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Peter Steinfels, former senior religion correspondent for The New York Times and now “Beliefs” columnist for that paper, told a Villanova audience on Nov. 17, that the Roman Catholic Church faces challenges both internally and external. To a capacity audience in the Connelly Center Cinema, Steinfels bluntly stated that today, the church’s membership is in danger of what he characterizes as a “soft slide into a kind of nominal Catholicism.”

While acknowledging the devastating effect of the recent sexual abuse scandal, Steinfels maintained that the scandal did not change church history, as he and other observers originally had thought. “I came to realize that there is scarcely a known or likely result of that scandal that was not somehow already underway,” he said, “from the drop in Mass attendance, the questioning of leadership, the reduced numbers seeking the priesthood or the disaffiliation of young adults from Church life. It would be more accurate to say that the scandal did not such much change the course of that history as to accelerate it.”

Steinfels’ lecture was sponsored by the Office for Mission Effectiveness, the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, the Core Humanities Program, the Villanova School of Law, and the Augustinian Institute. Its theme was based on his recent book, A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Simon and Shuster, New York, 2003). The crisis, Steinfels said, was based on the fact that the Church today faces two internal changes and two massive external ones. The first of the two internal changes is the transition in leadership at all levels of Catholic life from the ordained and vowed to the laity, not only in schools and universities, but also in Catholic healthcare and social services. “The question is whether laymen and laywomen, without the benefit of the religious orders’ prolonged and common formation, can take up the baton, and preserve and renew these institutions’ [Catholic] identity,” he said.

He claimed that the most dramatic example of the transition is the emergence of lay pastoral ministers. Between 1992 and 1997, the numbers of lay ministers in parishes had already surpassed the numbers of active parish priests. Most of these lay ministers are motivated by a call or, at least, by some concept of religious service rather than by a wish for self-fulfillment.
“In the future,” Steinfels predicted, “the face of the Catholic parish will not be the male pastor, but probably will be the female director of religious education or parish administrator. Who are they? How are they recruited? What are the preparations? Who nurtures their spiritual lives and how? If someone ever asks you whatever became of Limbo, the answer is that this group is in it.”

The second internal change is a generational one: the leadership of the church is moving from those who came of age in a pre-Vatican II subculture to those who came of age in the tumult of the post-Vatican II years. “The convergence of these two changes makes their impact all the greater,” Steinfels said.

Externally, the church also is facing change on two fronts. First, it must confront a changed understanding of human sexuality based on humankind’s newfound ability to separate intercourse from reproduction. Even the present pope addresses human sexuality differently from his predecessors, according to Steinfels. The second change is the global movement for the equality of women and their inclusion in public roles from they have been traditionally excluded.

Steinfels said there is a need for leadership at all levels to confront these four challenges and to end the drift. He called for that leadership to “escape the entrenched positions that have defined American Catholicism for almost four decades since the council.”

“It is time,” he stated, “for conservatives and liberals to gracefully recognize that 40 years of experiences have taught us a few lessons and that here and there, the other side in this trench warfare may actually have been proven right.”

Steinfels called for stronger collegial principles and decentralization in decision-making, as well as for greater transparency. At the same time, he said, he disagreed with the rejection of hierarchy and “quasi-Congregationalism” found among the more radical theological thinkers, especially some feminists. He also said he believed in opening the Latin rite to married men and the deaconate to women.

The leadership of the church should also balance its theological principles with close attention to practical realities, he said. “The Church needs less energy spent debating the theology of hymn lyrics and more energy spent on actually counting how many people in the congregation are moving their lips.” Steinfels expressed concern as well for the religious formation of youngsters, observing that the rare child who actually attends a catechetical program every week from kindergarten to high school will spend a total of 390 hours in religious education, compared to the 11,000 hours he or she will spend in a public school classroom or 15,000 hours watching television.

Since A People Adrift was published, Steinfels has been interviewed many times. One interviewer asked him if, with all those problems facing the church, he personally has hope. His hope, Steinfels said, lies in students like those sitting and listening in the Connelly Center, Cinema; in the “called” laypersons taking over in Catholic education, hospitals, and social welfare agencies; in the 30 thousand lay ministers in parishes; and in the 35 thousand more training to join them.

Steinfels closed his lecture by recalling the story of Jesus out on the water with his disciples when a storm blew up. The apostles were terrified and awakened Jesus who was sleeping. “Why are you terrified, you of little faith” he remonstrated, and then rebuked the sea and the wind so there was calm again. “Even when we feel that like the disciples we are perishing, we should not be terrified,” Steinfels concluded. “So I am not hesitant to say that our hope is in the Lord, who is with us, and for whom all things are possible.”