A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America [Hardcover]

Peter Steinfels (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2003

In A People Adrift, a prominent Catholic thinker states bluntly that the Catholic Church in the United States must transform itself or suffer irreversible decline. Peter Steinfels shows how even before the recent revelations about sexual abuse by priests, the explosive combination of generational change and the thinning ranks of priests and nuns was creating a grave crisis of leadership and identity.

This groundbreaking book offers an analysis not just of the church's immediate troubles but of less visible, more powerful forces working below the surface of an institution that provides a spiritual identity for 65 million Americans and spans the nation with its parishes, schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, clinics, and social service agencies.

In A People Adrift, Steinfels warns that entrenched liberals and conservatives are trapped in a "theo-logical gridlock" that often ignores what in fact goes on in families, parishes, classrooms, voting booths, and Catholic organizations of all types. Above all, he insists, the altered Catholic landscape demands a new agenda for leadership, from the selection of bishops and the rethinking of the priesthood to the thorough preparation and genuine incorporation of a lay leadership that is already taking over key responsibilities in Catholic institutions.

Catholicism exerts an enormous cultural and political presence in American life. No one interested in the nation's moral, intellectual, and political future can be indifferent to the fate of what has been one of the world's most vigorous churches -- a church now severely challenged.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

American Catholicism "is on the verge of either an irreversible decline or a thoroughgoing transformation," according to author Peter Steinfels, veteran religion reporter and writer of the "Beliefs" column for the New York Times. In the face of the Church’s daunting sex scandal, few could argue with Steinfels’ dramatic assessment. But what makes this book especially unique and controversial is that Steinfels believes that the American Catholic Church would still be grappling with impending decline or a serious overhaul even if the heinous acts of sexual misconduct had never occurred.

Steinfels—a practicing Catholic—nostalgically speaks to the positive ways the church once influenced and guided American Catholics. "Sacrament, edifice, art, doctrine, parental example, youthful devotion, adolescent romance, a teacher here, a mentor there—all part of passing on the faith from person to person—generation to generation," he writes. Indeed, a generation ago, the Church weighed in heavily when American Catholics made decisions about work, sex, marriage, and raising children. Nowadays, the younger generation of Catholics may go to church, but are far less likely to integrate the Church into their daily lives. Steinfels cites polls showing how Catholics are deeply divided on seemingly non-negotiable issues, including the use of birth control and the legality of abortion. He also examines crumbling institutions, such as Catholic hospitals and religious orders, showing how the innate divisiveness in the Church has created the current decline. Other topics of intense scrutiny include the shape-shifting Catholic schools and the resistance to ordaining female priests. Rather than pontificating on solutions, Steinfels offers an intelligent expose that is bound to create waves among the "people adrift." --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

What a challenging time for the Catholic Church in America, and what a challenge to write a comprehensive assessment of its past 40 years to draft a list of possible futures. But veteran New York Times religion correspondent Steinfels, also former editor of Commonweal magazine and teacher at Georgetown and Notre Dame, is ideal for the task. Steinfels is deeply knowledgeable through research and experience of his formidably vast subject, and he brings personal loyalty to his faith, moderated by the detachment of his profession. Blessedly, the sex scandal that shook the church in 2002 gets context from a man who wrote about the occurrence of abuse a decade earlier. Large institutional questions-primary and higher education, health care, worship, leadership, the priesthood, roles for laity and women-all are examined through Steinfels's own years of reporting as well as through the lenses of major studies by sociologists. If anything, the book is not big enough for so complex a subject. Steinfels sounds a call for a reasoned common ground that respects the richness of tradition and also reflects the reality of the practices and needs of more than 60 million American Catholics, rather than the agendas of any number of the small but vocal groups within Catholicism. This book will be hailed by many, and with good reason; it should not be ignored by Catholic officials.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 2nd edition (August 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684836637
• ISBN-13: 978-0684836638
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,136,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Searching for Common Ground, November 20, 2003

By 

Frank J. Wassermann (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Hardcover)

This is a surprisingly broad survey of the state of the Catholic Church in the United States which avoids focus on hot button moral or divisive doctrinal issues to instead examine nearly every major facet of Catholic corporate life. At first, I found this a little disappointing because I expected a dominant focus on matters of leadership and institutional structure. But upon getting deeper into the author's project, I was gratified by the breadth of perspective because it showed how widespread is the Catholic presence in American society, and in turn, how thoroughly Catholicism is affected and challenged by that society.

Steinfels begins with an account of the last years of Cardinal Bernardin in Chicago and his efforts to establish a dialogue between different wings of church opinion on fundamental issues defining the future of the church. The effort was called the "Common Ground Initiative." It was publicly criticized by several of Bernardin's cardinal colleagues on the basis that there could be no real dialogue, implying compromise, on church teaching in key areas identified by Bernardin. The topics are worth noting:
- changing roles of women
- organization and effectiveness of religious education
- Eucharistic liturgy as most Catholics experience it
- meaning of human sexuality and the gap between church teachings and the convictions of many faithful
- the image and morale of priests, and their declining numbers and ratio to laity
- the succession of laypeople to positions of leadership in Catholic institutions formerly occupied by vowed religious, and the provision of adequate Catholic formation for them
- the ways in which the church is present in political life and debate
- the capacity of the church to embrace minorities
- the survival of Catholic school systems, colleges, health care and social service institutions, and the articulation of a distinct and appropriate religious identity and mission for these institutions
- financial support
- manner of decision making and consultation in church governance
- responsibility of theology to authoritative church teachings
- place of collegiality and subsidiarity in the relations between Rome and the American episcopacy

Most of these topics are taken up by Steinfels in his subsequent chapters. Steinfels argues that Bernardin correctly saw that American Catholicism was increasingly subject to polarization by vocal minorities on the left and right and that it was important to bridge the real differences through dialogue while dispelling the notion that the extremes were in fact in the mainstream. Yet the very reaction to his effort demonstrated how increasingly suspicious various segments of the church were of one another, reading any area of deviance from one's own view as evidence of being in the wrong camp in general.

Steinfels offers four common interpretations of the aftermath of Vatican II ranging from far right to conservative to liberal to radical left. Steinfels claims to personally find himself somewhat on the liberal side of the analysis, though receptive to many concerns of the conservatives. In any event, he argues, that the Catholic hierarchy, especially in Rome, failed in its leadership to implement Vatican II leaving divisions (and suspicions) to fester. Much of the downside of the shake-up in the American church had settled by the mid-Seventies when Rome, under John Paul II, began to ratchet up its oversight and exacerbate tension on problems of authority within the church. Increasingly under John Paul II, the hierarchy has a conservative bent while Catholic leadership outside the church as such is dominated by liberal elements. Yet each side feels beleaguered by the other which feeds an undue emphasis on contentious aspects of church life or teaching at the expense of more fundamental and ultimately more fateful issues.

85 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will Catholic Faith Flourish--or Fumble--in the USA?, August 20, 2003

By 

Robert William DeMarco "santangelo" (Seattle, Washington United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Hardcover)

A judicious, deeply thoughtful, thoroughly informed, and lucidly written analysis of the crisis that threatens to send American Catholicism, the largest faith community in the United States, for all its present energy, diversity, and service to society, into a period of "irreversible decline." According to Steinfels, American Catholics have around ten or fifteen years to rescue what is most valuable and truth-disclosing in their tradition or watch it begin to diminish in its transformative power, its spiritual authenticity, and its cultural productiveness. Can the Catholic community recover itself, be honest with itself, and sustain a respectful conversation within itself--in time?

Steinfels, the former senior religion correspondent for "The New York Times," and a former editor of "Commonweal" magazine, relies on his broad experience as a journalist and interpreter of the contemporary experience of various religious communities, their traditions, practices, conflicts, and aspirations, to provide close attention to--and critical reflection on--specific practical and institutional matters crucial to the full survival of the Catholic faith. It is the type of attention and reflection that ought to ground serious "theological" work & keep it rooted in the lives, questions, & feelings of human beings struggling to make sense of their lives in today's world. The author pulls no punches as regards the scandals, embittered arguments, and failures of leadership that are tearing the American Catholic community apart. Nor does he offer cheap solace through soothing compromise or ecclesiastical happy-talk. But all those who care about the future of Catholicism in America, including those in a love/hate relationship with its present institutionalization, should read this sober, intelligent, and painfully honest book.

Steinfels belongs to an impressive group of American Catholic intellectuals, that includes his wife, Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, all of whom, in very different ways, have been trying to understand what is happening to U.S. Catholicism. Shouldn't somebody gather these people, urge them to let their common loves & concerns outweigh their various personal differences, and invite them to address all these issues now with an acknowledgment of being in an emergency situation?

35 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The shaky state of the Catholic Church, November 13, 2003

By 

Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A People Adrift : The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Hardcover)

" A People Adrift", Peter Steinfels's new book about the crisis in the Catholic Church in America is as comprehensive a study as you will find about the church today. For those of us non-Catholics who wonder why Catholics go through all the fuss and bother that they do, Steinfels helps us out. Most importantly, he gets us away from the screaming headlines of the newspapers and the segments on television and gives us a close-up look at the many layers of Catholicism, how they interact, what's wrong (and what's right) in the church today.

What struck me most about "A People Adrift" is how much lay leadership has become a part of the church. With declining numbers of priests Steinfels points to the increasing role of laity....a sure sign that at least in some respects the church is willing to accept change. But the author reserves his harshest criticism for the hunkering down of Rome with regard to women and celibacy. He suggests that without a liberalization on the part of the Vatican that the Catholic church in the U.S. will continue its decline. As an outsider in a progressive Protestant denomination, I very much agree with him.

Although the author is willing to make his own feelings known, he is careful to balance counter arguments. He offers possible solutions to questions about the Catholic perceptions of sex, celibacy, religious education, the roles of priests and bishops, the state of affairs of worship, etc....in short, Steinfels covers just about every tier and angle. And I smiled when he signaled his great respect for the late Cardinal Bernardin and his contempt for Cardinal Law.

While "A People Adrift" is a must-read for Catholics who are concerned about the future of their church, I think this book extends far beyond Catholicism. It is an important book to read for people of any faith, not just as a comparison to their own but as a revelation to those who want to understand the joy and the agony of what it is to be Catholic in America in 2003.