Fr. Z's Blog

There is a piece at Rorate from a couple days ago which addresses a massive problems in Italy with paltry vocations, unstaffed churches, and declined church attendance.  They are hitting the pot of strong coffee that we in these USA have been staring at with perhaps more realism.  In Italy, however, much of the infrastructure and the clergy are sustained by the state through taxes.

The Rorate piece starts with a a focus on the area of Tortona, which once had as a bishop, the infamous Bp. Viola now in the “Dicastery” (Congregation) for Divine Worship (who wears Bugnini’s episcopal ring).  He is the clerical side of the team with the layman Mr. Cricket who, under Roche, are trying to kill off the traditional Roman Rite and eliminate from the life of the Church the people who desire it.  Remember, its just as much about the people as the Rite they desire.  They don’t like the people.

The article explains that where Viola was once bishop there is ecclesial devastation.

All over Italy there are efforts to redraw parish lines, consolidate.  This is even going to extend to dioceses.  Italy has quite a few small dioceses, some of them already merged into hyphenated entities.

Here’s the last part of the piece with my emphases and comments.  The mention of Ratzinger is an earlier reference to he prediction about a smaller Church and its reemergence.

A new geography made up of new boundaries is being redrawn, in an Italy of churches that first empty and then close. Man will experience “indescribable loneliness,” Ratzinger warned, and “having lost sight of God, he will ”feel the horror of poverty.”

The structural crisis is also felt outside the circle of diocesan priests. “Of the 43 Augustinian convents of the 1990s, today there are 20 left. There were 230 of us in 1996. Today there are 106 of us left,” explains Father Francesco Giuliani, pastor of the Shrine of Santa Rita in Milan. “We also have the dilemma in our order: put one in each convent and thus give minimal service or rather to come together and close places? I believe that more than organization we should have the courage to call the process by its own name: reduction. And it is better to look straight into the face of reality, without shame, without unnecessary guilt.” [NB…] The patterns of the past no longer hold, just as the traditionalism of the past provided a structure that no longer has the numbers to sustain it, despite the consternation of the faithful who have remained frightened by the changes. [It makes you pound your head on the table.  If what you are doing now and for the past decades doesn’t work… try what did work.  I am reminded of my old pastor Msgr. Schuler upon reading the “new diocesan ‘five year plan’  to deal with the shrinking numbers of priests without doing anything to change their approach toward vocations.  Comparing the situation to the famine in Ireland (apt because Irish clergy with mainly in control), he said, instead of planting different crops let’s all sit around and plan how we are going to starve to death.] “We in the diocese of Tortona,” Fr. Paolo continues, ”like others before us, have raised the issue of giving proper dignity to the liturgies. [Hence, it has been lacking?  Whose fault is that?] With few faithful maintaining the high standard is difficult, there is a shortage of volunteers at the reading during the celebration, [?!?  So what?  What are priests for?] catechists for the children, not to mention the choir that would be an important element of the liturgy and is now a mirage.” [Brick by brick my man.  Look at the enormous success of Ss. Trinità in Rome and other places – even in Italy – where the Vetus Ordo is used.] Father Giuliani also agrees: “Because of the reduction in staffing not all churches are able to hear confessions; [Keep throwing the traditional-leaning men out of seminaries and you get what you created.] rather, it is necessary to join forces.  Just as Ratzinger said, according to whom Christianity will be communities that are no longer large, but small, with an almost family-like flavor, in which people will participate not so much out of duty as is perhaps done today in some cases, but out of true conviction. And we will have gained in quality.”  [GAH!  I remember how, decades ago, the vocations people in LA crowed that its program was a huge success focused on quality of candidates.  Their screening process was so effective that they didn’t have a single man enter that year.]

It still comes back to him, to the young Bavarian theologian on the run from Tübingen, a refugee in the quieter Regensburg from which he looked out to interpret the future. It was from there that he assured the radio microphone, “It will be a long process, but when all the travail is over, great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simplified Church.” The process seems to be only halfway through.

Halfway or quarterway… it’s on the way.  There is a demographic sinkhole opening up.  And where it is worse there is a kind of blinkered lemming-like forward dash to the cliff.

About that last part, “when all the travail is over, great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simplified Church”.

This is what I have been saying.  My recent attendance at the priest’s conference held by the St. Paul Center confirmed it for me through my conversations with priests.  My email confirms it.  Of course the plural of anecdote is data.

As I see it, as the sinkhole swallows larger number because of the unwillingness of church leadership to find a new path, there will remain

When the demographic collision happens, and it will, only the strong and disciplined will survive.

Right now, who are the strong?  Traditionalist Catholics, for sure, and probably also those of a more charismatic bent. Yes, some nasty critters will survive, too. They always do.

Those who are attracted to traditional worship are strong, hard-identity Catholic.  They are young and they are having lots of children.  Also, strong, are those next-generation young people who have inherited a saner and sounder charismatic approach.  They pray the Rosary and attend Eucharistic Adoration.  They are informed and they love the Faith.   Converts are coming into the Church, often from a background that grounded them well in Scripture and works of mercy.  Among seminarians these days still a high percentage are open to or eager for tradition, even to the point where the bumfuzzled swotters on the Left are ringing their hands.  The religious orders still attracting postulants are imbued with Tradition.

NB: I’ll add here that these groups will out of necessity have to work together in a smaller, demographically and financially devastated Church.  There will be frictions, but the fruits could be amazing.  Catholics with a stronger grounding in Scripture, with zeal fueled by the Holy Spirit, on the foundation of traditional worship.  Holy cow.

Some years ago I wrote this.  I trot it out in honor of the anniversary year of the death of the Professor:

In these USA, we as a Church are like band of adventurers on the march towards a long-desired destination.  We have swamps and storms and enemies to face at every turn.  Sometimes we are forced on horribly high and perilous paths only to find tenuous bridges over chasms heading towards tunnels filled with orcs or forests with hypnotic spiders.  The voyage takes its toll on our numbers.

And, soon, a big drop in numbers will result when the inevitable battle takes place.  A heavily-armed force named Demographics is coming at us from the other direction.  We will soon collide.

The number of people saying they are or pretending still to be Catholic will soon plummet.  The number of diocesan priests and religious will shrink as the Biological Solution catches up to presbyterates and orders.

This is the state of the question after decades of both purposeful and systematic corrosion of Catholic identity as well as erosion through neglect and incompetence.  Europe is worse and Latin America is incomprehensible.

When the demographic collision happens, and it will, only the strong and disciplined will survive.

 There are also market forces at work here.  As demographics shift in the Church, lots of people who have written books and speak and teach see what’s going on and they adapt.  I am in no way suggesting insincerity.  They are genuine and they are learning and being influenced by what they learn.  Believe me!  As a convert – and the impact of converts on the Church today is huge – I get it.  And by convert I mean both formal and interior, reverts and those who have had ongoing deepening of the gift they were given from their families.  Conversion must be ongoing if it is truly conversion and not just role-playing (aka hypocrisy). It takes a long time to convert.  As a matter of fact, it lasts until your final breath.  And there is a great deal to discover in Holy Church’s treasuries.

Coming into the Catholic Church, or recommitting, is like coming into a vast store of riches, like finding the hoard hall under Erebor, the Lonely Mountain.  Imagine the time it takes to explore it and benefit from new discoveries.  A small band, converts all in the large sense, enter in wonder.  Some track in one direction in the great cavern and find this or that treasure while others clamber off in another direction.  Eventually, after one awesome revelation after another, they come together again and point and say to each other simultaneously:

“You have GOT to see what I found over there!”

And mutual enrichment begins.

The treasury, by the way, has been guarded by a dragon who wants to keep it away from all of us.

Let’s beat the dragon, claim the treasure, and together build what it can build.