On Institutions, Western Culture, and Spirituality

Speaking about lay movements in the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict's addressing of the spiritual state of Western Europe, Russell Shorto of the New York Times said in his article, "Keeping the Faith",

According to many observers, the lay movements substantially accounted for the unimagined numbers of mourners who poured into Rome. Data on declining church attendance obscure the fact that there is a good deal of spiritual hunger in Europe, but it is largely outside institutional religion, a phenomenon that the British sociologist Grace Davie calls “believing without belonging.” The Vatican is aware of this and says that the lay Catholic movements may represent a bridge, a way to bring the aimless, searching, largely secular Europeans back into the fold.

Msgr. Donald Bolen, an official with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told me that the lay movements “are movements of the Holy Spirit. The temptation in the church has long been to try to keep the parishes filled, to spend energy on maintenance. These movements are not about maintenance of old structures. But this isn’t a new thing. When Francis of Assisi started with his little band of disciples, some were confused. Movements within the church are not new.” The pope’s media spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, made much the same point to me: “The lay movements are a sign of life. The Vatican is not the whole church.”

But the problem is that the spiritual hunger that exists in Europe seems to be precisely for what the church can’t provide. Polls show that Europeans distrust institutions of all kinds. For an institution that is practically synonymous with hierarchy and control, the lay movements may represent as much a threat as a promise...

Benedict may be right that the Catholic Church has a world-historic chance to transform Europe and bring about change. But the church’s own strictures could work against that... “Think of the silencing of theologians in recent decades,” said Father Reese, the former editor of the Jesuit journal America. “The suppression of discussion and debate. How certain issues become litmus tests for orthodoxy and loyalty. All of these make it very difficult to do the very thing Benedict wants. I wish him well. I want him to succeed. But it seems everything he has done in the past makes it much more difficult to do it.”

A friend of mine living in Italy said that she felt like she has seen the possible future of Christianity and culture in the U.S. I saw some strikingly similar parallels as I read this article in the New York Times, confirming where it is that we are now in a post-Christian Western culture. Like mentioned in the quotes above, there is hope in the Spirit's work in the people, but there will be tension with the power structures of the institutional church to the extent that there are conflicting interests, both in the RCC and other denominations of the Christian church. It's really sad to me to see such power struggles. Though we must contend for the faith, it seems that many, once established as authorities on "the faith", contend for much more than that.

Like the last guy said, I really do want the Pope to succeed in helping Europe to move past postmodern secularism. I really do want the institutional church to succeed so far as it makes disciples of Jesus, but it seems that, like the Jews of Jesus' day, there are some systemic "logs" that will prevent the institutional church from being all that, in Christ, it could be.

Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus, make all things new.

"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me." (Jn 17:20)