The Impossible Job: God’s CEO on Earth
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Retreat From Religion
The abuse is not the only reason Catholics have turned their backs on the church. A more general retreat from organized religion perplexes leaders who grew up in societies where the church had deep influence.
The drift is most marked in Europe, Catholicism’s traditional heartland. Eight years after Cardinal Ratzinger chose the papal name Benedict in honor of Europe’s patron saint, vocations, baptisms and marriages in churches are still declining.
The trend has political consequences. Governments and courts have ignored church objections and legalized same-sex unions or marriage, and insisted that Catholic adoption agencies help gay couples find a child.
Even in heavily Catholic Poland, politicians are proposing a clearer separation between church and state. The mayor of the southern city of Czestochowa, whose monastery and golden-haloed Black Madonna painting attract millions of pilgrims yearly, wants to offer couples the option of in vitro fertility treatment, firmly opposed by the church.
Bishops in Europe and North America have begun defending church teachings more forcefully against such political pressures. In the Philippines, the only country in Asia with a Catholic majority, secularist trends have reached the point where Manila passed a family planning law despite stiff church opposition.
Role for Women
In the Chicago suburb of Evanston, lawyer Lynne Mapes-Riordan is already preparing for change, studying for a leadership role which the church does not now allow. “I hope they will open this to women someday,” says the 50-year-old mother of two. “I don’t have any particular insight as to when that might be.”
This stained-glass ceiling for women is increasingly out of step in a world where they do every job from soldier to CEO. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most powerful politician in Europe and even some Muslim countries have had female prime ministers.
Many say the church cannot operate without women because they pass on the faith as mothers and religious educators. Yet in the traditionalist atmosphere Benedict fostered, small advances like girl altar servers at Mass are being rolled back. Even women who do not advocate female ordination—something the Vatican completely rules out—question what place the church has for them and their daughters.
Surveys in the United States show Catholic women under 30 are now less religious than men their age; some 45 percent attend Mass once a year or less, compared with 39 percent of men.
When asked in an Indiana University study if they had complete confidence in religious organizations, 16 percent of the men said yes. None of the women did.
Sister Patricia Wittberg, a sociologist who did the study using data from 2002-2008, said this was the first generation of American Catholic women who were less religious than men. “That, in my opinion, is extremely ominous,” she said. “Who’s going to baptize the kids?”
Conservative Africa
The new pope will also be under pressure to bring the church leadership to terms with a massive shift in its center of gravity.
Around 68 percent of the world Catholic population is now in Latin America, Africa and Asia, but that is not reflected at the Vatican. Europe will still have 61 cardinals among the 115 electors in the conclave, while the developing world will have only 39—about 34 percent of the total.
These “Global South” Catholics are far from a bloc. Each area has its own focus, and juggling different regional priorities requires the skill of a seasoned diplomat.
Sub-Saharan Africa was the faith’s fastest growing region by far over the past century, soaring to 16 percent of the world Catholic population in 2010 from only one percent in 1910. And African Catholics are much more conservative than “inclusive” Catholics in the north.
“Africa stands strongly by Catholic beliefs,” said Rev. Isaac Achi, whose church near the Nigerian capital Abuja lost 44 parishioners when a Boko Haram Islamist extremist drove a car packed with explosives into it on Christmas Day 2011. “We fight against abortion, we fight against homosexuals, lesbians and contraception.”
Thousands of miles to the east, in Luwero, Uganda, mechanic Kizito Emmanuel, 38, agrees. “We don’t want any change,” he said. “Family planning doesn’t need these pills. I don’t support priests getting married. As an ordinary Catholic, the biggest challenge I face is a problem of capital.”
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