I have been conducting an informal survey, speaking with Catholic Pastors who have been friends throughout the course of the four decades I served in active Priestly ministry.
I have been trying to determine if there is any evidence to suggest that faithful Catholics are leaving their parishes or simply not approaching the Sacraments with the frequency they did prior to the recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury report as well as the scandalous allegations which Archbishop Vigano has made against high-ranking Church officials including Pope Francis himself.
The Priests I spoke to indicated that they have seen no discernible difference in either Mass attendance or voluntary contributions since these stories broke.
But all of them have told me that many of their parishioners have been quite frank in expressing their anger and disappointment.
Speaking further with these same Pastors, it appears that local parishes will sustain the fallout from this horrid tales of the homosexual predation of young males by Catholic Clergy and the almost universal strategy which Bishops employed in the cover up of the abuse.
In previous articles, I offered my opinion that the Catholic faithful identify the Universal Church with their experience of the Faith in the context of their parish.
Catholics are loyal to their parishes and to the Priests whom they have experienced to be dedicated and fervent ministers of Christ’s Word and Sacraments.
And so, when the horrid and horrible stories of abuse are publicized, many Catholics empathize with the suffering of the victims and their families, they are frustrated and angered by the lack of accountability on the part of the abusers and the Bishops who covered for them, but they remain loyal to their parish and to their Pastors who have served them in times of great joy or sadness.
Here, then, is what I think the impact these scandals will have on the average Catholics who still attend Mass and receive the Sacraments frequently.
These good people will continue to attend their parishes and support their Pastors.
But, these same good people will withhold their allegiance to their Bishops, whom they generally see as aloof administrators of the a “corporation” rather than as “pastors of souls”.
The Bishops, all of them and most sadly the Bishop of Rome himself, have lost what little moral authority and persuasion they held.
While serving as a Pastor, it was my experience that people generally made up their own minds about what was right or wrong, morally sinful or not, the gravity of their actions and whether or not they needed the intervention of the Church to form their consciences or absolve their sins.
Catholics have long since the end of Vatican Council II deferred to the Bishops in discerning whether or not their choices or actions conform to the tenets of Catholic teaching.
In the wake of these scandals, the role of Bishops as teachers and shepherds will be diminished even more.
Only when these scandals touch upon their experience of the Faith at the parish level do Catholics generally react to the point of abandoning their Catholic heritage.
And so, Pastors can likely expect that the folks who were attending Mass and contributing to the parish before these latest scandals will continue to do so for the most part.
But the Bishops must know that those same Catholics will be deaf to their words and withholding of their offerings.
And while the ecclesial structure of Church governance remains the same on the abstract and theological level, the reality is quite different indeed.
In the day to day functioning of the Church, it is the local parish Priest who has the greatest impact upon the lives and the faith of those entrusted to his care.
The Bishops may get before banks of microphones, appear on television and radio, command columns of newsprint in their efforts to speak to the people of their dioceses, but their words are like seeds scattered by the winds and will take no root because no one is paying attention to who they are or what they are saying.
In this, the Church structurally and sacramentally has suffered a mortal, if not, fatal blow.
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