By Msgr. Owen F. Campion

Keeping the faith

America's tradition of rugged individualism is undermining community-oriented religions

A few weeks ago the Pew Forum study of American religion received much publicity, and for Catholics it was quite sobering. While the number of Catholics in this country actually has increased, much of the increase has been due to the arrival of Catholics from abroad. The number of Catholics who no longer are active in the Church, or who have gone to other religions, or to no formal religion is striking.

"Mainline" Protestant denominations, such as Episcopalians, United Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians, once so very influential in this country, have experienced, percentagewise, even greater losses nationwide than have Catholics. No sizeable influx of immigrants offsets their losses.

Many factors enter the picture, as it involves Catholics or Protestants. An overriding factor, however, is the extreme individualism that has become so very much a part of our culture and of the way to think, religious or otherwise.

It is strictly what an individual person thinks. Any outside voice is an intruder if it overrides the individual. Of course, this society is based upon the freedom of the individual conscience. Thus our laws allow us to worship as we choose, to say what we want to say publicly, even to criticize the government, and to elect our political leaders.

However, carrying it to the extreme has resulted in a mindset that no authority deserves respect in the end. Hence we hear the arguments for "choice" when it comes to abortion. Few if any people say that they want to force abortion on anyone. Instead, they insist that anyone has the right to procure an abortion, regardless of the unborn innocent life at stake.

This attitude affects religion. Common among Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and others is that church means a community somehow bound together, functioning somehow under an ordained leadership, and more or less standing on a mutually recognized tradition. This applies even despite cases of great differences about what tradition means and how binding it should be.

A religious group that has not declined as much as the "mainline" denominations is that of Protestant fundamentalists. Fundamentalists rely solely, and insist upon, the absolute supremacy of the individual when it comes to interpreting revelation.

I tell people on occasion that I could never be a fundamentalist Protestant because the very idea is so contrary to the New Testament. After they recover from the shock of hearing what I have said, they ask me to explain myself.

I refer them to the Acts of the Apostles. Acts actually is a continuation of St. Luke's Gospel. In itself, this is a lesson to us. The Christian life did not end with the Lord's ascension.

During the weeks after Easter, the readings at Mass from the Acts of the Apostles are plentiful. Listen carefully to these readings. They describe what Christianity meant to the first Christians, many of whom actually knew Jesus.

For example, on this Second Sunday of Easter, we hear that the very first Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles' instruction and to the communal life, the breaking of the bread and the prayers."

For the first Christians, listening to the apostles was everything. Private interpretation is nowhere. Importantly, they listened to the apostles, not just to the learned or holy among them, not to those whom they elected. They lived in a visible community. They gathered for the Eucharist. They cared for the needy.

This literally was Christianity in the days just after the ascension of Jesus. Look at American religious groups today. Which ones resemble this ancient model? Look also at the historical tradition behind us. The Catholic Church is the only one that fills the bill.

Msgr. Owen F. Campion is associate publisher of Our Sunday Visitor.