Now, I'm used to being the youngest person at church events. In fact, when I went to mass with Steve at one point in the Fall, the parish director was so excited to see young people show up to the service that he took us out to dinner and asked us about joining the parish. But I wasn't expecting people who had stuck with the church for so long to be the ones actively trying to organize to change it. It was incredible hearing their perspectives, though, as they had all actually lived through Vatican 2 and could talk about what things were like before that, as well as to reflect on how things have evolved over the 50 years since then. It was a very interesting perspective to be able to share.
I guess when I think about it, maybe the oldest generation has the most dissatisfaction with the way that the church is run today. Many of the people my age that have issues with the church just leave. But older people have spent more time as part of the church, have developed a stronger identity as Catholics who go to mass, and have more invested in Catholicism. In fact, one of the women at the meeting tonight mentioned that if not for her children, she might not be a practicing Catholic at all anymore. She had 6 children, only half of whom still go to mass. It turned out that everyone who was part of that conversation (excluding me) had children who were grown, and at least one of each set had stopped going to mass. And the parents, who I was talking with, identified with their children's reasons for leaving the church. But for some reason it was strong enough for them to organize, but not strong enough to make them just leave.
I think this experience lends itself to an interesting commentary generally on the human condition of developing an identity as part of a group, and specifically on religion as an organization. What does it mean to be Catholic if you disagree fundamentally with a large number of decisions that have been made and consistently re-affirmed by the leadership of an organization, especially one as hierarchical as the Catholic church? You agree to be part of a group that shares certain beliefs, and then fight about what those beliefs are. To what extent are you really PART of that group, and to what extent do you even want to be? I like to think about what would happen if one of these people, or I for that matter, could somehow erase our history of personal experience with the Catholic church and then if we were asked to decide which, if any, religious organization we would be a part of. How many of us would choose Catholicism, with all of its brokenness and judgement and exclusivity? Certainly there are a lot of things that I love about the Catholic church, but are those things worth also being connected to all the things I disagree with?
I suppose in some ways it's not entirely dissimilar from campaigning for political change. If you're affiliated with a political party because you believe in many of their positions, but you take issue with some of their other stances, you generally stay in that party and fight to shift it closer to your ideals. You don't just give up on the whole thing and call it a wash. Most people don't, anyways.
It's beginning to feel like I'm rambling, so I'll close. I guess the take-away from this is either that old people can be progressive and fight for change, or that young people are less-invested in the church. Or, of course, that the success of organizing efforts is limited by the ability of the organizer to reach all of the intended audiences, which could have been a huge factor in play here. Oh yeah, and that self-imposed identities are funny. That's a pretty big one too.
