Catholic New Times, the award-winning social justice and faith journal, a beautiful 30-year moment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada, closed its doors just shy of its 30th birthday. Having written in the first edition in 1976 and also (with my daughter Susannah) in the last one and having been editor for five years, I would imagine that I am as qualified as anybody to reflect on the change over the last three decades. Here’s my take.

The paper was born in the halcyon days following the great reform movement of the modern church, the Second Vatican Council. Those were heady days for Catholics rising from the slumber of a self-contained, hermetically sealed defensive church. Catholics had outgrown their minority status and their immigrant cultures to take their place as equal partners in Canadian life.

Pierre Trudeau would do well as a contemporary symbol for this new status within Canada — a well-educated Catholic layman in touch with the roiling theological ferment in the post-War world, confident enough to distance himself from the suffocating clerical culture which had smothered a quiescent laity.

By the mid ’70s the Canadian Catholic church had distinguished itself (along with the Dutch) as the most forward looking national group in Catholicism. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, led by Jesuit Bill Ryan and layman Tony Clarke produced a series of electrifying Labour Day statements and solidarity, compassion and ecumenical co-operation became the watchwords as Catholics eagerly joined coalitions to prophetically engage the enemies of life who were busy marginalizing poor people, Aboriginals and Mother Earth herself. The energy released at every level of the institution was formidable. Catholics had come of age.

This was the fundamental context of the birth of CNT. The proximate catalyst was the reactionary stance of the official church organ, the Catholic Register which was engaged in a rearguard action to blunt the burgeoning social justice thrust of the faithful. The founders of CNT were adamant that this “official” paper did not reflect this new moment in history. An alternative was necessary. CNT was launched and quickly grew.

A series of outstanding editors — Mary Jo Leddy, Jack Costello, Sr. Frances Ryan, Anne O’Brien — all members of religious communities led the paper in these years. Engaged academics, they deepened the theological bases of the paper’s strong justice editorials. Those editorial meetings which included people like Joe Mihevc — the only Toronto City Councillor with a PhD in theology, Stephen Scharper the environmental theologian and journalist, myself and several other progressive Catholics over the years, were both exciting and memorable. ‘Twas bliss to be alive, indeed!

Catholics had every reason to believe that the reformist tendencies of the Vatican II church would continue. After all, the church had styled itself as “ecclesia semper reformanda,” a church always in a process of renovating itself, one which listened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in history. This deep listening to God’s voice was known as “a signs of the times” theology, a phrase taken from the gospels and Council documents. It simply meant that the church always had to hear what the culture was saying and evaluate it through the liberative lens of the gospel.

Among the indisputable authentic cries since the ’70s would be the cry of the poor, the cry of women for equality and the anguished cry of the earth. Within the church itself we might include the extraordinary efflorescence of an educated laity and its demand to be heard as full baptized members of the People of God. Could the hierarchical Catholic Church, its governing structure more akin to a monarchy tolerate adult, educated believers?

Neo-conservatism

Meanwhile, in the early ’70s a global neo-conservative movement was being born as a response to the emergence of post War demands for radical inclusion in the new world order. Third World nations freshly liberated from their colonial pasts were at the UN demanding a new deal. Communications technologies were amplifying their voices. Liberation movements all over Latin America were fomenting. Antiwar sentiment and the civil rights movement in the U.S. spawned other cries — those of Aboriginals, gays and lesbians, women for a place at the banquet and an end to hierarchical structures.

In the famous cry of a member of the Trilateral Commission (1973), “Too much democracy was breaking out!” This created the corporate driven neo-conservative movement led by Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Ronald Reagan in the U.S. and Brian Mulroney in Canada as well as the monetarist school of Milton Friedman, the justification for market idolatry and the savage capitalism which has bedeviled the world in the past 30 years.

In the church, a parallel neo-con movement was begun in the pontificate of John Paul II (1978-2005). One might say that JP II’s arrival as pope was a similar reaction to “too much democracy breaking out” — this time in the church. Karol Wojtyla embodied the very best of the Vatican II justice thrust. On the global stage, he never tired of consistently defending the transcendental value of the human person, the just demands of the Third World. He relentlessly defended the dignity of workers, the right of the state to intervene in the economy; he promoted life in all its forms, rejected capital punishment, was withering in his criticism of Communism’s oppression of the individual and capitalism’s consumerist seductions.

But like all of us, John Paul II was a product of his own history and his blind spots soon became evident. While consistently rejecting war and defending humanity, the Polish pope was a pure product of a fossilized conservative church in his native Poland, one which, for legitimate historical reasons, had to speak with one united voice against the Communist monolith, never trusted democracy and the loosening of church structures.

He promoted literally hundreds of bishops who had very little of his justice orientations but shared his very conservative view of church hierarchy and patriarchy. He never grasped the changing role of women in the world. He defended an all male priesthood and a rigid orthodoxy which clamped down on the necessary change the church needed to adapt to the modern world.

A new McCarthyism grew in the church led by Cardinal Ratzinger, the present pope. The new collegiality and co-responsibility promised by Vatican II disappeared. Differences between lay and cleric were exacerbated.

Tension grew as careerist bishops more known for their servile obedience to Rome rather than their creative and imaginative pastoral leadership were promoted. At the same time the priesthood became sacrificed on the altars of celibacy. Foreign-born priests with different cultural assumptions and linguistic difficulties and an inability to work collegially with lay people took over parishes. Younger priests (described by Fr. Andrew Greeley as the “young fogeys”) alienated the often better educated Catholic laity with their authoritarian ways. All of this had a profound effect on thinking Catholics. In the diocese of Cologne, Germany alone, 250,000 Catholics left the church under the ultra-conservative archbishop Joachim Meisner.

The same phenomenon has occurred everywhere. I received many calls in my five years as editor which reflected great discouragement in the direction the church was going. The major issue was the failure to acknowledge women’s roles at every level of the church. The harsh judgmental language about homosexual people being “disordered” saddened many Catholics. The shocking non-response of the hierarchy to the Canadian Religious Conference (representing priests, nuns and brothers) challenge to the bishops indicated a paralyzing autism from men who are supposed to be serving God’s people.

A church stuck

As subscriptions to Catholic New Times fell because of the above another factor emerged. The younger generation of Catholics, many the children of Vatican II Catholics, were not picking up the torch, viewing the church as out of step with the times. They did not have the same commitment as the older generation had. They increasingly saw the church as obsessed with itself and not a player in the major issues of our time. Young women increasingly rejected their marginalization.

A third factor was the rise of the internet. In the many talks I give to young teachers, this is always mentioned. Few subscribe to any papers or journals, the former staple of the intellectual life and the ongoing conversations. All of their information is gathered, for good or bad, on the Net. I find these young people to be alive, concerned and open to many of the issues CNT sees as cardinal for our times. While not as well-read in a classical sense as the previous generation, they can and must be reached in new ways.

I suspect there will be new approaches, probably around the internet which can possibly fill the void left by the demise of CNT. Historically, there is always a restoration after a reformation and we are, I believe, in the last throes of this restoration. Catholics of the future will not tolerate second class status in the church. Increasingly they will demand a greater say in the running of their church. In essence, we are witnessing slowly but surely the death of the feudal church. The next CNT, more needed than ever, will become a midwife to this vision.

Births as we all know are sometimes long and painful but they are rewarding. The Catholic Church with all its warts has made mighty and profound contributions to the humanization of our world. Its present struggles may be painful but a necessary prelude to a more decentralized, less clerical incarnation. I give thanks for our 30 year gift and look forward with anticipation to the needed renewal.