I have read with interest the various posts regarding Catholic communal attachments (or lack thereof). My own background is much as that described by Mark: I grew up in Sts. Simons and Jude (the only meaningful way to identify where in Brooklyn I came from); we went to SSJ grammar school; we played volleyball in a parish league in the SSJ school yard every Saturday, except for my brother, who played CYO softball; my parents ran the parish youth center and served on the parish council; my mom taught CCD and was a Columbiette, my dad was in the K of C, etc, etc., etc. Everyone's lives were built around the parish.
My current experience in Port Washington (a burb on the North Shore of Nassau County) is very different but I'm not convinced the difference is primarily city vs. suburban issue. First, I think Greg is quite correct that the presence or absence of a parish school makes an extraordinary difference. My experience in SSJ bears out the truth of his observation that familial involvement in the school leads to a greater involvement generally in the life of the chuch. My current parish does not have a school and, while people generally do hang aound after mass (no one leaves immediately after communion), it takes a lot more effort to keep people involved.
Another factor that I think is very important is the declining number of religious - both priests and nuns. SSJ always had at least 5 priests and several deacons, not to mention a flock of nuns the whole time I was growing up there. My current parish (albeit much smaller) has one priest and two nuns. When I grew up, the priests and nuns were a constant fixture in the neighborhood - just walking around, constantly at the home of one neighbor or the other, attending our volleyball games etc. Now it is true that people walked around a lot more in Brooklyn than they do in Port Washington (I'm not saying there is no truth to the city vs. suburb point), but the numbers make a big difference.
I also agree with Greg that there is a problem in what he calls the "prevailing mind-set in the typlical Catholic parish." My sense is that Catholic parishes too easily buy into a view that people have a lot of things demanding their attention and that the Church should not be adding to their burden of responsibilities. I, for example, once heard a nun say that all Holy Days of Obligation should be changed to Sunday so that people don't have to go to mass an additional time during the week. I find it hard to accept that it is a great burden to spend one additional hour (actually most masses take less than one hour) each week in communal workshop on those few Holy Days of Obligation that we still celebrate. While I agree we all must take responsibility, I also think the leaders of the parish must set a tone that suggests something more than attending mass once a week is called for.
Rob asks, "is there any persuasive reason why the Convention [on the Rights of the Child] should not be embraced by those concerned with the well-being of the child? Should Catholic legal theorists be taking up the charge and advocating for its ratification?" A few thoughts:
First, I have to admit that I am not particularly moved by the observation that "the United States is the only nation other than Somalia not to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child." I don't believe that all of these countries have in any meaningful sense committed themselves to protecting the dignity, rights, and welfare of children. I suppose those making decisions about the Convention on behalf of the United States might think that ratifying the Convention should actually reflect a commitment to be bound by it and might believe that, in the absence of such a commitment, they ought not to ratify it.
Second, and notwithstanding the declaration that Rob quoted, regarding the Holy See's views of the Convention, it seems to me that there might good reasons why a country committed to limited government, a diverse civil society, the integrity of the family, and the rights of parents to direct and control the upbringing, education, and religious formation of their children might hesitate before embracing the "rights talk" regime outlined in the Convention. Such a country might well hesitate before agreeing that it had an obligation -- to say nothing of a right -- to pursue the various aspirations set out in the Convention. The Convention provides, for example:
Parties undertake to ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals legally responsible for him or her, and, to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures.
Is it enough, do we think, to "tak[e] into account the rights and duties" of parents? Also:
In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
What are the implications of agreeing that "[i]n all actions concerning children" by "private social welfare institutions" the "best interests of the child" -- as understood or conceived, presumably, by state actors -- "shall be a primary consideration"? And:
. . . Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention.
What is the significance of (apparently) conditioning parents' rights and duties regarding the upbringing and education on their children on officials' understanding of what is "consistent with the evolving capacities of the child"? Next:
Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely [including, as the next provision makes clear, in legal proceedings] in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
What would it mean for a child to enjoy this right, and for this right to be enforced? The Convention provides:
The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice.
The exercise of this right may be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; or (b) For the protection of national security or of public order . . . or of public health or morals.
Do we believe that children enjoy such a right to "receive . . . information and ideas of all kinds", subject only to the needs of public order (as understood by officials)? Finally, there is this:
Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
Does this suggest that, at some point, as her "capacities" "evolv[e]", a child has a (legally enforceable) right to, say, opt out of her parents' insistence that she participate in religious instruction?
Now, I do not have a firm view on the question whether, all things considered, the United States should ratify the Convention. I do suspect, though, that reasonable people -- and, what's more, reasonable people who are trying to think through policy in accord with Catholic thinking and teaching about the family, civil society, religious freedom, the common good, the duties and powers of government, etc. -- could have some concerns about the Convention's text, its premises, and its application.
I know that Patrick Brennan has been thinking a lot about children's "vocation" lately. I wonder what he thinks . . . .
Last week the folks at Emory held a conference, "What's Wrong With Rights for Children?," devoted to the question of why the United States is the only nation other than Somalia not to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Martin Marty reports:
Some who care about these things are embarrassed, ashamed, frustrated, and even enraged that presidents do not forward the Convention to the Senate -- which, however, in the present climate would never consent to it. In his keynote at the conference last weekend in Atlanta, where he returned for a kind of progress report, the usually hopeful Nobel Laureate [Jimmy] Carter commented in one word on the possibility of the U.S. joining all the rest of the world now: It's "hopeless." Period.
A question for my fellow travelers on the Catholic legal theory road (readers and co-bloggers alike): is there any persuasive reason why the Convention should not be embraced by those concerned with the well-being of the child? Should Catholic legal theorists be taking up the charge and advocating for its ratification?
Just to give fair warning to those who want to build a Catholic legal theory case against the Convention: Pope John Paul II declared in 1984 that "The Holy See regards the present Convention as a proper and laudable instrument aimed at protecting the rights and interests of children, who are 'that precious treasure given to each generation as a challenge to its wisdom and humanity.'"
Nevertheless, was the Pope missing something that should give the United States pause?
How is it the day after our posts on suburban sprawl and Catholic values, an abstract pops up on SSRN of a paper by Prof. Lewyn at GW entitled "Suburban Sprawl, Jewish Law and Jewish Values"! Note his reference to Philip Roth's Newark of the 1940's! Here's his very interesting abstract:
In the second half of the twentieth century, America's cities
and suburbs were engulfed by suburban sprawl - the movement of
people (especially middle-class families) and jobs from older
urban cores to newer, less densely populated, more
automobile-dependent communities generally referred to as
suburbs. Cities throughout America lost population to their
outlying suburbs, and cities that gained population usually did
so only because they were able to annex those suburbs. America's
suburban revolution has not left Jewish communities unscathed.
For example, the city of Newark, New Jersey, contained 58,000
Jews and thirty-four synagogues in the 1940s, but today has only
a few hundred Jews and only two synagogues. Similarly, the city
of St. Louis, Missouri, now has only one synagogue, although its
suburbs have over twenty. Even in more vibrant cities,
significant Jewish flight has occurred. In 1990, two-thirds of
metropolitan Chicago's Jews lived in suburbs, up from 4% in
1950. This flight to suburbia has affected Jews' daily lives
dramatically. Suburban Jews, like other American suburbanites,
are highly dependent on automobiles. This article discusses the
tension between suburban sprawl and Jewish values. Specifically,
the article argues that the automobile dependency and class
division exacerbated by sprawl conflict with Jewish ethical and
environmental values and impede observance of Jewish law. In
addition, the article rebuts libertarian objections to
anti-sprawl policies by pointing out that Jewish law encourages
public regulation of land use, and that in any event,
anti-sprawl policies need not conflict with libertarian norms
First, I'm so pleased that Eduardo has joined us, and has delivered mefromthe "guy on MOJ who posts about 'new urbanism'" slot. Right on.
Second, I seem to be gettingcredit for Rob Vischer's excellent post, "Community in Suburbia."
Third, I want to thank Mark for his moving and personal reflection on the richness of Catholic urban life. I am, and have long been, attracted to the idea of the rich, thick, Catholic life of America's cities in the pre-suburban era. That said, I have to remember that the richness of that life (like the "thickness" of life in many African-American enclaves) was, at least in part, the product of poverty and prejudice, and lack of opportunity. And, it is worth remembering that it was inept government, and corruption, and entrenched bureaucracy, and crime, at least as much as the evil Wal-Mart, or the interstate highways, or suburban developers (to name just a few of the commonly named culprits), that ruined the "old neighborhoods" where "thick" Catholic life thrived.
It is also worth remembering, I think, that no one made Catholics abandon their sense of community, or their understanding of the importance of parochial schools, when they moved to the suburbs. It's a struggle for me to remain merely frustrated, rather than furious, when I think about the fact that many suburban Catholic parishes don't bother having schools because, after all, Catholic schools are for those folks who don't have decent public schools. Uh, . . . no.
Greg is right, I think. The most important feature of Catholic urban life was the parish school, and the lives that were constructed around it. And, the most important task for suburban parishes is to get their members' heads right about the importance of Catholic schools. We need to drop everything else, and get our schools in order, and get more of them. How can the law help, or at least stop hurting?
After reading the recent postings on the difficulties of maintaining Catholic communal attachments in the sometimes alienating suburban environment, I want to emphasize the troubling contradiction identified by Rob Vischer in his post about modes of social interaction between evangelical and Catholic congregations and then note as a partial answer the vitality of the Catholic parish school to parish community life.
First, as introduced by Eduardo Peñalver in his posting, Catholicism in its doctrine (beginning with the Trinity) and social teaching (from solidarity to the preferential option for the poor) is communal in nature, whereas the American suburb can be highly individualistic in daily life and interaction (or lack thereof) with neighbors and others in the community. Interestingly, and in rather sharp contradiction with the principles of community central to Catholic teaching, Rob Vischer accurately contrasts the powerful and uplifting communal nature of worship in evangelical churches (even and perhaps especially of the suburban genre), as against the almost stand-offish approach of congregants attending Sunday Mass in many or most Catholic parishs (whether of the urban or suburban variety).
I applaud the understanding that the celebration of the Mass itself ought to be focused upon God, with worship directed upward. For that reason, I too can be unsettled when worship is interrupted by often awkward and misplaced attempts to encourage socializing during the Eucharist. But when the Mass has ended and Catholic congregants dissipate with little more than a perfunctory handshake with the priest on the run toward the door, I submit that there is a serious disconnect from Catholic understandings of the human community that deserves more considered attention. If Catholic communities are to remain vibrant as society changes and as ethnic conclaves dissolve, Catholic parishes must recapture a sense of community.
Like Rob, I too come from an evangelical Christian background. For that reason, I have been sensitive to what almost appears to be an anti-social atmosphere in many (although by no means all) Catholic parish settings. Indeed, when moving beyond evangelical Protestantism in my journey toward the Catholic Church, one of the most precious things that I thought I was leaving behind was the evangelical consciousness, that is, the intensely personal -- and simultaneously social and communal – atmosphere when fellow believers gathered together. In fact, however, there is no reason for that evangelical sensibility to be missing, especially in the Church that Christ founded by sharing the Gospel with the original evangelists.
Catholics ought to be at least as evangelical, if not in style or culture then in deliberate approach and meaningful practice, as our Protestant brothers and sisters. To be sure, and I have greatly appreciated being a part of such communities, some Catholic parishes and other Catholic groups have found the way to a distinctly Catholic sense of community. But most parishes have yet to find the way there. And I submit the problem lies in that prevailing mind-set in the typical Catholic parish rather than in the geographical location of a parish in a suburban rather than an urban setting. The initial responsibility must lie with the priests, who as leaders of the parish set a tone and style, but ultimately we all must take responsibility as well (and I include myself, when I think of how quickly my feet move after -- and sometimes before -- the priest says that "the Mass is ended").
Second, while only a partial answer to the community disconnect problem, a parish school can be a vital center for a Catholic community. In my experience, parishioners whose children are or once did attend the parish school are far more likely to be engaged with the parish and with one another. Catholic elementary education has value for a multitude of reasons, but not the least of them is the way in which family involvement in the school puts down roots in the parish and puts out branches toward others also involved in the school. I am convinced that the future of the Catholic Church, at least in the United States, is inextricably intertwined with the future of Catholic education. Any attack on Catholic education, and any impediment by law or policy toward choosing Catholic education, ultimately is an attack on the Church itself.
Eduardo's and Rick's posts bring me to one of my favorite subjects: the shifts in Catholic identity with the movements away from the cities. This is a multileveled phenomenon that needs a lot of analysis, but also one that I feel very personally because it is also about my life. As a 54 year white ethnic from the urban northeast, I've lived through the transition and have deep, though ambivalent feelings about it, so I'd like to offer some ruminations. This will return to some of the themes I first wrote about in my posts on Kelo. (I should preface my comments, however, by noting that the Catholic chattering classes are filled with people of my age and background, and we tend to regard our experience as the whole story of American Catholicism -- which obscures the different experience of the burgeoning number of Hispanic, and to some extent Asian, Catholics who have a different story to tell.)
To some extent, there is a tendency to take a "world we have lost," nostalgic view of the urban communities centered around Catholic Churches until (more or less) the 1960s. When you asked someone from South Philly, or South Boston, or East Baltimore or 115th St in Manhattan where they were from, they were as likely to say St. Tommy's, or Mount Carmel or St Joe's as they were to name the city or neighborhood. They identified with the parish, which said something about both the importance of the Church in their lives and the importance of the neighborhood as the social unit with which they identified. Orsi's wonderful sociological study "The Madonna of 115th Street" about the importance of a matriarchal form of Italian Catholicism in an Italian neighborhood in midcentury Manhattan, evokes this wonderfully, as does O'Farrell's "Studs Lonigan," which does the same in fiction for an Irish Catholic neighborhood in the Chicago of the first part of the century. Both books show the importance of ethnic homogeneity, relatively recent immigrant status (particularly for Italians), relatively uniform working class and lower-middle class status, isolation from educated elites, and the Church as a major source of education, moral instruction, self-expression, entertainment and spectacle. Of course, the nature of the physical space contributed to all this. While these neighborhoods weren't all NYC-type tenements, Southie-type three deckers or Philly or Baltimore-type rowhouses, and had different strata of housing, they were all compact places, where most people could walk to work, take trolleys or subways, or (later) drive short distances. This was the world of cradle to grave Catholic institutions. Someone born circa 1930 would come squalling into the world at Mercy Hospital, be sent to elementary school at St. Casmir, high school at West Catholic, and dances at the CYO, while your father played cards at the Knights of Columbus and went to the Sunday breakfasts sponsored by the Holy Name Society and cooked by the mothers in the parish Sodality. If you were smart and lucky you went to Seton Hall, or DePaul or BC or Fordham; if you weren't, you joined labor unions influenced by the labor schools sponsored by the Jesuits. When you got sick you went back to Mercy Hospital; if you didn't make it, you went to Impelliteri's funeral home and ended up in Mopunt Calvary. Requiesicat in pace. Of course, most of this world is gone through a combination of factors: social/economic mobility; geographic mobility; assimilation of the grandchildren of the immigrants; and last but not least, the way Vatican II undermined, despite all the good it did, old patterns of Church authority and observance. Orsi shows poignantly the way the intense and dramatic celebrations of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on 115th Street gradually disappeared with the dissolution of the community that supported them through generational change and flight to the suburbs. All of this was exacerbated, of course, by tax, planning and government financing policies that accelerated the flight to the burbs.
It's difficult for me to have a coherent, internally consistent way of thinking about all this. My goal as a teenager in the 1960s was to get as far away from this world as possible. As soon as I could I fled to a secular college that was everything that world was not, and the Church and my faith played little role in my life for many years. Only much later in life did my feelings about all that begin to change, especially after I experienced what the sociologists call the moral minimilaism of suburban life. American suburbs are peaceful places because of the lack of moral claims those of us who live there make upon each other. The prevailing moral rules in use do not extend beyond politeness, respecting property boundaries and maintaining one's lawn to community standards. There is literally nothing to fight about. Nothing could be more different the old neighborhoods contrasted in Anne Tyler's depictions in "The Amateur Marriage" of Polish East Baltimore in 1941 and suburban Baltimore of the 1970's.
No one captures my ambivalence about all this better than Phillip Roth. In the '60s with "Good-bye Columbus" and "Portnoy's Complaint," he was an enfant terrible in his rebellion against the old Jewish neighborhood and culture that in important respects was similar to that of the Catholics a few streets over. More recently, his tune has changed. His brilliant books from the last few years, particularly "Sabbath's Theater" and "American Pastoral," all have moving elegies for the old Wequahic neighborhood outside Newark and the Jewish Jersey Shore of the '40's. The other day he was honored at the Wequahic public library, and he suggested that this honor was truly his Nobel Prize. He has come a long way from the 60's.
I'm not sure what all this has to do with Eduardo's and Rick's comments, with which I have great sympathy, both as a supporter of New Urbanism and an uncomfortable participant in suburban Catholicism. And I think they are mining a rich vein in exploring the religious dimensions of the way we organize and use space. But there is a "goneness" to the Catholic physical/spiritual/social world that requires us to produce new paradigms for how (and where) we should live now.
Readers might be interested in a symposium on interjurisdictional recognition of same-sex unions. This symposium was just published in Volume 3, Issue 2 of the Ave Maria Law Review. The papers are from a conference held in November 2004 at Brigham Young University. The conference was co-sponsored by Ave Maria School of Law and the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young.
The symposium issue includes papers by a diverse group of scholars. The ten papers are by William A. Reppy Jr., Dwight G. Duncan, Emily J. Sack, Richard S. Myers, L. Lynn Hogue, Lynn D. Wardle, William C. Duncan, Stanley E. Cox, David M. Wagner, and Sheldon A. Vincenti. The conflicts issues, which are increasingly moving to the forefront of the debate, have also been addressed in recent issues of the Creighton and University of Pennsylvania law reviews.
Eduardo's call for the Church to address land use resonates with my experience, but perhaps for different reasons. Put simply, evangelicals have adapted to suburban living in ways that make meaningful community still possible. In my experience, Catholics have not. Growing up in suburban evangelical churches, each Sunday morning I attended a 90-minute Sunday school class, followed by a 90-minute worship service. My family would linger after the service for up to an hour talking with friends, then gather at someone's home for a big Sunday dinner with friends or extended family. In the evening, we would return to church for another worship service. And on Wednesday nights, we would again go to church for children's activities while the adults participated in a prayer meeting. All of these activities were intensely communal, rich with bonding potential. The fact that we all retreated to our car-centered, isolated living arrangements did not matter as much because we had three opportunities for building relationships every week (not to mention the regular potlucks, holiday services, etc.). The church was the social and spiritual center of my family's weekly existence.
As a Catholic, I am consistently surprised by how quickly the church empties after each Mass (beginning before the Mass even ends, as some folks begin to file out once they get communion). At least at the parishes I've attended, there is very little socializing that occurs. In fact, in the many parishes I've visited, no one has ever stopped me to introduce themselves, asked me if I'm a visitor, or made any effort to reach out to me unless I initiate a conversation. Now that I've gotten to know a few people in our parish, I'm again surprised that none of them know each other -- even though most have belonged to the parish for years, I'm introducing them for the first time. When I've asked longtime Catholics about the apparent lack of community surrounding the Mass, the response I usually get is, "Well, the mass is primarily about worship, not socializing. The socializing traditionally occurs during the week." That approach might have facilitated community-building in urban ethnic enclaves, but it doesn't cut it anymore in suburbia when folks disperse to their isolated existences without even a Sunday-morning experience of community (much less a Sunday-night or Wednesday-night experience) to fall back on.
So while I agree that the evangelical spiritual life is much more amenable to the solitary living-room experience, evangelicals have actually made suburban community a reality in ways I have yet to see from Catholics.
Since I’m spending this year outside of the city, I’m experiencing my first real dose of suburban living in several years. My wife and I, who have come to love New York’s public transportation system, are learning to depend on our car for even the most insignificant errands.Even our dog, who is forced to spend his days alone in our back yard, is missing the sociability of canine urban life. In addition, and more relevant to this blog, I find suburban Catholicism to be a very strange animal.
In my opinion, there appears to be a certain incompatibility between Catholicism and the suburban lifestyle. With its emphasis on collective worship, public engagement, and the social dimension of justice, Catholicism has always seemed to me to be most at home in the dense urban neighborhood or perhaps the small town or village. In particular, suburbanism’s elevation of the nuclear family and the private realm seem to me to be in deep tension with Catholicism’s more broadly communitarian impulse.
There’s a large and influential body of architectural and planning literature concerning the ways in which land use decisions can facilitate or hinder the development of community.The New Urbanists, in particular, have argued that suburban sprawl has a tendency to cut people off from one another, isolating us within our cars and inward-turned homes.The culture of suburbia has always struck me as far more in tune with the individualized, inward-turned theology of evangelical Christianity, with its emphasis on developing a personal relationship with Christ.This is a spiritual goal that it is perfectly possible to achieve within one’s own living room, perhaps in the loving glow of the televised evangelist.It is at least arguable, then, that suburban sprawl is in some way harmful to Catholicism in its tendency to water down the communal bonds on which Catholic spirituality feeds.
Assuming some affinity between Catholic culture and particular patterns of development, perhaps the Church should begin to address questions of land use in its social teaching.After all, the Church has forcefully argued that certain systems of production (e.g., socialism, laissez faire capitalism) are incompatible with Catholic views on human flourishing.Is it so far-fetched to think that certain ways of spatially organizing human communities might be similarly incompatible, or at least unhelpful?
