Within the solemnity of personal faith and public ritual, a grand and dynamic debate between traditionalism and cultural relevance has been under way in the Catholic Church since the 1960s.
More often about discipline than doctrine, the issues cover profound territory, from the role of women to optional celibacy for priests, from artificial birth control and abortion to involvement of the laity in the selection of church leaders.
Although the modern questioning began with the increased role of the laity after the Second Vatican Council, the loss of the conciliatory Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and the waning years of John Paul II’s strict papacy might signal a time for more prickly arguments among the Catholic laity.
Dissession is found worldwide, but many of the arguments are framed in particularly American or democratic terms. The questioning of church authority in Chicago, with its century-old reputation for innovation and dissent, reflects topics present to some degree in every archdiocese in America.
At the heart of dissension within the church is a not-so-simple question: To whom does God speak?
Does truth filter down only from appointed leaders or does everyone have unmediated access to divine wisdom? If the latter is true, then should the church be more democratic, especially when dealing with contemporary issues?
For many Catholics, the pope is the intermediary between God and the church: Violating the pope’s edicts, they believe, is nothing short of violating God’s will. But others increasingly feel that although the pope is the undisputed head of the church, everything he says is not beyond dispute. They believe there can be a broader interpretation of doctrine–beyond the pope’s pronouncements–to lead a life pleasing to God.
The church under this model is not a hierarchical pyramid with the pope at the top, but a series of concentric circles that allow priests and laity a measure of authority along with the bishops and the Vatican.
At the same time that dissenters at one end of the spectrum are pushing for more institutional change, other members believe the church has changed too rapidly and forcefully in the last three decades–more so than any time in the last three centuries.
Many of these Catholics are perturbed at the inclusion of what they consider pedestrian and politically correct-language in their prayers and songs, at loose, relativistic teaching from the pulpit and at a leadership that seems too willing to succumb to the pull of compromise.
Traditional values
A snapshot of such conservative challengers can be seen among the worshipers at St. John Cantius Church, a West Side congregation of traditional, ritually reverent believers who do not consider themselves dissenters exactly but whose views are seen as out of step with the mainstream of American Catholicism.
Inside the baroque symmetry of the parish church, the central mystery and ceremony of the Catholic Church is spoken in the same form and language established after the Council of Trent nearly 450 years ago.
Among the hundreds of worshipers under the brown and gold murals of St. John’s are those who see themselves as adherents to the unchanging church. They embrace the form and disciplines that prevailed until after Vatican II. In the wooden pews, men finger their rosaries and women wear hats or lacy mantillas to cover their heads, just as they did in the 1950s.
For them, the ethnic parish built as a symbol of a united and triumphant church in the neighborhood once called Polish Patch is now an enclave of orthodoxy and tradition in Chicago’s vast geography of change.
“There is a sense of mystery and tradition and sacredness,” said Elizabeth Rhea, a 25-year-old lawyer who attends weekly services at St. John Cantius. “Outward symbols reflect how we believe inside. It’s not a nostalgia thing. It’s a hungering for somebody to tell us something.”
Which is why Rhea, who is the oldest of seven children and attended Catholic school in Kansas City, sought out a parish that adhered to traditional rituals when she moved to Chicago.
Rhea believes Christ set up the Catholic Church as a stable and lasting institution. “If you believe that, you’re not gonna say, `Well, it’s just not hip with our times . . .’ and then try to change everything.”
Change is good–maybe
Vivian Williams, 48, has an almost directly opposite view. Like millions of other Catholics, Williams, who has never left the Far South Side community of Beverly where she grew up, has chosen to stay in the church and speak out for change. “It’s a living, breathing church,” she explained. “The day it stops changing is the day it’s dead.”
Although the number of public activists on either side is small and splintered, numbering only in the hundreds or few thousands, their strident and intransigent debates on issues from abortion to liturgy were serious enough to prompt Bernardin to invest his last months in the Common Ground project to create a dialogue within the church.
Moreover, the dissent that comes from both ends of the Catholic spectrum is not only a challenge to the current structure but will also have an influence on a third and significantly larger group.
Whether they call themselves lapsed or fallen away, or C and E–Christmas and Easter– Catholics, the number who do not express their belief at weekly mass is significant. On any weekend, according to annual attendance surveys, only about 560,000 of the 2.3 million Catholics in the Chicago archdiocese attend mass.
“If I were going to church and actively practicing, could I be a better person than I am right now? I don’t really think so,” said Jon Ehrenstrom, 37, a Chicago police officer who has just begun practicing law.
Ehrenstrom is Williams’ brother. But unlike his sister, he has no use for the church–at least not now.
Though raised by the same parents with the same strict belief in Catholic ceremony and education, he said attending mass was never “a comfortable experience,” probably because he was forced to attend church from an early age.
Ehrenstrom, who is married and has two small children, said his boys were baptized Catholic, more out of family obligations than religious. He added, however, that if his children were not baptized, “it would make me nervous, and I’m not exactly sure why.”
For him, boredom–and not church teachings–pried him away from the church. “I just never got it. I never really felt like I understood what was going on. I never felt this was a spiritual community-type thing my sister talks about.”
Indeed, Ehrenstrom does not rule out the church completely. “I absolutely refuse to preclude a time in the future when I might need it,” he said. “Maybe that’s unfair of me, being a fair-weather fan.”
Social scientists have discovered that maybe 2 to 3 percent say they could see themselves as totally leaving the church.
Terry Mueller counts herself in that minority. At the age of 39, she still has a scary image of God. She said from early childhood the message she got from the church was that she faced a legion of obstacles to get to heaven.
“In the Catholic religion, the higher power was frightening,” Mueller said. “I was just scared to death I wasn’t gonna follow the rules and God was not gonna love me.”
Others have experienced the church in disappointing ways.
Eileen O’Sullivan, 31, broke away from the church about five years ago after a friend suffered a tragedy. Desperate for help, O’Sullivan, a single mother of two, said she went to a church rectory in the middle of the night and was mistaken for a homeless indigent by a priest and told to seek help elsewhere.
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She never returned to the church and subsequently pulled her boys out of Catholic school. “I felt I was turned away when I went back for answers,” O’Sullivan said.
While dissenters who walk away lose their voice, dissenters who remain tend to be very vocal and committed. The most orthodox and traditional are active and faithful churchgoers, as are the most ardent liberal dissenters.
Not that dissent is uncommon within the church.
From the time of the Apostles, when Paul challenged Peter and prevailed in taking the message to gentiles as well as Jews, there have been disagreements. Early church councils were rent by ecclesiastical fussing.
Although dissent produced schisms and the Protestant Reformation, Catholicism has thrived over the centuries in the face of persecution and internal dissent.
Since the late 1960s, it has been the discontented laity in the United States whose numbers have mushroomed.
“There was a sense of security in the old, pre-Vatican II church. Everybody knew exactly what the rules were and how to behave,” recalled John Lennan, a priest who teaches doctrinal theology at Catholic Theological Union, the seminary at the University of Chicago.
The watershed of dissent came in 1968 after Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which affirmed earlier birth-control prohibitions, despite the recommendations of a respected panel of experts assembled by the Vatican.
Those who disagree with specific teachings, yet do not feel cut off from the church, are likely to be described as “cafeteria Catholics” for picking and choosing what they want to believe and disbelieve.
Although the more orthodox prefer to make their traditionalist arguments on ideological and historical grounds, they are concerned that the church not drift from its primary mission, that it keep its focus not as a social-service agency but as a repository of faith and eternal truth.
“If the church was to start compromising itself on teachings of doctrine and morality, I don’t think that it would be Catholic,” suggested Rhea, who graduated from the University of Notre Dame Law School. “It would no longer be faithful to its mission . . . which is to save souls and to preach the truth.”
The Chicago archdiocese is regarded not only as the most American but often the most contentious. Even when the legendary Cardinal George Mundelein was sent here in 1915, according to the authors of “Catholicism, Chicago Style,” his first task was to impose discipline on a group of unruly priests.
Among conservative Catholics, William Fairman, 67, leader of a local chapter of Catholics United for the Faith, represents some of those who insist there is no room for dissent.
“You can’t really dissent from the teachings of the church, whether it’s on matters of morality or faith,” Fairman said. “If you do, once you deny that, you’ve broken away from the church. You may call yourself a Catholic, you may have been baptized a Catholic, you may even go to church once in a while . . . (but) you’ve pulled yourself out. You don’t lose your faith. You give it up, effectively. You cannot be a dissenter in that sense and be a member of the church.
“As I always say, if it’s only the pope and us, that’s it. That’s the church as far as I’m concerned.”
An awakening
Mary Grace Williams wouldn’t say she lost her faith but that the church lost her.
The epiphany began with hair.
For almost a year, Williams, then a 28-year-old religious instructor, had helped prepare three preteen students for their baptism at St. Joseph’s Church in New York City. Every week, they talked about the Bible and Catholic tradition and the presence of God.
Days before the big event, two girls confided that they were going to the beauty parlor and were worried that the priest might ruin their hair with the baptismal water.
So when the pastor looked in on their rehearsal, Williams advised him on what prayers he should read, where he should stand–and to be careful with the hair.
Suddenly, as Williams was explaining this to the pastor, she realized, “This doesn’t make sense!”
She had been the children’s teacher. She had developed a relationship with them, “and yet, when it comes time to do the sacramental part of the program, I’m told to stand off to the side.”
Ultimately, Williams left the Catholic Church, frustrated by the limitations it imposes on women. Today, the 42-year-old divorced mother–she adopted a Chinese girl three years ago–is an Episcopal priest at St. John the Evangelist Church in Flossmoor.
Williams’ dissent is an extraordinary example, yet her voice is among many who find themselves at odds with the institutional leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.
Dissent also is present in the demure existence of “small faith communities,” whose members choose to worship not in geographical parishes but with like-minded Catholics. The communities exist in a more institutional form in Catholic universities throughout the United States, where theologians often are willing to proclaim their latest disagreement with the Vatican.
Jon Nilson, associate professor of theology at Loyola University Chicago, said the relationship between the theological community and the church in Chicago is quite good, largely because of Bernardin’s style. Theologians in Chicago, Nilson said, saw the cardinal as a partner. “We are devastated,” he said of Bernardin’s death, “because he was so concerned to develop collaboration and mutual respect.”
In Beverly, parishioners are trying to attract Catholics who have lost their faith or just left it. On one recent Tuesday evening at St. John Fisher Church, a storm that knocked out the lights did not stop the faithful from proceeding.
Parishioners lighted candles for the “homecoming,” a term chosen for its neutrality as much as for its welcoming attitude.
Vivian Williams talked quietly to the handful who had ignored the storm, discussing those hurt by rudeness or bad advice from a priest, about guilt and forgiveness.
The Catholic teacher addressed everyone sitting in the candle-lit semicircle and welcomed their questions about coming back to the faith.
An active member of her parish, Williams also is a member of We Believe, which promotes inclusive language and open dialogue in the church. The group’s position, she said, is: “Let’s be sensible. There has to be some change.”
Williams sees dissent as positive. “I see it as birth pains,” she said. “I see it as labor. I think you can’t have newness, you can’t have renewal or you can’t have change unless there’s pain.”
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THE SERIES
DAY 1: The Vatican’s global challenge.
DAY 2: Protestant inroads in Latin America.
DAY 3: Africa offers opportunity.
DAY 4: Recruiting and keeping new priests.
DAY 5: Poland and the limits of church power.
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DAY 6: The changing American church.
DAY 7: Inside the Chicago archdiocese.
DAY 8: Life and doubt at the seminary.
DAY 9: The lop-sided world of Catholic schools.
DAY 10: Catholic hospitals’ spiritual battle.
DAY 11: Stories of dissent and departure.
DAY 12: The changing face of one parish.