What if the Game Has Changed?

Catholicism is many things, but more often than not for us moderns, it is comfortable.  We can argue every day over whether or not it should be, but the truth is that in the West, it often is.  Now I'm not one of those people who thinks this is an inherently bad thing.  There's a lot to say for structure, routine, a beautiful liturgy and a welcoming community.  People act like this is a bad thing, and I'm just not having it  Like all good things, there is a risk of excess.  The comfort can lead to complacence, and if we aren't careful, we can value those comforts above all else.

What I want to talk about today is what happens when we are careful, but that comfort is still dangerous?  For the past 40 years, Catholicism (especially in the West) has had the comfort of a pretty well defined orthodoxy.  By this I don't just mean doctrinal, but in terms of the overall parameters of Catholic discussion.  The disagreement over Vatican II is really not that big:  the overwhelming majority of Catholics treat the Church before 1960 as a dark age we were gladly liberated from.  The discussion instead centers on what it means to be liberated from that dark age.  Even traditionalists carry out a discussion mostly within those parameters.  The same comes for the various discussions around the liturgy, the role of the laity, etc etc.  

I'm not saying there aren't disagreements, or that these disagreements don't matter.  There are, and they do.  Yet the factions line up pretty smoothly, and everyone mans their post at pretty comfortable, predictable, and familiar positions.  While those who love these debates do that, everyone else tends to follow a pretty predictable path in living out their faith.

I worry that this predictable arrangement is coming to an end, due to two factors.  One is an external event, the other is internal.  While they are not directly related, they are influencing each other.  The first is of course the COVID-19 pandemic.  The pandemic is rearranging every facet of life in the West, and our experience with religion is no different.  In large parts of the West, the Sunday obligation is suspended even now.  When we go to Mass, we are going with drastically smaller congregations, and many of the usual comforts and interactions are no more.  The parishes and communities that thrive do so only with great creativity and tireless work maintaining relationships in the age of social distancing.

In this age of creativity, everyone is beginning to see a new reality.  The first part of that new reality is drastically reduced Mass attendance.  The Church in the West was already contracting in Mass attendance.  Even before the pandemic the much hoped for "Francis Effect" (a pope more in touch with the sensibilities of western elites leading to a better environment for Christianity and increased Mass attendance) gave way to a smaller and shrinking Church.  If any of the numerous videos and writings by bishops are any indication, that Church has gotten dramatically smaller the past 9 months, and it will continue to get smaller.  Before anyone cheers a "smaller, purer" Church, with that smaller church comes a drastically scaled back Church.  Many of the great missionary activities we do rely on money, money that isn't coming in.  It means fewer food banks or crisis pregnancy outreach.  It means less marriage counseling from a spiritual perspective.  It means fewer retreats.  Good liturgy, especially today, requires a bit of training to get people acclimated to a different state of mind.  Good luck convincing a parish to do that when they are broke.

Certainly you shouldn't be so pessimistic Kevin, everyone will come back.  Right?  

Right?

What if they don't?  What if there's something that has happened in the Church over the past few years that has shaken the confidence of even the devout, and left Catholics with a bitter taste towards the hierarchy meant to guide them?  What if, freed from their Sunday obligation, they suddenly start questioning why they should go back?  Why should they go back to an organization that is rotten and corrupt at every level?

I speak of course of the various scandals plaguing the Church over the past few years, especially the crimes (spiritual and sometimes legal) of her bishops and priests.  While the McCarrick scandal takes on outsized importance, he is not the only one.  Catholics in Latin America, especially Argentina, are scandalized by the actions of Bishop Zanchetta, a close personal aide of the Pope.  In Chile, the episcopate is still trying to drag itself out from years of institutional rot over abuse, and the Pope is attempting to recover his reputation after his remarks on abuse in Chile drew widespread condemnation, including from his own inner circle.  In the United States, there is Bishop Malone, a (as yet pretty quiet) Department of Justice Investigation, and the recent arrest of an Ohio priest on federal trafficking charges.  (In what will become a recurring theme, he is alleged to have taken a victim across state lines to abuse him.)  Over 2/3 of American states are investigating their respective dioceses. You can give a defense of various players involved.  The overall picture?  Much less.

Before the pandemic, we were already starting to see the fruits of this.  DC churches were hemorrhaging money.  Dioceses were driven to the brink of insolvency as states began removing limitations on coming forth with sexual abuse charges.  In Europe various individuals resigned, were arrested, or tried in court. This is not just an American problem (as the pope's advisors originally tried to argue), as senior Churchmen are facing abuse charges and scandals on every major continent and island.

This scandal seems to be engineered to keep people away from the faith if they become less attached to it.  Like say, a global pandemic hits and you're no longer required to go to Mass.  What would happen if, say, a large amount of dioceses simply abandoned their flocks during what may have been a necessary lockdown, as happened in a lot of dioceses throughout the USA?  While there were a lot of creative pastors, we also had in some areas no sacraments for months, and nothing to provide some relief outside of a mass you could watch online.

Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist, but let's say this scenario is real:  that the pandemic leads to a drastically smaller Church, and its kept small by the disgust a lot of Catholics, rightly or wrongly, have over the abuse scandals and other corruption scandals in the Church.  What do our debates of comfort have to say about that?  Is this situation going to be reversed by another debate over Dignitatis Humanae or a sub clause in Lumen Gentium?  Will the latest papal writing do much?  Or another revision and debate over the death penalty or the catechism?  Or hey, let's bring back the liturgy wars! 

One thing every one of these has in common is they are debates mostly aimed at converting the in-group.  To those not in the Church, these debates look a bit silly.  (Okay, they are, but shut up outsider!) I don't think that means they are bad.  Just that the relevance to those not already plugged into a Catholic way of life and culture (even if its not a particularly good one) is next to nil.  There might be a lot of people no longer plugged into that life, to say nothing of a wider world experiencing suffering that hasn't been felt in decades.

Consider this a thought experiment.  What if I'm right?