The Catholic Church in retreat – The Kingston Whig-Standard

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The announcement last week that Pope Francis may be planning a visit to Canada to apologize for the Catholic Churchs involvement in the abuses committed against Indigenous children in residential schools prompted a reflection on the state of the church today. The simple fact is that the churchs influence in the world is now at its lowest ebb since the early days of Christianity.

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For centuries, the Catholic Church was one of the great pillars of western civilization. It built magnificent cathedrals and monasteries throughout Europe. It established the first great universities. It provided health and education services to the poor. It ran great estates that were a significant part of the agricultural economy of many countries. Its leaders, cardinals and bishops, were trusted advisers to kings and queens and occupied major ministerial positions. A long succession of popes played a major role in European politics. And its missionaries spanned the globe, bringing Christianity to peoples in Asia, Africa and the Americas. No other institution was more influential in the progressive westernization of the world at large.

Over the centuries, the church suffered two major blows to its power and prestige. The first was the Great Schism of 1053, which saw an irreversible split between the sees of Rome and Constantinople. The result was the creation of what came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox churches, with headquarters in Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Cairo, Moscow and Kyiv. These churches remained essentially true to the doctrines of the Catholic Church but ceased to recognize the Pope as their leader. This split did irreparable damage to what had until then been a largely united Christendom. The second blow occurred in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant reformers took exception not only to many of the corrupt practices that had become evident in the church, but also to many of its doctrines. There emerged from this movement a variety of denominations, including Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Baptists. These denominations solidified their presence in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries and from there spread their wings to the New World, where they spawned yet more new churches, such as Mormons and Shakers. The once total domination of the western world by the Catholic Church thus came to an end.

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But the Catholic Church rebounded from these setbacks with the Council of Trent, the Counter Reformation and the birth of the Jesuit order of priests, who came to be known as the shock troops of the Pope. The church managed to maintain its dominant position in countries such as France, Italy and Spain. And it, too, spread to the New World. All of the countries of Latin America became predominantly Catholic, and Catholicism remains the largest single Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. In the United States, the church established for itself an enviable position in higher education with universities such as Georgetown, Fordham, Notre Dame and Loyola. And Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Spellman of New York and Father Hesburgh, the president of Notre Dame University, became highly respected national figures in the United States. The church scored a notable breakthrough with the election of the first Catholic president in the history of the United States in the person of John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The glory days of the church were already beginning to be numbered, however, in the 1950s. Hundreds of thousands of Catholics left the church over its positions on birth control. They were simply not prepared to kow-tow to the churchs strictures or injunctions to have ever larger families. This flight from the pews was to grow exponentially over the decades. Women in Europe and North America became increasingly disenchanted with the churchs total domination by men. Religious and lay women began to demand a greater role in the government of the church. When their demands were steadfastly resisted by the church hierarchy, many went into overt opposition. One byproduct of this is that the recruitment of women to the religious life has dwindled to a trickle. Most nuns today are distinctly aged, and numerous convents have been closed down. Nuns in the classroom or on hospital wards are now as rare as hens teeth.

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If the recruitment of nuns has dwindled dramatically, so, too, has the recruitment of new priests. Parishes in Europe and North America are all suffering from a shortage of clergy. Churches that once had two or three priests on staff are now reduced to sharing one priest among two or three parishes on Sundays. Many churches have had to close down because of the shortage, and not only in remote rural areas. One of the main reasons for this is that the church has steadfastly refused to allow priests to marry. Thousands of ordained priests have jumped the wall for this reason alone. (A perfect illustration of the problem is to be found in the Grand Seminary in Montreal. Once home to some 400 recruits to the priesthood, it is now reduced to less than 40 and has had to shut down its grand building on the slopes of Mount Royal.)

The closure of churches is not attributable solely to the shortage of priests. In one church after another, congregations have grown older and many parishioners have died off. The remaining parishioners can no longer afford the costs of maintaining their churches. (The most obvious local example of this phenomenon is to be found in what was the Church of the Good Thief on King Street West. It is a magnificent old stone church dating back to the 19th century, but which now carries the sign closed at its front door.) This decrease in the size of congregations is attributable to many factors, including growing materialism and the advances of rationalism and secularism in the modern world. Many young people simply feel no attachment to religion and are not inclined to go to church solely because their parents did. In short, the church is greying and aging in many western countries.

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The latest challenges confronting the church are to be found in the multiple revelations regarding the sexual and physical abuse of children perpetrated by members of the Catholic clergy. Over the past 20 years, there has been an outpouring of such revelations in one country after another. Church-sponsored and government-mandated commissions of inquiry have revealed a pattern of criminal activity by literally thousands of priests. And further inquiries have shown the efforts mounted by the Church hierarchy to hide the truth and protect both the perpetrators and the image of the institution. This year alone has been notable for the findings of a commission in France regarding the sexual abuse of thousands of French children by priests over several decades and for the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of former Catholic-run residential schools in Canada.

The churchs response to these revelations has been anything but exemplary. Beyond trying to cover up the facts, numerous bishops have gone to court to try to avoid having to provide financial compensation to the victims. Others have been reluctant to share documents and records relating to the events. The past two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, did whatever they could to sweep the matter under the carpet and not face up to its gravity. It has been left to Pope Francis to deal with the issue and the mounting toll that it is taking on the churchs reputation. He is obviously a man of good will who wants to do the right thing, but he seems overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. He has issued several apologies for the actions of the clergy and will no doubt issue more, but these are widely viewed as insufficient by the victims of abuse. In the meantime, Catholics by the thousands are abandoning the church and leaving it a weakened institution.

Louis A. Delvoie is a retired Canadian diplomat who served abroad as an ambassador and high commissioner.

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The Catholic Church in retreat - The Kingston Whig-Standard