By way of introduction, I should say that this week’s post is written by a fellow who is still a U.S. Catholic. Born and baptized in SW Michigan, I attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, Catholic college, and Catholic universities. My career as teacher and professor has been in Catholic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. But I am proud to say that I have always strived to be a constructive, thoughtful, and inquisitive Catholic. Asking questions is healthy and necessary. As the Greek philosopher, Socrates, who died in 399 BCE, reportedly said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

          The U.S. Catholic Church, today, is in a major transition. Catholics continue to lose more members than they gain, though the retention rate for Hispanic Catholics is somewhat higher than for white Catholics. According to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C., 20% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Catholic. But in 2007, 24% of U.S. adults identified as Catholic. The Catholic population today is 57% White, 33% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 2% Black, while 3% are of another race.

          Politically, from the mid-19th century up to the 1960s, U.S. Catholics were close to 90% solidly Democratic. In the 1960s and early 1970s, however, with the decline of unions and big city machines, and with their upward mobility into the middle classes, U.S. Catholics drifted away from the Democratic Party and began to support the conservatism of the Republican Party. This shift was apparent in the presidential elections of Richard Nixon. He received 33% of the Catholic vote in the 1968 election but 52% in 1972. Today, 61% of white Catholic registered voters say they identify with or lean toward the the Republican Party, compared with 35% of Hispanic Catholics.

          In the 2020 presidential election, Catholic voters were split down the middle: 49% backed Donald Trump and 50% voted for Joe Biden. And so, what will happen in the 2024 U.S. presidential election? Big question. As of a few days ago, it appeared that the balance had shifted in favor of the Republicans, with 52 per cent of Catholics currently identifying with the Trump Republican party. Now of course it will be interesting to see what happens on November 5th with a far-right conservative Catholic Republican vice-presidential candidate, and the U.S. Catholic, Joe Biden, no longer a 2024 presidential candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumed Democratic Party candidate and comes from an atmosphere of interfaith openness. She is a dedicated Baptist Christian. Her mother is Hindu. Her father is a Baptist. Her husband is Jewish.

          There is no question that the U.S. Catholic bishops supported many former Trump administration policies, especially on abortion and gender issues. They wanted Catholic institutions to reject birth control provisions in their employees’ health insurance coverage. They wanted to fire staffers who did not support their teachings on gay marriage. They celebrated when Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

          New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan cozied up to Trump after his presidential election in 2016 and gave the invocation at his inauguration on January 20, 2017. In 2020, both Cardinal Dolan and the former bishop of Tyler, Texas, Bishop Joseph Strickland, used their positions of authority to essentially support the Trump administration. Jamie Manson, writing in the National Catholic Reporter on April 28, 2020, reported that New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, “…seems to like to boast about his relationship with Trump almost as much as Trump likes to boast about himself.”

          Bishop Strickland served as Bishop of Tyler from 2012 until his removal by Pope Francis on November 11, 2023. In May 2023, Strickland had accused Pope Francis of having a “program of undermining the Deposit of Faith.” He also said President Joe Biden was an “evil president.” But that is not the reason Strickland was removed from the Diocese of Tyler. Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio, the Holy See ambassador to the United States since 2016, told Strickland that the most serious allegation against him was his “disrespect for Pope Francis.”

          I don’t know if U.S. Catholics in general are really thinking theologically today. Their beliefs are out of sync with the hierarchy. Perhaps they have just become more secularly American. Nevertheless, while the Catholic Church officially holds that abortion is wrong and should not be legal, 6 in 10 adult U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a profile of U.S. Catholicism by the Pew Research Center. In addition, Pew reports that many U.S. Catholics would welcome more changes, with 83% saying they want the church to allow the use of contraception, 69% saying priests should be allowed to get married, and 64% that women should be allowed to become priests. According to Gallup, a majority of U.S. Catholics have consistently supported same-sex marriage since 2011.

          U.S. Catholic papal sentiments are interesting as well. Pope Francis’ approval rating of 75% is slightly higher than that for his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, but almost 20 points behind the U.S. Catholic approval rating for Pope John Paul II, at 93%. What is papal popularity based on? Papal PR packaging or objective reality?

 

          Well, I now move on to another set of U.S. Catholic observations. As a professor of theology, I taught master’s level U.S. Catholic seminarians for more than thirty years. Many former students became priests, and a few became bishops. What I find most significant about young U.S. Catholic priests today, however, is that they are theologically, ethically, and liturgically extremely conservative. A great many are returning to Mass in Latin, to people receiving communion on the tongue, and moving girl altar-servers aside. Implications for the future? When one turns clocks backwards too much, they just stop working.

          In an article in the New York Times on July 10, 2024, Ruth Grahm, describes today’s young Catholic priests as “Young, Confident and Conservative.” Ruth Grahm is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times. Her article is about new priests ordained by Milwaukee’s Archbishop Jerome Listecki (now over 75 and close to retirement) at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee. Grahm stressed that there is increasing unity among today’s young priests, writing: “They are overwhelmingly conservative in their theology, their liturgical tastes, and their politics.”

          Dr. Brad Vermurlen, assistant professor of sociology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, has studied the rightward shift of U.S. Catholic priests for a number of years and reports in Sociological Spectrum (Volume 43, 2023) that priests ordained since 2010 are “the most conservative cohort of priests we’ve seen in a long time.”

          So, why are there so many conservative young U.S. Catholic priests today?

          As a participant and close observer of seminary formation programs, I would say, first of all, because conservative-leaning U.S. Catholic bishops were appointed over a 35-year period by Pope John Paul II (pope from 1978 to 2005) and his successor Pope Benedict XVI (pope from 2005 to 2013). They changed the theological focus of seminary education by removing progressive professors with an open-minded post-Vatican II theology and replacing them with conservative professors with a narrow-minded pre-Vatican II theology that romanticized “the good old days”

          Today’s young Catholic priests are the products of that Pope John Paul/Pope Benedict theological throwback and fear of change. As my friend Dr. Patrick Sullivan, head of P&D Consulting in Montana City, wrote recently: “I think they long for simpler answers…. There is so much change happening around them that they seek some form of stability. They honestly believe that having the security of straightforward rules and answers will simplify their lives.  We are going through a paradigmatic change.  Young people are particularly sensitive to this. When someone comes along and shows them that things were much better when Catholics behaved, they are open to it.”  Patrick, who also has a Master of Divinity degree from the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, is the former president of ARCC, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church.

          I suppose if people try to live in the romanticized “good old days” they don’t have to think about contemporary issues. It is much easier to be obedient to conservative authority, sing the old songs, repeat the old lingo, and be happy. That is the fundamentalist journey. Unfortunately, it often ends in a dead end. We live in the present. The past is past.

 

– Jack

 

Dr. J. A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be