Is this is an effort to deal with the problem of declining membership which was recently described in a parish bulletin?
"The Catholic bishop of Peoria has begun a process of realigning the parishes of the diocese. Parishes will be 'clustered,' and, in some cases, merged
The bishop is doing so because the diocese has less priests to go around, and because the diocese, which claimed 220,000 Catholics in 1990, has seen the number dwindle to 160,000. There are, therefore, fewer people in the pews on Sunday and less children in the Catholic schools. Indeed, the three Catholic elementary schools in the Illinois Quad-Cities are what remains, after elementary school mergers.
Alleman which had 1,400 students in the late 1960s, now has only 440."
Add to that information, the following: a large Moline parish, which used to have Sunday Mass every hour with and additional Mass in the gym, now offers only three.
Why? What explains why the diocese has 27 percent fewer Catholics? How can the decline be stopped?
Can the loss of membership be explained by the fact that the Catholic Church has an all-male priesthood? Probably not. Few if any Catholics leave the church because it has a celibate male clergy. They've grown up with that.
Can it be explained by papal claims of infallibility? Again, probably not. If someCatholics disagree with the Pope's teaching ( e. g., on contraception), they generally don't leave the church; they simply ignore the teaching.
Can it be explained by the church's teachings on homosexuality or abortion? While a scant few might leave over those issues, I think it highly unlikely that that has caused 60,000 to walk.
What about its teaching on remarriage after divorce without a church annulment? According to a 2008 study the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, 28 percent of Catholics are divorced. Catholics who are divorced and who remarry without first obtaining an annulment, are barred from receiving the Eucharist. (And it is estimated that only 10 percent of divorced Catholics get annulments.)
Do Catholic barred from taking communion for that reason continue as Catholics? Some do; most, I would guess, don't. And what about their children? Are they raised as Catholics? Sent to Catholic elementary schools and high schools?
Does the church's policy of denying the Eucharist to divorced Catholics who remarry without church permission explain, at least in part, why there are fewer Catholics? Has denying the Eucharist to Greeks and Protestants brought them back, or has it hardened the divisions? Can you bring people back to the church by telling them that they are not entirely welcome? Is that how Christ treated "sinners?"
There are, however, some non-doctrinal factors which may be driving Catholics away.
When I was younger, Sunday Masses normally ran about 40 minutes. (Masses then were scheduled every hour-on-the-hour. It took 10 minutes to clear the church and 10 minutes to refill it.)
The same Mass, which even now often runs no more than 18 minutes on a weekday, is now more often than not stretched to an hour and 15 minutes on Sunday.
How? The explanation is simple: processions, meditations, chants, additional music and longer sermons, and special ceremonies.
As a result, the Mass has lost its pace and its focus, and ceased to be meaningful. Such Masses cannot hold the interest of most modern Catholics used to movies, and television shows which succeed largely because they are coherent and brilliantly paced.
And what of the extended homilies? All too often they consist of nothing more than a rehash of that Sunday's scriptural readings. Rambling, incoherent homilies are more often than not irrelevant to the daily life of both young and older Catholics. They are rarely meaningful.
For a priest to be successful, he must be able to relate to his congregation. The time a priest spends with the congregation during his homily is precious. It is probably the only time during the week he will have with most of his parishioners.
Christ was successful in his ministry largely because he was a charismatic figure who spoke with "authority" as he delivered his message. Would thousands of people have followed him into the wilderness had he rambled on incoherently, or chanted much of his message in a "latin-ized" vernacular? Christ succeeded because his message was relevant, meaningful and well-delivered.
I ask these questions because the church is coming out with a new translation of the Mass in the period before Christmas this year. Catholic are enthusiastically told that the new English Mass will be a "better and more accurate translation of the old Latin Mass."We are also told we will be "singing the Mass more," and that much of the new Mass "is intended to be chanted."
My question is why? Did Christ speak Latin? Did Christ chant? Use incense? Will a more "Latin-ized" Mass be more relevant and meaningful to American Catholics? To young American Catholics? Is their any likelihood, that the revised "Latin-ized" Mass will draw fallen-away Catholics back to the church? Non-Catholics?
Or will more Catholics find worship increasingly irrelevant and less meaningful?
My guess is that turning the clock back to Trent and pretending that Vatican II never happened will not bring fallen-away Catholics back home or draw non-Catholics to the Church. I await the ad hominem response.
Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2011, 6:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea
Copyright 2011, John Donald O'Shea
