The “new” Catholic church

It is a tumultuous time for the Catholic Church and for its members. From the scandals concerning pedophile priests, to the aging Pope, to the loss of identity within Catholic institutions, it is obvious the Church has reached a crossroads.

In a telephone interview with Mirror reporter Eileen Arnold, Gibson expanded the theories from his book to apply more specifically to Catholic Universities and students attending Catholic Universities.

Eighty-five percent of this university is Catholic and even so, I have a friend who once said that the only thing Catholic about this university is that it’s Catholic. Would you agree that the same crisis of identity you spoke about for the church is affecting the universities as well?

DG: Yes, very much in many ways. I don’t think universities themselves are as overwrought about it as outsiders and the Vatican. I think they [universities] see themselves as doing their mission in a less preachy way, or in a less overtly Catholic way.

But I do think that there is an issue of what really is your identity about, what makes you Catholic in this American world … I think universities are the synthesis of everything American. It’s a pluralistic arena where everything can be subject to argumentation and where everyone is ostensibly welcome.

Again, in that sort of arena, what is it that makes you Catholic? What are the markers that make you Catholic, how can you be Catholic without setting up fences that either keep you in or keep people out? It’s a very difficult thing that’s a real sub theme of the book, not only for universities, but for Catholics of all stripes- how to be American and how to be Catholic? It’s resonated since Catholics first came to this country in the 17th century and it continues to resonate.

EA: Can you speculate on what the impact of these changes will be on the Catholic University, if anything at all?

DG: Here’s one sort of pet theory and maybe pet hope: in centuries past religious orders have been the engines of reform in the Catholic Church at times of scandal and crisis and corruption … From the Benedictines to the Franciscans to the Dominicans to the Jesuits, religious orders have sprung up and really driven reform and purification and renewal in the Church.

Of course, religious orders have really fallen on hard times in terms of numbers in an unprecedented drop off. In a way universities and colleges and the Catholic educational world is the place where the legacy of religious orders survive.

I also think a historical echo can be the engine of reform again. I see places like Boston College and Notre Dame and Fordham which are engaging in programs to explore this most immediate scandal, but also a whole raft of other issues that come up and that are associated with the scandal or that have been brought up as a result of it.

I think because the orders are a little more independent of the Diocesan Bishops that they are in an arena or oasis where people can come and debate openly a lot of the issues that are going on in the Church today.

So in that sense, maybe this can be a source of renewal for the universities themselves, to really be the mind of the church during this time of crisis.

This will affect change both on the university because they would be so focused on this hugely Catholic issue, but it would also in turn revitalize the wider church as well.

EA: When Vatican II occurred in the 60’s the Church went through a lot of changes obviously, so much so that it made the Church an alien identity to our parents, do you expect the same thing to happen in our generation now?

DG: No, I don’t think so. Some people on the liberal wing of the Church are calling for Vatican III, but I think that’s a mistake. I think for one thing Vatican II was kind of a close call for progressives winning out, and I think people might be surprised at to who shows up at Vatican III. I think it might go more conservative than people would think. The bottom line is that I think we need to integrate the changes of Vatican II more completely. To a degree the Church in the last couple of decades under John Paul II is in some respects returning to something that is a little more familiar to our parents. So I don’t think there’s going to be any great shift one way or the other and I don’t think there necessarily should be. I think Catholics are kind of dizzy with all the changes that have come down, especially at the liturgy, and at the mass.

Mass should be the point where we come together.

EA: These days it’s more popular to be spiritual without an establishment like the Church, even at a Catholic University, so why save the Church if you can be spiritual without it?

DG: That’s the great question that this scandal and this crisis in the church raises. In that sense what I’d like to point out is that the fate of the Catholic Church is not just about Catholicism. It’s really bound up in the fate of religion in America and perhaps the rest of the world.

People are asking these days when Islam and Judaism and Catholicism are in such turmoil, can an ancient institutional faith exist in the modern world? In America increasingly, religion is the dirty word and spiritual is the nice word.

I think frankly my schtick is that we’re such a hyper individualistic society, I don’t want to sound like a blue nosed neo-puritan but I think we’re so individualized that we’ve lost that sense of community. That is the great challenge for Catholics in this crisis, to show that we can work things out respecting people’s dignity and we can work things out within an institutional setting. The institution is a bad word, but if we think of it as a community, which it essentially is, then working things out without cutting and running is a wonderful thing.

EA: It looks like the Catholic Church may call on universities to embrace their catholic identity in ways that they haven’t in the past to respond to what’s going on with the Catholic Church right now. How will that work with the Church asking us to make our catholic identity stronger?

DG: I think it’s always going to be a source of tension. That’s almost the nature of the intellectual endeavor. It’s always a question of a back and forth and there will always be a degree of tension between what the institutional church would like and what the university setting would want.

I’m not sure that there’s going to be that much radical change in that respect. There could be some flare ups, but universities are individual enough so that they will be able to go their own way. The thing is, when you talk about Catholic Universities as well, it’s not just one size fits all, as you know.

There are just so many universities out there with so many different identities from the Ave Maria law school to Notre Dame, to Fairfield. There are so many different identities out there and I think that sort of variety is a good thing.