The Church’s Neutral Ground

      It rather often happens to me that I’ll sit down to begin a book or read an article, and I realize, with surprise, that the written thoughts of the author are articulations of important things that I had only begun, somewhere along the way, to give a bit of attention to. All of a sudden I discover my thoughts, musings, and conjectures being given order and sense.  I had asked, perhaps, the right questions and had begun to think somewhat in the right direction… and never fully followed through.  Certainly this was true of my discovery, by God’s grace, of St. Thomas Aquinas.  I began, being young, to revolt against the philosophies I studied at university and was trying to come to some conclusions about a possible alternative.  I read Aquinas and said to myself, “Yes! This is what I was vaguely getting at!” 

      The same sort of experience occurred this past week.  I’ve been musing on the phenomenon of so many Catholics – around a billion the world over and over 70 million just in this country – and yet so few, comparatively, who actually practice the Faith.  “Why are there so many ‘fallen-away’ Catholics?” certain enquirers into Catholicism ask among themselves, other Catholics, and priests like me.  Why indeed?  (And by “fallen-away Catholic” one means a person who still considers himself Catholic but does not practice the Faith.)  Other religious groups don’t seem to have the same sort of category as the Catholic Church does; generally, when adherents of such another group stop practicing the beliefs, rituals and disciplines of that group, they simply stop referring to themselves as “members.”  Or, religious groups adapt their beliefs, rituals and disciplines to the current lifestyle of members so that there’s nothing from which to “fall away.”  There just aren’t that many fallen-away Methodists or Presbyterians around; they seem, for the most part, to either convert to another religion or cease being Christian. 

      Then I came across an article by a writer I often read, an article entitled “Who Really Cares?”  (The answer was and is:  Holy Mother Church does!)  This writer articulated my incoherent thoughts on this question, by comparing the situation of the “fallen-away” to the scenes in many large Catholic churches in our larger cities:   

If you enter such a church while Mass is going on, you'll notice three distinct categories of visitors: worshipers clustered in the pews near the altar, obviously partaking of the Mass; tourists strolling around with their maps and videocams, obviously not partaking; and a third group sitting or kneeling in the gloom at the back of the church or in the side aisles. Their connection with the Eucharistic action is not clear. They don't want to be seen as participating in the Mass; in fact, they don't want to be seen at all. 

      This “third group” is itself often heterogeneous:  pious Catholics engaged in private prayer; non-Catholics interested in this mysterious Thing that is so old and large and able over the many centuries to attract so many others; and, finally, Catholics of the “fallen-away” type, who perhaps are for some reason estranged from the Church by irregular marriage or by a besetting sin that pulls them away from Her communion, a besetting sin that tugs at them to declare another loyalty apart from the faith of their upbringing.  “And yet,” this writer continues, “[they] can't shake the spiritual conviction that it's the Church, at bottom, that has it right.  They put me in mind of St. Peter, warming his hands at the fire in the high priest's courtyard” [the night of Jesus’ arrest and trial].  These dark corners of large Catholic churches, small niches of devotion, pews in the back strategically near an “escape” route back into the “light” outside, a vantage point from which the flickering sanctuary lamp is still visible… and so very much inviting, a vantage point too from which the green light above the confessional also beckons. 

      These physical spaces in a church signify what the writer calls “the neutral ground” of the Church.  He explains further:

All the folks in the third contingent make use of the church's "neutral ground" to address a deeply personal spiritual need. Especially with regard to the last mentioned category [the fallen-away Catholic], I hope this neutral ground is never done away with; I hope no Ministers of Greeting (out of misguided good will) are commissioned to pounce on the loners so as to bind them into "fellowship." Fellowship is an excellent thing, but if made into a kind of ticket that must be punched before entering church, it can eliminate that particular freedom -- the freedom of the publican in the parable -- to pray in God's house as an anonymous sinner, as a believer not yet capable of commitment. My hunch is that many souls are gained or regained for the Church simply by her providing this paradoxical conjunction of the holiest of mysteries along with the space to look on those mysteries from a distance: outside, yet not wholly outside. 

      “Well, if they’re not gonna practice the faith, why don’t they just be honest and stop calling themselves Catholics?” one hears from the impatient.  “After all, they give scandal to non-Catholics by the way they live as Catholics.”  Yes, sort of like the sinners with whom Christ our Lord sat down to supper, causing a lot of scandal.  The Catholic Church is like that:  both in Her very buildings (of the traditional type, the kind we need to start building again) and in Her motherly provision of a neutral ground.  The Church is a home and a hospital for sinners.  And most of those quiet, half-hidden people there in the distance, in the shadows cast by images of the Saints who lure them to their secluded spot – most of them are, yes, wayward children of the Church, baptized Catholics, who “can't shake the spiritual conviction that it's the Church, at bottom, that has it right.”  The Faith is still in them.  And the Church is there for them.  That’s why we have so many “fallen-away” Catholics who still call themselves Catholics:  their Mother will not give up on them, and deep down they know that.