Commentary: If Liberal Catholicism is Dead, then the Youth Killed It

Last weekend, David Van Biema posed the question "Is Liberal Catholicism Dead?". It's a very interesting essay, and has already received much comment, but I think there is a major flaw in his account of where things stand that I'd like to point out.

Bear with me as this will require a few lengthy quotations from his article. Don't worry, it's all on topic....

To begin, Biema claims that the trend towards liberalism started with the youth:

Vatican II meant even more to a generation of devout but restless young people in the U.S. Rather than a course correction, Terrence Tilley, now head of the Fordham University's theology department, wrote recently, his generation perceived "an interruption of history, a divine typhoon that left only the keel and structure of the church unchanged."

They discerned in the Council a call to greater church democracy, and an assertion of individual conscience that could stand up to the authority of even the Pope. So, they battled the Vatican's birth-control ban, its rejection of female priests and insistence on celibacy, and its authoritarianism.

One could dispute his historical claim, but let's move on for the moment with what he says (underlining mine):

To some extent, liberal Catholicism has been a victim of its own success. Its positions on sex and gender issues have become commonplace in the American Church, diminishing the distinctiveness of the progressives. More importantly, they failed to transform the main body of the Church: John Paul II, a charismatic conservative, enjoyed the third-longest papacy in church history, and refused to budge on the left's demands; instead, he eventually swept away liberal bishops. The heads at Call to Action grayed, and by the late 1990s, Vatican II progressivism began to look like a self-limited Boomer moment.

I would argue that what the liberals most faileded to transform was the next generation of the youth - the "JP2 generation" which followed the pope that Biema mentions. And not only did the heads at Call to Action gray, at the same time no young heads of hair were to be seen interning in the cubicles.

But my point gains more force as Biema unfolds his vision of the future:

The familiar progressives-versus-Vatican paradigm seems almost certain to be undone by a looming demographic tsunami. Almost everyone agrees that the "millennial generation," born in 1980 or later, while sharing liberal views on many issues, has no desire to mount the barricades.

Notes Reese, "Younger Catholics don't argue with the bishops; they simply do what they want or shop for another church." And Hispanic Catholics, who may be the U.S. majority by 2020, don't see this as their battle. "I'm sure they're happy that the celebration of the Eucharist is in the vernacular," says Tilley, "but they don't have significant issues connected to Vatican II."

Reese makes his point negatively, but I think it is more accurate to say that many young Catholics simply "agree with the bishops." It's not an issue of "not disagreeing with the bishops", as Reese claims. Young Catholics are active and passionate, and when they stay in the Church, they stay because they want to, because certainly they must resist a great deal of external pressure nowadays if they do.

Now here's the clincher (again, underlining mine):

And so, unless Benedict contradicts in Rome what he said in New York, the Church may have reached a tipping point. This is not to say that the (overhyped) young Catholic Right will swing into lay dominance. Nor will liberal single-issue groups simply evaporate. But if they cohere again, it will be around different defining issues.

"It's a new ball game," admits Steinfels. As Tilley wrote recently in Commonweal regarding his fellow theologians, "A new generation has neither the baggage nor the ballast of mine. Theirs is the future. Let's hope they remember the Council as the most important event in twentieth-century Catholicism."

That underlined sentence is what got me to write this post. Why, exactly, does Biema feel the need to claim that the young Catholic Right is "overhyped", I wondered? Frankly, I think it's underhyped.

I mean, how many times have you heard the mainstream presses clamoring about the young Catholic Right? Even once before the pope arrived, and a couple times (amidst thousands of headlines) when he was here? How can Biema predict that the young Catholic Right won't swing into lay dominance (whatever that means, exactly) when he has just noted, as we recall, the greying heads of Call to Action and the fact that Young Catholics who have stayed in the Church don't argue with bishops (again, I prefer to say: "agree with bishops")?

Biema, normally full of explanations, gives no reasons to support this hypothesis.

Instead, the ending quote admits that "it's a new ballgame" and that "[ours] is the future."

I think behind Biema's mistake is an underlying assumption that the only way for lay people to build up the Church is to resist the authority of the bishops and pope. However, the goal is not to "liberalize" the Church, but instead to perfect her, and that can be best done through following the authentic teaching and leadership of the bishops united with the pope. Liberals thought perfecting the Church meant one thing, and the young Catholic Right apparently think differently.

To make my main point once again: the youth are not ignorant and lazy if they are in the Church. They do remember the importance of Vatican Two, and they've learned from the mistakes of those who took it upon themselves to implement it their own ways.

And if they don't know about the Council itself, they have grown up suffering its effects. At the same time, however, they've discovered something else, something deeper, and something that keeps them coming back to Mass on Sundays. Not all of them, but enough to make a start. And they're having babies or becoming priests.

So, in other words, the future is bright, even if it's underhyped. Just give it a chance and some time.

As a postscript, I thought this news story today about a beatification cause being opened for a 21 year-old Spanish martyr was very much applicable to what I'm talking about. His dying words:

“I want nothing of this world. I belong to God and I live for God. If I die I will be totally God’s in heaven, and if I don’t die, I want to be a priest. We need saints!”

Now that doesn't need any hype.