The recent Economist magazine features a helpful article about Catholicism in contemporary Europe, “The Fate of Catholic Europe: The Void Within.”
The title is misleading, suggesting a spiritual vacuum. The substance of the article is more nuanced, however, drawing attention to the diversity of Catholic experience in contemporary Europe.
What caught my attention were astute observations about the changed social status of the Church in much of Europe, what in a recent reflection I identified as the end of clubby elite status for the leadership of the Catholic Church.
After giving details about recent scandals in Ireland and Belgium, the Economist writes:
“What the Belgian and Irish stories suggest is the collapse of a centuries-old order in which the church functioned as a sort of ‘state within a state’‹administering its own affairs, and often the affairs of its flock, by a system of law and authority that ran in parallel with, and could trump, the authority of the state. Europe’s enlightenment may have put an end to the sort of formal theocracy in which popes commanded armies and kings ruled by divine right. But in a messy mixture of ways the authority of church and state has remained intertwined across Europe.
Even now quasi-theocracy dies hard. Ireland¹s hierarchs have lost their grip on secondary and higher education, but primary schooling is still a church-based affair; even non-Christian youngsters are drilled in Catholic teaching. In France the Catholic hierarchy had until recently an informal place in the establishment. Nicolas Sarkozy may be the first French president who does not see the archbishop of Paris as a natural interlocutor. Mr Sarkozy, whose own roots are secular and Jewish, speaks of the church from an outsider’s distance.
As the Irish case shows, the most insidious links between church and state are often informal ones, which can leave priests and bishops virtually exempt from scrutiny. But all over Europe the child-abuse scandal has made secular powers keener to reassert their authority, and less willing to accept the Catholic church as a semi-autonomous power.”
I would modify the final paragraph. By my reckoning the child-abuse scandals have precipitated a desire to assert of authority over the Church that has been building over the last few decades.
But in the main, the analysis is correct. The Vatican has been disoriented by the vigor of the responses to the sex abuse scandals, because the leaders of the Church are only beginning to reckon with sociological reality: the hierarchy now finds itself on the outside the magic circle of elite culture.
The sex abuse scandals in the United States have followed a different trajectory, and for two reasons.
First, there is no legacy of ecclesiastical establishment in America. As a result, however powerful bishops may have been in the machine politics of major American cities—and they were very powerful—they were never intertwined with the WASP elite that dominated American culture for so long. Perhaps Cardinal Law imagined himself a the prince bishop of Boston, but his colleagues didn’t, and therefore they understood that the Church stood naked before the storm of public outrage, unprotected by the unspoken agreement of elites to shield each other.
Second, because church attendance remains relatively strong, the American Catholic Church exercises a still considerable power in the public square. The pastors still have flocks, and in a democracy boots on the ground matter.
There is a third dimension to the American Catholic Church, one shared by the European Church. Her views of morality, culture, and politics represent one of the most cogent and intellectually sophisticated alternatives to the secular liberalism that has gained the upperhand in the public square. In a word, Catholicism remains ideologically powerful. For this reason, the Church is not just outside the magic circle of the elite. She is also increasingly seen by the secular elites as an adversary to be defeated, which is why we’ve seen such an explosion of polemics against Christianity in the last decade.
In all likelihood, the Catholic Church will become still more ideologically powerful, because animated by a much clearer sense of her own vision of human flourishing. Meanwhile, postmodern liberalism will become increasingly unnerved by the extremes that seem to arise from its own first principles (e.g., euthanasia, infanticide, genetic engineering).
Outcome? My crystal ball remains cloudy.
August 10th, 2010 | 4:31 pm
Another excellent article.
I’d recommend to suppement it Cardinal George’s really brilliant recent book, “The Difference God Makes.” It has a brilliant analysis of the cultural situation of the Church in the U.S. today.
One good thing about being excluded from the elites is in not sharing the onus for its mistakes. If our secular situation deteriorates, any “sophisticated” other authority may find itself increasingly influential. The Judge Walkers and the Obamas may find themselves sinking in the same boat.
August 10th, 2010 | 5:42 pm
It is time for current Catholics to decide whether or not they can in good conscience remain Catholic. Are they going to continue to give their tacit and overt support to the Pope and the Vatican, or are they going to side with their conscience and help to prosecute those who raped and sexually assaulted children and those who have tried to cover it up by leaving the Church and ending their support to the Catholic Church?
It is time to do the right thing. It is time to stop supporting this church. Whatever benefits you receive from your church, the price is too high.
August 10th, 2010 | 8:37 pm
@L.a.d.R
Are you aware that your friend was eaten by the beast he helped create? Better not to create the beast.
August 10th, 2010 | 9:04 pm
Robespierre’s Friend, Salvation too high a price? I think not.
August 10th, 2010 | 10:30 pm
“Whatever benefits you receive from your church, the price is too high.”
Lemme see…inner tranquility through the love of God, an understanding that there is a greater order to things, the realization that god has a plan in which the Church is to play an integral part. Seems like a bargain, truth be told!
By the way…interesting choice of name. Exact how many people did Robespierre send to the guillotine in the name of reason and progress?
August 11th, 2010 | 2:39 am
[...] we? Whatever we choose to call it, R. R. Reno at First Things has a strong case. I see that once again he’s advertising what he thinks is his brilliant insight: that what’s happening in [...]
August 11th, 2010 | 7:54 am
Robespierre’s Friend – As your friend remarked
L’athéisme est aristocratique ; l’idée d’un grand être qui veille sur l’innocence opprimée, & qui punit le crime triomphant, est toute populaire. Le peuple, les malheureux m’applaudissent ; si je trouvais des censeurs, ce serait parmi les riches & parmi les coupables [Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being who watches over oppressed innocence and who punishes triumphant crime is wholy popular. The people, the wretched would applaud me; if I were to find critics, it would be among the rich and among the guilty]
August 11th, 2010 | 8:37 am
Looks like the Whore of Babylon has raised its ugly head again.
The bottom line is, can the Church survive? A question which has been asked hundreds of times over 2000 years.
Who can know the future to ask such a question. All we have is a promise and a number of hints from history to surmise this: the Catholic Church will be still standing, still fulfilling its mission from Christ (however imperfectly), long after Western culture in its European form has dissolved into Muslim theocracy, long after the USA has passed into history, and, more personally to you, my friend and I, long after we have gone to our eternal destiny.
August 11th, 2010 | 8:38 am
…and, incidentally, long after the Judges of the Church, namely the Economist along with Newsweek and Time have gone to their eternal destiny, bankruptcy.
August 11th, 2010 | 10:45 am
Finished reading a Ted Turner biography which also made Jerry Levin of Time Warner seem pathetic. And Murdoch might be craziest of all of them. The sooner some of these media outlets go bankrupt the better. It takes a while to find great writers on the internet. R. R. Reno’s composure is a lift above the swamp.
August 11th, 2010 | 10:46 am
I agree with Joe: the great stength of the Catholic Church is that, unlike its adversaries, it takes a long view of history. The secular ideologies that so loudly blustered that they would destroy the Church (like our Ami de Robspierre) have all collapsed and died under their own inner contradictions (one thinks of Communism – once seemingly on the verge of world triumph, now confined to such anachromisms and Cuba and North Korea). They have all been mere blips on screen of the Church. Ironically, in the Darwinian “struggle for survival” of ideas, religious faith always proves itself far more powerful than secular enthusiams. What we are witnessing in Europe is not the death of the Catholic faith, but the slow, whimpering death of secular humanism as it melts away in a tepid relativism and a demographic implosion. The decline of the Catholic faith in Europe is only the most salient symptom of this disease. But the Church elsewhere around the globe is doing quite nicely, thank you.
August 11th, 2010 | 1:03 pm
Our friend of Robespierre not only shows how resilient jacobin enthusiasms can be, he also asks a worthwhile question, if not exactly the one he intended. Will we give our support to those who perpetrated and covered up these crimes?
LADR assumes it is the entire Catholic Church responsible for this. He makes no finer distinctions. Benedictine sisters or Franciscans working that soup kitchen, good parish priests (yes, they do exist) quietly keeping their parishes running and administering sacraments and comfort to the afflicted – all lumped in the same boat. At best, they’re useful dupes.
It’s bootless, however, not to look more closely at how these things happened – at who is responsible. The Vatican is an easy and popular target. And to be sure, feckless curial officials like Cardinal Sodano (who did so much to enable Marciel Macial) don’t do much to dispel such impressions. But the truth is that the Vatican had at best a very marginal role in the sex scandals, and anyone who understands how it really works would know this. Curia offices are thinly staffed and rarely efficient; and they, like the Pope above, are almost entirely dependent on the information given them by bishops and their offices.
And it’s these closed circles of episcopal elites – who have perpetuated themselves in key national conferences throughout the West – who have overseen these crimes over the last four or five decades, just as they have the virtual collapse of their charges. Why have Catholics not demanded that more episcopal heads role? Why not more urgency for an overhaul of leadership?
Under Benedict XVI the quality level of appointments has gone up quite a lot, at least in the U.S. That helps. But it would also help if a sterner message was sent by the removal, directly or indirectly, of the worst offenders before their canonical retirement age.
August 11th, 2010 | 3:39 pm
Richard M raises good points but, in the U.S. at least, they are two decades out of date. Yes, two decades. The church has worked the problem in those two decades and continues to do so. The Globe’s revelations greatly empowered that effort, but that was eight years ago now. Yet the approaches, whether the 18th century L.a.d.R. or the reasonable Richard, are all phrased as if the crisis were occurring today.
In Europe, I don’t know the figures and they may not be available as they have been in the U.S. for many years now. But, hasn’t Richard noticed that the “worst offenders” have already been removed as the American side was years back? The question is and will continue to be: what do we do now? How do we help prevent that culture from returning? R.R. Reno is looking ahead and I, for one, appreciate it.
August 11th, 2010 | 3:46 pm
Please pardon me for what I want to say is rather off the point.- but the article reminded me of how saddening it is that I, an octogenerian first generation American , have not a single French cousin in a very large family – who remains a practicing Catholic . I am quite sure that all their children-few in number as they are- also remain alienated from the Church. As best as I can tell that happened- at least in my family- in one generation. We American Catholics must not allow ourselves any sense of false security. Somehow secularism exerts a very strong pull here too. We must pray for our young and find ways to improve their formation in the Faith.
August 12th, 2010 | 11:41 am
What Ed says is not so off the point: my father’s family immigrated to America from France a century ago, devout Catholics all. Almost all my favorite modern Catholic philosophers, theologians and spiritual writers have been French. Thus, to see the present state of the French Church makes me unspeakably sad. But with Christ there is always hope and I try to say a prayer every so often for my fellow Catholics in France and for the resurrection of their Church, something that is well within the power of God to bring about. There have been stranger turns in history!
August 15th, 2010 | 5:02 pm
[...] latest article on Catholicism, The Void Within — which R. R. Reno wrote about in Catholicism in Europe — argues that parts of European Catholicism are dying and parts reviving. Insofar as it goes, [...]
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