Practicing Catholic by James Carroll [book review]

Practicing Catholic by James Carroll [book review]

Carroll is a very interesting writer. At times he can be too deep, so deep that his reflections seem lost in obscurity. At other times, he often uses his  personal involvement and reactions to frame important issues. This is a very unusual way to craft a narrative, yet Carroll succeeds. He uses his personal and faith history to cover the changes in the Catholic Church over the last fifty (can it be that long?) years.

Drawing on both history and his life, Carroll starts by looking at “Americanism” which the Church first defined in terms of heresy and disloyalty. An American church that valued pluralism, freedom of religion and conscience and democracy was a huge threat to a Vatican that had just lost their temporal power over the Papal States. With secular values on the rise throughout Europe, Darwin seemingly replacing God with chance and the walls coming down on the Old Order, the Papacy responded with a claim of infallibility, a re-statement that there was no salvation outside the Church and a denunciation of the American heresy.

Carroll finds a hero to stand up for America and modernism – John Cardinal Cushing. Cushing had a Jewish brother-in-law. Church dogma said that there is simply no salvation outside the church, defined as the Church. Jews (as Carroll documented in Constantine’s Sword) have suffered greatly under Christianity of all stripes. At that time, a priest in Cushing diocese was boldly reaching this No Salvation doctrine. Cushing found this dogma in contrast with his experience and therefore ethics. For him, dogma had to flow from experience rather than the reverse. Cushing sought to have him silenced and the Vatican agreed with him on the basis that Cushing was a Cardinal.

Vatican II is another event covered in some detail. Despite John XXIII’s wishes, the Council almost came to naught, since the Old Guard tried to sabotage it from the start. Carroll rightly identifies language as a key, as well as dogma that flows from experience, rather than dogma that comes from literal interpretation of language about God, which can NOT be literal, since God is greater than language. Carroll ties this to a war between modernism and a more feudal, authority based religion.

Carroll’s take on contraception may be typical, but his focus on America’s role in the Church is enlightening. He ties in the Berrigans, the anti-war movement, Howl, women’s liberation, Liberation Theology into a bundle that brought him to adulthood and found the Church opposing them all. Unsurprisingly, the priest-pedophile scandal get a chapter, since the need of the hierarchy to protect their own enraged many of the flock that was being used, not protected.

Carroll has a poor opinion of the current pope. When John-Paul prayed with those of other faiths, then Cardinal Ratzinger issued a correction that Catholics can only pray “next to” not with others. Slowly, Benedict is seeking to restore No Salvation Outside the Church and the rule of dogma over experience / ethics. At the end he makes the case for staying Catholic (his choice, though former Catholics are more numerous than many denominations). To the extent that papal infallibility and other current pillars of the Church are modern in origin, he is calling for a Church that maintains continuity while responding to  modernity rather than uncritically fighting it.

Catholics who believe that the Pope (and therefore bishops) are owed unstinting loyalty will hate this book. Catholics who voted for Obama (about half of us) will find a lot here that resonates. Other Christians, people of faith and no faith might well appreciate the history and a view of a Church that is badly split, despite the univocal hierarchy.