Caught between the uncertainties created by the global economic situation in the secular world and the certainties of an institutional Church leadership that seems hell-bent on making our Church totally irrelevant in the lives of the great majority of the baptised, in some ways it's not a time of great joy. In this editorial though, Brian Coyne argues there is cause for hope as we face the future...

An occasion to celebrate...

During the week just gone much ado was made about the first 100 days of the Presidency of Barack Obama. Today we have reason to celebrate at Catholica because we are today celebrating our 1,000th edition. There are scores of people who need to be thanked for their support in helping us reach this milestone — those who have contributed so much of their time, skill and energy contributing commentaries and posts on the Catholica forum who attracted the readership without which an endeavour like this would not exist. There are also the people who have supported us financially and enabled us to cover our technical overheads and gradually expand out outreach through promotion in other media.

This time reminds me of a number of interviews I conducted with Dr Peter Tannock over the years following his progress with the establishment of the University of Notre Dame. On each occasion I interviewed him he was sanguine and not at all cocky that he had yet succeeded. He saw his "baby" as some kind of gangly adolescent still some distance from maturity. I have similar feelings with regard to our endeavour even if it is a lot less ambitious in scope than building an entire university from scratch.

A time to re-examine our hope and goals...

What I would like to focus on in today's editorial is our hopes and aspirations for Catholica. I do know our goals have changed a little since we started partly as a result of changes going on in the institution (or not going on in some respects); partly as a result of changes going on in wider society that we pick up in the feedback coming from our commentators and posters to our forum; and also because of factors outside our control such as the significant changes going on in the economic outlook.

In brutal honesty, when we started I am certain our hope was to establish some kind of outreach to the more educated sectors of the 85% of the population who have drifted out of regular partication in the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. While I had endeavoured to mount a number of earlier efforts from within the institutional structure and been rebuffed — and perhaps I should have learned my lessons then — when we started Catholica I still had hope, given all the talk of evangelisation and re-evangelisation that goes on within the institution, that eventually someone might twig that it might be something of a worthy endeavour for someone to be trying to make such an outreach. My views have changed today. After three years of Benedict's reign, I think the writing is now pretty clear that, at the highest levels, the institution cares diddly squat whether everybody leaves — apart from that small "we are loyal to the magisterium" Colonel Blimp demographic who believe they are the only ones in the entirety of civilisation who have "all the answers"; who believe they alone are going to be "saved"; and who believe they alone can read the mind of Almighty God. One hardly needs all the signs as to who gets preference for promotion, preferment and employment within the institution, and what sort of evangelisation and re-evangelisation programs get support at the highest levels, or what sort of liturgical ideas are favoured, to appreciate that today everything is geared to taking institutional Catholicism back to a Tridentine mindset in theology, morality, religiosity, and the liturgical and devotional styles that are going to be endorsed at the official level. If people don't agree with those directions they can effectively "go to hell" it seems in the minds of those who presently set the agenda for institutional Catholicism at the highest levels. I, like many, simply no longer have any confidence that the spiritual direction discerned by the people like Pope Benedict who lead the Church is either what the Holy Spirit is pointing towards, nor do I have confidence that it leads to personal salvation or in the short, medium or long term will lead to a re-vitalisation of Catholicism.

Others in the media have made the observation that it is not just the ordinary faithful and many of the priests who are deeply demoralised today, the affliction is now reaching into the ranks of the bishops as well. Many have "gone silent" and seem to now be just "serving out their time" in a sense of abject frustration that nothing anybody says, or does, is going to make the slightest difference with the small gaggle who effectively control the international agenda of where institutional Catholicism is heading. There are simply today no indicators on the ecclesial horizon whatsoever that anybody at the highest levels gives a damn about the slide in participation amongst the ordinary faithful let alone the crisis in training and providing the priests, pastors and spiritual guides that are going to be required within the space of one more generation, if not a decade. The leadership seem not just resigned to the unwelcome possibility of the Church becoming some kind of remnant of Tridentine Fundamentalists, they seem to want to positively encourage that outcome out of some sense of belief that only the Tridentine Fundamentalists can recognise "truth" and are capable of discerning the will of God.

A vastly altered social and spiritual landscape...

The social and spiritual landscape has altered radically in the last three years. One can today visibility sense hope evaporating in the lives of those who knew the vibrancy of Catholicism in the 1970s and 1980s in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. While the rhetoric used by the conservatives and emotionally insecure who set the agenda is always that the reform of the reforms they are introducing are to take the Church back to the "true spirit" of the Second Vatican Council only fools are deluded by those words. The reform of the reform underway at the moment is designed to take Catholicism back to a Tridentine mindset and spirit of governance. It is an abrogation and total contradiction of the direction discerned by the great majority of bishops who assembled in Rome for that historic Council in the 1960s under the leadership of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. One can only shake one's head in disbelief watching what has been happening and wonder what the Three Persons of the Trinity might think of all this in relation to the command of Jesus Christ for his followers to go out and makes disciples of ALL people.

In a sense then the social and spiritual landscape has become both more clear and less clear since we started Catholica. What is more clear is the direction in which the institutional leadership is intent on leading Catholicism — to a remnant status of Tridentine Fundamentalism. What is less clear are the spiritual and religious options available for everyone else — the presently 86%, and more than likely already edging towards 90% — who are left "out in the cold" with the figurative crumbs dropping from the tables of those presently swaning around the world absorbed in protecting "the faith of the little people" against the power of the intellectuals.

Not losing hope...

Where does that leave us? How has it affected the hopes and aspiration we had when we started Catholica? I have not lost hope. What is unmistakably in the air of Creation today is a new spiritual vibrancy. More than at any previous period in our lives, the media is filled with stories that are in some way connected with the spiritual dimension of our existence. In the wake of the vacuum created by the exit of the institutional religious leaders even caring about the needs of the 86 or 90% (the figure is already in the realms of 90% amongst young people — who ought be the "hope" for any Church of the future) it is blindingly obvious today that new secular forms of liturgy are springing up to replace the religious liturgies of yesterday.

Rather than living in hope for the hopes of the Second Vatican Council to be realised today the sense I pick up amongst "the many" is a gathering sense of hope in whatever is going to arise to fill the vacuum. It is still too early to discern where the Spirit seems to be taking all this — self-evidently it is not in the direction of responding to the desperate pleading prayers for vocations that have been offered up by the remnant element, and the rest of us, for decades now. Nature abhors a vacuum — and so does human society.

The vast majority of the educated, intelligent people I meet who have now dropped out of participation in the sacramental life of the institutional church are not radical libertines and totally uncaring of tradition and the accumulated wisdom of the ages. They are not seeking some libertarian, nihilistic or anarchistic alternative to the strictures of religion. They are people, many of them who have brought up families through to adulthood and who have far better understanding of the needs of tomorrow's generations than any of these celibate, ecclesial leaders who have never had the 24/7, 20 year+ relentless responsibility for bringing up their own children through to adulthood. They seek stability for their families. They crave to provide their offspring with a holistic outlook on life that embraces all four of the dimensions of our existence — the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual. They hunger for adult spirituality though, not some kindergarten-level spiritual outlook that was out of date before the Second Vatican Council in the generations of their parents and grandparents.

The sense I pick up from many who have become disenchanted under the direction forged by Pope Benedict and his predecessor is that they are not calling for the Protestantisation of Catholicism as some of the Catholic fundamentalists claim. We want a Church that seeks to shake off the cobwebs and the false religiosity that became attached to Jesus and his messages down through the centuries and, as discerned collectively by the bishops of the world at the Second Vatican Council, we seek a leadership and spiritual guides who will take us not back to some intermediate point like the Council of Trent, but will take us right back to the roots of Christianity and help us again discern the original and authentic vision of Jesus Christ.

Drawing on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit...

My sense is that collectively we need to draw on those great Gifts of the Holy Spirit in this time of unclear direction. We need to be patient as we watch what unfolds. We need to be bearers of wise counsel to one another. We need to have courage and fortitude. We need to be temperate in our ambitions and hopes. We need to ensure our own actions are constantly characterised by justice and prudence. We need to at all times act with charity and while our needs might not have been listened to we do respect that those who love the traditions and want to access their understanding of God and the spiritual objective of life through more archaic styles of liturgy and language they do have a right to worship, pray and think in their favoured way just so long as they don't endeavour to impose their views on everybody else by legislative and other forms of force. We need to develop an adult, mature sense of piety towards the Sacred and to ultimately maintain our sense of awe and wonder of God which is encouraged as the seventh gift of the Spirit. We don't live in fear of the Lord in the sense of school children of old who lived in fear and trembling of the headmaster who might punish them if they were naughty. Our sense of fear of the Lord needs to be developed more in the direction of continual awe and wonder at the breathtaking qualities of mercy, love, intelligence and justice with which we discern our Creator-God looks on Creation and each of us who can choose to be agents for the Divine in the outworking of Creation. Our "fear" has to be a fear of ourselves rather than a fear of our God. A fear that we cannot measure up to and ourselves exhibit the kind of mercy, love, intelligence and justice that our Creator models for us through the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, and which we are invited to emulate in our own lives.

Can I close this editorial by again extending thanks on behalf of Amanda and myself for the support you have provided us by way of creative input or as readers and subscribers to the input of ourselves and all who contribute by way of commentaries, conversations on the forum and the less tangible inputs that help us create a sense of real community providing moral support to one another during this long period where the institution itself seems to have become less caring of our spiritual needs and the spiritual needs of our children.

Brian Coyne
Editor

Amanda McKenna and Brian Coyne
Founders & Publishers of Catholica

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