A Faith Interrupted: An Honest Conversation with Alienated Catholics

Contents

To the Reader ix

1. A Million Good Reasons to Leave 1 2. Examining the Root Cause of Departure 17 3. What Good Is the Church? 39 4. What Do You Want from the Church? 57 5. What Does It Take to Be Catholic? 79 6. The Search for the “Good” Parish 107 7. Strengthening Your Spiritual Life 125 8. Why Be Catholic? 147

Epilogue for the Unpersuaded 169

Resources 171

vii

one

A Million Good Reasons to Leave Driving home one evening, a friend learned we were interested in ­promoting a conversation with alienated Catholics. She stopped the car, looked over, and said, “You can talk to me.”

She said this out of a depth of feeling, not without a tinge of anger and regret, doubt and longing, as if her experience with the church—and the fact that someone was interested in it—were still something deeply held, something that needed a good and living word spoken to it, whatever the final outcome. And she was quick to say she could put us in touch with a whole group of ­ people we may want to talk with. The message has been the same almost everywhere we’ve gone; no researcher need go far to find someone who has left the church or is questioning the reasons he or she stays. We’ve all been to gatherings where the subject comes up, making a great conversation starter at cocktail parties or over dinner: What is your horror story about growing up Catholic? What happened to you while attending parochial school? The stories may be told with the intention to amuse or astonish or score the biggest grievance, but underneath it all, an unresolved injury or anger often remains.

A Million Good Reasons to Leave

But the wound may be deeper and closer to home. A ­­ family member stops going to church, quietly or dramatically, and it sets off a fireworks display between spouses or generations. From now on, every ­family gathering wears the shadow of this division. The subject, spoken or unspoken, hovers in the corners at each wedding and funeral, and every ­family crisis is inhabited by the anticipation of a scene. In the life of Catholics, there are hours when it is expected that the church will be engaged: marriages, births, rites of passage, serious illnesses, and death, at the barest minimum. Each time one of those delicate milestones is reached, the separation of ­ family members from the church causes dissension at precisely the time we most need ­people to be pulling together. For families to be pulled apart in times of celebration or crisis is grievous. For the church to be the reason they are pulled apart is a contradiction tending toward the ludicrous.

The decision to leave the church is tough: on the individual who makes it, on the ­family who is pained or challenged by it, and less obviously but fundamentally, on the church itself, losing its members by way of the back door—along with all of their vitality, gifts, and purpose. A lot gets broken when a person makes such a choice, and too often the loss and damage are never healed or even addressed.

Alienation of Affection

There are a million reasons why ­people leave the church—or, more accurately, seventeen million reasons in this country alone, one for each person who currently relates to the term ex, lapsed, former, nonpracticing, retired, or, the hippest phrase, recovering Catholic.

Of all the reasons we hear for this migration, nearly none could be described as frivolous, and many are quite poignant. The most

A Million Good Reasons to Leave

common theme expressed among them all is a variation on the idea of “alienation of affection,” a term used to contain the world of hurt involved in the death of a marriage. Once there was love, and good faith, and the potential for growth and a life together. But one side, or perhaps both parties, broke trust, and nothing has been done to reestablish what was lost.

According to Dean R. Hoge’s landmark study Converts, Dropouts, Returnees: A Study of Religious Change among Catholics (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1981), around 40 percent of Catholics will waver in their commitment to the church at some point in their lives, for a season or longer. “Commitment” is generally defined by church attendance, although for some it may simply mean irregular or lukewarm involvement and for ­­others no contact with the church at all. Of those underage who stop going to church or attend rarely, dissatisfaction with their Catholic identity is generally expressed when they have moved apart from their families and no longer feel obliged to attend. Conflict with the church’s moral teachings, especially regarding sexual issues (premarital sex, birth control, abortion), is high on the list of reasons young adults drop out. Finally, a sense of irrelevance in the church experience—boredom at Mass, a disconnection between worship and “real life,” or the inability to establish a clear link between Catholic practices and the message of the Bible—is a factor that leads the under-twenty-five crowd to loosen ties with the church.

Catholics over twenty-five who leave are conflicted in similar ways but with different precipitating factors. If they stop going to church because ­ family pressure to attend wanes, it can be due to the loss of the more actively committed spouse or the end of the child-rearing phase of life. Older Catholics may object to church teachings, often in regard to divorce and gender roles as much as sexual or moral practices. They may feel their spiri­tual needs are not

A Million Good Reasons to Leave

being served, because of changes in the church—or, at least as likely, because the church has not changed enough to keep up with the times. Those who leave the church later in life may cite the practice of confession, which they find to be fearful or objectionable. They are also likely to take responsibility for their departure by saying they are lazy or lack motivation to go to church. Though young adults most frequently exit when they leave home, older Catholics find the impetus for their departure in a conflict with a priest, moving to a new parish, divorce, or other significant life changes.

It is clear from Hoge’s original study and his subsequent work on Catholics leaving and returning that dropping out almost invariably has to do with emotional and interpersonal issues. We are lead by our hearts as much as our heads in most matters, so it is no surprise that leaving the church is not an uncomplicated, rational process. Nor is it something we do in isolation from one another: those who leave the church frequently do so in response to changes in their relationships as a whole.

If relationships are a factor in our shifting membership in the church, then we have to consider the church itself as one element of the broader context of our relationships. After all, a satisfied and active member of the church is much less likely to depart from the pews when life changes occur and important relationships are on the ropes. Only the most intensely loyal Catholic would venture to argue that inadequacies in the church’s local expression are not at fault in the departure of at least some of the seventeen million Catholics who separate from the church. Given Pope John Paul II’s recent spate of apologies on behalf of the church—some one hundred were offered during the millennial Jubilee celebrations— it would seem that even the highest church authority is willing to take responsibility for a hundred reasons why ­people might leave the church. This is a good sign, and the appearance of multiple

A Million Good Reasons to Leave

resources for former-and-potentially-future Catholics in some parishes is another sign that the church is beginning to accept a share of the blame for what has led to this state of alienation as well as to assume a role in the work of reconciliation. (More will be said about exploring reconciliation in chapter 5.)

Official recognition of a share in the blame is necessary if we, the active and the alienated Catholic together, are to move forward in this relationship. After the lengthening crisis of church leadership on public display in the early years of this new century, it will be harder to advance the argument of unquestioned obedience to the authority that has been so poorly used, as demonstrated in the sex abuse scandals. This loss of an unwieldy hammer is not to be regretted—and is perhaps the only outcome of the scandal not to be lamented. American Catholics will now expect and demand better reasons to follow their leaders than formerly submitted. “The church says so” will not be enough—if in fact it ever was.

Even those Catholics who do not consider leaving the church as an option often have serious issues with aspects of church teaching, practice, management, and vitality. As a result, those who remain active participants in the life of the church are not immune to feeling a touch of alienation now and then, from within the relationship—a coldness that any marriage partner will recognize and appreciate as part of the cycle of commitment. Traditional and progressive Catholics alike feel somewhat betrayed by the church when it changes, or ­ doesn’t change enough, in response to the times. Some women who exhibit a high level of involvement in their parishes still admit that they feel like second-class citizens within the church they love. Catholics who acknowledge a gay or lesbian orientation will readily speak of the spiri­tual schizophrenia it takes to claim membership in a community that officially calls their fundamental experience “gravely disordered.” Folks who

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Many of America’s 17 million inactive Catholics are untroubled by their estrangement from the Catholic Church. They have found peace in other spiritual communities or they simply don’t care anymore. For countless others, their alienation from the church of their birth constitutes “unfinished business.” What went wrong? Can old wounds be healed? Can the Catholic Church once again be a spiritual home?

Camille & Schorn

is there a place for me in today’s catholic church?

In A Faith Interrupted, authors Alice L. Camille and Joel Schorn serve as compassionate mediators in a conversation about these questions. They help disaffected Catholics look honestly and objectively at why they have become separated from the church. For those contemplating a return, they offer suggestions for reconnecting faith or know someone who is, accept this invitation for healing and hope.

“ A Faith Interrupted, written in a fresh, conversational style, is a must-read to — George R. Fitzgerald, CSP, Paulist priest, author, and teacher “An excellent guidebook that asks—and answers—the right questions.”

— Linus Mundy, publisher of Abbey Press CareNotes and author of The Complete Guide to Prayer-Walking: A Simple Path to Body-and-Soul Fitness

Alice L. Camille, a widely published writer and religious educator, holds a master’s degree in divinity from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley. She lives in Southern California.

Interrupted

help you start making the arrangements for the ‘welcome back’ festivities!”

a faith

with Catholic spirituality, sacraments, and parish life. If you are struggling with your

a faith

Interrupted

An Honest Conversation with Alienated Catholics

Joel Schorn has worked extensively in Catholic parishes and has been an editor and writer for several Catholic publications. He holds a master’s degree in theology and lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Alice L. Camille & Joel Schorn