"Catholic Concerns", cont'd

Thanks to Michael for posting Martin Marty's recent "Sightings" essay, "Catholic Concerns."  Marty asks, among other things, "why care?" about the crisis some perceive for American Catholicism.  A few months ago, in a similar vein, I wrote:

In and around our nation's big cities, hundreds of Catholic parishes, schools and hospitals are consolidating and closing. Many of these institutions have long provided the foundation — as well as provided for the faith — of urban neighborhoods and immigrant communities. . . .

Why should we care?

For starters, urban Catholic schools and their teachers do heroic work in providing education, hope, safety, opportunity and values to vulnerable and marginalized children of all religions, ethnicities and backgrounds. Similarly, Catholic hospitals have long cared for underserved and disadvantaged people in both urban and rural areas, and helped to fill glaring gaps in the availability of health care. It is too easy to take for granted these and similar contributions to the common good. We should remember that, as these institutions fold, the burdens on and challenges to public ones will increase.

We might also care about the closings for slightly more abstract but no less important reasons. In a nutshell: It is important to a free society that non-government institutions thrive. Such institutions enrich and diversify what we call "civil society." They are like bridges and buffers that mediate between the individual and the state. They are the necessary infrastructure for communities and relationships in which loyalties and values are formed and passed on and where persons develop and flourish.

Catholics and non-Catholics alike can appreciate the crucial role that these increasingly vulnerable "mediating associations" play in the lives of our cities. Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam and others have emphasized the importance of "social capital," both to the health of political communities and to the development of engaged citizens. In America's cities, it has long been true that neighborhood churches and schools have provided and nurtured this social capital by serving as places where connections and bonds of trust are formed and strengthened. As Joel Kotkin writes in his recent book, The City: A Global History, healthy cities are and must be "sacred, safe and busy." If he is right, Catholic parishes, schools and hospitals help make America's cities great. . . .