The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States this week comes at both a very good and very bad time for American Catholics.

One way of measuring the current state of the Catholic church is to compare it with fifty years ago, in the 1950's. In those days, most Catholic kids went to Catholic schools, typically taught by nuns, who, I can personally attest, were tough taskmasters not inclined to spare misbehaving children the rod, or more specifically, the ruler. (Some nuns were also pretty nice once you got to know them.) Attendance at Mass on Sundays was pretty much universal. Catholics were very strongly encouraged to marry within their faith (as opposed to so-called "mixed marriages") and large families were very much the rule.

In that era, Catholics very much emphasized that theirs was the one true faith, whose tenets were taught with great specificity in the Baltimore Catechism. Students were required to memorize large portions of the catechism, and religious instruction took up a significant portion of the day in school. Much effort was made to collect for the missions abroad, which provided for the physical needs of the poor abroad, while attempting to convert these individuals to the teachings of the church. The church emphasized its universality by using Latin for the Mass, and there was a certain mystery to the ceremony as churches were considerably darker than they are now and the priest mostly had his back to the congregation.

There were downsides, however, to being Catholic in the 1950's. Some have argued that the church of that era overemphasized sin and guilt and was stifling. More tangibly, while the position of Catholics in society was steadily improving, they were still not at the top rung. Catholics tended not to occupy top positions in business and Catholic students were not well represented in some top academic institutions. Politically, there was still a bias against a Catholic president, which John Kennedy would have to fight off in 1960.

Of course, much has changed since the 1950's, both for good and bad. Spurred on by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, the Mass was moved to the local language, the priests faced the congregation and there was more outreach to other faiths. More emphasis was placed on God's love and the need to help others. Meanwhile, anti-Catholic discrimination has largely dissipated in American society, and Catholics are well represented in the highest economic and political strata.

But the Church has also faced significant problems. Religious vocations have dwindled sharply, with a resulting aging priesthood and Catholic schools overwhelmingly taught by lay teachers. A number of traditional teachings of the church are not accepted by significant numbers of Catholics. A very nasty abuse scandal rocked many dioceses in the recent past. Mass attendance has declined.

In addition, the Catholic Church, along with other religious de-nominations, has found it very difficult to get its message across in the face of a media culture proclaiming hedonistic values and instant gratification.

As Peggy Noonan observed last week, Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, has been described as the perfect pope for the television age, a man of images. Benedict, however, is the perfect pope for the internet age."You download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it." Catholics hope and pray that the pope's somewhat cerebral message will be able to break through and transform the American church of today and indeed the larger society.