Tough guidance from Catholic priest and author

SALISBURY — The Catholic Church is at a crossroads, according to Paul Lakeland, who spoke to the St. Mary’s Book Club at Noble Horizons on Sunday, Oct. 18.

Lakeland, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University, made some fairly startling remarks during his talk.

Catholics must realize that “not everything we know about our church is destined to survive.�

Citing Marquette’s Bryan Massingale, he compared the church to a person entering hospice care.

“What do we do with a person in hospice care?� asked Lakeland. “We celebrate the life and accomplishments and recognize that this life is coming to an end.

“But out of this comes new life.�

Lakeland said this kind of transformation, or regeneration, is nothing new in Christianity.

“Today we look back at the history of the early church. But if the church is still here 10 or 15 centuries from now, they will look back at us as the early church, as we do with the church of the third and fourth centuries.�

“It does not mean the church is dying. Dying and rising is the rhythm of Christian life.

“But this form of the church is entering hospice care.�

Lakeland said this change is not a cause for gloom.

“There will be new elements we don’t recognize or imagine taking the place of the familiar.�

But not all of the familiar. Lakeland stated that “the proclamation of the Word and celebration of the Eucharist will persist, but almost everything else may change.�

In his 2007 book, “Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church,� Lakeland identifies rights and responsibilities of the laity and clergy — especially as they emerge in the evolving church.

He was critical of the system that isolates priests. Saying that clergy have a duty “to model accountability, moral accountability in particular,� he said that priests are sometimes ill-equipped for the task.

“With the history of celibacy and of clergy living alone, the burden of binding, concrete accountability in terms of lifestyle is difficult.â€�  The isolated priest is more likely to develop problems with alcohol, fiscal responsibility or sexual issues.

“For the laity, the common way of life is some form of lifelong partnership, which is the most concrete form of moral accountability. It doesn’t make it easy but it does make it harder to avoid.

“The laity are more experienced with moral accountability. They need to model it for the clergy.�

Lakeland also said that American Catholics are often what he called “default Christians.�

“They are reluctant to drop the claim, but they don’t show up� for Mass.

He described a “disconnectâ€� between Catholics and the bishops. “The data indicates that church-going Catholics do not have a problem with the things that bug bishops.  

“Either they are teaching the wrong things or they are teaching the right things incredibly ineffectually.�

Lakeland acknowledged his views are controversial — the book club was prevented from using St. Mary’s for the event, by the archbishop — and didn’t seem troubled by the fact.

But he urged the audience to rethink their idea of the priest-parishioner relationship.

And he offered encouragement: “We travel in hope, encouraged by the blessing of the Spirit.�