Eucharistic Blues: Reviewing the Mass Exodus

By Jim Madden

For the Roman Catholic Church, the golden anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council will not mark a golden 50 years since the Council opened. The promise of Vatican II to become a new Pentecost evaporated into a retreat from the Church when its leaders poorly implement the Councils changes. In a Church, excited by the boldness and the spirit of hope of Pope John XXIII, high hopes and great expectations were replaced by caution and curtailment. As this change in spirit seeped through the Church, the hesitancy of a less emboldened church leadership replaced the strong reforming commitments of Pope John.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jan 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465306241

Jim Madden

The author of Eucharistic Blues, Jim Madden, looks back to the pre Vatican II days of a robust Church and then tries to address the issue of the huge and unexpected falling away from that Church since Vatican II days. He contends that it was not the Council or its decrees that have brought this about but the inability and reluctance of Church authorities to implement those decrees effectively. The mixed messages of these and following years expressed in poorly implemented changes particularly in the Mass have left many Catholics uncomfortable with their church and thus their Eucharistic Blues and led them to give up on their Church in a Mass Exodus.

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Copyright © 2012 by Jim Madden.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011963381

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-9645-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-9644-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-0624-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except reasonable extracts for research, teaching and illustration purposes, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The biblical quotations and references used in this work have been taken from The New Jerusalem Bible © 1985 by Darton, Langman & Todd Ltd.

At this stage of the production of Eucharistic Blues permission of the authors cited and the references to their works have been assumed. In doing so the author believes that he has worked within the framework of the copyright laws and begs the indulgence of the authors and publishers concerned if he has committed a technical infringement of their copyright. He adds the assurance that permission to use these texts and references will be sought if this is required.

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Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter I  Sunday Mass Attendance

Chapter II  Sunday Mass Obligation

Chapter III  Careless and Bad Catholics

Chapter IV  Marriage Problems

Chapter V  Disputed Church Teachings

Chapter VI  Youth and the Church

Chapter VII  Pastoral Care Outreach

Chapter VIII  Catholic Community Life

Chapter IX  Individual Spirituality

Chapter X  Mass in Retrospect

Chapter XI  Catholics and Change

Chapter XII  John XXIII—A New Pope

Chapter XIII  Second Vatican Council

Chapter XIV  Mass Confusion

Chapter XV  Liturgical Changes

Chapter XVI  Mass Changes

Chapter XVII  Liturgy of the Word

Chapter XVIII  Israel Covenant with God

Chapter XIX  Eucharistic Covenant

Chapter XX  Catalysts of Exodus

Chapter XXI  Community Fragmentation

Chapter XXII  Getting It Together

Bibliography

Dedication

To the Memory

Of

Peter Patrick McEniery STL MTh DD

Introduction

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This book was developed several years ago from a conversation with my then neighbour and good friend, Tom Browne, who had asked me why so many Catholics had given up going to Mass on Sundays. Tom and his wife, Kathleen, are traditional Catholics. They were born into and reared in the pre-Vatican II Church in an area of South-East Queensland where a strong Irish heritage still continues, even to today. As long standing loyal Catholics they have tried during the last forty years to adopt the post Vatican II ways of being Church but this has been far from easy for them.

During those years they have witnessed many, among their relations, friends and neighbours, especially the younger ones, give up their Catholic practices, especially the regular attendance at Sunday Mass. This has perplexed them and Tom’s question arose from his desire to try to understand what had happened and continues to happen to the rising generation regarding their religious practices as members of the Church.

That morning Tom and I discussed how through factors, within and outside the Church, and even beyond the Church, the bonding of many people to the Catholicism of their childhood had weakened. In particular, we noted how many children of the immediate post Vatican II generation never established a real bonding with the Church. We talked about the ecclesiastical and social conditions that had fostered bonding in the past and how these had lost their force in the last 50 years. After Tom left me I began to jot down notes of our conversation to which I added as thoughts sprang to mind. What I have written in the following pages represents the continuation of that conversation and part of the outcome.

The situation focused upon is this: within the Roman Catholic Church, the practice of regular Sunday Mass attendance, long its flagship and emblem of vitality, is in sharp decline. Prior to the Second Vatican Council any prediction of the swiftness and the extent of this decline would have been dismissed as ludicrous. Church membership was on the rise, parents had their children baptised and educated in Catholic schools, young men and women were volunteering in growing numbers to begin training for the priesthood and the religious life, more lay people were becoming involved in Catholic parish and diocesan activities. After the Council these trends went into reverse at an unexpected and unbelievable pace. The speedy down turn in Sunday Mass attendance became symptomatic of this trend.

The reasons for this continuing downturn in Sunday Mass attendance among Catholics have been identified as follows. Firstly, the manner in which changes in the Mass following Vatican II were introduced often made attendance and participation in the Mass an irksome and irrelevant experience rather than a joyous celebration of a closeness with God and the solidarity of the congregation with Christ, their Lord and Saviour. Secondly, because Vatican authorities, including the Pope, refused to move forward on a range of issues such as birth control, the role of women in the Church, a married priesthood and others many found themselves in conflict with official teachings and gave up on the Church. Thirdly, the forces of secular society and the demands of the Church were diametrically opposed and many succumbed to the drawing forces of growing secularism.

In Australia, those now attending Mass on Sundays make up only a fraction of the crowds that constituted the congregations of the forties, fifties and sixties. In place of the gatherings of men, women and children of all ages, these assemblies now consist mainly of older people and a few families with young children. Teenagers, single adults and married couples with grown up children are conspicuous by their absence.

Churches in some parishes are still crowded but this can often be attributed to the closure of neighbouring churches and the reduction of the number of Eucharistic celebrations offered in the continuing parish churches. It is rarely due to the proportion of the population attending Mass. Although more churches and more Masses should be expected with the increase in population this has not happened. In expanding areas of metropolitan and provincial cities the development of new parishes has been put on hold and old parishes have been closed down, a situation due, perhaps, to the Church’s restrictive clerical recruiting and employment practices known as the shortage of priests. The situation has become crucial and the future looks ominous.

People ask, What has happened and what is going to happen? The following represents my attempt to unearth some of the underlying trends that have developed. This has been done in an effort to clarify the existing situation that has emerged and offer some insights on trying to come to terms with it. Here I am offering my thoughts to encourage others who value the potential of the Church with its capacity for goodness to further investigate what has happened as a preliminary for planning remedial action into the future.

The position I have developed in the following pages is that the Church in Australia, at the parish, diocesan and national levels, never fully developed as a community with the distinctive mission to the world as expressed in the Eucharist. This was a mission to commit themselves in their Catholic life world to one another in Christ to continue his saving work in their homes, places of work, recreation venues, and locations of services. Through their participation in the ritual of the Sunday Eucharist and reception of Holy Communion, members of each Christian community continually renew their commitment to Christ and his mission in and through one another. For most this realisation is far from obvious.

Unfortunately, this vision of being a Catholic had been left undeveloped among the people of Catholic parishes in Australia before the Second Vatican Council. Consequently, when the challenge came to be that kind of a community, it did no readily make sense and there was no effective effort made to help them develop that meaning. Other factors compounded this situation and membership began to fall apart.

Australia’s pioneer bishops, priests and religious established strongly cohesive communities of Catholic people within their parishes and around their schools. This cohesion was built on the bond of the Irish nationality of most early Catholic settlers and their descendants. This began during the times of transportation. Its development was assisted by the stability of populations before the advent of more efficient transport after World War II. The lack of educational opportunities of those times and the limited flow of public information also played their part in holding together the Catholics of mainly Irish heritage.

During the years prior to World War II there was little realisation of the need to develop this community of Catholics into a people with a shared faith arising from their mission in society as the People of God. Their social life was, for the most part, centred on their parishes and schools and this was used to raise funds for the construction of their Church buildings. As well, they were united in their defence of the Church against the inroads of sectarianism and later the threats of Communism. This seemed sufficient keep them united as a people with a common outlook and commitment.

Some church leaders took up the call of Vatican II for the development of more vibrant Catholic communities. However, some bishops and priests strongly rejected this call, while others practically ignored it or embraced it only half-heartedly. Of those who were more in earnest only a few realistically considered the kind of community to be developed, or considered the means required to bring it about. Too often those of good will had neither the understanding of the process of community development nor the skills to successfully promote such a process.

There was lots of talk about the need for ‘more community’ but it seemed that those who wanted ‘more community’ though that it would come about automatically if they continued to mention the need for it. There was little evidence of an appreciation of the need to develop a shared mind set of responsibility as a community of faith to reach out into the highways and byways to spread the light of salvation to those who remained in the shadow of darkness. The role of evangelisation was seen as belonging to priests, brothers and nuns. Lay people only had to be concerned about the salvation of their own souls and, to some extent, the souls of their children.

Changes in the Mass were rushed in and imposed on an unsuspecting laity through a central administration style of a fiat from above. The Mass changed so quickly that it became easy to talk of a liturgical revolution. The speed with which changes were introduced meant that clergy and laity had little opportunity to digest their meaning and to relate them to what they were replacing. This led to confusion which, in turn, was amplified by the public disagreements about what changes should be adopted and what directions they should take. The lack of an effective homiletic and catechetical program to help people assimilate the changes moved lay people from a state of confusion to one of disillusionment and bamboozlement. The meaning of the Mass became unclear and its ritual lost its attractiveness.

I have come to these conclusions by reflecting on my life experiences, through consistent wide reading, and through discussions with others inside and outside the Church. I was born and bred a Catholic who became a priest following seven years preparation as a seminary student. After sixteen years of ministry I left the priesthood mainly because I could no longer tolerate the confusion that was developing in the Church. I have always been a keen reader of matters theological, ecclesiastical, educational and historical and a keen listener of those discouraged and discontented with trends and practices in the Church.

Born in 1937, the eldest child of cradle Catholic parents who subsequently raised a family of six boys and four girls I first attended parish Catholic schools run by the Sisters of Mercy and the Ursuline nuns. This was followed by nine years of primary and secondary schooling with the Christian Brothers. During these years I was an altar server at my parish church. I was active at school in the Legion of Mary and, in my parish, in the Young Christian Workers group.

After finishing school I trained for the priesthood at the Pius XII Seminary, Banyo, Queensland and was ordained for the diocesan priesthood in 1962, just prior to the opening of the first session of the Second Vatican Council. My priestly ministry took me into parishes in Queensland and in the Northern Territory as an assistant priest, parish administrator and a parish priest. For a short time I was Director of Catholic Education in the Northern Territory. During that time I witnessed the adaptations being made in schools for the children of tribal Aborigines whose own culture was being eroded and who had to deal with the increasing inroads of white European culture. This had a significant influence on my thinking. My involvement in trying to foster such changes stimulated my thinking about productive ways of implementing changes within the Church.

Even before my ordination I seriously believed there was a growing need for priests to meet the educated world on its own terms. More Catholic young people were undertaking university programs and gaining degrees. I believed that priests needed to earn similar degrees to be able to reach out to the graduates living in their parishes. Studying at university level in an external mode was the only way open to me as my rather conservative bishop, who feared the Church was losing priests by degrees, would not give his approval for full time studies.

I gained degrees in Arts and Education as these were the only suitable areas available by external studies in those days. Happily, however, I found myself hooked on Education which I pursued to Master’s Degree level. Questions arising from the areas of the Psychology of Learning, the Sociology of Knowledge and the Philosophy of Education led me to look critically at the processes and products of Catholic theology, in particular into the Neo-Scholasticism I had been trained in at the seminary.

As I delved into the ability of the human mind to reach absolute conclusions the more I began to wonder about the level of finality in the truth value of the many doctrines proclaimed by the Catholic Church. In the theological world serious doubts had arisen about the validity of the direct communication of divine knowledge from on High through a simple process of revelation by divine inspiration. At the same time my educational studies were pointing me in the direction of a social construction of knowledge in which what is known is limited and conditioned by personal and environmental factors influencing the process of learning in which language, a human product, played a very significant role. Experience and reflection were leading me to the conclusion that the level of finality claimed by the Church in its teachings was scarcely within the capacity of the human condition.

John XXIII’s announcement of the Second Vatican Council was really exciting. My approached to the implementation of its decrees was an approach of enthusiasm and caution. I thought the changes in the Church, principally those in the Mass, needed to be introduced gradually and only after an extended and intense catechetical preparation. Except sporadically and in pockets, little attention was given to this matter. What really disturbed me as the Council progressed and reached its conclusion were the divisions that emerged within the ranks of priests and religious and among lay people in parishes.

In retrospect I believe that, as a priest, I was never really satisfied with the official performance of the Church. At a time when a clear call for appropriate and decisive action was needed, the Church was just bungling along. It was even worse than this. So many reactionaries obstructed the development of the new Vatican II directions by the proclamation of specious arguments calling for the preservation of the old. Shooting the messenger became a popular hobby of Church members, episcopal, clerical, religious and lay, who opposed the introduction of change. As their tactic to achieve this they discredited anyone who promoted change in their efforts to have such people and their proposals rejected at large. Such a spirit had always disturbed me and eventually I decided it was no longer the life for me.

For almost twenty years after leaving official ministry I attended Mass regularly each Sunday, mainly in my parish church but, from time to time, in other places also. Over this time I became more and more discontented, even angry, with what I experienced. The atmosphere of the congregation was never more than tepid, the liturgy was poorly performed and sermons often based on the Saturday’s newspapers, particularly the sports news, were hardly inspiring. The sudden announcement by the priest one Sunday morning that, From next Sunday we will have Communion givers, made me livid. Eventually, like so many others, I gave up the practice of Sunday Mass attendance because I was finding that at the end of Mass each Sunday I was leaving disturbed and hostile at what I had experienced. I developed a feeling that going to Mass was an exercise in the law of diminishing returns.

During this time I read widely from what was available in bookshops in an effort to understand where the Church was going and where I stood in relation to it. I reacted negatively to Pope John Paul II, believing that he was overstating the case for the Church and in doing so he was ignoring and writing off the positions that had been developing in contemporary theology, philosophy, biblical studies, history and the behavioural sciences. In this I felt that the pope was asking a growing educated laity to dismiss as of no consequence and as having no impact on the teachings of the Church what they were discovering through their professional and other studies offered by agencies other than the Church. This shattered my faith in a Church that I believed could and should confront squarely and with honesty any challenge that appeared on its horizon.

Discussing my experiences and the conclusions drawn from my readings and my discussions with others was a continuous factor in this constructivist learning process. Many of these were former priests and religious scattered throughout Australia. To these were added people from different walks of life. I was amazed at the level of disillusionment and discontent with the Church, even among those who continued to practice their religion, as well as among those who had given it up. Non Catholics who acknowledged the Church for its contribution to the world for the good of mankind were included in my discussions. They failed to understand how the Pope and so many bishops could so easily dismiss many issues such as the celibacy of the clergy, birth control and divorce, which to them demanded their attention and positive action. They felt that the Church’s continuing to travel along this road meant losing its significance, prestige and credibility.

In a nutshell, except for a decreasing number of Catholics who find security and comfort in the traditional way of being church with its uncritical embrace of any and every papal pronouncement, the Catholic Church, both for its members and those outside the Church is becoming irrelevant. In view of this, Church leaders have this decision to make. On the one hand they can retain the present teachings and practices of the Church and cater for a declining number of people who can accept them as credible and find comfort and security in them.

On the other they can accept that, in view of the scientific, technological and information revolutions and the social revolution that has accompanied them, their traditional way of seeing the place and destiny of human kind no longer accords with the modern world view these revolutions have produced. The modern world view has been developed through the accumulation of evidence gathered through systematic research and critical reflection of educated people today. The Church needs to re-examine its teachings and practices in the light of developments in the modern world.

Acknowledgements

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For what is contained in the following pages I am totally responsible. The theme and argument of the book has been my initiative and my response to what I have found to be a personal religious problem. However, I am indeed indebted to many people who inspired and encouraged me to write this book. As I have already indicated, the basic inspiration came from my neighbours, Tom and Kath Browne, a retired couple, who asked me one Sunday morning as I watered my garden shrubs during a prolonged drought, Jim, why do you think so many Catholics have stopped going to Mass on Sundays? The question stimulated my thinking and the answer has taken me many years to construct. As well I would like to thank Tom and Kath for reading the manuscript, their mature comments, and for the discussions they stimulated when they dropped by for a chat on their Sunday morning walks.

Along with Tom and Kath Browne, I extend my gratitude to all who have assisted me in various ways. These include two non-Catholics, my brother-in-law, Professor Mark Toleman, and a former colleague, Mark Taylor who read and commented on the text. Friends from school days, Paul McNally, former Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Southern Queensland, Max Winter and Graham Sweeny, still practising Catholics read and gave useful responses to my thoughts. Among my relations who read and commented on the text were my brothers Kevin and Pat, my aunt, Sister Christine Gabbett and my cousins, Dr Bill Tyler and Kerry Carmichael. I am also grateful to my good friends, Veronica McMahon, Ian Wallace and Warren Dredge for reading the manuscript and commenting on it. To all these I am grateful for their incisive and critical comments, for their encouragement and their accolades regarding how informative and interesting what I have written has been.

Jim Madden

December 2011

Chapter I

Sunday Mass Attendance

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During the last quarter of the twentieth century the Catholic Church in Australia became an exodus church. This was obvious from the decline and change in the pattern of Sunday Mass attendance. Churches are no longer crowded with worshippers on Saturday evenings and Sundays and the congregations they now draw consist mainly of older people and a scattering of young families with babies and children of primary and pre-school age. Young single people and mature age adults whose families have grown up are noticeably missing from the Sunday Mass assembly. This is what a casual glance around the congregations of weekend Masses almost anywhere in Australia reveals.

Church leaders deeply regret this but seem powerless to change it. In her newspaper article Ancient Beliefs find a following in the Suburbs (Courier Mail 6 Feb 2004) Tess Livingstone reported that John Bathersby, Archbishop of Brisbane, was deeply saddened that of the 600,000 baptised Catholics in the Archdiocese only 80,000 attended Mass weekly. This has been the situation now for several years. If these figures can be applied uniformly across Australia as a percentage of the people who attend Mass on a regular weekly basis in 2004 then less than 15% of Catholics attended Mass regularly each Sunday.

Church leaders deeply regret this but seem powerless to change it. In her newspaper article Ancient Beliefs find a following in the Suburbs (Courier Mail 6 Feb 2004) Tess Livingstone reported that the then Archbishop of Brisbane, John Bathersby, was "deeply saddened that of the 600,000 baptised Catholics in the Archdiocese only 80,000 attended Mass.

This 80,000 is an interesting number as it is 20,000 less than the number his predecessor in the 1950s, Archbishop James Duhig, claimed attended Brisbane’s annual Corpus Christi procession. In those days this would have represented the cream of Catholic church-goers. His estimate was perhaps rather generous but the Catholic clergy, religious and faithful of those halcyon days used to crowd the arena of the Brisbane Exhibition grounds, the grandstands and the surrounding area to take part in this grand demonstration of faith, as the Archbishop so liked to describe this occasion. Alas, the crowd drawing days of the Catholic Church seem to be coming to an end, if they are not already over.

Using these figures as a general guide, it is possible to suggest that while the population of the Archdiocese of Brisbane has increased dramatically, some would say exponentially, over the last fifty years the total number of regular contemporary churchgoers does not equal the estimated number in the cream of the Catholic population of fifty years ago. All the regular weekend churchgoers today would hardly be able to stage such a grand demonstration of faith if they could be gathered together in a single place for a Corpus Christi procession.

The remark of Archbishop Bathersby, cited in the Courier Mail, echoed the sentiments Paul Collins noted 20 years ago in his book No Set Agenda where he wrote, "A very large group of Australian Catholics has simply stopped going to Mass. For those people that absence is symbolic of the fact that they