Gone forever?

Today in The New York Times a story on the fluid religious life of Americans reports that “roughly 10 per cent of all Americans are former Catholics.” The Roman Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group. Only the influx of Catholic immigrants have kept the over all numbers of church membership the same. Every Catholic family knows this problem firsthand. Relatives and friends have defected in droves, or should we say more neutrally, “they have moved on.” But to what? No one is sure what is believed by the large group of no longer self-identifying Catholics. An older optimism might claim that “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” but I don’t think this is true any more. Returnees and later life reconciliations seem rare these days. The sex abuse crises seems to be a lethal blow to the Catholic allegiance of those who have left. It seems pretty clear that an older institutional model of the Roman Catholic Church is dying. Those of us still “hanging in” have to take solace in our resurrection faith: dying leads to new life. And now there is a new analogy to help in this period of travail and rebirth. I have just heard of “hospice theology.” This image points to the need to give up false hopes, nostalgia and denial in order to help a dying patient. In a hospice approach to death you reject hostile anger over loss and charitably, patiently work to ease the pain and suffering of the transition for all. Yes, this sounds like what we need right now. I wonder if others agree? Sidney Callahan