How will we be judged for our stewardship of the Church?

John Allen has written an interesting column in the current issue of National Catholic Reporter in which he challenges the notion that the Catholic Church is in decline. His commentary though deserves challenge on a number of fronts.

The broad argument that Allen presents is that statistically the Church is undergoing massive expansion in "the South" - the undeveloped regions of the world at the same time as it has been experiencing massive decline in "the West". Let me quote just three paragraphs that sum up his argument:

Between 1970 and 1985, to take just one index, some 4,300 people a day were leaving Christian churches in Europe and North America. Over the same period, there were 16,500 conversions to Christianity a day in Africa, yielding an annual growth of some 6 million new African Christians. In Roman Catholicism, more than half of all adult baptisms in the world, generally considered the most reliable indication of conversions, are in Africa alone.

Moreover, the new growth in Africa and Asia, and to some extent in Latin America, is not merely replicating pre-existing European patterns of faith and practice. Instead, it's creating myriad new forms of Christianity as the faith mingles with indigenous customs and concepts. Experts have described this as the most important cultural transformation in Christianity since the period of Hellenization launched by St. Paul.

In other words, the central challenge for world Catholicism at the moment is not decline, but growth, and making sense of the new interactions between faith and culture this growth is generating.

What I find unclear in Allen's argument is, precisely, what sort of Church he envisages in terms of its core objectives. Is the Church merely some "global empire" seeking to have more "believers" than any other faith? Or is this an institution which is seeking to discern a particular set of values and an ultimate "truth" as to what this entire religious quest is about?

If the endeavour of building the Catholic Church can be likened to some endeavour not dissimilar to assembling the largest football club of all time then, indeed, the "Good News" John Allen brings is indeed "good". There is much to celebrate.

One wonders though what exercises Pope Benedict's mind when he surveys this sea of faces from his balcony in Rome and then retires to his chapel to consult with the Almighty who surveys all this from an even higher vantage point? What, precisely, are we trying to build here? What, precisely, are we trying to teach all these people? What, precisely, are we endeavouring to lead all these people to?

Elsewhere in his column, Allen criticizes the argument I often put forward:

[T]here is sometimes a smug Western assumption that the dynamism of the church in the developing world is ephemeral, and that as Africa, Asia and Latin America develop economically they will experience the same secularism as the global North. It's an untested assumption, and one that many Christians in the South bitterly resent.

In this I think Allen misses the point. It is not the economic development in the West that has largely led to the demise of Catholicism in our sector of the world along the lines that people have been sucked out of the Church by the allures of affluence and secularism. The more potent force in the West had been a changing worldview brought about by universal education and the capacity of the population in the West to think for themselves. That is the process that will eventually also be transferred to the South. It is education, not economic affluence that poses the greater challenge for the traditional hegemony that Catholicism has exercised over human culture.

If Catholicism is seen, or presented by those who lead it, as some religious endeavour offering to exchange one set of superstitious beliefs for some kind of superior set of superstitious beliefs then it may well be able to capture some short term political gain in numbers. The ultimate test of Catholicism though is not some "political" numbers game. It is a test as to whether she can lead people to the ultimate "truth" - to an understanding of the meaning of our lives as close as possible to the meaning of our lives as understood by the One whom Benedict consults when he retreats into the privacy of his chapel.

None of us, ultimately, are going to be judged on how many individuals we induced to mouth the words "I believe", or even with what scrupulosity we were able to mouth the words "I believe" ourselves. The evaluation of our lives is more likely to be based on how effective our endeavours were in leading the world, and our individual selves, into understanding the meaning of our lives as seen through the eyes of the Only One to whom we are all ultimately subservient - and accountable.

John Allen's original column can be found at:
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/

Tom Scott is the pen name of the editor of Catholica, Brian Coyne.

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