The Center Can Not Hold Because It's Disappearing

It' getting harder and harder to find a Catholic parish whose priest doesn't have a comb-over. Not true with coffee.

How church shopping is polarizing the country

By Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Special to CNN

A report this month on who gets abortions showed some surprising results: Catholic women are about as likely as any other woman to terminate a pregnancy. Then again, the striking thing about American Catholics is that they look almost exactly like the average American.

According to the Pew Research Center, for example, Catholics supported Obama in the 2008 election by 1 percentage point more than the general public. Even when it comes to abortion, which the Catholic Church strongly opposes, American Catholics are only 2 percent more likely than the general public to favor making it illegal.

What explains the divergence between church teaching and political poll responses? A large part of it is the difference between those who check a religious box in a public opinion poll and those who show up at a church on Sunday. If we look at only white Catholics who attend church at least once a week, they favor making abortion illegal by 76 to 27 percent.

The figures underlie a striking change in the characteristics of American churches of all denominations: in the '60s, those showing up in church on Sunday might have represented a cross-section of American viewpoints; today, they are more likely to reflect traditionalist views, further driving modernists away from religion altogether - and intensifying what some have called the “devotional divide” in American politics. (The traditionalist mind would never agree that they were 'driving' others from churches. The 'others' are choosing to leave on their own because they have fallen prey to secular relativism.)

The difference in viewpoints between traditionalists and modernists is profound - and has dramatic effects on today’s culture wars. David Campbell, a Notre Dame political scientist, explains that traditionalists believe in an eternal and transcendent authority that “tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are." (Personally I prefer the stages of spirituality to explain this gulf of which the need for an eternal and transcendent authority is part of stage I.)

Modernists, on the other hand, would redefine historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life. They are less dogmatic, more tolerant, more open to change. Both might prefer that their 17-year-old daughters not sleep with their high school boyfriends. Modernists, however, would have an easier time saying, “But if you do, be sure you use a condom.” (Or come up with something more convincing than "You will go to hell.")

In the era following World War II, both groups attended the same churches. They were likely to subscribe to their parents’ religion, to attend the church down the street, to include their children in community activities the church sponsored. Today, we are more likely to shop for churches that express our individual values, and traditionalists - those searching for “an eternal and transcendent authority” - are much more likely to attend church at all.

The result, according to journalist Bill Bishop, is the “collapse of the middle” in American church life. Mainline Protestant churches, which tended to be more moderate and inclusive, have been losing membership for decades. The churches that have shown the greatest growth have been the large-scale megachurches, where eight in 10 are traditionalist.

During the same period, Catholics have become more likely to choose parishes on the basis of something other than geography, and 72 percent said that “the traditional or conservative nature of the church” was an important or very important reason for choosing their parish.

In the meantime, modernists, who are less comfortable with churches dominated by traditionalists, have become less likely to attend church at all. During the '90s, the number of Americans reporting “no religion” doubled, and sociologists believe the shift reflected the desire of many Americans to distance themselves from the increasingly close association between organized religion and conservative politics.

That association is the result of a set of reinforcing factors. Traditionalists are much more likely to attend church. The Republican Party has adopted more traditionalist rhetoric and policies, locking in the political support of those most in search of fixed rules and uncompromising principles. The association between religion and conservative politics and policies alienate the modernists, who distance themselves from religion. This leaves church attendees talking to the converted - those who share both their religious and political beliefs. (Unfortunately one of the other trends is they talk to the converted consistently about the sins committed by the unconverted. Hence one hears far more sermons on the evils of abortionsamesexmarriage than on the evils of adultery.)

Studies of group psychology show that when people with similar views talk to one another, they end up at even more extreme positions. The very ability to choose - neighborhoods, cable TV stations, websites, churches - increases the risk that we will hear only those with whom we already agree.

As a result, the middle may be dropping out of American politics the same way it did from Protestant churches. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that those who attend religious services more than once per week voted Republican more than those who never attend religious services at all.

Notre Dame’s Campbell adds that, in interpreting these results, traditionalism may matter even more than church attendance. In 2004, for example, only 24 percent of the top quartile of modernists voted for Bush, compared to 84 percent of the highest quartile of traditionalists. Campbell concludes that in explaining the devotional divide “it is clearly traditionalism that makes the difference.”

Catholics as a group may accordingly be quite capable of reaching consensus views. The traditionalists who dominate Sunday mass and the modernists who have become less likely to attend church at all, however, are increasingly unlikely to talk to each other.

********************************************

I promised myself I would spend a lot of time this week thinking about this gulf between traditionalists and progressives. One of the common denominators in the pre Vatican II Church was that progressive questioning thinkers and traditionalist believers were pretty much placed in the same boat--"We were all going to hell". Hardly a one of us hadn't eaten meat on Friday or missed Mass on Sunday and so all those other buzz sins of today didn't hold anyone's attention. Didn't much matter how one earned their ticket to hell, it seemed we all had that ticket in common. That might have generated more camaraderie amongst us in that we were all equal in that going to hell respect.

I maintain we still are equal in that respect. I might not believe we are all going to hell, but I certainly believe we all have a ton of personal shadow stuff we haven't dealt with and that makes us all equal. I'd love to hear one bishop give a sermon on the truth about spiritual/psychological maturation. Here's the short version of that truth. Some people can find their security and faith in a very straight line, while others take a very circular path and can still return to find themselves behaving in a similar straight line--albeit for different reasons. It doesn't make those different reasons less Catholic than those reasons which appeal to the straight line types.

We used to have a Church that understood that. I don't know where that Catholicism went. It's no longer enough to practice Catholicism in union. Now it has to be practiced with the same mind set as if we all had the same experiences, education, family structure, natal culture, and language. Sadly, that's exactly the kind of Church Catholicism is becoming in the West. The numbers are reflecting this. Once the last of the centrists leave or, depending on one's point of view, forced out, the numbers will stabilize around 15% of the baptised Catholic population.

There's little question left that Benedict is counting on that remnant to take Catholicism into the future in the West and sustain the Church in the developing world. That's a heavy yoke. It also flies directly in the face of human progress which is relentlessly marching towards an understanding of our connectedness, not our separateness. In my estimation, this program of Benedict's is not Christ like. It is highly manipulative. It does not value the traditional mindset so much as it panders to it, in order to use it. And for some people, that works both ways.

This process is usually far more obvious in our current politics--see Republican party or Rahm Emanuel --than it is in our religious institutions, but that might be changing as well. I find it difficult to believe that even the most traditional of traditionalists thinks Eucharistic Adoration is an adequate form of Vatican repentance for the clerical sexual abuse scandal. (Sure is a lot cheaper though) Perhaps the Vatican has forgotten all those words from Jesus about not approaching the altar if one is not reconciled with one's accusers. Even John McCain understands he can't go forward without old enemy Mitt Romney.