Church from Below: for Many, the Church Was Abandoned Because of the Church, Chicago Catholic News, November 29, 2010

Church from Below: for Many, the Church Was Abandoned Because of the Church

Chicago Catholic News
November 29, 2010

http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/2010/11/church-from-below-for-many-church-was.html

(POSTED: 11/29/10) In a recent column in the Catholic New World, Cardinal George wrote about the New Evangelization, a worldwide campaign to bring back to the faith the millions who have strayed away. He was certainly on target about the straying. Surveys indicate so many have abandoned Catholicism that today one in every 10 Americans is a former Catholic.

But as I read the cardinal's words, I could not help but question the one and only reason he gave for the drift: Many "have rejected the faith. They live as if God did not exist. Their way of life and of thought is 'secularized' . . . . For secularized people it is not Jesus Christ who saves but their own resources and activities, our scientific knowledge, our sense of human progress. Self-sufficiency, of course, is the sin against the Holy Spirit."

What George does not acknowledge is that for many who have fled, perhaps the majority in the last 10 years, the Catholic Church was abandoned because of the Church. An all-too-pervasive anti-gospel has compelled people to leave their Catholic heritage, not to embrace secularism or self-sufficiency but to find some peace of mind.

What is this anti-gospel? It is the persistent priest abuse scandal that drains respect for Church authority even as it keeps bubbling up all over the world. It is the shameful failure of the pope and bishops to take control of the scandal in its early manifestations and in many cases to spread the contagion by transferring offending priests over and over into sensitive situations. It is the fact that many self-protecting bishops to this day have not been removed from their positions, have not offered contrition or done penance and remain in their cathedrals living as if nothing had happened, while their dioceses dry up and go bankrupt. It is the rigidity of an institution which relies on its naked authority to pronounce final judgment on so many critical moral issues that deserve at least a hearing, an institution that repeatedly denies the sense of the faithful has any validity in this day and age. It is the clericalism of those priests and bishops who lord it over their flocks and require the higher seats on every occasion. Finally, the anti-gospel is the ongoing effort to convince Catholics that the Second Vatican Council changed nothing and that the spirit of that council is a dangerous illusion that must be dispelled.

Yes, the Church should preach the gospel to all, but the greatest obstacle is the anti-gospel that preaches unfortunately louder and, for many, more convincingly. I know a veritable regiment of Catholics who have left the Church, not lured by materialism or relativism. They left because in their particular experience and situations, they could not find their savior Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. That is the reality that Cardinal George and his fellow bishops need to face. By all means, let the New Evangelization be launched, but let it start where it is most urgently needed.