James Carroll’s new book, Practicing Catholic, is a brilliant and far-reaching study that holds great importance for Catholics, and, I believe, for others concerned about religion and its role (or lack of same) in their lives.

This book’s overarching theme is set forth by the author in his introduction. He describes it as “the positive transformation of religious thought that has defined much of Christianity, including Catholicism, during my life.”

As Carroll notes early on, ten percent of native-born Americans are former Catholics. This astounding figure, some 30 million people, shows how extensive the leakage has been from a church that has still managed to retain its size, largely because of immigration.

While no single reason explains fully why so many have left, Carroll’s book points to the church’s failure to follow through on the reforms adopted in the early and middle 1960s. Despite his own profound disappointment at this failure, the author, as his book title indicates, has chosen to stay.

Among the leaders whom Carroll considers heroes of church reform he highlights the following three: Pope John XXIII, whose vision led to the calling of a council of the whole Catholic Church; Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston, whose rejection of the “No salvation outside the Church” theology helped bring the Catholic Church closer to respect and affection for other churches and religions; and Swiss theologian Hans Küng, whose rejection of papal infallibility led to his ouster from his university position as professor of Catholic theology.

What troubles Carroll about the church’s recent history is the way the clerical power structure, centered in the Vatican and supported by the bishops virtually everywhere, has betrayed the promise of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965.)
Under three of the last four popes ─ Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI ─ that power structure has succeeded in reversing both the spirit and the letter of the reforms envisioned by Pope John XXIII and mandated by some 2500 bishops assembled for the Council from around the world.

Carroll feels particular concern that Benedict, the present pope, has endangered Vatican II’s breakthrough in the church’s relationship with the Jewish community. As he did when still a cardinal, this pope has proclaimed a view of the Jewish tradition, and of other religious communities, as radically deficient compared to the Catholic faith. Benedict emerges as one who still considers the Jewish heritage of faith as superseded by that of the church.

With his book Constantine’s Sword and his subsequent movie of the same name, James Carroll had already established himself as a leading voice on  Catholic-Jewish relations, and on the church’s part in the tortured history that led up to the terrible events in the first half of the 20th century.

In a different realm, Carroll sharply criticizes church pronouncements on matters of sexuality. Unyielding positions on both contraception and clerical celibacy demonstrate the lengths the power structure will go to retain its dominance. Carroll explains why the 1968 decision of Paul VI banning artificial contraception, a verdict made to uphold papal authority, has in fact done the opposite.

The autobiographical parts of the book, interwoven with other themes relating to church, are filled with human interest as the author recounts his own call to the priesthood in the Paulist community, followed by his later leaving of that calling.
He emphasizes the special character that the founder of his community, the 19th century convert Isaac Hecker, imparted to his followers, especially a respect for things American. This made for a contrast with the Vatican which, in the last year of the 19th century, condemned “Americanism” as a heresy.

Carroll details his various reasons for leaving the priesthood. He explains, for example: “When it became clear to me that I was expected to join in the thwarting of the movement that began with Vatican II, I simply refused.”

In another section, he says he left so as to become a writer. When still a seminarian, he had been told by the distinguished poet Allen Tate, that a person could not be both priest and poet. Later he came around to share this view. Indeed, he had come to believe that “it is only as a layman that I have the intellectual and moral freedom to dissent from the reactionary trends in the post-Vatican II Church.”

Readers of this book may wonder what keeps Carroll in a church of whose leadership he is so bitterly critical. He makes his answer clear: he believes the future will bring reform. But he believes that reform will come, not from the hierarchy, but from the people.

Carroll often writes as a prophet. He speaks the way prophets always have, presenting uncomfortable truths to those who do not want to hear them.

Prophets don’t have to be right all the time. Even when they err or fall short, however, an institution ignores what they say only at its own risk.

Richard Griffin