The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful Are Shaping a New American Catholicism

by David Gibson

Overview

Award-winning religion journalist David Gibson presents a startlingly clear-eyed look at the impact of the sexual abuse scandals on the Catholic Church and how they have set off a revolution from below that is galvanizing North America's rank-and-file Catholics to bring positive changes to their Church.

The Catholic Church is at a crossroad. People on all sides are demanding change, but few are sure how that change can happen. Recent history suggests a powerful minority will block any reforms.

In this sweeping assessment of where the Church has been, and where it is going, David Gibson uses his insider's knowledge and sources to reveal the forces that are already transforming Catholicism—from the laity to the besieged priesthood to the papacy itself. Laypeople, especially women, are taking larger roles in Church life as the number of priests continues to decline. Priests are redefining their calling as scandals and shortages spark changes not seen in a thousand years, including new openings for married priests. Bishops, under fire from every quarter, are struggling to reimagine how the Church can be governed, while the College of Cardinals are waging an intense—and increasingly public—debate over how the next papacy will be different from the current one.

The Catholic Church is always changing, but today the need for immediate reforms is more urgent than ever as Catholicism seeks to remain vital to American life and faithful to its authentic mission of following Jesus. In The Coming Catholic Church David Gibson examines the disputes that have polarized Catholicism and focuses on the new forces that are currently bringing Catholics together. From Church governance at the parish level and the selection of bishops to the way Catholics now view the rule of Rome, Gibson explains the transformations coming through both a revolution from below and an impending change at the top of the Church. This book is an expression of the heartfelt feelings and aspirations of all Catholics, from the people in the pew to the priests in the pulpit, as they struggle to renew their faith and their Church.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060587208
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/29/2004
Edition description:	Revised & Updated First Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

David Gibson is an award-winning religion writer and a committed lay Catholic. He writes about Catholicism for various newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Boston magazine, Fortune, Commonweal, and America. He was the religion writer for the The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. Gibson has worked in Rome for Vatican Radio and traveled frequently with Pope John Paul II. He has co-written several recent documentaries on Christianity for CNN.

Read an Excerpt

The Coming Catholic Church
How the Faithful Are Shaping a New American Catholicism

One

Anger and Protest

Rome to Dallas

The heat was on in downtown Dallas, and it had nothing to do with the scorching sun of a Texas June. Central air-conditioning in the luxury Fairmont Hotel took care of the weather. Other pressures were bearing down on the 250 Catholic bishops gathered in the hotel's grand ballroom, and as the morning wore on toward noon it became clear that the gathering storm was beyond their control.

For five months the churchmen had been blasted by a flock outraged not just at the endless reports of priests who had sexually abused minors, but at the revelations that so many bishops had covered up for the molesters, or had reassigned them to parishes where they had struck again and again and again. The hierarchy had only compounded their problems with ham-handed public-relations efforts to spin the scandal. First there were the outright denials, and then the claims of poor record-keeping (which was a tack Cardinal Law tried in Boston, to universal derision). And then, as more stories leaked more damning details, there were the hedging admissions that yes, something bad had happened, but the bishop wasn't at fault. He just got bad advice by psychiatric experts. Or the whole thing was being blown out of proportion by a Catholic-bashing media pandering to a secularized society that dislikes the church's teachings anyway.

A command performance with Pope John Paul in Rome a few months earlier had been expected to help, but that April 2002 meeting had only made matters worse. The Vatican had wanted to demonstrate that the Home Office was in charge and should be trusted to put things right, so they had called the dozen ranking American cardinals to Rome for a two-day summit that became a media circus and a public-relations disaster for the church. At every turn mediaphobic officials of the Roman Curia -- the pope's civil service -- sought to blunt the Americans' access to the press in public and to rein in the Americans' plans for reform in private. The summit ended in confusion and an embarrassing late-night press conference that was all but boycotted by Vatican officials and carefully avoided by most of the American cardinals, whose whereabouts were a mystery even to their brother bishops.

The joint communiqué released at the press conference was intended to be a road map for healing and reconciliation, but the Vatican couldn't have planned a worse detour. The document's stipulation that only a priest who is "notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors" could be subject to defrocking drew everyone's eye and considerable harsh criticism. That the cardinals included a special letter expressing the bishops' solidarity with their priests without a word about the victims didn't help matters. Nor was there any mention of the Catholic laity who make up 99.9 percent of the flock. No reference to their sorrow, their anger, or their possible role in ensuring that such a scandal would never happen again.

Washington's sure-footed Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was stuck selling the statement to the world press at 10:30 P.M., hours after the document had been promised. Why no mention of lay people? "I was looking for it because we had it in there last night," said a clearly exhausted McCarrick, scanning the pages they had spent hours trying to get right. "This document is a document that -- words are in and words are out," he added gamely.

The cardinal was telling the truth. Over the previous twenty-four hours, during intense negotiations with Vatican officials, the Americans would agree on language with the curial staff, who would then send the draft to be copied at a shop outside the Vatican, explaining that the Holy See didn't have whatever amounts to the Italian version of Kinko's. When the drafts returned, however, the Americans would often discover that phrases had been deleted. The cardinals "certainly did want to tell the lay people of the United States that they must have a major role in this," McCarrick said, covering as best he could. But the damage was done.

"An awful mess," a senior papal aide admitted later.

Now, however, two months after Rome, the American bishops meeting in Dallas figured that they were back on track. The hierarchy meets as a group twice a year, in Washington in the fall and at different locations around the country for their spring conference. For this spring meeting they had cleared the agenda -- normally filled with debates so soporific that the previous year just one wire service reporter had covered the event -- so that they could take concerted action. This year, there were nearly eight hundred journalists from around the world checking to make sure they did.

Still, the bishops' timing, once again, couldn't have been worse. While Dallas had been chosen long before the scandal broke, this meeting fell a few days before the fifth anniversary of a $119.6 million judgment against the Diocese of Dallas for shuttling a former priest, Rudy Kos, around parishes even though church officials knew that he was abusing children.

The case reminded everyone that the bishops had been down this road before. Kos's trail of abuse, which started while he was a seminarian, ran from 1977 to 1992. He seduced dozens of boys as young as nine years old using candy, video games, alcohol, sedatives, and marijuana. Plaintiffs testified that they were often invited to spend the night in the rectory with Kos, who sometimes raped them after he drugged them. Many of the victims wound up with lives ruined by addictions. Kos was convicted on three counts of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to life imprisonment on each count. But he continued to portray himself as the victim. He said he merely suffered from a "foot fetish" and was not a pedophile. "I think I have been through five years of hell already," Kos complained to the Dallas Morning News after his sentencing. "I have lost everything, everything. I have lost my friends. I have lost self-respect. I lost my dignity. I lost everything."

The Coming Catholic Church
How the Faithful Are Shaping a New American Catholicism. Copyright © by David Gibson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Preface--The Current Catholic Church	xi
	Introduction: Catholic Scandal, American Catholic	1
Part 1	The Laity	19
1	Anger and Protest: Rome to Dallas	21
2	Pay, Pray, Obey: Old World to New	35
3	Altar Egos: Who Runs the Show?	52
4	The Exodus: Why They Are Leaving	63
5	The Mystery of Catholic Identity: Why They Will Stay	82
6	Revolution from Below: "We, the People of God ..."	109
Part 2	The Priesthood	147
7	The Men in the Middle	149
8	Sexual Abuse, Sexuality, and the Modern Priest	163
9	Clericalism: The Original Sin	197
10	The Changing Face of the Priesthood	220
11	Married Pastors, Celibate Priests	246
Part 3	The Hierarchy	271
12	The Bishops and the Fall of Rome	273
13	The Bishops and the Keys to the Crisis	293
14	The Next Papacy and the New Church	318
	Conclusion: Mutatis Mutandis	342
	Index	351

Editorial Reviews

Gibson displays uncommon intelligence in The Coming Catholic Church ... this book has impressive range.

Chicago Tribune

Gibson provides a refreshingly well-informed and judicious survey of American Catholic life... ranges widely without being shallow.

Christianity Today

Not another entry in the Catholic Church "scandal" genre, this is instead a prophetic statement about evolving Catholicism that emphasizes the possibilities latent within the current crisis-ridden institution. A lay Catholic who has worked for Vatican Radio and as a religion reporter for various newspapers, Gibson employs his experience and Vatican insider status to author this delicately balanced work. The darker sides of hierarchical polities are fully exposed and the sinful exploits of errant ecclesiastics revealed. Nevertheless, Gibson uses this discussion as the starting point to articulate a new epoch of faith, tried and purified. The text is divided into three major sections-"Laity," "Priesthood," and "Hierarchy"-each having several chapters developing a new framework for the Church. Although journalistic in style, Gibson's book provides adequate historical detail and commentary, giving a sense of completeness. This new vision could be interpreted as a manifesto for the laity, but the priesthood and hierarchy retain an intrinsic, albeit changed, role. Honest, hopeful, and challenging, this book is highly recommended for larger public libraries.-John-Leonard Berg, Univ. of Wisconsin Lib., Platteville Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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