Joseph Bottum has written what is sure to be a controversial article (Amy Welborns commentariat are already at it) for First Things entitled When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano: Catholic Culture in America.
Bottums argument is that there are signs of a new distinctivelyCatholic culture emerging in the United States after a longabsence. He traces that long absence tothe fratricidal struggles within the Church that emerged in the wake of VaticanII and peaked during the 1970s. Bottumspends a fair bit of timeperhaps too much timerecalling the excesses of thatdecade in detail. He also traces thegradual decline in the authority of the nations bishops, which has, of course,been exacerbated by the clerical sexual abuse crisis. He concludes with a recounting of somethe recent liturgical struggles in a parish in the Diocese of Orange County.
After recounting this rather grim tale of institutional and cultural decline,one might ask where Bottum sees signs of hope. The answer is a new generation of Catholic young people who are, as heputs it, impatient with the debates of the past. These are the people who areswelling the ranks of the pro-life movement, clamoring for the return oftraditional devotions, and pouring over the pages of the Catechism of theCatholic Church to fill in the cavernous gaps in their catechetical formation.
Ive tried my best to present a digest of Bottums argument that takesit seriously and does not reduce it to caricature. While I disagree with some of his specificjudgments, I think he gets many of the trends right. Since the early 1970s, there certainly hasbeen a drastic decline in what one might term the thickness of Catholicidentity and its hard to deny that the lack of a shared consensus about whataspects of that identity were worth preserving were part of the cause. Who can argue that the ecclesial and moralauthority of the episcopacy is not at its lowest point in decades? And whileone can argue about how many younger Catholics are actually participating in whatmight be called the orthodox revival, there is no doubt this movement ishaving an impact on the broader Church.
Nevertheless I think that Bottum might do well to reflect more deeplyon the causes of the collapse of a distinctively Catholic culture in the United States. He implies that it was primarily the work ofzealous iconoclasts and appears to echo George Weigels assertion that theproblem was that the Church opened its windows at the same time that Westernculture was entering a tunnel filled with poisonous fumes.
I think the truth is more complex. Much of the richness of Catholic culture in the United Statesowed its existence to the urban Catholic neighborhoods that were already losingfamilies to the suburbs even before Vatican II convened. My mother grew up in a Massachusetts mill town where a mixedmarriage was an Irish Catholic marrying an Italian Catholic. I grew up in a suburb in New Jersey where my two best friends were aPresbyterian and a Lutheran. Sustainingdistinct cultures in the United States has always been hard in the face ofeconomic change and geographic mobility.
While the existence of zealous iconoclasts cannot be doubted, I thinkit is also fair to say that the some of the beams supporting Catholic intellectualculture had also rotted from within during the 20th century. The ecclesiastical repression following theModernist crisiswhich continued through the middle of the centuryproduced anenormous bitterness in many parts of the Church, a bitterness that could onlybe held in check by a Herculean willingness to submit oneself toauthority. If you read Fr. FrancisMurphys (a.k.a. Xavier Rynne) Vatican Council II, you will find, under a veneerof good humor, a deep anger at the curia and a clear sense that for at leastsome people the Council was payback time. Or, if Murphy is not your cup of tea, read some of the private writingsof people like Yves Congar or John Courtney Murray. The feelings expressed by these devout andbrilliant churchmen do not speak well of the Churchs internal life duringthis period.
I remember an experience that encapsulated for me what it must havebeen like to live through this. I was ata retreat with a group of fellow parishioners and our leader was an elderlyFranciscan priest who I think would not object if I described him as veryliberal. He was mild and self-effacingthroughout the weekend until a couple of our more conservative parishionersbegan to give him a hard time over a theological point. At one point, he snapped angrily, Look, theychanged the rules on me, buddy! and his body shook as he said it. He regained his composure almost instantly,but just for a moment I thought I had gotten an insight into what had happenedin those tumultuous years after the Council, when decades of suppressed angerwere suddenly unleashed.
But I also knew in that moment that the struggles of thisgood and holy man would not be my struggles. Our experiences of the Church have been very different. Having returned earlier today from an almostentirely content-free session of sacramental preparation for one of mychildren, I find that there are aspects of the orthodox revival with which Ireadily identify. Say what you willabout the Catechismand much can be said about itat least it provides somethingsolid for the brain to bite down on.
But something needs to be said, so I will say it: thesekidsof whom I, at the age of 40, am probably still onestill have a lot tolearn. When twentysomethings barely outof RCIA feel comfortable using their weblogs to instruct bishops theyve nevermet on how to interpret curial documents, I hope I will be forgiven if I do notsee this as a great leap forward for Catholic intellectual life. Having a copy of the Catechism and access tothe Vatican web site does not make you adogmatic theologian. Nor am I especiallyenthusiastic about the growing number of seminarians and newly ordained apparentlyeager to put the "smackdown on heresy." Many of my fellow parishioners are old enough to remember the last timea generation of ecclesiastical Jacobins descended upon them and I think mostwould prefer not to repeat the experience.
As a conservative, Im sure Bottum understands thatcultures cannot be built so much as they have to be grown. But before I surrender the keys to a risingnew generation of gardeners, Id like to have a sense that they have a deepknowledge of what they are being called upon to tend, of its breathtakingdiversity and of the full sweep of its history. Id like to see greater respect for those who came before and a seriouseffort to understand the choices that were made in the past, even if they mightmake different choices today. I have to say that I would like to see thesethings more often than I do, because much depends on it.
