THE SILENT MAN IN THE PEW SPEAKS OUT!

The Silent Man in the Pew Speaks Out

A Plebian View of the Roman Catholic Church in Decline

PART ONE

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC LAITY IN SEARCH OF ITS CHURCH

James R. Fisher, Jr.
Written in 1968
© November 2005

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NOTE: This was never published. It was written just before I took on a life changing assignment. Only in my 30s, I was being sent to South Africa to facilitate the merger of our South African subsidiary with a British affiliate and a South African chemical company.

This essay was written only days before going to South Africa. The Church was in turmoil trying to assimilate the tenets of Vatican I and II, while the US was in chaos over saber rattling in Viet Nam. The disenfranchised generation of American youth born to baby boomer parents was now eligible for the draft. My generation went into the military without protest, but this generation was inclined to burn their draft cards or escape to Canada. I was leaving this all behind to take on the South African assignment. It was early April 1968.

A devout Catholic, I would emerge from this experience a different man. I went into Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and came out of it aware of the darkness in my own heart. I am now writing a novel of that experience.

Religion was one of my anchors as a youth, and I would imagine if I were a Jew I would have been considered orthodox. Garry Wills wrote a book in 2002 titled “Why I Am A Catholic.” I found the title amusing.

Roman Catholic indoctrination is so strong that if you receive it while very young there is little chance you can ever escape it no matter what games you play with your mind. I came to South Africa sure of my faith and my identity, and left in search of the real parents of my soul.

I make no apologies for the sophomoric style of this essay. Recording it now, unchanged, for the record, I see that I was a Catholic writer before publishing my first essay or book, and I think it is fair to say, after eight books and more than 350 published essays to date, I remain true to that identity.

My novel, which is to be titled “Green Island in a Black Seas,” relates to my struggle with South African Apartheid, my company’s duplicity, my Irish Roman Catholic faith, my marriage vows, my wife and four children, and a life that brought to the fore one word to describe everything: betrayal.

Writing has provided sanctuary and retreat from confusion. Writing has made me aware you don’t have to be published to be a writer. You just have to make connection with yourself by connecting the letters of the alphabet. It is published here as an invitation to readers to ponder their own situation.


Note recorded this date: November 20, 2005


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To a casual observer, it would seem that the Roman Catholic Church has always taken itself seriously. With an air of omniscience, it has conducted affairs of the Catholic world in a somewhat unapproachable, even unimpeachable hauteur. Wasn’t the Church man’s only means to eternal salvation?

Not long ago, this question would have been considered academic, in fact absurd, in the eyes of the average Catholic. Ecclesiastical thinking and activity had not trickled down to his level. This was not surprising. He had become conditioned to being spoon fed a definitive, catechetical approach to religious education. A comprehensive and conceptual understanding of the Church, her theology, philosophy, and history was not promulgated to the general laity.

The reason for this was quite simple. An authoritarian and paternal Church hierarchy did not feel it was needed. That is why the present remedial and ameliorating steps being simultaneously considered and implemented have been found both stultifying and confusing to many on both sides of the altar.

Church history indicates that this current situation is actually following precedence. Crises in the Church have invariably been followed by Vatican Councils, which in turn have led to new doctrines and dogma. The present contingency is similar to its historic predecessor but yet different. It differs in scope, mood, and ambition. A very real threat that mid-twentieth century man will finally reject Christianity has put the Church in a most conciliatory frame of mind. Worthy and necessary as Christian unity may be, there exists cold realities, which must be faced.

Catholicism has instilled beliefs, attitudes, habits, and practices with which only Catholics have been identified. Much of this has been somewhat symbolic, like not eating meat on Friday. Nevertheless, these are real and fixed in the minds and hearts of many who call themselves, “Catholic.” Such a preconditioned laity may attract obfuscation and conflict instead of harmony and a spirit of ecumenicism if they do not see Church history and thought in true perspective, as well as understand what is taking place today. The man in the pew must identify with the Church in transition, or all is for naught.

Born more than thirty years ago a congenial member of the Roman Catholic Church, this observer has no claim to authority. However, raised and inculcated in Catholicism in the traditional fashion has produced its effects and memories. For example, a dependence on dogma and doctrine is remembered instead of the beauty of Christianity. Even after reason prevailed, these tenets have merged and submerged, often obliterating rational clarity.

That is why an issue like birth control languishes in the mind of the Catholic, waiting, desperately waiting for Church sanction, even though logic and reason has already bombarded his mind with the answer.

Consequently, it is quite typical for the average Catholic to accept trauma, doubt, confusion, thought, and education as the natural progression to truth, understanding, and meaning as he is able to glean it.

This experience is necessarily private and usually committed to silence. But the times dictate that this must change. It is not the individual but the entire Church, which is now going through a painful reappraisal. Ultimately, it will be the cataclysm of all Catholic and Christian thought and interpretation, which will prove the destiny of this FAITH, and its relevance to this time.

Seldom does the man in the pew, the true plebian, express his will. This must not be. Perhaps one plebian view may encourage many others to unshackle their minds from wondering in silence about their world and their fate. Their responsibility to contribute to the dialogue has been obviated by history.

Three centuries after Christ’s death this did not seem so certain. The Church faced a great test. A Greek monk named Arius was preaching a doctrine that Christ was the Son of God, but neither consubstantial nor coeternal with the Father. This doctrine called Arianism was the reason for the Council of Nicaea. Here the Church solemnly proclaimed her belief in “ . . .one Lord, Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, born of the Father before all time, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, the same in Being with the Father (consubstantial) . . .”

Today we know this as the Nicene Creed, which has become a touchstone of sound orthodoxy and Church unity.

A period of grace, power, and growth followed for the Church, only to be tainted by the spoils of such good fortune. It was Middle Age. Simony in the papacy and the episcopacy; marriage or concubinage in the secular clergy, and sporadic incontinence among monks contributed to the view that the popes and the religious were vulnerable, fallible men; that the papacy was not a fortress of order and a tower of salvation. Even so, it would be centuries before the doctrine of infallibility and celibacy would be postulated as dogma and doctrine respectively.

Simony was the ecclesiastical correlate of contemporary corruption in politics. Although concubinage and marriage weren’t openly condoned among the general clergy, the practice was common and not subject to the pressure of public ridicule and scorn. Nonetheless, this situation did test the fiber and substance of the Church’s unity and challenge its security. Quiet reform followed, complemented by a series of wise, scrupulous and discerning pontiffs.

The nadir of the papacy gave way to a new day in papal authority, supremacy, and popularity. Its splendor and magnificence greatly affected the temporal states and their balance of power. Even culture, education, and wealth were somewhat in the control of the Church. So great was her dominance that the temptation to dictate to the temporal community on mundane matters was a very real problem. On occasion, she would yield to this pressure, but never without finally retreating to a less advantageous position. This would be a less painfully learned.

Meanwhile, our progenitors of that day were satisfied to accept the Church’s dictums and doctrines with blind faith. They embraced a primitive type of ritualism and colorful pageantry with veneration. Lacking education and the opportunity to better themselves, they were moved less by the reality and drama of Jesus than by the chimerical preaching of fear.

Prepossessed with the negative, sin and hell was understood and preferred over the positive of grace and heaven. The existence of these uncomplicated souls, in fact their culture, was totally God-centered. This would not last.

Much like a centrifugal force, the villain, time, would come to act on man’s conscience to drive Him out of his centric, ultimately to the periphery of his mind. More on this later.

The intrigue of the Church hierarchy and royalty was completely foreign to the laity of the middle ages. Faith was a simple and pure commitment unshackled by lust, greed, and pride. The clergy and laity were essentially of two separate worlds.

These humble brethren considered the secular clergy several stations above them and the episcopacy beyond classification. Perhaps this explains why public protest of corruption in the Church was not proffered from this quarter. Unschooled, subjugated, controlled, they went through life isolated from the storm gathering overhead, sheltered in their simple, dedicated and honest Faith. The church would not receive its challenge from them. They were, indeed, the Children of God.

Much like a vintage wine aging gave the Church a delicate bouquet. Unfortunately, it was also intoxicating. The Church became more and more indurate to the realities of contemporary life. She lost touch with her people and control of her clergy.

It was at this moment in history that a distraught monk, Martin Luther, tortured by a hatred of authority, nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg church door. The Reformation followed, concomitantly an equally significant evolvement, The Renaissance.

This explosion was of sufficient magnitude to dislodge God from the center of man’s conscience and to trigger the centrifugal force of attending events. Truly, a new day was at hand.

The rebirth of learning and culture kindled in man a new awareness of the genius within him. It marked a time when he became preoccupied with his own glorification at the expense of Christ.

In such an innocent and innocuous manner, the seeds of existentialism were planted, only to wait centuries for man to harvest them.

Though the center of man’s existence shifted to man, this was indeed a self-conscious change. A taint of guilt was manifested in his preoccupation with religious themes in a disproportionate share of his creative endeavors. Science and the “Age of Reason,” which was yet to come, would ease his conscience and liberate his intellect from this confining abstraction.

Another factor contributing to and supporting Church reform was the industrial and economic revolution. Perhaps this sustained and polarized the Church split more than the theological and ecclesiastical questions of the day.

The agrarian nature of the Church was neither prepared for nor able to cope with the emergence of nationalism. Thus, while her spiritual control was being tested, a struggle for power and national identity was further usurping her influence over the state. Accordingly, the issue of Church-State separation would come to be tete-beche obfuscated by devious maneuvering on both sides.
Frustration of this age would lead to schisms, wars, and much suffering, a pattern repeated to this day. Man’s tempo of living would continue to escalate with passing time. The formula would change little:

Progress giving birth to new wealth, exposing old poverty; freedom producing
a mutated form of servitude; opportunity awakening sleeping discrimination;
growth inadvertently causing atrophy; contentment discovering and exposing
misery . . . . . .

would concatenate its way in a quasi-convoluted fashion into mid-twentieth century life. Skepticism, nihilism, isolationism, and unbridled apathy would come to be discovered, then forgotten, and again rediscovered with a new and frenetic frenzy.

Point-counterpoint would come to weave a melody maddening in its intensity through the conscience of man’s mind to snuff out forever the pure and the simple, never again an innocent and unconscious love of God.

Were it possible to go back, one might contemplate the effect the Soul of sixteenth century man might have on modern man. Would it assist him in channeling his energetic driving renewal spirit, and simplify the priority of his preferences? One must wonder.

So often trees and forest seem to merge and submerge into unity for him that bewilderment appears to be his constant companion. Twenty centuries of Church guidance has neither allayed his fears nor reconciled him to accept Christ’s simple changeless and ETERNAL TRUTHS.

The growing complexity of life around him acts as an endless distraction. Only two horrendous world wars have staggered him to attention and awareness of the grave dangers confronting him.

The Holocaust might be imagined:

Completely shipwrecked, the flotsam and jetsam of all ages appear before us.
Fragments of cherished beliefs and ideals of centuries can be seen surfacing, but
only fragments. The heavy bulky awkward shackles of righteous Christianity;
lugubrious and somber mores; stiff and pretentious society; and presumptuous
and greedy colonialism seem to coalesce, producing new densities of meaning and
relevance. Mired in the mud of time, the tissue of man’s fantasies.

Civilized man was finally discovering how fragile, what a put on, his civility. The atrocities of war had given him a new awareness of his depravity and the bestial character existing within his nature.

A critical focus on what he was as well as what he pretended to be, precipitated by this terrifying revelation, was inevitable. Everything now was suspect. It was now considered essential to disinvest himself from the trappings of society and the conventional ideals of civilization. Change, departure from his modus operandi, would be his first step. This would overcome man’s characteristic inertia and establish the required momentum to bring him into a new day. We now find ourselves in that day.

This collision of change had to strike a cornerstone of man’s foundation, religion. It can be said that the Roman Catholic Church did not ignore the tremors nor fail to record the vibrations. Aware that the laity and secular clergy were restless, and in a changing mood, the Church allowed a questioning of basic Catholic tenets. This is still in progress.

Final positions on celibacy, papal authority, infallibility, birth control, and many other issues are yet to be given. Even so, it appears safe to assume that a new religiosity may be added to a growing list of modern improvisations, which include a new sociology, economics, and technology. A more flexible viable one is replacing the staid structure. Moreover, a new disposition has been manifested:

What has been is truly passé; what is now is of central interest; what is to be is truly blasé.

Christianity, and its promise of eternal salvation, is no longer centermost in man’s life but rather on the periphery of his existence. He is quite active and busy, not in search of God, but of himself. Truly, man is unknown, causing him to grope and stumble in the darkness of his identity. Thus, this paradox unfolds:

Hope born out of despair; opportunity out of inequity; power out of the collapse of order
and authority.

Perplexed, he is a sometime tyro pretending to be the epicurean. Whereas he once understood the “good life” to be the purifying experience of hard work, he now pays some tribute to the philosophy of hedonism as if he understood it.

Since man is happier at work than at play, this has in effect made him an alien to himself as well as an emotional cripple. The overflow of this spirit and dilemma appears to have seeped into the Church.

From this progression, a new laity has come into being, dominated by affluence and quasi-intellectualism. It seeks a new role, new image, new sense of fulfillment, and a new power.

A cry for change, for renewal, has reverberated from every quarter. Vatican I and Vatican II gave it the hope it needed and the promise for a new quintessence. Time, patience, and understanding will determine if this is a true bridge to hope and a new and unity or just another ephemera. It will also put Martine Luther and Protestantism in a new perspective. Surely, today personifies the mod and thinking of this giant of man in the Church.

A strong and vibrant middle class has suddenly discovered Luther. Nearly five hundred years late, the laity and secular clergy are intrigued with Luther’s challenge to the papacy, the doctrine of infallibility, celibacy, freedom of conscience, and even the liturgy. Perhaps the only thing that is constant is change itself.

Summarily excommunicated and painted a devil by the then Catholic world, Luther now shines out in God’s heavenly firmament. Perhaps he knows that the contemporary of his celebrated antagonist, the Catholic theologian, is presently his staunch ally and stout defender. Theologians are not only listening, reading and studying Luther’s one-time-heresies, but are considering ways to implement them quickly into Roman Catholicism. Even though this may prove to be a providential strategy and a sound policy, one must still wonder why the rush.

Many pat and reasonable answers might be given, and in many cases, have been. It has been suggested that the Church has frankly been in error; that it has been out of touch with the present world; that it is horribly out of date. It has been suggested that, indeed, she is a pillar blindly standing in the road of progress.

Despite whatever validity these evaluations may have, they are not acceptable to this observer. That is why the picture of man in continuous struggle with his heart, mind, and yes, soul, has been proffered here. Much more is at stake. Simple easy answers will no longer suffice. Christianity, not only Roman Catholicism, has been losing popularity with the common man in this uncommon age. The essence of this challenge is that Christianity, not only Catholicism, is on the block with survival in the balance. Why?

Out of the maze of conflict and confusion has arisen a new man with a new sense of destiny. He sees himself walking among gods. His genius has created the ultimate weapon, synthetic life, interplanetary machines, transplantation of human organs, etc.

This discovery of god-like powers has moved him naturally into a new sense of cosmology and theology. He now sees himself as having the power of greatness within him, reasoning that he is truly the temple of the Universal God, or more traditionally, of Jesus Christ. His body is his church. A peripatetic philosophy of introspection has seized his mind. He welcomes no guidance, no interference, and certainly no authoritative control.

An eternal adolescent, man seeks privilege without responsibility, power without control, peace without sacrifice or restrain, and contentment without struggle.

History appears to have been surgically removed from his conscience by the scalpel of pride, and candid self-glorification.

Quite often, man is found wearing the façade of contentment, the veneer of complacency, betraying the fever which continuously rages within him. Might this fever be that of total disenchantment?

Whether it is fair to say that modern man is wandering aimlessly, uprooted and anchorless, certainly his direction, action and predilection give credence to such speculation. Arius must have felt his antichrist theology was ripe for the society of his day when it behaved in a similar fashion. The necrologists of today have sensed that society is now running concurrently with this philosophy, and therefore boldly published the obituary of God. Perhaps they have something.

Irrational as it may seem, society appears bent on feeding the fever with which it is being consumed. Once panacea were panacea were panacea. No longer would this seem to be so. Simple answers to man’s complex allusions sans struggle, sans searching, sans doubting, sans fear, sans the idea of God are offered to a deliriously receptive, hopeful battered mankind. Man is too numb and preoccupied to question their validity.

Such an attractively wrapped package of essence was certain to jar the very foundation of Christendom. Perhaps the effects it would come to have on the clergy as well as the laity, and their respective reactions to it, should have been predicted. No one was apparently watching the store.

This is not surprising. Society has come to expect professionals of all endeavors to maintain a frigid detachment in the heat of involvement. That is why the antithetical response of many religious to this situation leads one to wonder if they really understood what has taken place. Witness priests, brothers, and apostolate exhibiting their dismay and disillusion, and in many cases, defeat trying to compete for souls with the rampant iconoclasts. Thus broken, a steady stream of them can be seen quitting their rectories, convents, and monasteries for either the eerie promise of the sybarite, or to still the Siren’s call. For this lack of professionalism, they solicit sympathy and assurance while they proselytize a more comfortable faith.

Their new appeal is not to the strength in man’s heart, but to the weakness in man’s loins. Meanwhile, less conspicuous, but equally despairing are those who continue to wail from their sanctuaries and cloisters that, indeed, the religious life and priesthood of Jesus Christ is dead.

No longer is there a marriage of vocation to avocation for them, but rather a struggle betwixt the two. Perhaps there is no quiet, no true isolation. Could the clamor of the time be too much for the contemplative life? Too distracting to see what is happening and who is involved?

To a concerned plebian, this is difficult to fathom. It would seem that the mask of the time, the façade of intemperate indulgence has been accepted as the true face in the crowd, and not the disguise that it is. That a certain faction of the secular clergy has been so misled is a matter of record. Unfortunately, it seems to have cast even a larger shadow.

This is suggested sententiously from what appears to be a movement in the Church, as cautious, temperate, and enlightened practices seem to have loss their appeal at discovering root causes, while a wave of more dynamic, and expedient methods is being employed. This is disconcerting, but not the problem. The actual riddle is that compromise appears to be entertained when one knows that TRUTH cannot be mollified nor abated. Such a dilemma has developed because the Church and its obvious imperfections has become centermost when the ETERNAL TRUTHS should be.

One wonders if this rush to action is not an attempt to ameliorate symptoms rather than to treat causes. Could it be that defining the cause of man’s bewilderment in mid-twentieth century is more elusive than the problem? Perhaps this is why we hear a cry for a prophet to come forth.

Certainly, it would be reassuring to have a kind, affable, witty and sophisticated intelligence such as that of Desiderious Erasmus to step forward. The German’s had their Luther, but the Dutch had their Erasmus. In retrospect, it might be said that Luther was a good patient for his time, but a poor doctor. Erasmus might be said to be that doctor.

This quiet man, Erasmus, sympathized with much of Luther’s thinking, but chose to remain in the Church. Which man showed the greater courage?

Today this question might generate considerable discussion among the erudite, but not the common man. Luther touched man’s spirit and imagination. Erasmus touched only his mind. Albeit this tells us something of the propensities of man, it does not assuage Erasmus’s loss.

The temperament, genius and cold intellect of Erasmus produced a beautiful satirical study, “The Praise of Folly.” In a day when man was angry and threatening to his Church, Erasmus generated light rather than heat, giving man a new insight into the nature of his being. He wanted to call attention to the fact that the Church exists despite the combined inadequacies of the clergy and laity; that the Church was true because it was HIS, not ours; that the Church lived and lives because of and for HIM, not us.

Since FAITH is responsive to man’s deepest needs, he wanted to penetrate the blindness of our personal pride to see the light of the eternal Jesus. Practically forgotten today, this very slender volume is significantly apropos at this very moment in man’s history.

Erasmus illustrated man’s cynical flippancy and irresponsibility. He contented that this appears in man as the uninhibited force of natural instinct, and as the immense effort with which man struggles to achieve his ends, valueless though they may be. “Folly” reminds us that when people grow up, they suffer a loss of youthful energy and flexibility. Seeking the stoic ideal of god-like rationalism brings in its stead a sort of marble monsterism. “Folly” could also be a name for all man’s misdirected effort, for all his elaborate pains to gain the wrong thing:

There we see a woman dressed and pained, pretending to be young, valiantly chasing
a man and her spent youth; here can be seen a young man, collecting degrees, developing
impressive credentials, while responsibility and manhood fade from his sight; over there
we notice a respectable businessman, lying, cheating, misleading, and swindling the public
in order to make money so that his children can spend it in purposeless glee; and here again
we see a priest, the sacerdotal commitment found wanting, emerged in temporal life and
causes, pontificating his new theology and morality as he sinks into the quicksand of life.

This kind of contemporary imagery comes rapidly to mind as one invades the pages of “Folly.” The compulsion to wonder how Erasmus would view today is also there. Probably, it is safe to say that he would note mankind’s fumbling towards eternity with a tinge of sadness, but little surprise.

He would no doubt register only mild protestation at man’s arrogance before man. But before God? Surely, he would be somewhat alarmed. Perhaps he might indeed believe man had retrogressed. For comprehending the comedic figure of man before God was the quintessence of humility in his age. Puncturing the prideful pomposity of man was essential to understanding and tolerating oneself in the sixteenth century. Hopefully, this is not anachronistic nor hors de saison.

Even though we may not have spiritual heavyweights like Erasmus around to deflate man’s ego and give him balance, this is not so disturbing as is the knowledge that the need is neither accepted nor recognized. Rather a cult is developing to pay it homage.

New symbols, signs and aphorisms have been hastily created to demean conventional concepts, traditions and practices. Worthy as some of these new ideal and ideas may be, to summarily and willfully negate one’s heritage with a wave of hostility and condescension suggests paranoia. The symptoms are there.

Man is riding the crest of prosperity and a state of real, ideal and/or contrived euphoria envelops him. Once a slave to time, he now finds it weighs heavily on his hands. The fruits of his efforts have made time a luxury, producing a surplus of idleness, and this has made him uneasy.

Many jobs have been created with no productive end in mind, but only to fill the void. This has not been enough. Consequently, play has become hectic, demanding, serious, and more important than work. The awful rush to fill the dismal void of hours hangs like a sickness over man’s head. Consumption and possession have become obsessions; a compulsion to satiate oneself with food, sex, and material things is now viewed as a necessity. In man’s quest for life, meaning, peace, and purpose, man has often been left frantic, supported only by nerve pills and other placebos. His attention to Church, religion, family, society, state, and the old fashion values has been casually shifted to a perfunctory plateau of his mind. “Folly” is still his name.

One hears that times have changed, but that the Church’s life and function is petty, silly, anachronistic, irrelevant, and hypocritical by today’s standards. What is not said is closer to the nerve of the matter:

The Church and Christianity in general has been used by man as a crutch to shore him up
when the going got rough; when he was alone and desperate and had no one to turn to, he
could always find solace in his Church and with his God. The two were synonymous in his
mind.

Not so today. Comfortable, prosperous, modern man looks within himself for the answers. Prayer and supplication are not for him. Yet, with all that he is and has, he will readily admit to being empty, unfulfilled, and seeking, continuously seeking. This is an age when public confession of the most intimate thoughts is common. Nothing appears sacred or private between man and his God, a phenomenon that has produced an identity syndrome composed of anxiety, frustration and the essence of alienation. A common observation:

Thrusting out contemptuously, he projects and substitutes this sense of guilt to causes
outside himself. He cries for change but hopes to extricate himself from personal
involvement. His demands are implicitly or explicitly focused on the Church and her
responsibility to him.

Somehow, he has forgotten or erased from his memory that if the Church falls, he fails. If Jesus Christ is the TIMELESS TRUTH, then the answers must be there. Certainly, renewal will not suffice if man does not understand that the Church has not failed him, but that he has failed it. The Church reflects him. The bromides, platitudes, and formulae to instant happiness have never been relevant to man’s needs. They only compound his illusions and delusions. There is a danger that man’s caprice will tempt him to advocate the diminution of the Church, an ersatz Lord of Life being hastily put into focus.

A happening is not surprising in religion today. The last two generations have endured as much change as the balance of man’s history. That this ordeal of change has been a baffling experience is irrefutable. Losing his self-image, man appears to have developed myopia and a loss of depth perception as well, throwing him into punishing melancholy.

Man is restless for action, any action. One wonders if this affliction has not penetrated the staid structure of Roman Catholicism. It is one thing to articulate the ETERNAL TRUTHS in man’s vernacular, but quite another to adulterate them for palatability.

One theologian conversing with another might construe this statement to be unfair. It is, however, made by a plebian to reflect the silent dilemma of the Catholic laity. Truth is the essence of anything and cannot be altered is a dialectic he understands.

The silent man in the pew does not want to be considered a proponent of empiricism. If new insights into the TIMELESS TRUTHS of Jesus are discovered, he would prefer that they be carefully and definitively defined, painstakingly weighed, systematically categorized, and then providentially implemented into his religion. Filling the air with waves of speculation and testing the currents of acceptance will always be considered suspect and only produce chaos.

Personal involvement in change is a demanding emotional experience. One must give up that which he knows and understands relative to himself for that which is unknown and perhaps feared. Shedding one’s personal integument and assuming a new posture, image, association, status quo, and identity are painless only when done without conscious insight.

Just as one is ever losing and replacing his epidermis, contented man changes bits and pieces all the time without knowing it. Each time one accepts a new idea, new concept, something is quitted, something is lost. That is why the revolution of ideas is preceded by intellectual speculation. It prepares the way.

Mounting the current Christian renewal and ecumenical movement without such cultivation would seem absurd. Yet, this is the prima facie situation at the moment. After a wave of emotional altruism and generosity of spirit, it appears that the chill of self-doubt has set in, producing a silent retreat to the more comfortable known and understood ground.

If this is questioned, one need only observe who still controls and initiates the ecumenical: the clergy. This has been frustrating for the secular clergy, but what of the bewilderment of the laity?

No improvement has ever been made in the conventional and laborious process of making wine. The implementation of a more streamlined, truly catholic FAITH is analogous to wine making. No steps can be left out or hurried.

Christianity and Roman Catholicism are not going out of business. The link between them and the non-Christian world is likely to improve, as improve it must. Nonetheless, man’s self-image and identity with his God, now more nebulous than ever, must first receive attention.

Emotional posturing and psychological speculating have proven of little value. Though he needs guidance badly, this does not mean that he wants his Church to become entombed in his quagmire. Rather, he prefers that his Church view and understand his needs with providential detachment.

An Erasmus recognized this. A Thomas Aquinas provided the rationale for making Christian theology and philosophy a viable formula for a timeless Church. Why have their voices not been heard in modern times?

Modern man is a complex and enlightened individual, disciplined and cultivated, but nonetheless a child, always a child in his religiosity. Seeing his priests caught up in the period’s social and political activism, kneeling to the pragmatic cries of the day, does not contribute to his sense of essence nor does it give him a fix on his eternal salvation.

Man wants renewal, enlightened renewal, but not necessarily change per se. This might mean the digesting of Thomistic theology and philosophy, and the essence of revelations, that is, getting inside the thoughts and ideas of the FAITH. The laity has never been fed these before. This type of renewal would require energetic pursuit on the part of the laity but would give it a foundation of essence, something now missing. True ecumenicism could then proceed with speed.

The Roman Catholic Church in transition must accept her history, understand her laity, and patiently implement a more substantive educational program before true ecumenicism might be broached. Otherwise, the body Christendom could be weakened by her arrogant disregard for the dilemma of the silent man in the pew.

The End

James R. Fisher, Jr.
Completed: 8 April 1968
Anchorage, Kentucky
USA