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Pope's visit excites lay people but doesn't erase problems

"People are excited that he's coming. He'ssaying, 'You matter in the universal church,' " says Sheila Garcia ofthe U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' office for the laity. "But formost laity, the church is what happens in their parish.

"Participation is what this country is allabout. We believe people … have a right to bring their gifts andtalents to their church. If they don't, many ministries won't get doneat all."

If Benedict could visit just three places beyondhis six jam-packed days in Washington and New York, he would see — in astruggling urban outpost in Boston, a Phoenix megachurch booming withHispanics and two stalwart small-town Iowa parishes that share a priest— much of the promise and the problems in U.S. Catholic life today.

It's not like the Catholic church in Europe,with its empty pews, or the Third World, where one in four parishes hasno priest, or in Islamic countries, where Catholics can't buildchurches.

The USA's 67 million Catholics live in a vibrantworld of faith and service, rooted in nearly 19,900 parishes. Laypeople, particularly women, have risen to new heights of participationand leadership. Where priests are scarce and overburdened, they keepthe lights on.

Yet this is a church under duress.

It's challenged by intense competition fromsecular culture and other religions. About 10% of people born Catholicsay they're no longer Catholic, according to a February study by thePew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Of Catholics, 55% say they practice theirreligion, and 61% say sacraments are "essential to my faith," findsanother study, released Sunday by Center for Applied Research in theApostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

The number of priests has declined for decades.

And faith in the leadership of the bishops wasshaken by the clergy sexual abuse crisis, which exploded into theheadlines in 2002 in Boston and reverberated nationwide.

"The church is on its heels in this society —divided and demoralized and damaged. It really needs this pope to comeand talk about the good things — to America's witness for life, itsrich parishes and ministries, its remarkable efforts for socialjustice," says R. Scott Appleby, a professor of Catholic history at theUniversity of Notre Dame.

He hopes the pope will "offer a powerful,charismatic, healing word about the abuse crisis to the laity, who needto hear this, and hear that the work of the Holy Spirit continues to begood and give life."

That's a message Catholics can take home to their parishes, the heart of the church.

Changing urban churches

The Catholic Church in America looks in someways like Boston's St. Mary of the Angels, a century-old parish,embattled but still standing, offering a multicultural ministry in theimpoverished and crime-ridden Roxbury neighborhood.

Founded by Irish and German immigrants, it isnow the parish home of African-Americans, Caribbean blacks andimmigrants from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic who go toEnglish or Spanish Masses.

The Boston archdiocese, wounded spiritually andfinancially by the abuse crisis, tried twice to shutter the parish inan economic move as the archdiocese confronted shifting demographics,declining attendance and $85 million in settlements with abuse victimsand legal fees.

Although the nationwide costs of the abusescandal were estimated by church studies at about $2 billion,population shifts out from inner cities were the primary reasondioceses closed 2.7% of parishes nationwide between 2000 and 2006,according to CARA.

Of the 20 dioceses that closed more than 10parishes in that period, all were in Northeast and Midwest dioceses,"where Catholics have migrated away to the Sun Belt or the suburbs.These changes would have occurred on their own, yet were likelyquickened by the sex abuse crisis," says CARA researcher Mark Gray.

St. Mary's was spared after nearby business andcommunity groups joined parishioners in pleading its case. Still, theparish is short on funds. Day-to-day administration is run by two agingstaff members, a retired executive doing the books and a nun coveringmany of the ministries. An annual intern from the Jesuit VolunteerCorps works with service programs. Volunteers do the janitorial work.

"After two years of frantic efforts, we've takena deep breath and carried on to the next crisis," says St. Mary'spastor David Gill.

He celebrates six Masses a week at St. Mary's,teaches classical languages at Boston College and serves as a chaplainfor a lay Catholic community. "The parish has to think about whathappens when I can't do this anymore," Gill says.

A shortage of priests

More than 17% of the 18,891 U.S. parishes in2005 had no full-time priest. Overseas, the shortage is more acute: 24%of parishes have no resident priest. But prospects are brighter abroad:From 1975 to 2005, U.S. ordinations fell 40.8% but climbed 59.9% fordiocesan priests worldwide.

Gill is 73 and worries, "Will they close the place when I leave?"

St. Catherine of Siena parish in Phoenix is hometo 4,500 families, including Mexican-born Ramon and Rosa Ramirez, whobring their 13 children here to be formed in the faith.

Of U.S adults, 24% say they are Catholic. But46% of immigrants say they are Catholic, compared with 21% ofnative-born U.S. adults, according to the Pew Forum.

The real numbers may be higher. HispanicCatholics are less likely, culturally, to register with a parish, saysSt. Catherine's pastor, the Rev. David Sanfilippo.

This week, 96 of his parishioners, includingRamon and Rosa Ramirez and eight of their children, plan to be inWashington, and 71 will follow Benedict to New York. Most of thesepilgrims don't even have tickets to the public events: They just hopeto catch a glimpse of their pope.

"The Vicar of Christ is coming to us. The leastwe can do is be present for him," says Rosa Ramirez, 42. "We areconcerned about people who suffer spiritually, who lose hope, whoselives can be meaningless. We worry about Catholics slipping away."

Most Catholics say they are proud to beCatholic. But only 43% say church teachings, the pope or bishops guidethem in "deciding what's morally acceptable," according to the CARAsurvey.

"We need Benedict to address our real crisis.It's not the priest shortage or the sex abuse crisis. It's education,"says Greg Erlandson, publisher of the Catholic weekly newspaper Our Sunday Visitor.

"Young Catholics today don't know the basics,and, often, their parents don't, either," he says. "How are we handingdown the faith?"

Catholic America also looks like the stalwartlittle Iowa parishes of St. John the Baptist in Mount Vernon and nearbySt. Isidore the Farmer in Springville.

They share one priest, while administrator SueSchettler and her all-female staff run the day-to-day ministries,supported by legions of male and female volunteers.

Lay ministries abound

More than 30,000 lay people are specially trained in ministry, and 80% are women, Garcia says.

Almost half of diocesan administrative posts(48%) are filled by women, according to a 2003 study, the most recentavailable, by the National Association of Church PersonnelAdministrators.

Their numbers climbed sharply after 1983, whenrevisions in canon law, which are the laws that govern the church,permitted laity to take on roles once reserved for priests.

Lay people can now take on positions frombecoming chancellors, which are similar to chief operating officers fordioceses, to reading Scripture during Mass, says Mary Jo Tully,chancellor of the Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., since 1990.

Not everyone is satisfied with this progress.Some fear that female lay leaders will be barely seen and not at allheard by Benedict.

"I'm glad he's coming to see a world beyond theVatican," says author Joan Chittister, a Benedictine sister in Erie,Pa. "But if he's not here to learn from the nature of the church, itsneeds and questions, then what good will it do? If half the Catholicworld, the women, are left out of the discussions, what can he learn?"

Many protest groups are clamoring for Benedict'sattention. Calls will ring out from various Catholic groups for moretransparency in church governance, greater acceptance for gays withinthe church, ordination for women, permission for priests to marry,punishment for bishops who failed to protect young people from abuse,and stronger opposition to the Iraq war.

However, administrators Tully and Schettler haveno complaints for Benedict. Neither could break away to see him.Neither seeks his acknowledgment.

"I don't do this because I'm looking forthanks," Schettler says. "I do it because I'm serving the people ofGod. I always assume I'm in the pope's prayers on a daily basis."

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