Two churches, only one with a future

Nick Kristof has a fine op-ed at the New York Times, titled "A Church Mary can Love."  After noting the egalitarian quality of the early church, Kristof says that, today, there are two churches:

In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches. One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. To me at least, this church — obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice — is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized.

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.

One the one hand is the Roman Catholic Church of the heirarchy.  On the other hand is the Church on the ground--priests, nuns, laypeople who help the poor and lift up the lowly.  The former pronounces rules, the latter delivers grace and mercy.  The former is focused on Vatican I, which proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope.  The latter is formed by Vatican II, which opened the doors of the church to the world.

For the last forty years, the heirarchy of the Roman church has continually whittled away at the Vatican II reforms.  Right now, American nuns are being called on the carpet in two investigations because, basically, the heirarchy thinks they are too much in the spirit of Vatican II.  The conservative, more institutionally oriented Catholics, have cheered this retrenchment while the social justice wing has largely ignored it and kept on with what they were already doing--God bless 'em.

Most American Catholics are Vatican II Catholics.  A recent poll presented a sample of Catholics with twelve statements about the Christian faith and asked them to identify the statements with which they most identified personally.  The top two statements more frequently chosen were (1) the resurrection of Christ, and (2) helping the poor. 

Purdue Prof. James Davidson, noting that recent surveys show young Catholics focusing on social justice and equality for women and gays as "public markers of their religion," says that his research indicates that 80% of American Catholics identify with Vatican II.  It is this form of Catholicism--the social justice, Vatican II wing--which is the Catholicism of the future. 

 

Comments

[Andrew]

I think the same can be said for most church bodies. There's certainly the same division among Lutherans -- some prefer that the church maintain its ideological and dogmatic purity while others push for the church to move towards justice.

(And, one can go even further and note that, in the ELCA, the justice-oriented Lutherans seem to be directing the church more than the purity-oriented Lutherans. The opposite is true for the LCMS).

So, this seems to me to be a trend among all church bodies, not just the Catholics. Any thoughts?

[John Petty]

Good observation. This is a bit of an advantage for the ELCA. The "purity party" is pretty much located in the LCMS.

You're right that this difference of perspective is in most Christian traditions. For the RCC, it comes into sharper relief because of clear markers--Vatican II on the one hand, and John Paul/Benedict on the other.