The Emerging Catholic Church: A Community’s Search for Itself (review)

Tom Roberts is best known for his work as a journalist and this book emerged out of a series that ran in the National Catholic Reporter. Roberts writes as a journalist rather than from a scientific or theological perspective. His discussion of the emerging church is drawn from his observation of more than a quarter century of religious news. He describes the book as reflecting a very personal view of the big picture of things that have irrevocably changed since the Second Vatican Council.

Chapter 1 opens with a description Sister Thea Bowman’s 1989 address to the bishops of the United States. Sister Bowman’s plea for a more collegial approach to leadership, greater participation from the laity, and openness to diversity seems to represent what Roberts hopes will emerge. He contrasts Sister Bowman’s vision of the church with the increasing rigidity and legalism of United States bishops since that time.

Having assessed the tensions over how to interpret the Second Vatican, Roberts moves to a helpful presentation of the changing demographics of the Catholic Church in the United States. He shows that while the church is shrinking in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, it is growing in the South and the West. He provides useful context for some of the statistics that have become fixed in the imagination of Catholics. For example, though 32 percent of those who were raised Catholic in the United States have left the church, the numbers for the mainline Protestant Churches are worse (even the Baptists lose 39% of their flock). His analysis shows that compared with much of the rest of the world, we have a high percentage of priests to laity; however, it also shows that priests are not distributed according to population and the likelihood of growing shortages in the future.

The following three chapters concentrate on the sexual abuse crisis in the church, its fallout, and what it reveals about clerical culture. Roberts demonstrates that the first warnings about sexual predators in the clergy were brought forward as early as the 1940s, but he primarily follows the story as it unfolded from its first national coverage in the June 7, 1985 edition of NCR. While it is a gloomy subject, Roberts’ treatment is concise and his analysis is compelling.

The final chapters of the book are eclectic in nature. Chapter 6 focuses on three case studies of the church on the margins or the Church in mission territory and in urban centers, which reveal the less hierarchical church Roberts hopes for in the future. In chapters 7, 8, and 9 he provides materials from sources such as Phyllis Tickle, Father Richard Rohr, Sister Joan Chittister, Richard Gauillardetz, Father John O’Malley, Thomas Beaudoin, and others that address issues related to authority and to what can change in the emerging church. While this book is not appropriate in an academic setting, it would be useful for parish libraries and for book clubs.