 Good afternoon evening everyone It's a lovely crowd in here. I at first of all I apologize to those among you who did not know that the school of business Is now here and not over there from now on you know tell all your friends So I think I know almost everybody here, but my name is Paul Lakeland I direct the Center for Catholic Studies and this is the second of many events this semester and the 19th Andromy O'Callaghan Lecture I'm just gonna introduce Catherine O'Callaghan in a moment who will introduce our speaker but before I do I want to say something And I'm not sure we've ever said before so frequently I hear from the O'Callaghan family Many of whom are sitting on the front row here as indeed they should How how happy they are that for 19 years we've been doing this thing, right? But I don't know if we've ever said on behalf of the University how happy we are that they did it Because if you go back and look at the list of speakers we've had it's been a star-studied group barely barely a dud among them which is a Which is a great thing and a great testimony to them so once to thank my thanks to them so On this 19th lecture day Catherine O'Callaghan will introduce our speaker Trisha Bruce and Catherine is assistant dean of academic advising at Marlborough College, which is a most unusual and very interesting college up in rural Vermont Couldn't be more different from this place But it certainly is a place that people like me sort of kind of wish wish was bigger and We could be closer to and be more a part of so anyway here is Catherine O'Callaghan to do the introduction Thank you. I want to acknowledge Paul Lakeland's leadership and thank the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University for their support and care of this lecture series in honor of my mother For many years my mother worked as a catechist youth minister Advocate for the intellectually disabled and Director of Religious Education in the diocese of Bridgeport Tonight we celebrate the 19th annual and drumming O'Callaghan lecture on women in the church with an esteemed sociologist of religion Dr. Trisha Bruce Dr. Bruce's award-winning books include parish and place making room for diversity in the American Catholic Church and faithful revolution How voice of the faithful is changing the church Her edited volumes include American parishes and Polarization in the US Catholic Church Currently she is an affiliate of the University of Notre Dame's Center for the study of religion and society Has led research for the US Conference of Catholic bishops and is a frequent public Commentator on religion and society. I Think my mother would be particularly happy to hear this lecture tonight The lecture is entitled carriers of Catholicism agents of a future church Please join me in welcoming dr. Trisha Bruce Thank you so much for the introduction and what an honor it is to be here Thank you so much for the invitation to be a part of this lecture series I had the pleasure and honor of reading a little bit about andromi O'Callaghan And what an amazing woman and it is just a gift to be honoring her memory here today, too Thank you also to Fairfield University and to the Center for Catholic Studies and this beautiful space I you know, I am someone who sings and plays guitar So I'm gonna reserve the temptation to deliver my lecture tonight in song So but maybe later we'll see how it goes Do you recognize this place? I think all of us do and whether Catholic or not I think many of us were riveted on that day in April when we turned on the the news or the radio Or the print media and we heard oh my goodness Notre Dame is on fire and the images were gripping and You felt the wrench the heart wrench that that was This place that represents in so many ways the ties of Catholics to their church the church in the world US Catholics too right felt that connection on that day And of course we celebrated to find out that the the church would would survive But there's there's much to be said here about what's happening in this space Probably possibly you didn't hear about This occasion this is another church. It's also called Notre Dame It's actually a parish that is just outside the city of Boston in Worcester and It's an old Canadian parish Okay, French Canadian parish the wrecking ball began swinging in September of 2018 Taking aim at this near century old Notre Dame day Canadians Catholic Church and by implication the community members failed attempts to save it The Archdiocese of Worcester had suppressed the parish a decade prior Subsequently selling it to developers It was dormant for years and as plans Materialized or didn't materialize the structure began to fall into decay a Coalition of neighborhood activists Mobilized to save the Notre Dame under that name save Notre Dame Alliance Petitioning alternatives to a demolition that they labeled cultural vandalism Heated city council meetings court battles fundraising and petitioning to no avail the church as you can see here was ultimately raised The church in the center square of Worcester Fell in a mushroom cloud of steel glass and dust it will arise anew as city square a 565 million dollar multi-phase project in the heart of Worcester that includes housing units hotel rooms and parking spaces What is changing about Catholicism today? How do changes to the very structure of the church Shape the agency and the work and the faith and the lived experience of those within There's a lot that's changing about the Catholic Church and The US context it's a little bit misleading because if we look over time We actually see some stability Now I'm a sociologist, so you'll see a few graphs, but not too many This one comes from the general social survey that It's pretty recent release. It came out in March of 2018 and this is looking at the line of the Catholic population So what percentage of Americans that does the Catholic population? Comprise and it's about a quarter It's been about a quarter for a while It was about a quarter before It was about a quarter some years ago. It's about a quarter now In fact the highest points that you see on this graph go up to about 27% The lowest 23% There's a lot behind this line of course and There are trends in the larger religious landscape of the United States that also impact what Catholicism looks like This line looks pretty different than the next line. I'm going to show you That's right Which some you may have heard this term before the nuns. I'm not talking about Religious sisters. We might have some in the room. I hope we do. I'm talking about in ONE nuns These are Americans who claim no religious affiliation. So if you ask them, what is your religious affiliation? They'll say nothing in particular. It doesn't necessarily mean they don't believe or they don't participate They might even go to church. They might pray might still be important to them and their life in some way But they're they're gonna say nothing in particular in terms of affiliation The nuns are on the rise the Catholic line And the nuns on the rise if Former Catholics if we were to pick that line here, too, you start to see some of this coming together in a way If former Catholics were a denomination in their own right, they would be one of the largest Denominations in the United States. There are a lot of Catholics and there are a lot of former Catholics Part of what we see behind this line is that who's included is changing in In fact much of the exodus those who depart are white Catholics many of them young Catholics Millennial Catholics Gen Z Catholics and The stability comes from a couple things if you've ever thought about demography before how does that line stay the same? comes from fertility and Migration right so if people are leaving if they're leaving the church or what's the other way that they leave the line? They die right they pass on so then you have generational replacements younger folks or you have fertility people having babies and migration So part of the reason why this line maintains stability is that it's masking that kind of change So who are American Catholics today? What does that look like? Who's the average? American Catholic if there is one And maybe we could argue that they're not there are some substantial changes in terms of who's Catholic today age-wise Catholics are a little bit younger Than average Americans so Especially when we look at Hispanic Catholics Latino Catholics who constitute a larger and larger proportion of the church on average 49 years old Racially on average still white But I made the note that Catholics are increasingly likely to be people of color and in particular Hispanic Latino Catholics However, there's a growing population of Asian Pacific Island or Catholics as well. So still a small proportion But this is a bigger part of the story here, too Catholics are more likely to be southerners now You know, we have probably have an image of the church that maybe is concentrated in the Northeast Closer to this part of the country, but the church has largely moved south and west in terms of population So more likely to be a southerner and the church actually has the highest proportion of foreign-born Catholics now Then it's ever had which is a little bit surprising or you know an immigrant church But if we look at historically and comparing to the last 50 years or so We are now at a higher proportion of foreign-born Catholics And so a Catholic may be an immigrant or a child and an immigrant probably married And then politically we won't go into this. This would be a whole nother talk But Catholics are pretty divided right? It's it's really about half-and-half Democrat and Republican The other thing about Catholics to in this sort of change in the church setting up this context is that Attendance and participation in the church is changing Among self identifying Catholics the what we might call the core is shrinking and The periphery is growing. What that means is that the strongest Catholics I might use quotes around that but the Catholics who attend regularly Who have participated in all the sacraments regularly who go to church weekly this group of Catholics the Catholics who are involved in the church to and the parishes is shrinking and Catholics who affiliate but don't attend or who have links to Catholicism But don't participate in meaningful ways those that number of Catholics is growing this maps on to trends that are happening in the American religious landscape at large as well. So if we look at something like religious attendance, so who's going to church? All right, or Synagogue, you know, this is gonna include other faith traditions as well Weekly attendance again pulling from that same general social survey. It's it's you know, I mean It there's not a dramatic decline here But you can see it's it's ticked down a little bit where you see the more noticeable decline though is Among those who never attend. All right, so people are less likely to attend religious services now and Like Americans overall Catholics about a third of Catholics go to church weekly So that so we can say most Catholics identify as Catholics, but don't participate regularly don't don't go on a weekly basis to math And so it the core again the core is shrinking the periphery is growing so to state the obvious the Catholic Church in the United States is changing and the pace of this change is accelerating from within and from without these massive structural changes are spawning internal change at what we could call macro Mezzo and micro levels So if we look at cities and communities or a country-wide scale or even a global scale these macro lenses If we look at a mezzo level organizationally the ways that local groups organize whether it's through Perishes or otherwise and on a micro internal level now I mentioned I'm a sociologist and sociologists are going to pay attention to the dynamics of power and Groups and what happens at this nexus of all these different levels, right? You have these structural changes happening and then what does agency or your individual power within that structure look like? the You know the the subtitle of this talk is agents of a future church, right? And when I read about Andrew me O'Callaghan a brave and valiant woman I thought wow what an agent of the future church But this agency right it's inscribed by structure, and I think we see that yeah reflected in her biography as well Limited by constraints organizationally collectively. She's a question then becomes How does that change get managed and moved through the church through the structure structures of this church And I've used this term carrier right what carries the tradition What are the carriers of Catholicism look like and how does this internal change reverberate? I'm here to make a set of rather simple arguments on three Levels and this will allow us to kind of talk through some of these carriers of Catholicism at those different levels one being that perishes carry Catholicism another being that communities carry Catholicism and a third being that People carry Catholicism. I won't say individuals because I'm gonna Give a shout-out to John Paul the second focus on persons right people persons carry Catholicism because in fact, we're not really individuals. We're always linked. So these things are really linked together Much of my work is attuned to what I might call so that the containers of Catholicism So I've studied social movements and congregations and these different spaces these these organizations these groups that contain Religion but those containers are shaped by those other levels and the way that authority works So authority and the grassroots mix together Another thing I thought of too Even and thinking through these different layers is some of you I don't know if this was your experience, but when I was a kid Of course growing up Catholic going to mass and sitting in church and my mom You know trying to keep the kids quiet and she would do that little hand rhyme with us You know like the You know I'm talking about it's been a while since I've done this. It's like that. Here's the church Here's the steeple. Oh, yeah, open it up and there are the people right, okay? This is basically what we're talking about. Okay, so so it's the church and there's even a material element to this too Right the church itself, but then you have to remember the people but look it's all linked, you know It's all it's all together. So what does this change then look like? So with that first level parishes carry Catholicism So we can talk about churches parishes as carriers of Catholicism and in parishes there is growth and There is decline But what a presence. Do you know if you look at congregations? So here we're talking about not just Catholic parishes, but other type You know whether it's your methods church or your Jewish synagogue or whatever it might be right all that bucket of what sociologists would Would put in this camp of congregations Even though that word fits parishes imperfectly, but if we take the full number of congregations There are more congregations than there are all the top ten fast food joints Added up together and multiplied by three and you believe it So if you take all the pizza huts the subways the McDonald's you all those top ten, right? I know me too. I totally agree. You put them all together you multiply by three you would still have more congregations now I haven't spent too much time in the Fairfield area, so I don't know if it's the same here But I'll tell you what a Knoxville in the Bible Belt, you know, you cannot throw a rock without seeing a congregation Okay, these are meaningful places of where people do local religion where people gather in fact They serve all sorts of functions that go beyond just the doctrinal or the worship component of it Which is huge, but they have social services. They have food banks. They're where you know mothers have have care for XYZ they're where young people meet their future spouse, you know congregations do a lot in communities in 1965 there were seventeen thousand six hundred and thirty seven parishes in 2018 There are just over seventeen thousand parishes actually that sounds pretty similar But here's what you don't see in that number again the stability that's masking things Okay, there are a couple things that are important to mention. It's like that's fuzzy math One is that in between those two numbers it went up to Nineteen and a half thousand right so it goes peaks and then so we've actually seen a decline in parishes in recent decades The other thing is that there are a whole lot more Catholics now in the United States than there were in 1965 so you have fewer parishes serving a whole lot of Catholics The Catholic population has grown from fifty four million to seventy five million and we know also that the number of priests has gone down so in part what this is doing is Supersizing parishes Back to the fast food analogy, I guess right you have and sometimes priests are hopping from one parish to another And you have these mega parishes that have thousands of people because that's just how it has to be done fewer parishes More people fewer priests or alternative models of leadership, right? Who what happens in parishes and who does the work? Some of you may know the answer to that question I Edited a book that came out this year called American parishes remaking local Catholicism And I want to just read this little piece from it This is a this is a chapter by Mark Gray Who was a former colleague of mine at Cara the Center for Applied Research in the Apostle at a Georgetown University? And he writes about fifty three point one million Catholics attend Mass weekly monthly or at least a few times a year Most likely on I bet you can guess when they when do they go? Exactly Christers and Ash Wednesday. We'll give that to Ash Wednesday Easter and Christmas Some thirty eight point three million attend at least once a month This population is similar in size to the thirty four point four million who make regular financial contributions to their parish Moving closer to the core when we talked about the core the core of the Catholic population There are an estimated eighteen point seven million Catholics who attend Mass every week Near the very center super core, you know, I'm talking about Maybe it's you there are three point one million Catholics who are very active in their faith beyond attending Mass Within that population are more than fifty four thousand providing some aspect of parish ministry including more than thirty nine thousand late ecclesial ministers Professional paid and trained staff providing pastoral ministry at least twenty hours a week Last paragraph here extrapolating these populations to a per parish point of view There are an average of nearly six thousand baptized Catholics when it within a typical parishes boundaries of which about 4500 self-identify as Catholic So the baptized versus this so that's the departure right some have left some still self-identified from this population There are nearly 2,000 Catholics who attend Mass at least once a month about 180 very active in their parish and Three who are involved in parish ministry So these layers I Noted also in reading about Andromio Callahan that she was one of these three so her bio that that just shares she said after She moved into this parish Then she was involved in reach a religious education and Christian heritage religion education program that did liturgy for children Volunteer of with the children's literaties and she did youth ministry sacramental coordinator director of religious education Emmaus retreat and the list goes on right this is someone who was very involved in In the church so the one of these three and indeed women carry the lion's share of parish ministry Women are more likely to be in the core than in the periphery They're more likely to be involved in lay ministry Despite the lack of access or perhaps and because of the lack of access to certain leadership positions in the church that are the exclusive exclusive realm of ordained men Later leadership has supplemented priestly leadership in many ways So what we see then is this shift if we have these super sized parishes smaller number of leaders fewer number of priests Lay people stepping up and doing more again oftentimes women who are in these leadership positions in the church This is what what's happening in the parish when a Share one other excerpt from a different chapter in this book. This is by Courtney Irby Who's a sociologist at Loyola in Chicago and she writes about marriage ministry in Churches today comparing it to a historical context She says well the primary lessons on how to have a happy and healthy marriage Remain fairly consistent kind of looking back and looking now the carrier of that message at the parish level has changed Right, so who get who delivers that message now Looking at who can speak on behalf of the Catholic Church reveals a shift in parish level religious authority Yes, I'll summarize this essentially what she ends up saying here is that before it was the priest who was doing all the classes Preparing people for marriage right now It's the lay people the lay people who are giving it and oftentimes it's lay couples who are talking from their own level of Experience right and how they're in their own marriage. They have learned certain things So it's the it's the lay people in parishes who are doing the work again often the women in parishes who are doing the work We see parish vitality in a number of ways. I mentioned the south and the west This background image here actually comes from the cathedral in Knoxville where I currently reside and this is a brand new Cathedral this is kind of a side view of it. I have one more picture later You'll see the front of it. This is where you're seeing the new stuff being built Right. It was in Tennessee, South Carolina North Carolina, this is where new parishes are another source of vitality on the parish front where this change in agency happens is through the model of personal parishes and These personal parishes and this is this book that I wrote before is about personal parishes Which probably you've never heard of before most people haven't but you might have heard of national parishes and This is like the contemporary version, right? So the idea of a national parish is that it serves a niche population of Catholics So rather than being territorial or defined by geography Parishes are serving a particular group The new thing about personal parishes in a modern sense is that they serve other types of groups too like those who want the traditional Latin mass Or those who are interested in social justice There are all sorts of little creative versions of personal parishes that bishops have designated around the country About 200 of them in recent decades, which again, it's not a huge number I mean, it's a still a small proportion of overall parishes, but this is a way that the church is responding to this internal change Structurally right sort of saying here's a structural response to this diversification that we see and the need for Specialization and a special type of church this particular one is St. Rocco's in Avondale, Pennsylvania and this is a parish that was dedicated especially for Mexican Catholics and The part of the reason it was dedicated is because there were there was an influx of Mexican Catholics in the area in part Because there was a growth of mushroom farming And so the labor that that brought into the area meant that there were more and more people who were moving to the area Many of them Catholic and looking for a particular style of Catholicism Language connection and whatnot and embedded in the story too, which I won't go into fully But it's just to say that they didn't feel welcome elsewhere. They floated around to the other parishes and they were asked They were treated like renters. When are you going to leave? This is our space. This is not your space So for better or worse given that context they received a beautiful new parish This is a brand new parish and a brand new building that was dedicated specifically to their needs The personal parish concept this comes out of canon law So you can see where that where that comes about most parishes are territorial their geographic But personal parishes serve that niche population. So this is a form of vitality in the church You know the flip side of this though Is that there are lots of old national parishes? We could even say redundant parishes when again Catholics couldn't always get along We'll say back in the day right sort of the early formation of Catholicism in the United States and Whether by language or culture or otherwise Everybody wanted their own church, right? If I'm Polish, I want my own church if I'm German I want my own church and so we have all these churches Fast forward now. We have fewer priests and these structural questions and what happens You have excess churches. You have too many churches. You have to sell your churches This is happening on a phenomenal scale at this point a number of diocese throughout the country are closing parishes this happens to closing parishes and then having to sell their churches this happens to because of the context and that we've been in for Coming up on a decade also of a crisis of abuse in the church And the the again that shock that we saw on the day that Notre Dame burned Maybe there's a metaphor there right the shock that we felt when we heard these revelations of abuse in the church And so the scandals have likewise led to financial implications for many diocese to so there's a connected piece there And a number of these churches are now being sold Diocese like Allentown closed nearly half of their parishes between 2002 and 2018 so we're talking about very recent times Hartford closed 90 parishes, which was 41% of their parishes diocese like Buffalo Albany Camden, but also places like Indiana, Iowa, rural America this sort of the shifting of Populations and so that's where you see some of these declines in recent years The number of US priests also in that same time period went down by 19 percent So this is where it links into this next Carrier which is the community as a carrier of Catholicism and I posed this as much as a an answer as I do a question which is What happens when a church closes right you have all of these churches that have been built into the Infrastructure of communities that do all these things that congregations do as I described before that go way beyond worship All right, they are nonprofits effectively right immersed in their communities What happens when they close like libraries and schools Catholic churches and other types of churches are part of communities social infrastructure And when it closes then you have to ask these questions of what happens to it how those decisions are made Perhaps you've seen a closed church whether Catholic or otherwise that has become something else. I Know I have many times in fact, this is from a project that I've been working on for about a year and a half or so Which is trying to trace both in the US context, but also with a global comparative angle What happens the churches when they close and what does that say about how the role of Catholicism the role of religion in the city And who are the stakeholders involved in that? Not sure if anyone's ever been to these before but the left-hand one this is from This is in Pittsburgh So next time you go although some of you may not it's disconcerting right when I share this with my mom She says I don't I don't like to hear this Okay, there's one on the left is is a former church in Pittsburgh that is now a it's a bar I'll show you a pic of the inside in a moment And and they've converted the altar to have the big, you know, the beer containers and whatnot the one on the right is actually in Scotland and It you probably can't even guess from the outside. So that's why I'm going to show you interior pics It's a rock climbing gym and here's a picture of the the bar on the inside of the Pittsburgh one And that you know, I'm attuned as a sociologist and ethnographer field research I'm attuned to the sounds that you make right? I think that there's there's probably a mix, right? You know for someone's like, whoa, no, you know, my mom again, like, ah, you know But furthers live, you know, go in like oh, this feels like a holy place a sacred place, you know What does it mean to to to go into a space like this? Here's one more. This is in Boston luxury condos Religious buildings are exemplars of religious change Right. This is that the nexus of congregations of place of community of those levels of Catholicism that we talked about This one's called the Lucas. It just opened a couple years ago It was once holy Trinity German Catholic Church. This is one of these national parishes closed in 2008 sold by the Archdiocese of Boston and then The partner they partnered with an architectural firm to build this space on this front there is Conversation on both a I would say somewhat on a national level, but especially on a global level in fact I went and November of 2018 to a conference in Rome that was sponsored by the Pontifical Council for culture that was deeply concerned with the Decommissioning of churches right what happens to churches when it's they're no longer used as churches And so they wanted to set up some guidelines some rules And you can see there's a preference here for cultural aims right use them as museums You know, let's have an art gallery or or a social aim something that seems cultural or charitable and There's a caveat that I don't quote here says for buildings of lesser architectural value transformation into private dwellings may be allowed Okay, so there's a there's a a conversation happening But I would say it's a rather nascent one especially in the US scene here is is one Excerpt from an interview. I've done about 60 interviews at this point on this particular project But this is a woman. She's actually based in New York who is a big thinker developer type person and Catholic and she talks about basically the church is a property owner right and all of this landscape this context that we Just set up all this transition means that there's an opportunity a vision here That could be realized by transitioning that property into good use All right, whatever that good use or appropriate use may look like and maybe you have some Ideas and different dioceses are trying different things in meeting those needs But this is one of these changes as well the question then too is can the community carry or does the community carry? Catholicism right if it's not in the parish if it's not housed in the church the church Maybe the church is raised like we saw with Notre Dame in Worcester But maybe the church becomes a home for end-of-life care. Maybe it becomes a homeless shelter They're the die season Newark recently did a an exchange with a developer where they said okay? We'll let you make the church into luxury housing, but we want you to build a homeless shelter next to it So what does that look like and what does that mean as a carrier of Catholicism and Then this this third level people carry Catholicism We're not just talking about parishes and churches of carries of Catholicism. We're talking about persons about people, right? Remember this the steeple the people inside And I want to introduce you in this in this last part here two Three Catholic women who are carrying Catholicism today in different ways And I'll give you the context of these conversations since I'm pulling together multiple projects that I'm involved in and this particular Project actually comes from a broad-scale Study that I've embarked on over the past year a national study looking at Americans attitudes towards the issue of abortion Not just Catholics all Americans and we created a sample that approximated the Demographic characteristics of the US population at large and then did a random address based mailing and didn't tell people what the topic was Until they went in and did the pre-screener happy to answer more questions about that But we have at this point 222 interviews and so what I did here is think through look at that subset of Catholics And in particular look at it and these three women Catholics that I'm going to introduce here in order to tease out some of these ideas about carriers of Catholicism and and This is her pseudonym And so we're no longer talking about and from your gala. It just happens to be her pseudonym that we assigned in the project But Anne is an 87 year old woman. She lives in Indiana. She identifies as a Republican a pretty conservative Republican She's middle-class She is a Catholic and she she's a lifelong Catholic. She describes religion as her core foundation And religion infused her life both in terms of family and career She supported her husband's career as a railroad engineer She they used abstinence as birth control And they ended up having four children The way she tells that story is kind of interesting though She says my first three children were born in three years for three and a half years And then I went a bit of time because I was strict with my husband and on a timetable And then and I'm just quoting Anne here and then he lied to me and I had my fourth child Which I was never happy about But but what I wanted to point out is that she mourns now the Absence of her children from the church because when she was raising them She went to church with them. She went to mass with them and she says now again She's she's a seven years old now. She has children and grandchildren She says it gives me a lot of heartache because my children don't go to church They'll come along with me, but they don't go on their own and that's my biggest heartache You know when they were babies they went every Sunday, but now they don't and she she blames this in part She says well, they they married non-Catholics and that was part of it But you know, but you can tell it pains her and she says the hardest part is my grandchildren You know my children were brought up Catholic, but my my grandchildren Don't have as she puts it don't have the foggiest idea and she prays all the time that that will become important to them, too That's all I do And she says I know how they feel and I believe in all that and they have and they believe in all that and they Live good lives, but they just don't want the hassle of going to mass I'm hoping as they get older I'll change but at the moment. That's not a possibility Okay, so and to identify. She's the weekly attending the core Catholic Right and has seen her children that moves from the periphery to to beyond and that pains her Another woman this is Maria and Maria lives in Colorado and She's 33 years old Maria is a millennial and She's her daughter. She's the daughter of a Palestinian first generation father She identifies as an independent fairly moderate working class Now thinking through her own Catholic identity as a millennial She the interviewer asked her well, have you ever moved away from the church? Have you come back to it? And she says almost continually I never actually leave but there are many times when I look at what I've taught and I have to pull it Untangle it and see if what they're teaching is reasonable to me. It's always kind of a roller coaster But then she comes out and she says yeah, it's a tangled mess, but you know what? I don't think I'm actually ever going to leave the church. I I'm here. In fact, she's very involved in the church She kind of she goes on and you don't see that the full transcript here But she goes on just talks about how much she loves the mass. She loves prayer But she puts this tension forward. She highlights this tension Maria is someone who does not have children and has no plans to have children and she highlights this tension the shift that she sees that she observes as Balancing as a woman of faith notions of family and career or ambition and She wants to help in that tension because here she's someone who has chosen she does not She lives an absent in life at this point. She does not want to have does not have plans have children at this point But she understands what goes into that and she says, you know, I think I think we would see and again The context of this project relates to attitudes towards abortion. So this comes in as a theme She says I think we would have fewer abortions if as a society We were more supportive of giving birth I guess and of having children and then a third Daniela Daniela is a first generation American. She grew up in Venezuela and a Catholic and She's a peripheral Catholic. She does not attend church very often. She identifies as a Democrat She has a masters. She's middle-class. She's married She says, you know, I grew up Catholic, but of course we didn't even talk about it in Venezuela It's like everybody's Catholic, you know, it's not a thing and she said when when she spent some time in Germany And then she spent some time now. She is living in Tennessee. All of a sudden. It's a thing, you know Who were kept in Tennessee is actually the least Catholic state in the United States They've usually it volleys for number 15 49 or 50 out of out of 50 in terms of proportion of Catholics So now it's a thing but she says okay I'm still Catholic and all of a sudden it's it's more noticeable here And she says I did baptize my four and a half year old as a Catholic when well when she was a baby I'm planning to do the same with my my one year old and She says you almost hear this sort of hint of Catholic guilt in here, right? Well, perhaps I should I don't go to church every Sunday I go, you know, maybe three or four times a year on some specific occasions, right? We know when right? Ashwin's in Houston and We get into this conversation Daniela and I do I interviewed her and She shares how well she was in Venezuela and she was in college sophomore in college. She had an abortion herself and the way that she relays this story is in a In somewhat a matter-of-fact way But then the word she uses and you can hear this here is she talks about how scary it was in part because it was illegal It was illegal to do it in Venezuela where she was living And so she had to kind of you know go through the route that it was required to do that and she says how scary it was it was terrifying and She the way that she explains it is that she says, you know I had a particular vision for my life that focused on getting my master's degree going into a career She's a science writer is what she does She's very logical thinker and this was not the vision that I had for my life And she says when in recounting the story she says that she's never told her parents and at the end here I said I asked did you later tell them? She said I have not I was 19 and now I'm 33. I don't think I ever will So this this tension All right We have these these three stories on the personal level here of Maria and and Daniela and And This tension then of caring Catholicism as a woman of faith while also caring right family and career tensions Right. These are these this is where again that interplay of the broader structure Impacts how people live and work within right we we like to think of ourselves as free agents especially within a demographic Democratic context of the United States which we are our privilege to live in right we have so many rights and freedoms And yet within that context, right? There are many structures that that Constrain us and here these women are are sharing their own interplay of that that change and stability How they carry Catholicism in different ways You know does it carry on does it carry to children to grandchildren why who left the church scores of other interviews too Which I won't share with you about people who have left the church sometimes related to the to the issue of abortion sometimes not But who who are likewise carriers of Catholicism in different ways. We can talk to you about cultural Catholics, right? Who carry Catholicism but not in a religious identification anymore? These are the carriers of Catholicism personally organizationally Immunally within this context of change. These are the agents the future of the church Tethered in different ways linked in different ways given that these broad constraints and changes that people within are experiencing These kinds of adaptations are embodied They're played out locally in Congregations in our cities and I would say to you in decision-making as it's held by various stakeholders, right? We're the stakeholder of us We have various levels of dynamic and power within our local organizations our communities whether it's parishes or otherwise And then beyond right on a broader scale too. So if we think about the future of the church then What does that interplay look like and how is Catholicism carried or is Catholicism carried? I think we can ask that question too on all of these levels in the community when we see a closed church Is Catholicism carried and how within the people that that you heard from here and within these the change in context of organization how What gets carried and maybe what gets let go to? Thank you very much for your time and I welcome your questions Thank you, Trisha. I have a microphone. So those who would like to ask a question raise your hand, please because we want to be able to Hear your voice. There we go Bill did your studies show any impact of Catholic education when I was a boy Went to Catholic grade school and then to Catholic high school They did the high school is still going strong the grade school is closed but has anything been shown as as to what you could anticipate as far as Continuing your Catholic faith Great question. So I'll answer on two levels one has to do with the material reality of Catholic schools because Catholic schools are Closing at an even more rapid pace than Catholic churches Ironically, some of them are actually then sold and used as charter school So they they go from school to school but they they change hands and that Shifting of the schools is putting pressure then on the parish system as it is typically Set up now your question has to do more with identity, right? What happens if someone goes through the Catholic school system and then they leave or or is the Catholic school system like a Vaccine you get just enough of Catholicism and then you realize I don't you know not gonna do that And you hear you hear both of those things, right? You know, I oh Okay, thank you Yeah, there is some sociological literature that is especially attuned to that both at the K through 12 and at the college level I would have to look and see what the full effect is to be able to to Summarize it here, but I know that you know at the at the college level, too This becomes a real question is especially during a time of exploration You know is this is this the time that that people move away one other thing that I'll say is that In terms of life trajectory oftentimes in faith practice Faith attendance and practice dips in like your upper teens and lower 20s And then historically it comes back right comes back when you get married and when you have kids But that same effect is not being observed in the youngest generation now in part because there are high levels of education Both among men and women delays and childbearing and in some cases not getting married, too So I think you put all these changes together, right? If you're educated in the Catholic system exposed to a new reality delaying your education in your church Then it faith practice may take a hit, you know Did you find about? the reason that families might have left the church and the Rene Vitae birth control I think because I I read statistics somewhere where Like 98% of Catholic women had practice birth control and That I wondered if there's a correlation about feeling guilty if they break the church law or It has no bearing on why Since women basically, you know get the family ready to go to church Yeah, of course American Catholics have a strong Reputation and that's an empirically true of dissenting from within Meaning that they may disagree with certain church teachings often around issues of sexuality and birth control And yet still feel perfectly Catholic, you know, they're they do all these studies over time They say well, what are the most important things to being Catholic or what does it take to be a good Catholic? And usually at the top of the list or sort of things like, you know Well, you know having the Eucharist and believing what the Eucharist is and You know, you know believing in Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus and you sort of go down the list and then birth control You know, it's lower down the list. A lot of people think well, you could still be a good Catholic All right now now the other question though is that within the context of the rising the nuns and they lose the Loosening of tethers to parishes and religious affiliations. I think what once was a default Well, of course, I'm Catholic or I'm religious or I'm linked to religion in this way is Less and less becoming the defaults. So those dissenters those questioners, right my maybe it becomes a A new form of available identity that that is not dissenting from within And so that's that a lot of this is generational because of course human a Vitae and the the post Vatican to Vatican II and post Vatican II Catholics look pretty different than Younger Catholics today and the younger Catholics are the ones who are leaving So I'm not sure that the model for them will be dissent from within because they weren't for one They weren't alive when that happened and and they may not see the church in that same Paradoxical way of being able to dissent from within Ended with what gets carried and what gets let go and I'm wondering if you could give us some ideas of what you have whether it's based in sociology or intimations of what they are Yeah, this is one of the interesting ways that this has come up is with the the question of what happens to a church When it's no longer a church and all that and all of the interviews that I've done for this project I've asked the question of what is a church and There are multiple answers to that question Because what gets lost in part as you look around materially structurally infrastructure Lee This is a massive impact on the Catholic Church in the United States and globally I mean the Catholic Church is actually one of the largest Landowners property owners on the globe By the way, the Catholic Church of course is not the only denomination going through this mainline denomination So Methodist Presbyterians they're selling off a lot of a lot of churches too So this this is the law so this is not being carried right so then the question is well What what goes in or and and notions of the common good or notions of service? Like one of these you know, well, it's it's not it's what you do It's not what you say with your words. Is that a carrying of Catholicism? That's a little bit subjective right so the sociologist kind of observes will hear this and here's this massive change And then the question becomes is this the persistence or the decline of religiosity this question comes up a lot with conversations about secularization and For a long time like all secularization is happening, you know, God's out of this the religious sphere Except that people's levels of belief are still really pretty high the United States is one of the most religious countries Among the industrialized countries in terms of levels of participation and belief I mentioned the congregation stat You know religion is clearly still here, but it changes It changes and maybe in some of that change something is lost You know, you heard from the the woman that I described at first The pain of the loss that was her grandchildren and children and sheer numbers. It's people its Affiliation is absolutely in decline and I think that that even though that level has been stable again a quarter of the American population I Have my eye on it carefully because right now immigration and fertility is not offsetting as Much as it used to the exodus of Catholics so on the bottom line I think it's a it's a shrinking church in many ways So the question arises Or to what extent is it virtual Yeah, it's a great it's a great question I would throw in here also that You know the the pay structure is an interesting one the economic question is an interesting one because a lot of this work is unpaid this also happens especially in Congregations or parishes that are predominantly people of color where you have a huge number of unpaid laborers So the sort of the the work is being carried out Yeah, I mean clearly that the women I mean if we use the example of Andremio Callahan who whom this lecture is named after it means people pouring themselves into work That is meaningful to them right the product that probably has a spiritual connection to them. There's a reason that it's happening It elevates the question to of well, I mean the equal and opposite. So we say our Are those spiritual goods more available to some than others are other types of positions that may also be spiritually Giving available equally to everyone. So I think those kinds of questions can be put on the table, too As a sociologist, I will never be one to lean too hard on Nature versus nurture. I think a lot of it goes back to sort of the structures the environments that we're in Women again oftentimes being involved more in care-taking and family practices, which may lend themselves To participation in the Paris, but the vast majority of families now they're both working Families so this might be this is another piece of the puzzle to write the church attendance piece if you have two working parents if they have kids or two Adults in a marriage who are who are working because they have to I mean, gosh if you live around this area It's like there's no way you both have to work then nobody has time to volunteer even if it is your spiritual calling But but why yeah, why why who is there why they're there and how to keep them there? I think are great questions seems to me like Probably the basic issue one of the basic issues is power and Education as people have become more educated They they hold on to their own power they make decisions and so there's less willingness to say Even the church that I love tells me this is what I have to do and it's like no that doesn't make sense to me and so I think it's and then the power is you know with the men and so women a Lot of us here have had very serious roles in the church, but it's still that the official power if you will comes from those men that tell us what to do that Really and so I think that's the issue. I think that's why a lot of people leave younger and older That it's like it doesn't make sense to me to Know in my conscience. I remember going to Catholic school and really Getting lessons on informed conscience And so if you really have taken that seriously and have informed your conscience Then you follow it and you do what you know is true for yourself with your prayer and with your education and Yeah Yeah, I as a sociologist I appreciate the the question and the point about power and Ethiccy right so our ability to make a difference or have an effect And I think I get back to the question of women doing the lion's share of work in parishes That's a place where they're having an impact right this is a huge and in fact if you look at the history of Nuns and part of the reason why many nuns became nuns is because that was an outlet and a way for them to have Really high-powered positions like over Catholic hospitals over school systems That was a place of efficacy That they that they could occupy and so a very good point. How does that translate then now? To this new social reality that we live in and what does that mean in this juxtaposition of faith? And the desire for power and efficacy. How does all that balance? Hi, I I want to talk about two parishes that I've had experience in one in st. Jerome in Norwalk and This place was built back in 1960 as a school with a gym attached and They were going to build a church But until they did that the gym served as the parish church and it still does and I remember my wife telling me years ago that a Visiting priest came to our parish and I think he was a liturgist And he looking at the thing and saying you know if he were in charge He would simply tear it down and start all over and that annoyed her very much because she said he had no sense of What had actually happened in that building in terms of the joys and the sorrows and all the wonderful things that had happened in that particular community and and I guess the point of of that is that the building and We've got some lovely buildings here But the building is not the parish the people of the parish and our parish fortunately has experienced a tremendous Spirit which I think is still still functioning today The other parish I wanted to tell you about is st. Madeleine Sophie in Philadelphia. I grew up there and that was built to as with a It was a very large building with a school of large school and then a church attached to that and I That's really where I was formed as a as a Catholic and I'm very much happy about that experience But some years ago because of the demographic changes in the city They clustered our parish with a neighboring parish and then at some point after that they decided well They didn't need to keep both places open. So they closed st. Madeleine's and then finally what they did was to put it up for sale and they sold it and You can find online a Picture of the interior of the church with the high Walter and the sidewalkers and all of that And then you can also find a picture of the church as it is today It was bought by the Philadelphia Academy of Circus Arts, and if you look If you look at the picture you can see the the trapeze is in all of that hanging from the ceiling of the parish So it's a lovely building. It's being put to good use, and I'm sure the people there will probably at some point or other Feel some wonderful spiritual experience. I Love those stories. Thank you. I Thanks for the nice talk and all like that. Um, I Just like to throw a question out say 20 years into the future. Okay, I Have this awful vision And I hope it's not the way it all works out, but my awful vision is Well, you know the Jews talk about the law and the prophets I think that they've got to be two Catholic churches one based on the law And traditional and all like that and there'll be a second one of the spirit of the prophets Which will be very disorganized a lot of people that are committed to the extent they can be But still keeping in touch Uh, and then I see maybe another whole group that'll just merge into the the general population I'll pick up whatever new things come along and all like that so it seems to me that the The decline in numbers is likely to continue That the type of Catholicism is likely to diverge Anyway, that's that's my dim vision Yeah, yeah, and it's it's worth being attuned to that, you know getting these moments of Vitality and vibrancy and what does that look like? The personal parishes I mentioned, you know, the a lot of times these first-generation migrant parishes There's you know integrating likes So for example a predominantly Filipino parish that has some bung-a-vee in the nine days before Christmas I mean you talk about throngs of people this very vibrant Filipino parish And then other parishes we might say oh, this is this parish is struggling We cluster it with all of these other parishes And who gets to make that call and what happens to the church it is I think you're right to look forward to the future with some questions about What happens in that because in my mind as a sociologist again attuned to the dynamics of power You think about both the grassroots what's happening how people are owning their parishes They're building that this is a very common model right you build the school first you have church in the basement This is an instruction even from bishops. She doesn't even even run Bank banks and loans give loans to build a neighborhood around the parish to this is how it works so infrastructure building grassroots, but then you have these structures right these responses and the decline of priests or The the ways that the the model of leadership is built that can't always accommodate both of those things so far the church has been a phenomenal absorbent of Descent and difference within but many speak about yeah What happens if there are fractures and differences of opinion of what those outcomes look like which might in fact look like Yeah, a pretty pretty different kind of church or churches So I'm gonna draw this to a close and I have an announcement or two But before I make them will you please join me in thanking Trisha for So Two announcements. So first just a little commercial for the next event in the Catholic Studies program, which is next Monday It's at 7 30 and it's in the Multimedia room in the lower level of the library where Father Tom Fitzpatrick the oldest member of the Jesuit community here We'll be talking on that topic beloved of the elderly sexuality and prayer if you know him you know that He's gonna say something really interesting and we have no idea what it will be But he's very very concerned to talk about this is serious topic. I'm just joking a bit But it's a serious topic so 7 30 in the library in the library lower level On Monday you can you can get up close to Father Tom The other thing I want to announce is what we always announce at this point, which is we always announce the Speaker for next year some of you may have picked up the little flyer at the back that I prepared to For her, but I think I can safely say that next The next of Callahan lecture will be given by a millennial nun who is not a nun That is she is a nun. She's a sister of St. Joseph She is a millennial. She's in her early 30s Her name is Colleen Gibson. She was a student at Fairfield years ago Graduated from Fairfield as the valedictorian and the captain of the women's rugby club and went off to become a religious sister She works in social work in Camden Which is a tough place to be in New Jersey And you know for the first time I think in this series it came to me that maybe it wasn't a good idea Just to have academics during these lectures that it would be a good idea to have someone whose Experiences somewhat closer to the person for whom this series is Dedicated so Colleen Gibson next year. She's also she's not just a social worker You can say just a social worker. She's a writer and blogger and she's an excellent Presence and speaker and I hope you'll all put it in your calendars for October the 7th the first Wednesday in October next year So with that, thanks again to Tricia. Thanks to to Catherine for doing the introduction I thanks to all of you for being here. Now, you know where we meet you can come back. Thank you