Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American community, has recently co- authored American Grace: how religion divides and unites us, a landmark study of the role that religion plays in American life. He judged Davidson’s opinion of the data to be far too optimistic, saying: “The one-third who are not affiliated are not Catholic despite Jim wanting it to be so.” Although Putnam’s research has found that “without the inflow of Latinos to shore up the number of Catholics in the United States, the American Catholic population would have experienced a catastrophic collapse”, he doesn’t predict the demise of Catholicism in America. Citing the tremendous growth in the immi- grant Latino population and the fact that “the Church is one of the most adaptive institutions in human history”, Putnam advised: “I wouldn’t bet against the Catholic Church.” Despite the decline of the European immi-
grant Catholic population and the Latino surge – already accounting for more than a third of the Catholic population in the US – the “Lost” conference included just two Hispanics on the programme and four people not of European descent in total. Carmen María Cervantes, executive director of Instituto Fe y Vida, an organisation dedicated to empowering young Hispanics for leadership in Church and society, and Marilyn Santos, President of La Red, the National Catholic Network de Pastoral Juvenil Hispana, both provided key insights into the Latino Catholic experience in America.
Irish, Italian, German, Polish, etc. – were when they began arriving in the US well over a century ago, and now comprise the “Anglo” Church in America. Latinos may share the same language but are very different socio- economically, educationally, politically and devotionally than their Anglo counterparts in the US. Like many of the topics touched upon over the course of this ambitious con- ference, however, it was only possible to skim the surface of this issue. Putnam’s American Grace co-author David Campbell, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, also spoke and provided a more detailed portrait of young Catholics. He mentioned that a significant portion of those young adults leaving the Church do so because they are uncomfortable with what they perceive to be an inappropriate mixing of religion and conservative – Republican – politics. However, their own political instincts do
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not fit any neat categories for, while Catholics under 30 tend to be very liberal about homo- sexuality, they are much more pro-life than their parents. Campbell was quick to add the observation that lapsing from the practice of their faith does not mean these young people are not believers at some level. Unlike today’s secularised Western Europeans, Americans are deeply theistic: upwards of 92 per cent consider themselves to believe in God.
lthough they share a language, Latinos in the US are culturally diverse in much the same way that waves of European immigrants –
Unfortunately, considering the significant contribution that the publication of American Grace is currently having on the discussion of religion in America, Putnam and Campbell weren’t given a chance to discuss their findings at greater length and provide the conference with a more detailed overview of what their research has uncovered, not just among Catholics but in terms of the overall religious landscape in the US.
Of course, it comes as no surprise that, according to their book, the religious landscape in America is divided by issues surrounding sex and sexuality. It is a truism here in the US, particularly among young people, that Catholicism – and religion in general – is obsessed with issues that are “below the belt”. The panel entitled “Sex and the City of God” offered a compelling mix of perspectives on the topic. Donna Freitas, associate professor of reli- gion at Hofstra University, and author of Sex and the Soul: juggling sexuality, spirituality, romance, and religion on America’s college campuses, spoke about her research into what is known as “hook-up culture” on America’s college campuses. With her study finding that undergraduates – with the exception of evan- gelical Christians – are both very sexually active and deeply unsatisfied, she told the conference: “The students report that hook- up sex is unfulfilling because it’s predicated on not getting attached. And yet they know that attachments are actually happening.” This sentiment was echoed by Colleen Carroll Campbell, author of The New Faithful: why young adults are embracing Christian orthodoxy, who spoke of how the “counter- cultural nature of chastity” was appealing to the young adults she interviewed for her book who “fought and struggled to finding their way to new faithfulness”. The New Faithful is often cited in debates over whether there is a trend toward greater orthodoxy among younger Catholics in the US. Although she spoke movingly of the faith journeys of those she interviewed, it would be difficult to make the case that the “new faithful” are statistically significant enough to offset the growing drift away from affiliation to the Church that has been well documented.
While responding to his fellow panellists’ remarks, twentysomething middle-school teacher Patrick Landry drew spontaneous applause – the biggest of the day – from the audience when he confessed that he was in the “murky, messy middle” in terms of the Church’s teachings on sex and felt that so many of his fellow twentysomething friends also struggled to reconcile those teachings with their lived faith lives. Landry was one of only five twentysomethings out of 29 pre- senters during the weekend, a fact that was mentioned several times throughout the con- ference. “We feel disconnected,” said 23-year-old Jennifer Sawyer. “People are talk- ing about us rather than to us.” Sawyer also spoke of the “in-between-ness” that she and her friends feel. They are not married, have no children and work at entry- level jobs that seem to have little future in this depressed economy. “We graduated into
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the worst financial climate since the great depression. Many of my friends are getting less optimistic that good things are ahead for us,” she said. Sawyer is right to be concerned. Twentysomethings are too often seen but not heard in discussions about the Church’s future in the US. The fact is that her cohort is not the future of the Church, it is the present. They might not look, act, think or believe in the same way their parents did but they are here now, seeking greater meaning and pur- pose in their lives, and they are keenly aware of how underserved they often are by their own faith community. For the Church, the plight of the lost brings to mind an ancient Gospel teaching: “Which of you, having 100 sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4). Fordham’s “Lost” conference raised the notion that perhaps the idea of the good shepherd has been turned inside out. Is the Church more concerned with tending to the one remaining sheep than with the 99 roaming the wild? If that is the case, who is it then that is actually lost? Twentysomethings or the Church itself?
■Bill McGarvey is a specialist writer on the Catholic Church in the US and works for Good Thief Media. He spoke on Catholic culture’s relationship to popular culture at the Fordham conference .
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