American Catholicism "is on the verge of either an irreversible decline or a thoroughgoing transformation," according to author Peter Steinfels, veteran religion reporter and writer of the "Beliefs" column for the New York Times. In the face of the Church's daunting sex scandal, few could argue with Steinfels' dramatic assessment. But what makes this book especially unique and controversial is that Steinfels believes that the American Catholic Church would still be grappling with impending decline or a serious overhaul even if the heinous acts of sexual misconduct had never occurred.

An Interesting Analysis of the Church Today

There are many, especially those in conservative circles, who would dismiss the book as just another example of "Catholic-bashing." After all, the author is a writer for THE NEW YORK TIMES and was previously editor of COMMONWEAL. However, critics anxious to dismiss the book as just so much silliness would be foolish and short-sighted.

Peter Steinfels examines many of the major issues confronting the Catholic Church today with and depth, clarity and thoughtfulness rarely found in an era where thoughts are measured in ten-second sound bites and Hardball volleys from talking heads. A PEOPLE ADRIFT: THE CRISIS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA addresses the current scandals and long term issues facing the Church today. It explores the nature of the Church in society and the clash of the institution with secular influences.

The author also presents a number of "solutions" to the current crisis and it is in many of these recommendations that there will be a wide divergence of opinions and perhaps continued acrimonious debate. Ultimately however, this debate is important in that major issues will be explored and the concerns of Catholics will be given appropriate articulation and consideration. Whether or not one agrees with the author, it is important for all to understand these issues so that one can properly understand Church teaching on such matters. The issues will remain out there and it is important to deal with them.

I really wanted to not like this book.

As someone new to Roman Catholicism after having wandered the byways of Protestantism for lo, these untold years, I find little to attract me to the kind of Catholicism represented in this book. For example, the book has little negative to say about the culture of dissent that has arisen in Catholicism especially after Humanae Vitae. On the issue of artificial birth control, the author acts as if the case is definitively made for it because the vast majority of Catholics reject official Church teaching, justifying, therefore, the protest that has arisen in response to the Church's official teaching.

Catholicism has always proceeded on the understanding that its teachings are not the product of majority rule, but rather result from a careful process of faithfully unfolding the developing meaning of Scripture and Tradition. That is how Pope Paul VI approached the question of artificial birth control; that is how Pope John Paul II has approached the same question; that is NOT how Peter Steinfels and the vast majority of those who favor it have approached it. Rather, the proponents of artificial birth control in the Catholic Church (and Peter Steinfels himself) argue along these lines: it cannot be disproved by Scripture; the Church has been wrong in the past (about money lending, about slavery, etc.); the faithful embrace it. What this line of reasoning fails to recognize is that if the same criteria had been applied to, say, Arianism in the fourth century, we would not today be Trinitarian Christians. St. Jerome, after all, wrote that the whole world groaned to find itself Arian. The truth is that Trinitarian Christianity was a minority position in the fourth and fifth centuries. Nor could it definitively be proved from Scripture. Did the Church cave in and become Arian? No! Brave theologians like St. Athanasius (who was severely persecuted for his stand), St. Basil, and the two St.Gregories, plus the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, kept at it until Arianism was defeated.

One need only look at the kind of disordered sexuality that reigns in, say, the American Episcopal Church, which long ago caved in on the birth control issue, to see what would likely be in store for the Catholic Church if it went down the same road. The author seems not unaware of this possibility, which is somewhat unusual for someone of his liberal persuasion, but doesn't really appear to want to think about it very deeply, and apparently hasn't thought very long and hard about the merits of conservatives' arguments on this issue.

In the area of Catholic feminism, he seems a little more aware of its inherent disruptiveness to Catholic understandings. This is welcome, coming from a liberal Catholic. And on the changing patterns of faith formation and institutionalized Catholicism, he is also quite judicious. And his discussion of the recent sex scandal is also one of the best I've read.

However, I think he's quite far off on his discussion of Catholic liturgy and music. Modern Catholic church music, although not perfect, is, contrary to Stenifels's assessment, generally very satisfactory. There are many brilliant Catholic hymnists--e.g., Bernadette Farrell, Bob Hurd, M. D. Ridge, and Marty Haugen--and contemporary Catholic hymnody is generally far superior to its Protestant counterparts. His disparagement of contemporary liturgies is also off-base, I believe.

All in all, there are many commendable aspects to this book. Indeed, it is certainly the best book I have ever read by a liberal Catholic. It is also probably about the best book one can expect from a liberal Catholic journalist. Given its presuppositions, it is on the whole judicious, well reasoned, and uncommonly irenic. One can almost actually see oneself sitting down with persons of Steinfels's persuasion and actually working toward a Common Ground Initiative, which seems to be the overall thrust of the book: that in order to break the present impasse that plagues the Catholic Church, namely, gridlock between liberals and conservatives, the only way forward is for them to somehow find a resolution to their disagreements. Otherwise, Catholics will, indeed, be A People Adrift. I don't know that this will work, but I don't think it's been tried much. So, two cheers for Steinfels. **1/2.

Notes from a Catholic drifter

Mr. Steinfels, formerly editor of Commonweal, draws on his years of reporting for the New York Times in offering his overview of the Catholic situation in America. A self-described liberal, he speaks chiefly to other liberals about what he views as the failures and successes of changes since the Second Vatican Council. Alternative accounts are, regrettably, ignored or derided but nowhere engaged. Steinfels' emphasis is on the institutional and sociological, "rather than," as he puts it, "the profoundly spiritual or theological." A chapter is given to the recent scandals, but he believes the deeper "crisis" of his subtitle is occasioned by the Church's failure to respond adequately to the demands of women, the reality of contraception, the acceptance of homosexuals, and related changes in the culture. He urges what he calls the "American Catholic Church" to be more independent from Rome, and asserts that the Magisterium is teaching falsely about, inter alia, the ordination of women to the priesthood, which he believes will happen "ultimately" but should be implemented cautiously. On the renewal of episcopal leadership, Mr. Steinfels' favored models are the outspokenly liberal Kenneth Untener of Michigan, the now disgraced Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, and, above all, the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. Like embattled socialists who contend that true socialism has yet to be tried, Mr. Steinfels surveys the damages wrought by liberal interpretations of the Council over nearly four decades and recommends as a solution his somewhat tempered version of the same. The book begins and ends with a touchingly nostalgic backward look at what the author views as the unfulfilled promise of the late Cardinal Bernardin and the now languishing Common Ground Initiative, which sought a dialogue between those who affirm and those who ignore or deny Catholic teachings that stand in the way of the further Americanization of Catholicism. A People Adrift is a competent and eminently readable, albeit by now very familiar, account of religious, cultural, and institutional changes, written in tones of wan hope for a new and improved liberalism that is capable of resisting what the author sees as the threat posed by the "conservative" alternative. The book may be profitably read as an informed, if highly selective and tendentious, review of the recent history of Catholicism in America. Having set spiritual and theological profundity aside, Mr. Steinfels makes as good a case as probably can be made for defending the weakened hegemony of the liberal status quo supporting an American Catholic Church. This was from a First THings review