Still Running Off at the Keyboard

Forbes magazine published an article in September about an attempt by lay Catholics to help the Church reorganize and get on firm financial ground. That's a noble goal. But when I was interviewed for the piece, I was asked whether the answer to matters like declining vocations and declining attendance at Mass could be solved via "modern management techniques." This was not the answer. I said, "we need a return to orthodoxy."

Vocations and church attendance have to do with cultural matters, not managerial ones. The way to increase the numbers is to tap into the cultural reasons why some seminaries are doing well while others are not; it also makes sense to get a profile of those Catholics who attend Mass on a weekly basis.

Regarding vocations, Catholic World Report published an excellent article on the subject in July. Generally speaking, the smaller dioceses tend to be doing better than the larger dioceses, and the more orthodox dioceses tend to be doing better than the more progressive ones. Regarding the latter, Charles R. Morris found the same phenomenon to be true when he wrote his 1997 book, American Catholic: the more progressive the diocese, the less successful they were in attracting young men to the priesthood. Not surprisingly, the same pattern is evident among religious orders of priests and nuns: the more orthodox they are, the less problem they have in garnering new recruits.

It would be hard to find a more orthodox—and courageous—bishop in the nation than Fabian Bruskewitz, the bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. If orthodoxy sells, then he should be smiling. In fact, he's beaming: the ratio of Catholics to seminarians in Lincoln puts Bishop Bruskewitz at the top of the class—Lincoln has the best record of any diocese in the nation.

Progressive Catholics are certainly aware of such data, but it has had little effect on them. Take, for example, Peter Steinfels, the religion writer for the New York Times. Two years ago, he wrote a book warning that if the Church did not become more modern in its teachings, it would risk going south. This struck many orthodox Catholics as bizarre: hadn't the Church been going south for the past generation precisely because it became unhinged from its traditional moorings? So why would it want to compound the problem by going back to the same well that made us sick in the first place? Since Steinfels' book appeared, Joseph Ratzinger was named Pope Benedict XVI, thus ending the suspense about the future direction of the Catholic Church.

Continue reading...