The Church and Its Minor Crimes

Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophesy and Radical Religion. Garry Wills. 1972.

It’s funny to read a book from the 70s about the Catholic Church (in particular, the Catholic Church as it functions in the United States) in crisis, considering everything that has happened in the decades since then. There’s been nothing but crisis, followed by lack of change, followed by a suggestion of possible change, followed by crisis. The 70s, in comparison, look halcyon. For better or worse, and however they felt about it, people still went to mass then.

I used to go to mass too. I stopped for a long time, and then rejoined a few years ago. I got out of the habit again when my son was born and taking him was hard, and I haven’t been back much. Then the Dobbs decision happened, and I couldn’t stand to be around people who were happy about it. Then my parish changed priests, and I didn’t like the new one quite as much. There’s never been a single crisis, for me - no great incident that caused a decisive break. There’s only been a gradual retreat, then rapprochement, followed by by a greater retreat. It’s a gradual wearing away of my love for the Church of my childhood, one that (as of yet, anyway) has never been replaced by anything else. For me, unfortunately, it’s Catholicism or nothing. Right now it’s nothing.

I get the feeling Wills would understand this; I recognized a lot of this phenomenon in Bare Ruined Choirs. He would understand, and also, I think, recognize it as nothing special or unique to me, but a simple result of the clash between Catholicism and liberal America (and Wills, ever precise, means something different by “liberal” than Americans typically do now). That tension, between being an American and being a Catholic, has always been there, and the tension may have broken in the later half of the 20th century. My great-grandparents probably never thought very much about whether the priest was right about something; or if they did, the answer didn’t matter. My grandmother used to say that she was Catholic because of what happened during the mass, not because of what old men in Rome told her about how to live. At times I’ve felt that way too, but I can’t stop thinking about the old men in Rome.

Because, see, the old men in Rome won’t stop thinking - and talking, and deciding - about me, and what I do with my life and my body, and to be an American, I think Wills would say, is at least partially a matter of refusing to tolerate insults. Americans, twentieth and twenty-first century Americans, might be too proud and certainly too individualist to be good Catholics. The United States was created in the same fervor - albeit a few centuries apart - that fueled the reformation and then the enlightenment. You simply don’t tell Americans what the answers are, and that’s all the Catholic Church does. What else is it for?

Wills would say, even in his criticism, that it’s for a lot. There’s beauty, and that’s not nothing - he’s never been one of the TradCaths who just love incense, but he understands to his bones the moral worth of ritual, the routinization that can lead to true faith. I can see that too. He believes, I think, like my grandmother did, in what happens during the mass.

But he’s also seen Monsignors and nuns who host fundraisers to keep parishes solvent, smiling and gladhanding like any politician. He’s seen bishops more concerned with influencing politicians than with serving their diocese. He’s seen, though it hadn’t emerged when he wrote this book, the abuse crisis, and like all Catholics, was not especially surprised when it did emerge. We’d all heard stories. We all knew there were bad priests, and that nothing seemed to happen to them, and people protected them. I could tell you stories.

Is there hope for the Church in America? I don’t know. I do like Francis, but I think even he realizes that his time is short, and whoever might come after him might do anything at all. I’ve known good priests in my life, and good nuns. Most have been fine - ordinary people, doing their best. I haven’t baptized my kid though, when once I thought, assumed, that I would. Maybe I’ll come back when I’m old, but will there be anything at that point to come back to? Who can say?

There’s a lot about me here and less about this book, which is quite good. Like many of Wills’ best books, it’s best viewed as a kind of snapshot of American life at that particular time. For all that things for American Catholics have fallen more and more apart, this is very much a book of the 1970s as Nixon Agonistes was. I recommend it.