Chris Powell: Decline of Catholic Church isn’t improving state
The Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Some people may privately celebrate the steady decline of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, which worsened last week as Hartford Archbishop Leonard P. Blair announced the closing of two more churches in Waterbury and the merger of three others there.
The church is resented for its opposition to homosexual relations, its exclusion of women from the priesthood, and, of course, for the rampant sexual abuse committed by priests over many years and its concealment by the church's highest officials. Not so long ago the church in Connecticut strove to criminalize contraception and still opposes it, if only theoretically.
But the church may be resented most of all here for its opposition to abortion, a stance that has become heroic as abortion fanaticism has consumed the state's political class, which not only rationalizes abortions performed long into fetal viability but also wants state government to finance travel and abortions for women from abortion-restricting states.
The church gets little credit for the thousands of lives its hospitals have saved or improved, or for the education that its schools continue to provide, education far superior to and far less expensive than most education provided by Connecticut's public schools, which have been declining almost as fast as the church itself has been.
Nor is there much appreciation of the ordinary daily work of the church -- the baptisms and marriages performed, the counseling for engaged couples, the funerals and the many other good works that create and sustain community and proclaim the sanctity, obligation, spirituality and meaning of life, even for the poorest and most demoralized, pushing back against the corrupting materialism and nihilism of the age.
Yes, correlation is not necessarily causation, but as social disorder explodes in Connecticut, with ever more brazen crime, mental illness, drug abuse, homelessness, educational failure, road rage, hatefulness, political incivility, and such, the bad trends may not be completely unrelated to the decline of religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly.
Connecticut used to be heavily Catholic and this gave the church more political influence than it deserved and used well. But now that, according to Archbishop Blair, the number of practicing Catholics in the Hartford archdiocese has fallen by about 70 percent in the last 50 years, it's not apparent that Connecticut is any better for it.
At least Catholic and other churches help hold neighborhoods together and their buildings haven't become decrepit even as Connecticut's cities have declined economically and socially and gotten dangerous. Waterbury, one of those cities long in decline, will not be any stronger for the closing and consolidation of more of its Catholic churches. Indeed, few things are more disconcerting, incongruous, and indicative of social disintegration than a vacant church building or one converted to secular use.
Of course, the church must take responsibility for its decline, for failing to convince people of its necessity. Mere tradition is not a persuasive argument for religious doctrines.
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But venerable as it is, the church isn't the only teacher around, nor the only one making huge mistakes.
The biggest teacher, government, is, unlike the church, tax-funded and so draws on infinite money as its welfare system ruthlessly destroys the family and subsidizes child neglect and other irresponsibility, as it destroys education by abandoning standards, and as it promotes not just all sorts of gambling but also a hallucinogenic drug, marijuna, in the name of raising revenue without direct taxes. Altogether government is embedding and perpetuating poverty and hopelessness in society.
No church has been doing anything close to damage like that.
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The British writer, sometime politician and Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc may have had a point a century ago. "The Catholic Church," he said, "is an institution I am bound to hold divine. But for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."
By contrast, no matter how much knavish imbecility it commits, government will last forever. It is managed worse than the church but gets away with it mainly because it employs so many more people to do its damage, which they often imagine to be God's work.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net).