A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America

Steinfels has been covering religion in America as a journalist for a long time, and the balanced viewpoint that this has given him, along with his personal faith (which appears to be deep and well educated), makes him an authoritative speaker when it comes to the recent troubles of the Roman Catholic church in America. His love for the church is clear. His understanding of the human/political dimension in such issues as sexuality, the priesthood, liturgy, catechesis, and leadership is also clear. The synthesis he offers is a breath of fresh air that inserts itself between the cynicism offered by the media and the overly confident, and possibly power-focused, assertions by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He occasionally ignores the powerful lessons to be learned from our Protestant brothers and sisters. His hypotheses may not be comfortable for deeply right-leaning Americans. But he bases his ideas on scripture, psychology and the lived experience of Catholics. I am a former member of a parish that was suppressed by the Boston Archdiocese. I am grieving. But Peter Steinfels explains many of our problems in the American Church. Against all my expectations, he gives me hope.

Long standing New York Times journalist Peter Steinfels has produced in "A People Adrift" a very nuanced view of modern American Catholicism. As the title implies, Steinfels may be fairly placed in the liberal wing of the church, but his thoughtful analyses of various problems in the church and proposals for reform are as likely to disappoint radicals as they are to anger conservatives. Take his discussion of the sex scandal. While of course condemning the behavior involved, Steinfels casts a critical eye on his own profession, wondering whether the frenzy over the revelations was in part manufactured by the media's blurring of the time periods involved, lumping all of the crimes under the general category of pedophilia, and ignoring that this wasn't really new news but had been reported on 10 years earlier. But the church doesn't escape Steinfels' microscope either, as he details the public relations, legal and moral catastrophe the matter quickly became. As a woman, I found Steinfels' views on women in the church particularly interesting. Although he neatly dismantles all the theological arguments for limiting the priesthood to women, he wonders if the problem isn't as much that decision-making and managerial power goes along with ordination. One wonders why the senior staff in many bishops' offices are all priests in what are often administrative jobs--especially given the priest shortage. He also proposes a dual solution, admitting women as deacons and into positions of authority. Perhaps then the power to say mass would be limited to just that, and seen as limited to men as a matter of tradition. Although this stance is unlikely to appeal to radicals in the church it represents a middle ground less fraught with theological problems.Steinfels' first chapter contains an excellent statistical summary of where the church stands today, and it is immediately obvious the real success stories in terms of growth over the last four decades is in education and health care--not coincidentally areas which have transitioned to lay leadership. But he also examines the challenges of this change--exactly what does it mean to be a Catholic college where a substantial percentage of your students aren't Catholic, clerical professors are few and far between and your president is a lay person? Are Catholic hospitals unique in any way other than that they do not offer contraceptive and abortion services?Carefully researched and informed by a decade of reporting, this book is well worth your time whatever political camp you find yourself in.

" A People Adrift", Peter Steinfels's new book about the crisis in the Catholic Church in America is as comprehensive a study as you will find about the church today. For those of us non-Catholics who wonder why Catholics go through all the fuss and bother that they do, Steinfels helps us out. Most importantly, he gets us away from the screaming headlines of the newspapers and the segments on television and gives us a close-up look at the many layers of Catholicism, how they interact, what's wrong (and what's right) in the church today.What struck me most about "A People Adrift" is how much lay leadership has become a part of the church. With declining numbers of priests Steinfels points to the increasing role of laity....a sure sign that at least in some respects the church is willing to accept change. But the author reserves his harshest criticism for the hunkering down of Rome with regard to women and celibacy. He suggests that without a liberalization on the part of the Vatican that the Catholic church in the U.S. will continue its decline. As an outsider in a progressive Protestant denomination, I very much agree with him.Although the author is willing to make his own feelings known, he is careful to balance counter arguments. He offers possible solutions to questions about the Catholic perceptions of sex, celibacy, religious education, the roles of priests and bishops, the state of affairs of worship, etc....in short, Steinfels covers just about every tier and angle. And I smiled when he signaled his great respect for the late Cardinal Bernardin and his contempt for Cardinal Law.While "A People Adrift" is a must-read for Catholics who are concerned about the future of their church, I think this book extends far beyond Catholicism. It is an important book to read for people of any faith, not just as a comparison to their own but as a revelation to those who want to understand the joy and the agony of what it is to be Catholic in America in 2003.

Unlike the "Catholic Lite" reviewer, I actually read this book, which is an eloquent, deeply thoughtful, objective, and cautiously hopeful analysis of the Catholic Church in America at the beginning of the 21st Century, a Church Mr. Steinfels obviously loves and has spent much of his life in service to. If you share his passionate love of Catholicism and are looking for a hopeful way to proceed, whether you consider yourself "conservative" or "liberal" or somewhere in between, this book is a "must read."

A judicious, deeply thoughtful, thoroughly informed, and lucidly written analysis of the crisis that threatens to send American Catholicism, the largest faith community in the United States, for all its present energy, diversity, and service to society, into a period of "irreversible decline." According to Steinfels, American Catholics have around ten or fifteen years to rescue what is most valuable and truth-disclosing in their tradition or watch it begin to diminish in its transformative power, its spiritual authenticity, and its cultural productiveness. Can the Catholic community recover itself, be honest with itself, and sustain a respectful conversation within itself--in time?Steinfels, the former senior religion correspondent for "The New York Times," and a former editor of "Commonweal" magazine, relies on his broad experience as a journalist and interpreter of the contemporary experience of various religious communities, their traditions, practices, conflicts, and aspirations, to provide close attention to--and critical reflection on--specific practical and institutional matters crucial to the full survival of the Catholic faith. It is the type of attention and reflection that ought to ground serious "theological" work & keep it rooted in the lives, questions, & feelings of human beings struggling to make sense of their lives in today's world. The author pulls no punches as regards the scandals, embittered arguments, and failures of leadership that are tearing the American Catholic community apart. Nor does he offer cheap solace through soothing compromise or ecclesiastical happy-talk. But all those who care about the future of Catholicism in America, including those in a love/hate relationship with its present institutionalization, should read this sober, intelligent, and painfully honest book.Steinfels belongs to an impressive group of American Catholic intellectuals, that includes his wife, Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, all of whom, in very different ways, have been trying to understand what is happening to U.S. Catholicism. Shouldn't somebody gather these people, urge them to let their common loves & concerns outweigh their various personal differences, and invite them to address all these issues now with an acknowledgment of being in an emergency situation?