Customer Reviews

The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An outstanding synthesis of how three major factors coalesced about 40 years ago to undermine and severely damage the US Catholic Church's culture and teaching authority. I remember the Church as a very young child before 1962 and can appreciate the catastrophic post-Vatican II effects David Carlin so eloquently describes. His assessment of how we got to where we are today, as well as his prescription for rescuing Christ's holy Church in the US is right on target. I applaud Mr. Carlin's brilliant analysis. With lots of prayers, another St. Charles Borromeo for the 21st century, and a miracle, we may avoid falling into further irrelevancy and decline. Given our current secularist culture, as sick as it is and as pervasive even in the Church, I pray for bishops and priests to have the moral courage to preach the truth and do all they can to reverse the ominous trends Mr. Carlin describes. His book is a highly commendable first step in helping the leaders of the Church to speak the truth with fervor and choose orthodoxy over "making it up as you go along." I wish every ordained clergyman and member of the Church would read this excellent book and take its message to heart and act on its providential message.

This book does an execellent job of looking at the decline of the Catholic Church since the 1960's from a sociological perspective. Carlin addresses in an easy to read manner the step by step cultural upheavals that helped errode the faith of most Catholics in the last forty years. While I would have liked him to have a brighter perspective on the Catholic Church's future in America, I cannot but help feeling he is right on the mark with his assessments. The general assessement of the books is that the Catholic Faith will gradually become weaker and weaker a force in shaping America's future and will become as impotent a force as the Amish culture in shaping country's future if we continue to water down our faith to be more acceptable in the eyes of our secular American society. As long as we are content to water down the tough issues (Abortion, Euthanasia, Artificial Contraception, divorce, fornication, homosexuality) we will cease to be authentically the Catholic Church Christ founded and will simply become just another liberal church bowing at the altar of secular opinion polls.
I like the author's comments on Christ's promise that the Church that it would last to the end of the world. He asserts that while Christ's assertation will be true, Christ did not say America's Catholic Church would last to the end. There were Catholic diocese in Islamic countries centuries that currently are dead and gone. There are many places where the Church was that no longer survive. If Catholics in America do not get serious about being authentically Catholic, we may eventually lose the Church here. It will be of little consolation here in America if the Catholic faith thrives in Latin America, Africa, South America to the end of time, if our American Church dies here. We need to do what we can to perseve the faith where we live.

David Carlin's book is a great step by a Catholic Sociologist to examine and analyze the decline of Catholicism in America since the end of Vatican II in 1965. It is a must read book that belongs in every Catholic's library.

That said, I have to mention that Mr. Carlin does not go far enough or deep enough into the reasons behind Catholicism's decline, not only in America but worldwide. His book could be renamed "The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America and around the world." His main thesis that the Church hit an unfortunate tripple whammy of Vatican II, the end of the Catholic ghetto and the mainstreaming of Catholics into the culture, and the rise of secularism. Yet, he does not examine all of the ramifications inherent in the first major cause, Vatican II and how it effected the other two.

In his analysis of what the Church needs to do to pull out of this decline, in the next to the last chapter, was once again lacking systematic thought. There is a mental incoherence which is inherent in the mass of neo-Catholic's today. Even when trying to fight liberalism and secularism, they are so infected by these two "isms", that they forver fail to connect all of the dots, or overcome their inherent mental inertia.

He goes into the need for the Church to "invent" new rituals in order to fight secularism, failing to notice that Catholcism is traditionaly anti-inventionist! In fact, it was the cult of inventionism and experimentation, ushered in by Vatican II, that has caused the problem in the first place.

There is no need to invent (sic) anything. One of the main secularizing and liberalizing influences in the Church today is the new mass. It, more then anything else has dismantled Catholicism, and the anti-secularist supernatural mindset in the Church. Once neo-protestantism and "naturalism", was embraced in the litergy, it was only natural that the decline and secularization of the Church would Follow. I am willing to give this author the benefit of the doubt, for there are many great books that detail the problems inherent in the new mass and the post Vatican II stress disorder. What was needed was a great transition book that could touch upon the subject, and would lead the Catholic inquirer deeper into the subject by further reading. Mr. Carlin accomplishes this goal admirably.

All in all it is a great book and a beginning for Catholic's searching for the reasons behind the many ills in their Church today. From here I would recommend the book, "The Great Facade" to flesh out ones understanding of how we got to where we are today and what is truly needed to get the Catholic Church out of the guagmire of (post)modernism.

The great thing about this book is that it is very easy reading despite having a complex subject-matter. The author avoids giving a simplistic explanation for the decline of Catholicism in the US. In fact he gives a very complex explanation. Yet he does so in such an accessible writing style that any ordinary Catholic -- or non-Catholic for that matter -- will have no difficulty following his argument.

Moreover, as he talks about the great changes that have taken place in American Catholicism, he describes the great changes in American society as a whole. For the Catholic story, he feels, cannot be told apart from the American story.

He again avoids simplism when he gets to the end of the book and recommends changes if US Catholicism is to save itself. He avoids the simplistic liberal answer ("Let's modernize the Church") and he avoids the simplistic conservative answer ("Let's go back to the days before Vatican II"). Further, he avoids both cheap hope and bleak despair. He thinks the Church might (repeat, might) have a bright future in the US, but on the whole he tends to be pessimistic.

Slightly pessimistic but very realistic. If you want sociological realism about American Catholicism packaged in an attractive prose style, this is the book for you.

I have only two complaints about the book. One, it does not have enough scholarly footnotes. But then again, it is not meant to be a "scholarly" book. It is meant to be a serious book for the general reader. Two (and more seriously), it lacks an index.

That author David Carlin is a sociology professor and a former member of the Conneticut State Legislature certainly comes through in his presentation of the Catholic Church in the USA. His analysis of the history and context of the Catholic community during the 1950s through the 1990s is most interesting; perhaps his analysis and his recommended remedies make sense if Catholics in the USA want to understand themselves simply within the national context. However, the Catholic Church has never really been a self-contained, national entity, and this is where I find Senator Carlin's analysis somewhat problematic.

Now that I've presented my sense of what is a limit of the book (perhaps more in the sense of a boundary than of a limitation), I can say that the interesting element in this long series of essays is the attempt to identify Catholic culture. The author does not so much dwell on the "content" of Catholic culture, but he does speak to the issues of conditions and communication of values, ideals and beliefs in a Catholic way. The author also speaks to the empowerment of Catholic laity, not so much in terms of ministry (an internal reality) but in terms of "Church in the World".

Thus, while Carlin seems to criticize Vatican II, he does further the discussion articulated by Vatican II in its constitutions on "The Church" (Lumen Gentium), on "The Church in the Contemporary World" (Gaudium et Spes) and on "The Apostolate of the Laity" (Apostolicam Actuositatem). In this sense, David Carlin's "Decline and Fall" is a good resource for those who are committed to the ongoing renewal of the Catholic Church in the USA and elsewhere.

David Carlin has written this book as a sociologist to examine and analyze the decline of Catholicism in America since the end of Vatican II in 1965 and the confluence of two other social major factors that coalesced about 40 years ago to undermine and severely damage the US Catholic Church's culture and teaching authority. These three factors according to the author calls the "perfect storm" that include Vatican II, the end of the tight knit Catholic community called a "ghetto", and the American cultural revolution of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

This is a very easy to read sociological study that flows. The author does an excellent job as he explains the factors that influenced the identity of America before it became a nation through the emergence of secularism. Country founded on Protestant fundamentals that were agreeable to the various sects that composed early America, a nation whose basis was Christian. That evolved through emigration to a country based on Judeo-Christian principles as the people as a group were admitted into the main stream of American life, to what we have today a nation whose religion is non-Christian if not down right secularist

We see that as the new belief systems are brought in that a denominational mindset sets in to allow all to work together and live in peace and prosper in the new paradigm. Each religion focuses only on what they have in common and not their differences. When the culture changed from Christian to Judo-Christian there was still founded on biblical morals. The Catholics who since the Council of Trent had a built a wall that emphasized the difference of Catholic's and Protestant's was destroyed by Vatican II. This event along with the change in national identity is when Catholics entered the public mainstream and started to adopt the cultural aspects of their country.

The problem as shown was at this time that secularism was being accepted as a respectable group in America and therefore its own denomination. This had the affect on the Judeo-Christian denominations having the need to find what they had in common with secularist in order to keep the "American Experiment" alive. This and a definite lack of leadership in the Catholic Church which still has a vacuum of true Catholic Leaders has lead to the decline of the Catholic Church in America.

The misuse of the intent of Vatican II documents embraced by the modernist, both laity and clergy, was used as the justification of the dismantling of the Catholic Church and its ancient traditions. The most important one was the liturgy in the form of the "New Mass" that was acceptable to all Christians. And the lack of courage or will of the bishops to stand up and defend the doctrines and dogma of the Church accelerated this destruction that was embraced by many. For without the biblical moral foundation what is to stop people from sliding too a selfish attitude instead of the normal Catholic community attitude.

Most of the authors work is on track and all is well researched but his proposed solution to create new rituals to differentiate Catholic's from secularism as the Council of Trent did for Protestant's follows in the thinking of the modernist that caused the development of the "New Mass". So though he is interested in the Catholic Church surviving in America, for it will thrive in other countries, his solution follows the thinking of those who caused its decline in the first place. Even though all the ramifications that were the results of Vatican II are not touched on in this book and the author proposed solution lacking in systematic thought this book is worth reading.

The Catholic Church is over two millennium old and has always used its tradition as its bulwark to fend off all attacks. That is what is needed now. There are a remnant of laity and religious trying to do just this. All that is needed is true leadership to rebuke this ongoing attack of modernism on this ancient religion. The author is right in his analysis that the Catholic Church will survive, but the question is will it survive in America?

This book is a historical account of the sociological trend of the Catholic Church in America from pre 1960 to 2003, when the book was published. It is a thorough study that can be summed up as how the factors of Vatican II, the end of the Catholic "ghetto" (or, the end of the US Catholic Church's separation from outside influences, such as Protestantism and culture) and the cultural revolution of the 1960's and early 70's led to the great decline in the Catholic Church in America. Actually, the author is so thorough, he explains the factors the influenced the identity of America before it became a nation through the emergence of secularism. Going from Christan to Judeo-Christian to what is now (not specifically identified), but is most certainly non-Christian.

Although it is a sociological study, it is easy to read and for me, it was hard to put down. Even more, it seems to parallel what is going on in mainstream Protestant Churches that is leading to the decline of Christianity as a whole. The author demonstrates what happens when churches try to become ecumenical, which results in a loss of particular beliefs and compromise that washes away Christianity. This is also the result of identifying denominations and accepting all denominations as equal. The Catholic Church cannot survive when it accepts denominations that are in complete opposition or in any degree of opposition to their beliefs as being equal. It's a recipe for disaster and results in loss of membership as well as the loss of true Catholics - those that firmly believe and practice all aspects of Catholicism.

The author even covers the sex scandals - this is truly a thorough and eye opening book on the decline and fall of Catholicism in America. Trying not to end on a negative note, the author suggests how the Catholic Church in America can recover and become a great church again. This part of the book is also an enlightening eye opener.

Easy to read and well written. I highly recommend this book to Catholics as well and Protestants. We all can learn important lessons from this book.

Sophia Institute Press sent me a complimentary copy of this book for me to review.

I've read about 5 of the best books around concerning the fall of the Catholic Church since Vatican II. This is undoubtedly, hands down ,the best amongst a very select bunch of excellent good books in that category. For someone very interested in Vatican II and the time during and after its implementation, I recommend buying a standard good book to go along with this one also and you will have everything you need to understand.

Written by sociologist and lifelong Catholic David Carlin (Professor of Philosophy and Sociology, Community College, Rhode Island), The Decline & Fall Of The Catholic Church In America is an insightfully critical study and critique of the erosion of the Catholic Church's influence from the election of John F. Kennedy to today. Taking the staunch view that the root of the Catholic Church's problems lie not in the scandals that reach the daily headlines, but rather a shift in American culture to embrace secularist, libertine, and anti-authoritarian values, that caused American Catholics to adapt by downplaying their faith, The Decline & Fall Of The Catholic Church In America is a thoughtful and thought-provoking wake-up call that holds out the possibility, albeit not with overmuch optimism, that the American Catholic Church can do what it needs most to turn itself around.

Highly readable, well researched, especially regarding many statistics. The author sets out to prove a point, but this bias, while evident, is not a distraction.