Where Have All the Catholics Gone?

Catholics have been leaving the Church in droves for a long time now. At a recent mass at my parish church, St. Mary's in Painesville, Ohio, I asked my wife why the pews are so empty. It's like that almost everywhere we go (except last Sunday at the outdoor mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in Euclid, Ohio, where we attend mass in the summertime). This is such a contrast with church attendance in my childhood.

At St. William's in Euclid in the 1950s and 1960s, there were so many masses: 5:45 AM, 7:00, 8:15, 9:30, 11:00, and 12:15 PM. Later there was a Saturday mass and a Sunday evening mass. The church was so overflowing that there were two basement masses at the same time mass was held in the main church. And Catholics came to church no matter the weather (and I still do!). Even in bitter cold and snow the church would be full. Often people were standing in the aisles and in the back of the church.

So many things have happened in the past 50-60 years that have undermined the authority of the church. The sexual abuse of children, mostly by priests and religious brothers (really a very very small minority of religious--who have done enormous and lasting damage); physical and emotional abuse by some nuns in Catholic schools (again, just a handful were abusive, but I saw the beaqtings with my own eyes); changing conceptions of serious sin (we thought we'd go to hell for missing mass--no kidding).

There are other reasons--no one thing can explain the decline in church attendance. In many ways, the church has failed parishioners. Catholics have put up with bad liturgy and very bad homilies for the longest time--but now people are voting with their feet.

Secular society is often blamed for the decline of the Church. There may be truth in that idea, but I think it's mostly an excuse. Somehow the Church hasn't addressed the wants and needs of people for meaning. Personally, the over-focus on certain sins and the lack of focus on social justice has alienated me from some churches (that's why 10 years ago or so we left our Church in Chardon and started attending St. Mary's in Painesville. The first time there they mentioned their prison ministry, their work with the homeless and hungry, their work with Latino refugees and immigrants--and I was hooked. Four years ago we started actively participating in the Karpos Ministry to the Homeless and Hungry. This cemented our commitment to St. Mary's. We still put up with a lot of poor liturgies and homilies. But we have outstanding music and a vibrant parish life.

People want a deep engagement with the Truth, with the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. Our Catholic Churches have to offer this to people. We have to stop being so judgmental about divorce, about birth control. Sometimes the church needs to listen to the voice of the people. We have to give women a much bigger role. I still don't understand the arguments against women in the priesthood. I believe that will change some day, and we'll look back on the old days like we look back on slavery now.

One thing people don't realize is how much will be lost by abandoning the Church. Centuries, millennia, of culture, wisdom, goodness. That can't be replaced by things, by pop culture, by technology. Please don't abandon the Church. Instead, try to make it better. And to the Church: don't abandon the people! Make changes, and do it quickly before another generation of Catholics is lost.

Two Poems for Thomas Merton's 100th Birthday

Thomas Merton Follows the Spirit into Flesh

In the mid 1960s, you, Thomas Merton, most famous Catholic in America.

Convert, poet, celibate monk, famous author of

Seven-Storey Mountain and so many books on spirituality--nobody

Thought you an ordinary man, but you were not fooled.

So it didn’t surprise you when you fell in love with your nurse

When hospitalized in Louisville--for a bad back and an aching

Spirit. You fell like a 17-year-old boy, which in a way you were

(and that’s one reason we loved you!). And you ached to kiss her,

Wanted her hand on your chest, wanted to love her fully, knew you were “in deep.”

The Spirit moves in ways no one can predict,

And you tried to follow Her, embrace the grace,

See where it would bring you both

Together.

[Bob Coughlin / June 21, 2014]

Thomas Merton Burns M.’s Letters

You, Thomas Merton, who so carefully made carbon copies of all your correspondence,

Gathered your letters to M

And hers to you,

And out behind the Hermitage

Lit the flame--as if they were trash

(Or maybe something holy and sacramental--

that could only be disposed of by sacred fire).

These letters displayed your humanity

writ large and bold,

but contradicted the Abbott’s orders

and made clear the ambivalence in your own heart:

The need to be held, to kiss, to be touched, to touch--

for a while trumped vows made to an abstract Church

and an invisible God.

The fire consumed the precious words on paper,

but what of the words written on your heart,

on M’s heart? O Thomas Merton.

[Bob Coughlin / July 2, 2014]

Catholicism: A Big, Wide-Open Heart?

I attended mass at St. John Vianney's parish in Mentor, Ohio yesterday and the celebrant was a Jesuit missionary from Nepal (with the co-celebrant his Jesuit Nepalese superior).

During the homily the priest mentioned encountering a man in Nepal who asked him what his religion was. When Father responded, "I am a Catholic," the man put his hands near his heart, then extended them out as wide as possible, as if to say, "Your Church is the Church of the big, wide-open heart." I felt my eyes suddenly well up with tears--grateful that this Nepalese man had encountered Catholics who made him think so highly of our Church; and saddened that that so many bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes of late have made our church seem quite the opposite--a small-hearted, mean-spirited church, full of angry rules and boundaries.

I remembered Pope John XXIII and the great Catholic parish priests and even some bishops of my lifetime who believed in the big, wide-open-heart Church. And I wept thinking this Church seems to be disappearing.

Final Thoughts on Bishop Lennon's Closing of Churches in the Dioces of Cleveland

I have been an active, practicing Catholic for 6 decades. My family has been Catholic probably from the days of St. Patrick and St. Brendan in Ireland, some 1500 to 1600 years! I attended Catholic grade school, St. William's, high school, St. Joe's, and college, the University of Notre Dame. I have continued to read on theological and religious issues my entire adult life. In other words, I have some level of authority to talk about my Church, a Church I love and treasure.

I think a stealth effect of Bishop Richard Lennon's closing of 50+ parishes (some historic treasures!) is a loss of faith in the structure of the Church. To think that bishop has the power to arbitrarily do such a thing, with no need to consult, no real mechanism to appeal, no checks and balances to his enormous power. It is as if the bishop is a feudal prince. It is said all the time that the Church is no democracy. Wow, that is an understatement! It strikes me that the Church is un-American, so contrary to many of our core values. Again, I know that the Church does not have to be American. Really, it should be better than America, more just, better behaved, more principled. The Church is no democracy, but during mass today, with attendance so stunningly sparse that our pastor commented on it in the homily, I wonder if people are voting with their feet.

I fear for the future of the Church that I love.

5th Anniversary of the Cruel War

Today, March 19, 2008, marks the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War--with no end in sight. There have been news reports claiming that John McCain says we could stay in Iraq fighting for a hundred years. I remember when the news announced the invasion on March 19, 2003. As a longtime Catholic, I thought, "The tragedy of it--invading a country, starting a war on the Feast of St. Joseph." It was a slap in the face to Pope John Paul II, who begged Bush not to prosecute this war; worse, it was a slap in the face to Catholics and to all people who believe in war as the absolutely last resort (a basic tenet of Just War Theory).

Think of the costs of this war--in human lives and health, in treasure, and in moral authority. Bush and his cronies have undermined the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they have allowed and justified human torture; they have fought the first American preemptive war of choice (think of Pearl Harbor!); and they have spent an incredible amount of American treasure, estimated right now up to a half trillion dollars (that would be $500,000,000,000)--with no end in sight. A recent article in Vanity Fair says that a conservative estimate of the cost of this war is 3 trillion dollars! Bush did this without raising taxes, an action that was extraordinarily deceptive, and one that is fueling inflation and economic chaos.

This war has lasted longer than World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. When will it end? How will our Constitution, Bill of Rights, moral authority, and US treasure ever be restored? The lives lost, the lives in ruin!

Here's a poem for the occasion. Forgive the pre-Vatican II Latin:


"On the Feast of St. Joseph, 2008"

(The 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War)


Miserere, Domine, Miserere Nobis

Spare us O Lord though
We hardly deserve your mercy.

My soul is the gloom sky, the bitter
Rain the long hunger of March.

The crucifixion clouds our minds
The scourging the mocking
The crowning with bitter
Thorns

The death, the blood, white charnel house of bone
Smithereens, Our soul our country!

Parce Domine, Parce Populo Tuo!
Spare, O lord, spare your people

Bring us to peace
Though we hardly deserve it.

Miserere, Domine, Miserere Nobis.

(Robert M. Coughlin
March 19, 2008)

Being a Catholic?

My personal identity involves so many dimensions: being a husband, a father, a teacher, a Catholic, an Irish-American, and the like. I want to reflect a bit on the Catholic part of my identity [much more on this coming soon].

A great article on Catholic identity, by Regina Brett, appeared in today's Plain Dealer. Here's a link to that article: http://www.cleveland.com/brett/index.ssf?/base/opinion-0/120565780860950.xml&coll=2

March Blizzard; Sunday Mass at St. Mary's in Painesville

Two feet of snow fell over most of Ohio from Friday to Sunday. Saturday was "all blizzard, all the time." For the first time in recent memory, I didn't leave the house. There wouldn't have been anywhere to get to anyway because malls closed, restaurants closed, and many roads were impassable. It was glorious--the only flaw is that the timing was not right for snow days, so the school teachers and school children didn't get their most fervent wish.

Sunday morning I got up early and cranked up my snowblower and got to work. I had left my car near the end of my driveway, but it still took tremendous effort to clear a path to get out to the road. We were finally able to get the car out and headed to Sunday mass. Catholics go to Sunday mass no matter what; there are no excuses. Masses are never cancelled and real Catholics go under almost every circumstance.

It was a glorious Sunday morning, sun shining, snow deep, gleaming, pure white. We navigated our way to St. Mary's Church in Painesville (not our regular church), where the parking area was mostly cleared and gigantic piles of snow lined the edges of the lot.

Fr. Vellenga had the mass. Linda and I sat in our usual corner, what I call the "cult corner" of the church. There you find the infant of Prague statue, the painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and an impossibly ugly plaster statue of St. Patrick, holding the bishop's staff, day-glow green misshapen shamrock in another hand, and three snakes being crushed under his foot, their mouths open, fangs exposed. We love this little corner of the church, and gloried in the March 9th sun pouring in through the ancient stained-glass windows. At the communion, the choir began to sing "I am the Bread of Life," with its magnificent chorus, "And I will raise you up, I will raise you up, I will raise you up on the last day." The soaring chorus brought tears to my eyes as I remembered this song being sung at my Mom's funeral in this very church in December of 2003, and at my father's funeral at St. William's Church in April of 1997.

We don't exactly understand the mysteries of Heaven and of Resurrection. but we believe in them, believe in a time of being reunited with our parents, family, and friends.

If you arent't familiar with the hymn "I am the Bread of Life," here are some links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCeXk45IHzs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6MgOyFfUHE&feature=related