Surveys and Faith
November 17, 2021
Fr. John Riccardo
I’ve come across two surveys in recent days, one on the life, health and beliefs of Catholic priests in the United States, and a second on the beliefs and practices of the wider population in our country. To be sure, these kinds of tools can offer helpful snapshots of where things stand at present, whether in the clergy or beyond. Helpful as they can be, however, they cannot predict the future. God, quite simply, is not bound by trends or data or polls.
These surveys, and the various authors projections based on them, called to mind for me a passage in the increasingly popular book From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for An Apostolic Age. There, the author writes the following:
“An apostolic time [that is, a time like the one we’re living in now] needs to free itself from the logic of sociological surveys and numerical extrapolations. Whatever their use, such things tell us very little about the future fortunes of the Church. They leave out faith and miracle and the Holy Spirit by a necessity of their method, and so cannot but be inaccurate concerning the activity of a spiritual organism with its roots in heaven. What sociological survey could have predicted the conversion of an ancient and sophisticated civilization at the hands of a small group of uneducated laborers? What numerical analysis could have surmised the explosion of the monastic movement? or the conversion of all the pagan peoples of Europe? or the appearance of a St. Francis and his thousands of followers in a few short years? or the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the conversion of Mexico? or for that matter the conversion of a single soul?
“The Church has been a massive surprise from its first appearance, and its existence is a standing miracle in every age. This truth tends to get lost in a Christendom culture, when the wonder and the revolutionary power of an Incarnate God can come to be seen as just part of the way things are supposed to go. But in every age the Church runs counter to the spiritual atmosphere of a darkened world, even if at times it is successful enough to influence that atmosphere in significant ways. Every conversion is a marvel of grace, an astonishing work of God. St. Augustine once said that it was a greater miracle for God to save one sinner than to have created the whole world. This is the attitude appropriate to an apostolic age.
“This is not to say that such societal analyses are of no worth, or should be ignored. They are useful, even essential, in helping Christians to understand the culture they are navigating, and they can provide necessary information concerning the current state of belief. They can be used as spurs to action and as information to construct the appropriate stance and strategy of the Church; but not as predictors of how the Church will fare into the future, nor as a source of hand-wringing and an excuse for lack of faith.
“To take a somewhat recent example: the late eighteenth century in Europe found the Church in a general state of lassitude, with large numbers of its educated classes falling off from their faith. Then came the French Revolution, and Christendom’s lead country was thrown into twenty-five years of warfare, chaos, and at times forced dechristianization. The Pope was for a time held prisoner, the traditional Christian monarchies were tottering, and many thought the Church was on her last legs: old, lacking conviction, about to expire. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life in France were at a very low ebb, seminary instruction was lacking, many religious orders had lost their foundations, and there were contrary ideals and currents of unbelief in the wider society set against Christianity and the Church that weren’t likely to go away.
“A sympathetic observer of the state of the French church around the year 1810 or 1815 would have seen nothing but wreckage, and given simple sociological data, would have predicted vocational disaster into the future with everything that implies. What happened was something different. In 1808 there were 12,300 religious sisters in France. By 1878 there were 135,000. In 1830 there were some 3,000 priests of all kinds serving the French Church. By 1878 there were around 30,000, a ten-fold increase in sixty years, and their median age in 1878 was significantly younger than it had been sixty years earlier. All of this was a great surprise to the Church’s enemies, especially to those who were developing the science of sociology as a kind of replacement for theology and had been happily predicting, under its methodology, the demise of the Church. According to their logic, this wasn’t supposed to happen.
“The point is that the Church has great powers of regeneration. It is not a static body with a fixed amount of resources and a limited number of adherents. It responds to each situation it encounters with the power and the generative quality of the Holy Spirit. Or, more specifically, its members do so, as they take stock of their times, renew their commitment to the whole of the Gospel, and place themselves at the service of Christ” (39-41).
As our bishops gather this week in Washington, let us continue to pray for them, for the Church as a whole, and for ourselves. May the Church “grow young!” May we call out for, and trust in, the power of the Holy Spirit to move among us. May we not get seduced by data, trends and surveys, helpful as they can be. Let us expect God to move powerfully in us individually and in the Church. And, finally, in this month of November, let us call upon the intercession of the saints in a particular way, asking them to pray for us that we may sell out for God here and now, even as they did in their day.
