship
to attend a Catholic university. Following graduation, he became
Catholic prior to his first marriage, which ended in divorce seven
years later, "and then, fortunately for me, [came] an annulment."
The "initial rigidity" that Michael experienced in obtaining an
annulment caused him to "be absent from the church for several
years." Later, he returned to the church "and our parish, and
my love for the church is greater than ever."
More than a few said
they simply drifted away from the church through the influence
of a secular culture that is ambivalent about religion, at best.
Ken, a 43-year-old attorney, was one of many who slipped away
from the church after four years at a state university where he
had no Catholic friends. "It all began to seem irrelevant," he
said. It was only after he married in a civil ceremony and became
the father of three children that he and his wife -- who grew
up in a religiously indifferent family -- began a search that
led Ken back to his Catholic roots and his wife along with him.
Some told the common
story of being offended or hurt by a priest or nun, including
a few who were sexually abused in childhood by a priest -- the
latter stories straight from recent national headlines. One of
the true stories I had to cut from the manuscript of my book due
to space limitations was from Sharon, a 50-year-old grandmother.
She wrote about being sexually abused at the age of 15 by a nun
who taught at the Catholic boarding school Sharon attended. "Later,
I understood that this nun was probably a lesbian and maybe didn't
even know it herself at the time," Sharon said, "but I still live
with the fear and shame that came from being abused by her. Fortunately,
through extensive counseling I was able to return to life as an
active Catholic, and today I treasure my faith deeply."
I was surprised at
the number of formerly alienated Catholics who left because biblical
fundamentalists convinced them that the Catholic church is at
odds with the teachings of the New Testament. Yvonne, a 35-year-old
accountant, spent 15 years in a fundamentalist sectarian church.
Ironically, it was the minister of this sectarian church who led
her -- and about 60 other people -- back to Catholicism.
"Our minister was
a really studious guy," Yvonne said, "and he read long and hard
on the history of Christianity, and after about three years the
whole bunch of us, him included, just up and converted to the
Catholic church. For me, of course, it was a matter of coming
home."
Some Catholics come
home to the church after years of buying into the trendy opinion
that "organized religion" is spiritually constricting. Teresa
told of growing up in a Catholic family, attending Catholic schools,
then deciding in young adulthood that she believed in God but
had no use for "organized religion." Drawing from various sources
-- often Eastern religions, New Age gurus, occasionally Wicca,
12-step recovery programs, sometimes even Catholicism -- such
people cobble together a personal eclectic spirituality.
Teresa returned to
a life of active Catholic faith after her mother passed away.
"I had to attend the funeral Mass," she recalled, "and something
about the liturgy touched me deeply, and I realized that I had
to come back. I realized that what I had been searching for all
those years was right in my own backyard. Really, what I had to
do was leave behind the childish ideas of what being Catholic
is all about that I had lived with for so long and move on to
a mature, adult Catholic faith. I no longer expect the church
to measure up perfectly to my personal expectations, and I don't
expect to get all the answers."
The story Charles
told began with his account of becoming what he called "an intellectual
atheist" while attending medical school. "I concluded that if
you can't find scientific proof for something, including the existence
of God, then it can't possibly be real."
Charles said that
years later "I had to acknowledge that there are kinds of human
knowledge that can't be scientifically validated, beyond a shadow
of a doubt, but which are valid all the same. Sometimes poetry
communicates truths that science never can. To paraphrase Pascal,
the heart has its reasons that the intellect knows nothing about.
Eventually, I found myself back on the doorstep of Catholicism,
where I grew up. And thankfully, very thankfully so. Catholicism
has more respect for the human intellect, and its role in the
life of faith, than any other denomination, religion or philosophy."
Stories that came
up with surprising regularity consisted of variations on a theme.
Someone in the family was dying. A family member could get no
priest to come to the dying person's bedside. Often, this event
happened many years, sometimes many decades, ago. But the story
takes on mythological dimensions. Children, grandchildren, even
great-grandchildren do not grow up Catholic because a priest refused,
or was for whatever reason unavailable, to come to Grandma's death
bed.
I remain astonished
at how often alienated Catholics report that they left the Catholic
church because it didn't measure up to their personal expectations.
A significant percentage of lapsed Catholics will not tolerate
a church that doesn't meet their standards of perfection. "I want
nothing to do with a church that won't ordain women to the priesthood."
"I want nothing to do with a church that clings to the mundane,
uninspiring Mass it has now and won't allow the old Latin Mass."
Invariably, when
alienated Catholics return, their coming home requires the realization
that an adult faith includes the ability to distinguish between
the church as an imperfect human institution and the living Catholic
tradition, one that mediates the healing and liberating presence
of the risen Christ in time and space. Church and Sacred Tradition
cannot be completely separated, but an adult faith requires the
ability to distinguish between the two. Some find it difficult
to accept the idea of an imperfect church, a church that fails
at its mission regularly, but once they do it can be a liberating
experience.
Historically, Catholics
have had a kind of superior attitude toward "lapsed" Catholics.
It was a moral issue, and "fallen away" Catholics were culpable.
End of discussion. Fortunately, this attitude is changing. Outreach
to alienated Catholics is slowly becoming a part of Catholic life.
While many parishes
show little or no interest in reaching out to alienated Catholics,
the exceptions are noteworthy. Programs that reach out to alienated
Catholics are often local in origin. Some are remarkably successful.
One parish program, Alienated Catholics Anonymous (ACA), in Tucson,
Arizona, was launched in the early 1980s by Monsignor Thomas Cahalane.
Cahalane realized that if alienated Catholics have any contact
at all with the church it's likely to be at Christmas and Easter.
So he scheduled ACA programs for right after these two major liturgical
events. Later, he added a third series of ACA sessions after the
school year begins in September. Invariably, each ACA series attracts
20 to 30 returning Catholics.
Other programs are
national, such as Landings, a program designed and administered
by the Paulist Fathers. Printed materials describe Landings as
"a program for returning Catholics [that] offers them a safe place
to land." Although Landings has a national base, it is designed
for use on the local parish level. Alienated Catholics are invited
to join a group of active parish members for six to eight evening
sessions, and laity, rather than a priest, lead the two-hour sessions,
each of which follows a pre-designed format. The Landings program
website is www.landings-international.com/mercy.ssi.
Another national
program, OnceCatholic, is entirely Internet based. Sponsored by
the Franciscan Friars of the Cincinnati Province and their magazine,
St. Anthony Messenger, the OnceCatholic program invites
alienated Catholics to check out www.oncecatholic.org, where they
find information and opportunities for interaction with others,
plus referrals to programs for returning Catholics all over the
United States. Eight chat rooms offer a connection that is both
"cyber" and personal with a "companion" who is a pastoral minister
in the church.
Not infrequently,
returning Catholics have been carrying a load of anger and resentment
toward the church for many years. Those responsible for parish
and/or diocesan programs for returning Catholics find that it's
important to include resolution of these feelings in the reconciliation
process. Sometimes professional counseling is necessary.
Sometimes, Catholics
who return to the church do so when an official representative
of the church, usually a priest or bishop, expresses regret and
asks alienated Catholics to forgive the church for whatever led
to their alienation. In some instances, however, formerly alienated
Catholics discover that they, in return, need to ask the church's
forgiveness. "Basically," said one woman, "I realized that I needed
forgiveness as much as the church needed forgiveness. I had been
throwing a temperamental hissy-fit for 17 years because the church
wouldn't measure up to my personal standards of perfection --
as if I was perfect myself!"
Monica, a formerly
alienated Catholic, told her story: "I didn't consciously stray
or lapse from the church. Over my teenage years I had no real
interest or connection and that just continued for me. I was married
the first time in the church at a young age, but the realness
and seriousness of the sacrament and commitment of it was not
clear to me. After my first marriage ended it catapulted me onto
a spiritual path. I was seeking to understand myself, my life,
why I was the way I was."
When her marriage
ended, Monica entered counseling therapy, studied Eastern religions,
practiced meditation, visited a Hindu ashram and "spent time with
an Indian guru who embodied the qualities of a living saint."
Then, in the late 1990s -- "it was very much a surprise to me"
-- Monica returned to the Catholic church. "I never thought the
church had anything to offer or would ever be my path. I returned
home from a spiritual retreat and found myself drawn to reading
books about prayer and saints."
After reading a book
about an author's spiritual quest that brought an awareness of
the role in Catholicism of Mary, the mother of Jesus, Monica said
she "felt drawn back to church through Mary." She began attending
daily Mass, praying the rosary, and spending time in church to
pray before the Blessed Sacrament. "Suddenly there was something
real about this for me -- the Presence of Jesus became real, maybe
for the first time in my life! This is why I choose to stay connected
with the church now."
Reading the stories,
it struck me how subjective the return to the church seems to
be for most who come back. Typically, formerly alienated Catholics
do not return as the result of a quest for the truth. Only two
of my hundreds of respondents said that they came home to the
Catholic church because, in effect, they realized the truth of
what early 20th century convert and apologist G.K. Chesterton,
who anticipated
the perspective of Vatican II by several decades, said.
"I could not abandon the faith," he wrote, "without falling back
on something more shallow than the faith. I could not cease to
be a Catholic except by becoming something more narrow than a
Catholic."
Those who come home
to the church -- for whatever reason -- discover that reconciliation
is what being a disciple of Christ is about. Therefore, reconciliation
is much of what being Catholic is about. Indeed, this ministry
of reconciliation is the business of all Catholics. But those
who have come home to the church seem especially good at it, because
they know from personal experience the sorrow of being away and
the joy of coming home.
* * *
Mitch Finley is
the author of more than 30 books, including The Joy of Being
Catholic (Crossroad), Catholic is Wonderful! (Resurrection
Press) and For Men Only: Strategies for Living Catholic (Liguori).
(April 2004)
