American Church: 1970-2020

Our American Church over the last half century can be understood as the interplay of four competing groups:  Standard Parish Vatican II Catholicism, Traditionalism, Progressive Revisionism, and Evangelical Neo-Catholicism.

Across the USA parish life is remarkably uniform and consistent. It is like McDonalds: your burger- fries-shake are exactly the same in San Diego and NYC; so is your liturgy, homily, and music. Generic parish Catholicism harmonizes or inculturates Catholicism with mainstream middle class life. It is serene, bland, and comforting. It proclaims a God who is loving, merciful, accepting and inclusive. He is comfortingly free of wrath, awe-full transcendence, and excessive demands. All are welcome and none are offended.  Liturgy is warm, friendly, casual, and insipid. Family-friendly, its vigor omes from combining the best in Catholicism and American culture. It unfailingly preserves the sacramental life, faithfully teaches the basics of the faith, and fosters a wholesome ethos of charity, care of the poor, and virtuous living. God's grace is at at work bringing forth holiness in this modest, mundane setting. It is the Great Catholic Mystery: modestly but persistently, across the entire continent, the sacraments efficaciously convey grace; the faith is proclaimed, not always inspiringly or beautifully but with a certain down-to-earth indefectibility. Rarely is real heresy heard in the Sunday homily. In an unpretentious, almost humdrum manner, God's grace is at work awakening holiness of life in virtual anonymity.

Unfortunately, it often mimics the weaknesses of the broader culture it befriends. Notwithstanding the all-male priesthood, there is a softness, an avoidance of fierce virile energies; little drama or conflict; no mention of spiritual combat, demons, hell, sacrifice and fasting. There is a pervasive presumption: everyone is going to heaven and there is nothing to fear. The prevailing model is popularized psychology: "I'm okay; you're okay." Fierce,  traditional expressions of Catholicism (pro-life movement, Latin mass, Marian devotions, renewal movements) are tolerated but hardly advocated by the clergy. No mention of "chastity" (much less of contraception, co-habitation, pornography or masturbation.) The Culture War is largely ignored in a retreat from agonistic struggle with  Cultural Liberalism and so that the young to wander, without a clue, into the swamp of sexual license. Most couples seeking the sacrament of marriage are already living together and contracepting; they are given a vague, non-offending suggestion about refraining from sex before marriage; they feel entirely comfortable and welcomed. Large numbers quietly exit the Church, into secularism or move vigorous evangelical expressions of Christianity and many more cultivate a lukewarm, water-downed kind of Catholic-Lite. A majority of Catholics and most parishes fit this description.

Traditionalists probably include no more than 5 to 10% but are a strong, persistent presence. These react against the post-Vatican II Church and strive to retrieve elements of the Tradition that have been lost: Latin mass, theology of St. Thomas, a stronger sense of the supernatural (heaven and hell, saints, demons and angels), pious practices and a fiercely counter-cultural defiance of Cultural Liberalism and its sympathizers within the Church. Most seem to be white, educated, affluent, and competent competitors in our meritocratic economy. They have zero influence in the academy, and little in the parishes and chanceries. They are not a continuation or replication of the pre-Vatican II Church, but are a distinctively contemporary phenomena, structured by their antagonism to late-modernity as the progressives are by their accommodation to the same. The late-Tridenine Church I knew 1950-65 was already a harmonious honeymoon of a confident Catholicism with  the emergent, triumphant American Imperium. Its spirit was open, hopeful, collaborative. Today's traditionalism is defensive and sometimes fueled by fear, anxiety, anger and condescension. It is lacking in ecumenical ardor as it accentuates what is distinctive to Catholicism and is suspicious of all that is outside the Church. Their priceless contribution is that they retain, retrieve and develop sacred traditions that are forgotten by the mainstream and despised by the progressives.

Progressives number perhaps 20% of the Catholic population but have inordinate influence for several reasons: they prevail in Catholic academia and among the intelligensia; they are militant and aggressive; and, allied with the dominant secular elites (media, entertainment, etc.), they exert relentless pressure on the broader Church to discard Catholic traditions dissonant with the liberation of sexuality from marriage, chastity and fidelity. Even at secondary and primary levels of education they inhibit a wholesome Catholic catechesis of gender and sexuality in their disparagement of hetero-normativity, homophobia and patriarchy. They elevate and moralize a leftist political agenda which takes on a sacred character and then demonizes the opposition.

Evangelical Neo-Catholicism centers on the person Jesus Christ as it gestalts perennial elements of Catholicism around that salvific relationship, with a sensibility that critically accepts positive aspects of modernity. It's Godfather is unquestionably St. John Paul II along with his able assistant Pope Benedict (who had slightly stronger sympathies for the traditionalists). It is a personalism rooted in revived classical metaphysics.  The contemporary lay renewal movements (charismatic, Neocatechumenal Way, Communion and Liberation, etc.) as well as new religious communities fervently embrace and embody this vision. Its relationship to the Enlightenment and late-modernity is sophisticated and nuanced: cautiously separating the wheat from the chaff. For example, both popes, out of their personal engagement with Nazism and Communism, combined an appreciation for the USA in its experiment in liberty with a critique of materialism, consumerism, technologism and cultural liberalism.   It retains a robust sense of the supernatural that is dramatically involved with earthly life. Perhaps 20% of American Catholics belong to this group but it was unquestionably the dominant paradigm during the three decades of the double pontificate.

Pope Francis cannot be pigeon-holed into this four-part typology. He is definitely NOT generic American Catholicism. He has spent little time here; barely speaks English; does not know us and does not seem to like what he thinks he knows of us. He is a puzzling blend of the other three: his homilies frequently reflect traditional themes of piety, a passionate love of the forgotten, a sense of the supernatural, and often an intimate closeness to our Lord Jesus. But his decisions, appointments and casual remarks have given a huge boost to the progressives in their eagerness to befriend cultural liberalism (not to mention Chinese communism.) He is anathema to the traditionalists; and a huge disappointment to the Neo-Catholics. For the average parishioner, he is not such big change from his two predecessors.

The dynamism of the American Church can hardly be captured by this 4-part model. Three smaller movements are significant and interesting: New Age Spirituality, Catholic Worker type identification with the poor, and the sophisticated neoconservative, highly political Catholicism identified with First Things.

New age themes include interest in yoga, zen, alternate approaches to health/ healing, and the pantheist traditions of Asia. These are fashionable with some retreat houses and progressive religious sisters. It attracts the liberal leaning, affluent, educated who react allergically to traditional and evangelical Catholicism. It merges with mainstream psychology and compatible aspects of Catholicism to develop an new enlightened spirituality. Theologically and politically, it sympathizes with the progressives but lacks the appetite for cultural, theological and political war and prefers a retreat into personal wholeness.

The Catholic Worker continues to be a tiny, but influential presence in the American Church. Its classical expression (Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin) combined traditional piety with closeness to the poor, pacifism and anarchism. My understanding is that the various Catholic Worker homes vary in their combination of these elements. It is inspirational and impressive for its real intimacy with the poor which contrasts with the "limousine liberalism" of progressives who advocate for governmental assistance to the poor but hardly tolerate (to quote Pope Francis) the "smell of the sheep."

Last is the sophisticated political conservatism of the First Things community including R. Reno, George Weigel, Neuhaus and Novak of happy memory. Their's is an erudite and passionate affirmation of the values of American capitalism and culture in light of traditional/evangelical Christianity. It allies itself with Evangelicals and Pentecostals in the culture war with progressives. Recently Reno has even endorsed, in some degree, the Trump agenda even as he is uninhibited in his criticism of Pope Francis, who clearly reciprocates the disapproval.

The American bishops seem mostly to, unsurprisingly, model Standard Parish Catholicism: they are decent, intelligent, competent, pious men who are overwhelmed by the demands of a huge bureaucracy and the divergent currents of their flock. A critical mass seem to belong to the school of John Paul and Benedict and, allied with a handful of traditionalists, have been able to keep in check the progressives, who are surging with energy under Francis. This battle is inevitable and will persist: the temptation to adapt to culture is perennial. If Francis lives long enough he will, of course, create our episcopacy into his (mostly) progressive image. But the future belongs to the Evangelical Neo-Catholics: most of the new priests lean strongly traditional; most of the flourishing new orders are conservative; the lay renewal movements continue to surge with energy; and the splendid theological legacy of John Paul and Benedict is a gift that will continue to give into this millenium.

Full discloser: I myself am a passionate Evangelical Catholic; am comfortable and friendly with traditional and generic parish Catholics, but fiercely opposed to progressive revisionism. I am allergic to anything new-age; inspired by the Catholic Workers; and largely in accord with First Things.