new theology review february 2009 Michael J. McCallion and David R. Maines

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1 new theology review february 2009 Representations of Faith and the Catholic New Evangelization Michael J. McCallion and David R. Maines The call for great enthusiasm and a new boldness in the new evangelization is something very difficult to measure and thus to determine when it exists. The authors present the results of their empirical research in the Detroit metropolitan area on how Catholics and Protestants represent their faith to others. Most scholars and theologians would agree that a central issue under consideration by the conveners of the Second Vatican Council was the problem of representation within Catholicism. Certainly a major concern was the reaffirmation of the centrality of the church and rearticulation of core Catholic beliefs, but equal if not greater concern was given to matters regarding the expression of beliefs and representation of faith. Such expressions and representations were reformulated within the ethos of active engagement that permeated the various constitutions promulgated by the council, and that ethos was to initiate a turning point in Catholic culture and institutional conduct. Vatican II, justly regarded as one of the major reforms in Catholic Church history, sought to legitimate a process of change from the insulated church to one engaged in world affairs, from the laity as passive worshipers to active participants in the spiritual community, and from Catholicism as the holder of a single truth to an ecumenical partner in the many dialogues Michael J. McCallion is the director of the Institute for Research on the New Evangelization, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Archdiocese of Detroit, Michigan. David R. Maines is a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan. 58 michael j. mc callion and david r. maines

2 about truth. In all this, Vatican II, while seeking to strengthen church traditions, sought even more to challenge all Catholics to become more active and engaged in their practices as Christians. The ethos of active engagement was at the heart of what Avery Cardinal Dulles regards as the four great constitutions coming out of the council: the one on the church (Lumen Gentium), on the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium), on the church in the modern world (Gaudium et Spes), and on revelation (Dei Verbum). While each called for various kinds of change, the change in the metaphor for the laity from the Body of Christ (not abandoned however at Vatican II) to the People of God was singularly important because it signified a transformation in how ordinary Catholics were to regard and conduct themselves. As People of God, the laity were to embrace the ethos of active engagement and become more participatory and expressive in their worship and everyday lives as Christians. That transformed presence directly involves how religious faith is to be represented and communicated and is arguably the most relevant to the reformulations found in Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium. Of these two documents, the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy was the first to receive sustained organizational attention in dioceses and parishes. Starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, worship offices and commissions were formed, as were parish councils and various other organizational units that were designed to interpret and implement liturgical change. As Andrew Greeley characterizes it, the liturgical movement acquired a collective effervescence that permeated Catholic culture, especially in the United States, and had the effect of pulling its participants together into a collective enterprise of meaning and significance pertaining to worship practices (Greeley). That significance flowed from the central principle of Sacrosanctum Concilium stating, in the reform and promotion of the liturgy, the full and active participation of all the people is the aim to be considered before all else (SC, no. 14). The changes stemming from the implementation of this document are well known: Mass could be conducted in languages other than Latin; biblical sources of sacred meanings were emphasized and hermeneutical interpretations of Scripture could serve as a basis for homilies; tabernacles were moved from the center of sanctuaries; altars were reconfigured; priests faced parishioners during Mass; singing by the laity was encouraged, and so on. The organizing principle of worship now was to emphasize active participation by the laity, including greater attentiveness and thoughtful reflection. This active engagement of worship practices, accordingly, shifted the representation of faith from a passive and rote relationship with the visual (crosses, statues, altars, other sacred things) to the active and more verbal and communicative relationship with a community of worshipers. Lumen Gentium is a document that is complementary to Sacrosanctum Concilium. However, if the liturgical reforms ask the laity to be more actively engaged in their worship practices, Lumen Gentium asks, if not requires, the laity to be even more active in their everyday lives as practicing Christians. This increased activity representations of faith 59

3 is to focus directly on the perpetuation of the church, for in that document we read that the laity are gathered together in the People of God [and] are called upon, as living members, to expend all their energy for the growth of the Church and its continuous sanctification.... Through their baptism and confirmation, all are commissioned to that apostolate by the Lord himself. Pope Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi (Evangelization in the Modern World [1975]), reaffirms Lumen Gentium by proclaiming that the mandate to spread the good news is the essential mission of the Church. Embedded in that proclamation is the contention that to be Catholic is to be an evangelizer; that to be baptized is to be obligated to spread the message of Jesus Christ; that evangelization is not only unavoidable but a natural state of being for Catholics. Pope John Paul II went further in his proclamation by stating that this essential mission is new: it is to be new in expression, new in fervor, new in methods (John Paul II, 1983). The newness of the new evangelization, in other words, is yet another instance of Vatican II s ethos of active engagement. And in speaking of this new evangelization at the Fourth World Youth Day in 1989, Pope John Paul II underscored that ethos in saying that, It is not enough to discover Christ you must bring him to others!... You must have the courage to speak about Christ, to bear witness to your faith through a lifestyle inspired by the gospel. Following Redemptoris Missio, the United States bishops formally addressed Pope John Paul II s call for a new evangelization, and from their deliberations came the 1992 document, Go and Make Disciples: A National Plan and Strategy for Catholic Evangelization in the United States. Overwhelmingly ratified by the U.S. bishops, the plan formulated the new evangelization around three major goals: (1) to instill great enthusiasm among Catholics for their faith such that they will share it with others; (2) to invite all people in the United States into the Catholic Church; (3) to promote and transform the United States as a Christian nation. These goals were construed as inclusive of everyone in the United States from both practicing and inactive Catholics to Christians of other traditions to non-christians with the ethos of active engagement resting at the heart of that inclusion and those goals. The new evangelization was to entail a Catholic transformation from merely being silent witnesses to their faith through living good lives, as Fr. Kenneth Boyack characterizes it, to sharing their faith by speaking the gospel message clearly and by giving reasons for their Catholic faith (Boyack, 78). Moreover, this sharing is to be done with great enthusiasm to enable Catholics to fall more deeply in love with God, thereby becoming more holy. This inclusiveness and enthusiasm thus defines the newness of the new evangelization, or, as Bishop Samuel Jacobs puts it, The call is not just to evangelize, but to evangelize in the power of the Spirit with new boldness (Jacobs, 61, emphasis added). To be Catholic is to be an evangelizer. 60 michael j. mc callion and david r. maines

4 Vatican II addressed the problem of how to strengthen representations of faith while at the same time changing those representations. To preserve the church and reinvigorate faith, Catholics have been asked to become less passive in their worship and to actually do something liturgically that is reflective and constitutive of spiritual meaning (Sacrosanctum Concilium). Then they were asked to become more verbal, outward-reaching, and excited in their public display and embracement of their faith (Lumen Gentium). These discontinuities in Catholic practices stemming from the ethos of active engagement and formalized in these two constitutions were massive. Indeed, as Mark Chaves has shown in his recent book, Congregations in America, Catholicism is one of the most ceremonial and least enthusiastic traditions in the United States (Chaves, 147). These two constitutions, however, seek to position Catholics as more enthusiastic and less ceremonial, or at least more enthusiastic in their ceremonies. A variety of concerns and assumptions have framed the proposals and programs for increasing Catholic activity and enthusiasm, with some being more explicit than others. One of the most explicit has been the long-standing concern over secularization. Indeed, the U.S. Bishops Committee on Evangelization claimed that Catholic evangelization was necessary to meet the threat of the forces of secularized culture, and they believed that the assimilation of Catholics into American society had weakened their identity and values (Boyack, 74). Another concern has been the steady and in some cases spectacular growth of those Protestant denominations that have been more evangelical and expressive, and that the Catholic Church should also consider evangelical strategies as a mechanism of growth. Implicit in the liturgical reforms and calls for the new evangelization, and serving as a latent comparison with Protestants, though, has been the assumption that Catholics are too passive and inactive in their representations and expressions of their faith and that therefore they are not as engaged in their faith as they should be. It is to that assumption of Catholic inactivity and the latent comparison with Protestantism that we now direct our attention. Are these claims true? That question is one that the social sciences can shed light on in a way theology cannot. Empirical Data W e have collected recent data from more than 1,800 Protestants and Catholics from the Detroit metropolitan area, and among the questions asked were those pertaining to issues of evangelistic activities. These data are not about the new evangelization itself but rather about how Catholics and Protestants represent their faith to others, which is central to discussions and proposals for the new evangelization and the ethos of active engagement. In the course of empirically dealing with that ethos, we note that there is no benchmark or consensus for deciding when one is being active. This raises questions of what kinds of activity representations of faith 61

5 constitute bringing Christ to others, and how often must the faithful engage in that activity if they are to expend all their energies for the growth of the church? What kinds of behavior do the faithful engage in if they are to evangelize with enthusiasm and a new boldness? We attempt to shed some light on these matters first by reporting answers from 966 Protestants and 870 Catholics to the question of how frequently they engage in evangelistic activities. This was an open-ended question that left the definition of evangelism to the discretion of the respondents. The data show that Catholics are less likely than Protestants to engage in this activity, with 71 percent of Catholics and 52 percent of Protestants reporting they do so only once a year or less, or never. Despite these differences, we are struck by the rather low levels of evangelization by members of both denominations. If we assume that engaging in that activity once a week or more constitutes a high level of evangelization, we find that only 15 percent of Protestants and What kinds of 7 percent of Catholics are regularly involved. Again, there is a denominational difference, but the overall rates of activity are low for both. These data, therefore, strongly suggest that evangelization is bringing Christ not something frequently engaged in by American Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic. to others? These rather low levels of reported evangelization, however, do not mean that there is a corresponding low level of representation of faith. Christians represent their faith in many ways, verbally and visually as well as passively and actively, and we find that Catholics and Protestants engage in all these modes of representation. Tables 1 and 2 present data on these forms of representation of faith, and since the relevant Vatican II documents emphasize active engagement among the laity, we have organized our data in terms of amount of activity involved in these representations. The first part of table 1 compares Protestant and Catholic public representations of faith, and we have classified these data into continuously inactive (once a display is made, no further activity is needed) and continuously active (one must continue to do something to engage in the display) display categories. We find that Catholics are more likely than Protestants to engage in continuously inactive displays such as placing religious items or icons in their cars, yards, or at work. In general, both Protestants and Catholics appear more likely to engage in the continuously active representations of faith, with Catholics more active in some areas and Protestants more active in others. Both are very likely to wear crosses, with a slight edge going to Catholics, who, predictably, are more likely to carry rosary beads, while Protestants are more likely to read the Bible in public. Both are equally likely to wear clothing with religious wording and icons. The second part of table 1 activity constitute 62 michael j. mc callion and david r. maines

6 shows that a large majority of both Protestants and Catholics have religious items such as pictures, crosses, and statues in their homes, with Catholics slightly more likely to do so than Protestants. Table 1 Public Visual Representations of Religious Faith Protestant Catholic Continuously Inactive Display Religious items in car 39.6% 56.0%* Religious items in yard * Religious screensaver at work * Religious items at work * Continuously Active Display Wearing cross at work 56.7% 61.4%* Wearing cross outside work * Carry rosary beads * Wear religious clothing at work Wear religious clothing outside work Read Bible in public * Continuously Inactive Private Representations of Religious Faith Religious items in living room * Religious items in bedroom * * statistically significant differences, <.05 Table 2 presents data pertaining solely to verbal representations of faith. That is, all the items in this table involve the faithful having to speak to another person. We classified these activities into three categories of effort, ranging from low to high, to discern patterns relevant to the ethos of active engagement. The five items requiring only a low amount of effort show rather high levels of participation for both Catholics and Protestants, with Protestants being more active in three of the items. Protestants appear more likely to greet a visitor at church, recommend a religious publication to another person, and invite a work colleague to church. Of the seven items classified as requiring moderate effort, Protestants are more likely than Catholics to engage in four of them. They are more likely to deliver a gift to a visitor, call new neighbors about their church, call someone in their church that is not active, and share their faith while at work. We note, however, that on average the rates of participation for this category are about half of those for the low-effort category. Finally, in the high-effort category, all statistically significant differences between Catholics and Protestants disappear, and the rates of participation drop representations of faith 63

7 considerably. Only about 7 percent organize a prayer group at work, 4 to 6 percent talk door-to-door about their faith, about 5 percent hand out religious leaflets, with slightly higher but still low percentages involved in missionary work. Table 2 Level of Effort and Verbal Representations of Religious Faith Low Effort Protestant Catholic Greet visitor at church 84.2% 65.2%* Offer to pray for someone Say grace at restaurant Recommend religious publication * Invite colleague to church Moderate Effort Offer to pray with someone Deliver gift to church visitor * Call new neighbors * Call someone not active in church * After deed, say you are a Christian Share faith at work * Share faith outside work High Effort Organize prayer group at work Talk door-to-door about church Hand out leaflets at street or mall Missionary work in U.S Missionary work outside U.S * statistically significant differences, <.05 We recognize that the categories of Catholic and Protestant are rather broad categories, and that there is likely to be wide variation within each category in how people represent their faiths. Therefore, in table 3 we compare six items of verbal representations of faith in four of the Catholic parishes and seven of the Protestant churches we studied. One item was a low-effort activity (invite a colleague to church), and overall the Protestant churches were more active than the Catholic parishes. Three of the items were moderate-effort activities (share faith with others, call someone no longer active, and call new neighbors about church), again with Protestants on average more active than Catholics. Two of the items were high-effort activities (talk door-to-door, organize prayer group at work), with the percentages of both Protestants and Catholics dropping off to rather low levels. While these overall differences mirror those of table 2, we draw attention to the differences between particular parishes and churches. In all six items, 64 michael j. mc callion and david r. maines

8 St. Mary s and St. Elizabeth s parishes were more active than some Protestant churches, whereas Second Baptist and/or Bethel Baptist were the most active among the Protestant churches. Therefore, these data suggest that while comparisons of how Catholics and Protestants represent their faiths, and how active they may be in doing so, can provide valuable information, it may also be worthwhile to examine congregational culture and the local activities of parish and church members to discover in what ways the Catholic vs. Protestant comparisons mask important and relevant issues. Table 3 Denominations and Evangelical Activities Catholic Invite Colleague to Church Share Faith with Others Percent yes Call Someone No Longer Active St. Alexander St. Michael St. Mary St. Elizabeth Protestant Second Baptist Bethel Baptist First Presbyterian Holy Trinity Lutheran St. Timothy Presbyterian Central Methodist Bethlehem Lutheran Catholic Talk Door-to-Door Call New Neighbors About Church Percent yes Organize Prayer Group St. Alexander St. Michael St. Mary St. Elizabeth Protestant Second Baptist Bethel Baptist First Presbyterian Holy Trinity Lutheran St. Timothy Presbyterian Central Methodist Bethlehem Lutheran representations of faith 65

9 no benchmarks for active engagement, there are none for level of enthusiasm in spreading the faith. Discussion In considering the relevance of these data for the Catholic new evangelization, we distinguish between sharing Christian faith and growing the church, both of which are intrinsic to the new evangelization. Our data show that in substantial numbers, Catholics are quite involved in sharing their faith with others. That involvement includes the visual representations typically associated with Catholicism (e.g., statues in yards) as well as those generically associated with Christianity (e.g., wearing crosses). Some of these visual representations require only minimal activity (e.g., putting a religious item in a car), while others require continuous attention (e.g., wearing religious clothing). These ways of sharing Christian faith are common to both Catholics and Protestants and thus can be said to be elements of Christian culture, but they tend to be more typical of the ways Catholics share their faith. Just as there are Verbal representations of faith are also ways of sharing faith, but they are more directly relevant to and functional for processes of growing the church. Here we find some similarities between Catholics and Protestants but also find that Protestants tend to be more active in some areas. They appear to be more likely than Catholics to extend themselves to others by greeting visitors at church, recommending religious publications, inviting work colleagues to their church, sharing faith at work, calling on someone who is no longer active in their church, and delivering gifts to church visitors. These are activities that are more central to evangelization, and while the data show that Catholics are active in these areas, they are not as active as Protestants. However, the data are clear in showing that both Protestants and Catholics are identical in decreasing their levels of activity as the degree of effort required increases. Just as there are no benchmarks for active engagement, there are none for level of enthusiasm in spreading the faith. The call for great enthusiasm and a new boldness in the new evangelization is something very difficult to measure and thus determine when it exists. Our data, however, provide some clues about this matter and bring us back to the question of congregational culture. The two Catholic parishes (St. Mary and St. Elizabeth) and two Protestant churches (Second Baptist and Bethel Baptist) that showed the highest participation in outreach activities (table 3) had the strongest evangelical traditions and incorporated high levels of expressive worship practices. They also were composed of 66 michael j. mc callion and david r. maines

10 urban working class and relatively small congregations. St. Mary s is on Detroit s west side. It is made up of about 250 predominantly black, working-class families, and its members are very open to evangelization activities. St. Elizabeth s has about 300 working-class and predominantly white families and has a Catholic charismatic worship style involving spontaneous expressiveness, a charismatic Mass, and participatory music. Bethel Baptist, like St. Elizabeth, is on Detroit s south side with about 100 mostly white members. It is a sect-like church community, with an expressive, evangelical flavor to Sunday worship. Second Baptist, also on the south side, has about 200 members and has had a long and deep evangelical tradition of emotional expressiveness in its worship. The two other Catholic parishes (St. Alexander and St. Michael) are both suburban and larger ( families) parishes, and show lower rates of participation in outreach activities related to growing the church. Overall, these data suggest some rather profound differences in the challenges presented by Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium. The implementation of liturgical change was more of a cognitive shift in worship practices and was greatly facilitated by the alteration of physical objects such as altars and tabernacles, whereas the implementation of the new evangelization calls for more of an emotional shift and pertains to changes in relationships among the faithful. Both are instantiations of the Vatican II ethos of active engagement and are oriented toward the revitalization of the church, but they ask for quite different responses from the laity. Consider the fact that 95 percent of the new parishes built in the Detroit metropolitan area since 1950 were in the suburbs, and that these parishes were designed in a way consistent with more active participation of the faithful and less ceremonialism expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium. These parishes now serve roughly 80 percent of Detroit archdiocesan parishioners, and the only thing asked of them was to attend Mass. The building design, containing the Vatican II physical alterations, performed most of the rest of the liturgical change. However, Lumen Gentium contains an explicit deficit model of the Catholic laity. As Pope John Paul II declared, It is not enough to discover Christ you must bring him to others!... You must have the courage to speak about Christ.... (Martin, 21). And as the U.S. bishops have declared, the laity are not nearly enthusiastic enough in sharing the Good News. We speculate that the contention by church leaders that the laity are passive, unenthusiastic, and un involved in sharing their faith may well be met by the laity s contention, if we take the data in table 1 seriously, that they in fact do share their faith and bring Jesus Christ to others. One of the biggest challenges of the new evangelization, therefore, will be in communicating this deficit model to suburban, affluent parishioners where congregational culture is more individualistic. The most receptive parishes are likely to be those in the inner-city areas. However, the problem here is that those receptive parishes are declining (forty-four were closed in Detroit during the past half century). representations of faith 67

11 Accordingly, the Catholic new evangelization faces substantial challenges not faced by those implementing liturgical changes after Vatican II. First, how are church leaders to communicate the premise that the laity are insufficient Christians without insulting them so much that they turn away from their message? Second, how do they deal with the ecology of faith in which the vast majority of their audience, especially suburban Catholics, arguably will be the least receptive to their message? Third, church leaders should be sensitive to the implications of the distinction between sharing faith and growing the church and the salience of each to the new evangelization. The challenge of the former is relatively easy if the laity are not asked to drastically alter their lifestyles and that such faith sharing includes all forms of representing their faith. The challenge of the latter, however, involves converting non-catholics, which creates a tension with ecumenism, and bringing back unchurched and alienated Catholics. Fourth, and last, how will church leaders promote the new evangelization among younger Catholics? William D Antonio, Davidson, Hoge, and Gautier recently evangelization provided data in their book American Catholics Today that post Vatican II Catholics have a more faces substantial individualistic approach to faith and morals and are less likely to give credence to the church as challenges not mediator between themselves and God (D Antonio et al.). This situation raises the classic question faced by those of authority relations and whether church leaders can reasonably expect younger members of the implementing laity to fall in line with church proclamations and initiatives. These challenges will require sensitivity and balance among members of diocesan and parish after Vatican II. teams charged with implementing the new evangelization. The countervailing forces of Vatican II, which paradoxically accept and reject secularization, modernization, and individualization, place these evangelization teams in a historically disjunctive situation that blurs priorities. Team members and leaders must acknowledge that the laity routinely share their faith in the Catholic traditions passed down to them, but, like the vast majority of American Catholics, are less likely to overtly evangelize and engage in activities directly associated with growing the church. They also must be sensitive to the fact that enthusiasm can be neither mandated nor extracted from the laity. Enthusiasm comes from within the person, is born of commitment, and must find its place with other commitments that define everyday life. Accordingly, evangelization teams are cautioned to avoid criticizing the laity for what they The Catholic new liturgical changes 68 michael j. mc callion and david r. maines

12 might regard as inadequate vigor or boldness in representing their faith to others. They must realize that active participation is a moving target with no definitive markers that might signal successful evangelization efforts; and therefore, they must accept with gratitude the faith and commitments the laity bring to the church. Most of all, evangelization teams must develop a culture of invitation for the laity, Catholic and non-catholic alike, rather than a culture of strategic planning. This approach, by its very nature, will be specific to each parish and will depend on the configuration and life circumstances of particular parishes. References Boyack, Kenneth. Go and Make Disciples: The United States Bishops National Plan for Catholic Evangelization. In Ralph Martin and Peter Williamson, eds., Pope John Paul II and the New Evangelization: How You Can Bring Good News to Others. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995, Chaves, Mark. Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, D Antonio, William V., James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge, and Mary L. Gautier. American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church. New York: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Greeley, Andrew. The Catholic Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, Jacobs, Samuel. How Must Catholics Evangelize? Evangelization and the Power of the Holy Spirit. In Ralph Martin and Peter Williamson, eds., Pope John Paul II and the New Evangelization: How You Can Bring Good News to Others. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995, John Paul II. Redemptoris Missio (On the Permanent Validity of the Church s Missionary Mandate) (1987). (accessed October 8, 2008).. The Task of the Latin American Bishop. Address to CELAM, March 9, English translation in Origins 12 (March 24, 1983) 661. Martin, Ralph, and Peter Williamson, eds. Pope John Paul II and the New Evangelization: How You Can Bring Good News to Others. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, Paul VI. Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World), vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_exhortations/index.htm (accessed October 8, 2008). United States Catholic Bishops. Go and Make Disciples: A National Plan and Strategy for Catholic Evangelization in the United States, representations of faith 69