Back in high school I took a vocational aptitude test which, for the uninitiated, uses a series of multiple-choice questions that seek to match one’s personal preferences with those working in selected fields of endeavor.
After getting my results, I was reminded of a Candid Camera skit years ago featuring various unsuspecting students from an urban high school being shown the results of this same test.
Hilarity ensued as the hidden camera gleefully captured the shock and dismay on the faces of these young, expectant students as each was told the occupation for which he or she was best suited was a “shepherd.” Their stunned looks were priceless.
My results weren’t nearly as bizzare, though they weren’t what I had hoped for either. For one, the vocation I scored the highest in was that of a printer! To this day I’m not sure I quite get that.
Equally problematic, at least at the time, the test also showed my answers to be closely aligned with those given by pastors (somewhat prophetically as it turned out). More curious still, and this is the kicker, I scored even higher as a priest!
Which brings me to the banks of the Tiber. Meaning that my wife and I have started attending our local Catholic church. And it’s been strange. After all, as I’ve noted repeatedly, I come from a long line of Protestant pastors going back more than 200 years – not to mention the fact that I myself am a Protestant pastor.
Now you might assume this sudden change is related to the recent influx of young adults into our churches, particularly into the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions (our reason was far more prosaic, but more on that later). A recent poll, for example, reported a 34% increase in young adult attendance at Catholic churches this past Easter Sunday. I’ve also read that bookstores are reporting a significant increase in Bible sales as well.
Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. After all, young people today face a host of economic, social, and psychological challenges largely unknown to their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. It is the young, in other words, who tend to be the most affected by the ongoing dissipation of American culture.
A recent study, for instance, showed that 52% of Gen Z say they are currently experiencing an “existential crisis,” financial pressure being the dominant driver. 40% point to feeling powerless over their problems and are plagued by anxiety, helplessness, and a loss of control over their futures.
The study also highlighted a decided absence of community among the young, noting that they also tend to spend little or no time on “calming routines,” such as walking, time outdoors, music, yoga, etc.
Notably missing, one might add, was any reference to their faith lives. Given all the challenges they face, church attendance just might prove an effective antidote, offering not only a grounded communal experience but spiritually meaningful rituals and practices as well.
Were we to pan out a bit and take in a 30,000-foot view, these same maladies, including the corresponding increase in church attendance, could be seen as symptoms of the seismic civilizational change currently underway.
Many ancient and contemporary writers, philosophers, and historians have identified discernible, even predictable, stages that civilizations and cultures undergo over time. In a recent post, (https://climbingthewalls.org/toward-the-sunny-uplands/), I cited Neil Howe and William Strauss’ 1997 book, The Fourth Turning, as one example of recent vintage.
In their book, the authors identify four “turnings,” each mirroring clear, identifiable patterns found in all great societies throughout history: a HIGH, an AWAKENING, an UNRAVELING, and, finally, a CRISIS (the fourth “turning”). After the crisis, or fourth turning, the cyclical pattern repeats itself, though in admittedly unpredictable ways. It’s the future, after all.
A more recent contribution to this genre is Ray Dalio’s 2021 book, The Changing World Order. Here Dalio identifies not four but six stages that comprise what he calls the “Big Cycle”: RISE, EARLY PROSPERITY, PEAK PROSPERITY, OVEREXTENSION, DECLINE, and, finally, CRISIS/RESTRUCTURING.
Notably, Dalio’s “overextension” stage, observable within every great power throughout history (his study cites the Spanish, Dutch, British, and American “empires” or “hegemons”) involves not only unsustainable debt levels, but wide disparities in wealth AND values! Alienation and distrust invariably become the norm. Sound familiar?
Incidentally, as Dalio sees it, we now are likely entering the sixth stage, the “crisis/restructuring” phase. As has been said, what that will look like is anybody’s guess.
So is this why we decided to test the waters of Catholicism? Not exactly, though for decades we have been grown increasingly uneasy with the direction of the Protestant “mainline” church. Our sense if that it has lost its way amid these swirling secular changes, instead of remaining steadfast to its foundational mandates.
Just the other day, for example, I received the latest issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine that’s cover story featured the title, “Living Faith: The Divinity School and 21-Century Christianity.”
The title alone was a dead giveaway. Which is to say, the gist of the essay was how throughout its history the school has repeatedly shifted its focus, depending on the cultural imperatives of the moment.
The associate dean, in fact, is quoted as saying that the school “has long been attuned to the tensions between the teaching of tradition and the dynamism of society at large.” That’s certainly one way of putting it. Another might be: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
One cited example of the school’s secular shift followed a decline in enrollment around the year 1900, due, we are told, to the widespread challenges of the 19th century’s scientific method and other intellectual revolutions, not least Darwinism.
“The school responded,” the article explains, “by embracing an ecumenical approach to Christianity and retooling its curriculum in a way that…fused the ethical teachings of the Christian faith with contemporary social concerns.” Well isn’t that special?
A contemporaneous editorial in the Yale Alumni Weekly put it aptly: “We are interested in our fellows, and their social health and well-being, today, where our ancestors were interested in their theology.” So much for the latter, I guess. And hello Social Gospel!
Over time, I’m afraid, things don’t seem to have improved all that much. In this same article, the author cites “declining public religiosity” as a way of highlighting the alternate careers being pursued by many of today’s Yale seminarians.
Rather than working as pastors, in other words, many are turning to careers in law, business, and nonprofits; any work, in fact, that provides “service to others.”
Perhaps the school’s new branding campaign says it all: “For Humanity.” Given the benefit of the doubt, I suppose one might charitably infer that God is, in some sense, implied at least.
More broadly, the school’s present-day stance reflects an uncomfortable, if unspoken truth: the Protestant mainline churches are dying. You can dress it up however you like, but the numbers don’t lie. After years of single-minded fealty to the Social Gospel and, over the last few decades, its fiendish cousin, Critical Theory, they’ve simply run out of gas.
Our initial foray into the Catholic church, however, had little to do with these considerations. As it was, the Protestant church we had been attending (unhappily) canceled its services due to a snowstorm. The Catholic church was open. And we haven’t looked back since, finding the Catholic Mass to be a refreshing change from the steady stream of pseudo-sophisticated secularism dressed up as the gospel.
The focus instead is – dare I say it – theology. The themes, that is, revolve around sin, redemption, salvation, and sanctification (growth in the Holy Spirit), as we are urged to greater holiness in preparation for entry into heaven. In mainline Protestantism, all too often, such a focus is considered rudimentary, pedantic, even gauche.
Perhaps this is why, incidentally, a disillusioned and questioning younger generation is put off by the meager secularism of mainline Protestantism. Maybe they’re looking for something other than the same tired political and social propaganda they’re continually inundated with Monday through Saturday.
In a related sense, one of the more notable sins of Protestantism is its implicit assumption that we’re just fine the way we are and, as such, are in a position to fix everyone else. The Catholic approach is far more modest (and realistic). It takes seriously the fact that we are all a work in progress, that we are all sinners who struggle daily with the challenges and joys of following the God of Jesus. We can’t just assume we’ve somehow “arrived.” Cheap grace doesn’t cut it.
Perhaps most offensive to mainline Protestant sensibilities is the Catholic church’s stubborn insistence that salvation is effected only WITHIN the church, and not through the various “works” we champion out in the wider world.
For it is only within the church that we learn what it means to be disciples, rather than political, social agents pursuing grandiose secular schemes that vainly promise Utopia here on earth. It’s not that Catholicism denies the importance of loving and serving our neighbor, only that such charitable impulses must first be taught, practiced, and inculcated from within the four walls of the church.
In the final analysis, our tentative movement toward the Catholic church has been, as I say, a bit strange. For one, without being full-fledged members, full participation and full communion in the life of the church is necessarily compromised.
But for now we’re content to continue dipping our toes in the Tiber, even if we’re not quite ready to take the full plunge.