What's your bet regarding the future of the Church?

Dear Friends,

I honestly have to say I'm in two minds as to whether Professor Len Swidler is the fatal idealist and eternal optimist or whether this notion of greater democratic governnance of the Church will take hold. Last night a friend wrote me an interesting email that caused me to go back and examine my own predictions as to what is likely to happen to our Church. My honest bet at the moment is that the institution is going to continue to decline until only 5% are left participating. The chances of reform coming from within the leadership and internally within the Church are today almost zilch and declining even more rapidly that the numbers exiting the pews. In ten or twenty years we will be left with an institution basically composed of the remnant who sincerely believe they have all the answers and all the rest of the world are the sinners and the misguided ones with zero chance of salvation. There is simply no accountability structure within the entire institution other than everyone employed by the institution is trying to second-guess the mind of the pontiff and express their undying loyalty to him. For all practical purposes there is not even a lingering sense of accountability to God anymore — no sense it seems within the leadership that at some point they might be held accountable for their stewardship of the institution while this catastrophic decline has taken place over the last century or so.

I am not totally pessimistic though. I think what we are seeing now is the emergence of a parallel structure. I can only see that growing. It's not a "new religion" or denomination though. People are still attracted to a "Catholic way of thinking and perceiving and acting in the world" even if they believe, at the same time, that the likes of JPII and Benedict have got sidetracked from that vision and have been trying to lead us all up a garden path. I suspect that people will increasingly just ignore what the likes of Benedict and others in that mould are saying and, like they've now been doing for so long, they'll attempt to nut out the answers on their own and with the sort of commentators one finds these days on places like the ABC, BeliefNet, Eureka Street, America Magazine, The Tablet, NCR, even Catholica, and in the wealth of spiritual reading that commercial publishers are finding so lucrative today. There will be one difference in the future. Up until now most people have simply left without writing protest notes or setting up alternative structures to go to. The continued decline in the institution is now cutting into a sector of the population that takes their spiritual health far more seriously so we'll increasingly see more of these "alternative and parallel structures". Some day, presently far away in the future there will eventually be some "showdown" between the remnant and these "parallel structures" basically over who has the greater claim to the assets, the name and the claim to apostolic succession but I see it as still being a long way off. It is simply impossible to have a conversation with the 5% so people won't try. The people on the "search for truth" quest are not agressive people unlike those who are basically driven by the "search for certitude and authority figures". They're not going to fight the 5%. They'd prefer to just walk away even if temporarily it means handing over all the assets to the 5%. They figure it's simply not worth "getting your knickers in a knot about".

The only question that matters, it seems to me, is the bet we each make with our lives as to where our eternal salvation might reside: to stick with the "sinking ship" or to take to one of the life rafts that have begun to be lowered into the water in recent decades. In today's lead commentary Professor Swidler brings to a concludion his discussion on the five "Copernican turns" of the Second Vatican Council. <Click HERE to read Professor Swidler's commentary>

Best wishes for a great day wherever you happen to be ... in life or in our world!

Brian Coyne
Editor and Publisher