Is the Church in Better Shape Than We Thought?

A reader writes:

I stumbled across a book that caused me to re-consider whether western Christianity was coming to an end, or was it in better shape (if not size) than ever. The common view is, we are losing the culture war and the decline of western Christianity as evidenced by the falling church attendance rates means it has a limited shelf life.

We want things to be back to the way they were when everyone was a committed Catholic and church attendance was almost universal. The problem is, there never really has been such a period. Yes there have been times when most people in western Europe would have been nominal Catholics but as for their understanding the faith and living it out – that’s a different matter. In fact when you look at the available evidence (the number of daily mass goers, the fact that anyone who goes to church now has really made a positive (not cultural) decision to go, etc., this could be considered a golden period of western Christianity.

The book which got me thinking is free and on line (see link below):

http://genealogyreligion.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Secularization-RIP-Stark

It describes the following scenes from the middle ages:

• Writing in the 11th century, the English monk William of Malmmesbury complained that the aristocracy rarely attended church and even the pious amongst them”attended” mass at home in bed in the arms of their wives
• The ordinary people also did not attend church at all. The 13th century Domincan prior Humbert of Romans notes that his Friars had to try and reach the laity at markets and on ships i.e they did not go to church
• The author of Dives and Pauper (circa 1410) complained that “the people these days… are loathe to hear Gods service” and when they do come the arrive late and leave early
• The Lateran Council of 1215, in addition to requiring all Catholics to confess and take communion at least once a year during the Easter season, proposed that a massive campaign of elementary religious instruction of the laity be undertaken.

So the middle ages wasn’t a great time for the church. Then when the industrial revolution came along and people moved to towns and cities societal norms drove people to attend church because that’s what everyone else did. But just as in the middle ages the laity weren’t really Christianised and only attended mass because their neighbours also went. Therefore, when it became socially ok for people to not go, a great number of people chose this option.

To sum up, if you take the long term view, things probably are not as bad today as they at first appear and in fact when you consider the fact that we now have a substantial committed and catechised laity we should be, at least a little bit, optimistic for the future.

Perhaps you could draw the attention of your readers to this topic as i am sure many of them will find it interesting.

I have have a historian friend who has remarked on occasion that a lot of disappointment with the Church seems to stem not from the Church getting worse than The Good Old Days, but from our own rising (and sometimes unrealistic) expectations. We (rightly) hope for more from the Church and the Church (that is, you and me) fail to live up to the promise of the gospel.

The notion that things were better in the Good Old Days is always given a bracing dash of cold water in the face when I read the New Testament.  Bickering, stupid apostles (one of them a traitor, the rest gutless cowards), as well as congregations whose atrocious behavior is what occasions the composition of the letters of Paul (“stop suing each other, don’t treat the poor people in your gatherings like crap, stop getting drunk at Mass, quit worshipping angels, tell that guy sleeping with his stepmother to knock it off, and yes, I *am* an apostle”).  In Byzantium, prostitutes turned tricks in Hagia Sophia during the Divine Liturgy.  After Trent, the Church worked long and hard to get priests to give up their concubines.  The Church has always had weeds with the wheat and always will. What amazes me is not merely how far we have to go, but how far we’ve come.

Not that we will ever realize the eschaton in this world.  But I think that one of the more poisonous effects of perpetually buying a narrative of decline in the Church with such complete lack of criticism is that it is, ultimately, a cooperation with the devil against the virtue of hope.  Very simply, we’ve got it *way* better than our ancestors–and I don’t just mean materially.  I mean we have access to sacraments, spiritual helps, catechesis, resources, ministries of spiritual and corporal works of mercy and so much more and we *are* seeing real fruits if we’d only stop complaining long enough to look.  There’s as much reason to hope now as there was when the Church was a tiny little golden fly in a giant buzzing swarm of mystery cults from the near east.  If we take revelation seriously, we believe “his kingdom will have no end”.  So why perpetually feed a narrative which says “Our best days are behind us?”  There’s still six billion people left to evanglize.  We may not even be out of the first quarter of the game yet for all we know.

Arise!  Take hope!  Trust in the Lord.  He is with us till the end of the age and there remain much work to be done and great things yet to achieve by the power of the Spirit!