Post by Bozur on Apr 12, 2005 17:43:12 GMT -5
Catholics in U.S. Keep Faith, but Live With Contradictions
By DEAN E. MURPHY and NEELA BANERJEE
Published: April 11, 2005
Correction Appended
Catholics in the United States
The views of American Catholics on social and moral issues have come to mirror those of other Americans.
graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/12/nyregion/20040411_CATHOLIC_GRAPH.gif
Catholics in New York
A look at the changing state of the Roman Catholic Church in and around New York City, from the late 1970’s to the dawn of a new pontificate.
LOS ANGELES, April 8 - Lily Velazquez, who turned 18 on Thursday, is the sixth of 12 children of Mexican immigrants in a poor suburb of Los Angeles. She considers herself both a devoted Catholic and a hopeless sinner.
She attends Mass every Sunday but has had two children out of wedlock. She thinks abortion is murder but chafes at the Vatican's ban on birth control. She mourns the death of Pope John Paul II but hopes his successor will be "new and different."
"My mom gets mad if I don't go to church," Ms. Velazquez said, as her 2-year-old daughter, Emily, sucked on a bottle of juice outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the official hub of the country's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese. "As for me, I think I've done a lot of sin and if I go to church, it's better."
Ms. Velazquez was among the tens of thousands of Roman Catholics who visited the imposing cathedral in downtown Los Angeles this week to pay respects to the pope by lighting a candle or kneeling at his photograph. She is also a vivid example of the contradictions felt by American Catholics as they wait with uncertainty and some anxiety for the selection of a new leader in Rome.
American Catholics, be they Latinos here or African-Americans in Atlanta, or those of Irish, Italian or Polish ancestry in Boston and Baltimore, have come to accept that being Catholic means living with inconsistency. The roughly 65 million Catholics in the United States no longer have as distinctive an identity as they did a generation ago, and as they assimilated more thoroughly into American society, their views on social and moral issues came to mirror those of other Americans.
"Catholics as a whole occupy the mainstream of American life, when 50 or 60 years ago, they were on the periphery of society," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio and an expert on religion and politics.
As a result, the Vatican's teachings on a number of subjects, including contraception, the ordination of women and homosexuality, are out of step with the beliefs and lifestyles of most American Catholics. But the Americans mostly find a way to stay in their faith by adhering to values most important to them and quietly ignoring those they disagree with.
"Catholics right now are à la carte" in the practice of their religion, said Diana Gonya, 61, a retired insurance agent in Baltimore whose wedding 36 years ago was officiated by Pope Paul VI.
Certainly there are problems. Fewer Americans these days send their children to Catholic schools. Mass attendance in the United States fell during John Paul's papacy. The church faces an acute shortage of priests. And the sexual abuse scandal continues to roil dioceses across the country.
While few American Catholics say they expect doctrine to change markedly under the successor to John Paul, the transition has allowed them to dream a little about what their church could be. Broadly, they say they hope for a church that more readily embraces modernity. For some, it means that priests might be allowed to marry. For others, it could entail the arrival of women as priests. Most, polls show, would like to see a softening of the church's stance on birth control. After years of sexual abuse scandals, many look for a pope who will make ending the abuse a priority.
"If it wants to stay one of the major religions in this country, it needs to progress with the times and let women priests in," said Katie McDevitt, 20, a sophomore at Boston College, a Jesuit university. Ms. McDevitt says she attends church relatively regularly, and she recently went to a memorial Mass for John Paul. "It needs not to be so sexist and patriarchal. There is a lot of emphasis on the wrong principles."
American Catholics grieved for John Paul, as did their brethren all over the world, but a recent Gallup poll indicated that they think who the next pope might be matters less to them than to Catholics elsewhere, especially in Africa and Latin America, where the church has grown most robustly over the last two decades. There is a widespread acceptance among Roman Catholics in the United States that they can be out of step with the Vatican and still unequivocally call themselves Catholic.
Mrs. Gonya said that her attitude toward the pope and the church hierarchy was something like people's feelings about their parents. "We respect them for what they believe, but we have new information that takes us in different directions," she said.
Mrs. Gonya and her husband, Gary, are enthusiastic lifelong Catholics. Mr. Gonya studied to be a priest in the 1960's. The couple proudly show photos of their wedding during Pope Paul VI's visit to Mrs. Gonya's native country, Colombia, in 1968, and of an audience they had with John Paul in his summer home, Castel Gandolfo, for their 25th anniversary.
By DEAN E. MURPHY and NEELA BANERJEE
Published: April 11, 2005
Correction Appended
Catholics in the United States
The views of American Catholics on social and moral issues have come to mirror those of other Americans.
graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/04/12/nyregion/20040411_CATHOLIC_GRAPH.gif
Catholics in New York
A look at the changing state of the Roman Catholic Church in and around New York City, from the late 1970’s to the dawn of a new pontificate.
LOS ANGELES, April 8 - Lily Velazquez, who turned 18 on Thursday, is the sixth of 12 children of Mexican immigrants in a poor suburb of Los Angeles. She considers herself both a devoted Catholic and a hopeless sinner.
She attends Mass every Sunday but has had two children out of wedlock. She thinks abortion is murder but chafes at the Vatican's ban on birth control. She mourns the death of Pope John Paul II but hopes his successor will be "new and different."
"My mom gets mad if I don't go to church," Ms. Velazquez said, as her 2-year-old daughter, Emily, sucked on a bottle of juice outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the official hub of the country's largest Roman Catholic archdiocese. "As for me, I think I've done a lot of sin and if I go to church, it's better."
Ms. Velazquez was among the tens of thousands of Roman Catholics who visited the imposing cathedral in downtown Los Angeles this week to pay respects to the pope by lighting a candle or kneeling at his photograph. She is also a vivid example of the contradictions felt by American Catholics as they wait with uncertainty and some anxiety for the selection of a new leader in Rome.
American Catholics, be they Latinos here or African-Americans in Atlanta, or those of Irish, Italian or Polish ancestry in Boston and Baltimore, have come to accept that being Catholic means living with inconsistency. The roughly 65 million Catholics in the United States no longer have as distinctive an identity as they did a generation ago, and as they assimilated more thoroughly into American society, their views on social and moral issues came to mirror those of other Americans.
"Catholics as a whole occupy the mainstream of American life, when 50 or 60 years ago, they were on the periphery of society," said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio and an expert on religion and politics.
As a result, the Vatican's teachings on a number of subjects, including contraception, the ordination of women and homosexuality, are out of step with the beliefs and lifestyles of most American Catholics. But the Americans mostly find a way to stay in their faith by adhering to values most important to them and quietly ignoring those they disagree with.
"Catholics right now are à la carte" in the practice of their religion, said Diana Gonya, 61, a retired insurance agent in Baltimore whose wedding 36 years ago was officiated by Pope Paul VI.
Certainly there are problems. Fewer Americans these days send their children to Catholic schools. Mass attendance in the United States fell during John Paul's papacy. The church faces an acute shortage of priests. And the sexual abuse scandal continues to roil dioceses across the country.
While few American Catholics say they expect doctrine to change markedly under the successor to John Paul, the transition has allowed them to dream a little about what their church could be. Broadly, they say they hope for a church that more readily embraces modernity. For some, it means that priests might be allowed to marry. For others, it could entail the arrival of women as priests. Most, polls show, would like to see a softening of the church's stance on birth control. After years of sexual abuse scandals, many look for a pope who will make ending the abuse a priority.
"If it wants to stay one of the major religions in this country, it needs to progress with the times and let women priests in," said Katie McDevitt, 20, a sophomore at Boston College, a Jesuit university. Ms. McDevitt says she attends church relatively regularly, and she recently went to a memorial Mass for John Paul. "It needs not to be so sexist and patriarchal. There is a lot of emphasis on the wrong principles."
American Catholics grieved for John Paul, as did their brethren all over the world, but a recent Gallup poll indicated that they think who the next pope might be matters less to them than to Catholics elsewhere, especially in Africa and Latin America, where the church has grown most robustly over the last two decades. There is a widespread acceptance among Roman Catholics in the United States that they can be out of step with the Vatican and still unequivocally call themselves Catholic.
Mrs. Gonya said that her attitude toward the pope and the church hierarchy was something like people's feelings about their parents. "We respect them for what they believe, but we have new information that takes us in different directions," she said.
Mrs. Gonya and her husband, Gary, are enthusiastic lifelong Catholics. Mr. Gonya studied to be a priest in the 1960's. The couple proudly show photos of their wedding during Pope Paul VI's visit to Mrs. Gonya's native country, Colombia, in 1968, and of an audience they had with John Paul in his summer home, Castel Gandolfo, for their 25th anniversary.