By Bonnie Erbe
There's a raging debate about the state of the Catholic Church in America. Some Church officials still cling to the hope that massive influxes of recent immigrants will fill the pews left empty by more educated, fallen-away parishioners. But clearly the church has receded as a religious and cultural force, like a steroid-pumped bicep to a withering muscle.
The New York Times reports that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn plans to close two churches, fold six parishes into three and impose strict budget constraints on every one of its 198 parishes. This comes after a half-dozen waves of closings and mergers that left only about half as many Catholic elementary schools operating in Brooklyn as there were in the mid-1990s.
Clear signs point to an institution on the wane, with parishes going bankrupt nationwide. Those that continue face a shortage of leaders. The Reuters news agency reported in September that a sign outside St. James Church in the affluent Boston suburb of Wellesley summed up Catholicism's deepening struggles in the United States.
"Still searching for a priest," it reads. Another sign affixed to its thick doors pleads: "Save St. James."
Facing dwindling congregations, shifting demographics and a drain on cash from settling sexual abuse lawsuits, Roman Catholic churches are shuttering at a quickening pace in a traditional stronghold, the Northeast.
It's tempting to blame the priest pedophilia scandal and the Vatican's response to it for the church's collapse. Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reports nationwide 850 parishes have shut down since 1995. And the scandal has cost the church $2 billion in settlements with more to come.
Dogmatic, dictatorial churches do not resound with today's spirituality, and young people are not clamoring to join them. So sending a message that says, in essence, "Follow my rules or go to hell" might be a good way of retaining older parishioners used to such harsh boundaries. But as elderly parishioners die off, they take the church's message with them.
In a recent interview with the Associated Press, St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt said, "a shrinking Roman Catholic Church is no reason to consider a more liberal stance." He just announced his diocese would "close 21 churches to reflect churchgoers' move from urban areas to suburbia, declines in regular church attendance and an expectation of fewer new priests to replace those who retire or die."
At the same time, he defended his mailing anti-gay marriage DVDs to the area's 800,000 church-going Catholics, a tactic that angered many of them. Machiavellian diplomacy has never won followers. In case the church hierarchy has not already noticed, it's too late to return to the Middle Ages.
Church leaders blame shrinking parishes on a shortage of priests, in some cases. But making that argument is like blaming the hen for the egg. There would be no shortage of priests (or nuns, for that matter) if there weren't a shortage of congregants. And the nun shortage is particularly egregious, because their formerly free or cheap labor held down the price of the fabulous education provided by Catholic schools. Fewer children in Catholic schools will ultimately result in fewer adults staying with the Church.
Is it too late for the Church to turn around? As long as the Vatican forces priests to remain celibate, it will have an ever-greater shortage of priests in educated countries. And since Pope Benedict clearly looks to the past for spiritual guidance instead of referring to the past but simultaneously peering into the future, people who have choices will choose to leave.
Bonnie Erbe, a TV host, writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. Contact her at bonnieerbe@compuserve.com.
