RADICAL YOUTH?

Sister of Charity in India

In France, one of this week’s events is a new film by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, director of Les Héritiers (the Inheritors), a wonderful movie about a high-school class and their project on teenagers in the Holocaust. The new film concerns what we now call the “radicalization” of teenage girls, who often in a short space of time become what they think are strict Muslims and set off for Syria. Listening to an interview with the admirable director, who has lived with these girls and their families for three years, I was struck with a dolorous thought of great force: WHERE IS THE CHURCH?

            From what Mention-Schaar said, it was clear that many if not most of these girls, not at all from a Muslim or even immigrant background, were responding to on the one hand a barrage of indoctrination on the vile immorality of Western capitalist society, and on the other hand a burning desire for a life that is pure, upright, dedicated to both a divine plan and human betterment.

            Uh, huh. There was a time – and my wife remembers it well from her own childhood – when such girls burned to be missionaries or teaching nuns or religious working with the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa was an example of those, probably a minority, but still, who went through with it.

            But even before this connection came up, when last year was proclaimed a Year of the Religious, and a number of people were lamenting the decline in vocations, I was astonished by the lack of recruiting, advertising or even public relations the Roman Catholic Church (and the Anglicans are no better) is doing on the subject. Supposedly, they want the young or the relatively young: many orders take no one over 45. But are they lifting a finger to get them? No. For a time I was a member of an Internet group of Carthusian enthusiasts called the International Friends of St Bruno. In the 2 or 3 years I spent with them I don’t think I ever saw a posting from someone under 40.

            It is, and probably always has been, a feature of the teenage years to want to be an arrow on a divine bow: straight, sharp, noble, and aimed and shot at a deserving target. Nowadays, it does not occur to many to turn to a religious order to be arrowed; but the social networks turn a startling number of them to an Islamist jihad. Were we to see a tenth of that recruiting activity, both in quantity and in quality, on the social networks for the Carmelites, the Carthusians, the Benedictines, the Cistercians or the Franciscans, the number of novices would shoot up; and even if only a minority stay the course, fewer monasteries and convents would be inhabited only by the agèd and fewer would close. And for those who want activity, who burn to help the downtrodden, the Sisters of Charity are still in Calcutta and elsewhere. Pure you can be; dedicated you have to be; needed you will be. Of course you won’t have the thrill of the Kalashnikov; but on the other hand you won’t have the sweat and the bad breath of the freedom fighter on top of you whose slave you have been declared. And nowadays, your parents might even – oh joy! -- disapprove.

young Carmelites

Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal

FIDDLING ON THE TITANIC OR SINGING ON THE ARK?

I have been reading the admirable French daily La Croix’s decennial survey of the state of the French Catholic church and its presumed development over the next ten years. It is dire, of course: the number of baptisms is falling, the number of committed lay persons is falling, the number of those calling themselves Catholic is falling, and the number of vocations is plunging.

The suggested remedies are many, various, energetic and coming from all over. They include foreign priests, more work by the laity, reorganising dioceses, etcetera. And yet there is a vast and dense silence on a number of possibilities that instantly suggest themselves to a non-Roman-Catholic.

In the first place, married priests. Admittedly, that would prove complicated in terms of salaries, pensions, and adaptability to movement. But it would instantly augment the number of vocations, and in the face of 450 years of Anglican experience it is impossible to maintain that married men make less good parish clergy. To do the Pope justice, he did recently tell a bishop from Amazonia that the church would not exclude the consecration of viri probati, “proven” married men. But only in such extreme cases.

Secondly, women priests. This would double the pool of vocations if not triple it. And again, as the Anglicans are discovering, women make excellent priests.

Thirdly, a conservative redefinition of celibacy. Conservative in the sense of going back to medieval practice. Celibacy should mean not living in the context of a marriage and a family, and thus being available on a permanent basis. It should not mean giving up all sexual relations for the rest of one’s life. That is a great deal to ask of young males: and such a demand may be fine when there are many – in ages where priesthood confers status, education, and security --, but it should be completely reconsidered when the flood of vocations is reduced to a trickle.

Fourthly, the possibility of couples, straight or gay, both serving as priests, perhaps in the same parish or neighbouring parishes.  

Pope Francis memorably said, a year or so ago, that it would be wonderful if the Church could stop thinking about sex all the time. Notice that all the solutions I’ve mentioned as not being discussed or (publicly) envisaged have to do with sex.

As for the dwindling of the laity, I have long suspected that it had something to do with the Church’s (no: the churches’) relentless “updating” and “modernizing” of their habitus. And I notice that all the suggested remedies in the La Croix issue go in the same direction.

If each diocese decided to have a number of churches where a traditional liturgy was used – and not only at 8 a.m. -- , these might stop the drifting away, or the not turning up, of those whose faith is best served by a liturgy of reverence, of formal beauty, and of some distance. At the moment, such believers are faced with the choice of either post-Vatican II liturgical chumminess or Lefebvrist theological archaism. An unfair choice, that I’m sure alienates a larger number of the faithful than the Church realizes.

Finally, a number of French dioceses are moving in the direction of laymen getting together for church services without a priest. I have attended one or two of those, and they are embarrassing in their lack of direction and form. Once again, if there were more contact between French Catholics and Anglicans, the latter could suggest a translated version (which exists already) of their Prayer-Book Matins and Evensong services (minus the prayers for the Royal Family), which would meet the case admirably. This would also mean going back to an earlier conception of Communion, or Mass, as an occasional, say monthly, liturgical high point; something the Reformation instituted but has been moving away from.

In a time when the seas are rising, Christians should reflect on the nature and course of the ship they are manning. Are we bound for an iceberg or for Ararat?