THERE ARE CATHOLICS AND CATHOLICS

I find myself meeting three different groups of adult Catholics. Their distinction lies in their age.  There are “the Young” (late teens to mid-thirties), "the Elderly" (60 plus) and "the Middle-aged" in between.  Each has a different way of regarding the Church and consequently has a different way of relating to it.   (What follows is, of course, a generalisation.) How do these different groups regard the Church?

How they regard the Church

The Young group are children of our post-modernist society, coping with rapid change, technologically educated, with global concerns, the new cosmology giving them their worldview. For these, what they find in the Church -- the symbols, the expressions of belief, the moralising, the hierarchy of authority, the liturgy, the clericalism -- belong to another culture than that in which they live their daily lives.

The Elderly are those who experienced the shift from the pre-Vatican II to the post-Vatican II Church.  They are more leisured people with opportunity to reflect on where the Church is now.  While acknowledging that a tremendous change has taken place in less than a lifetime, they are divided in their response.  While some are the ever-faithful, the backbone of every parish, not wanting more change, others are saddened that so much they had hoped for from the Council has not yet come about and they are depressed by the back-sliding on the part of the Church leadership.

Between the two, are the Middle-aged, adults who were children during Vatican II and have not experienced a previous form of Church.  They struggle to bring up their families in "the true Faith" which often means the same beliefs with which they were brought up (pre- Vatican II) about which they have little opportunity or inclination to question.

How they relate to the Church

Apart from a minority in the Young group who tend towards fundamentalism in their need for a secure spiritual home, this is the group in the forefront of what is recognised today as the "Spirituality Revolution".  More spirituality, less religion.  As in other areas of life they are prepared to "pick-and-mix" the ingredients of their spiritual life.  Those who have not left the Church already for its irrelevance to their lives, want to be involved less in the parish than in justice and social campaigns.  Their Christian ideals inspire their lives and they regard their local church, not as having demands on them, but as the supplier of what they want from it.  Their beliefs about doctrine or morals will be those which match their personal experience.  In fact they seek spiritual experience.  They live more with questions than with answers.

The Middle-aged are the group which is the least challenging to the Church.  Their church-going (two or three times a month) will be the centre of their Christian life. Few want to get involved in Church activities. They want to do the right thing by the Church and keep in with God, as they have been taught.  They have neither the time nor the desire to delve deeper into their Faith.

The Elderly form the largest group of church-goers.  Those with hopes of real renewal are the most challenging to the Church: challenging its structures and its authoritarianism.  They are articulate and aware of their place in the Church as educated laity. They are driven by their desire to see what had been promised by Vatican II become reality.  Being contemporaries of most of those in ecclesiastical office, they feel free to speak out as their brothers and sisters.  What is not to be doubted in either group of the Elderly is their loyalty to the Church.  But as they pass on, whither the Church?

Adrian B. Smith