On Respecting the Freedom of the Laity

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Andrew Greeley

Among the changes in the ambiance of the human condition in recent years, one of the most important, perhaps from the religious viewpoint the most important, is the expansion of choices which a person must make through the course of life. Choice means freedom. Freedom is a terrible burden, but there is no escaping it. Moreover, once humans have adjusted to a condition in which their lives are structured by a steady stream of choices, of personal decision-making (especially when this structure is joined with much greater life expectancy), they are astonished and offended when they are told that in certain areas they must simply do what their told without any input into the decision-making or any persuasive reasons given for the decision.

Consider the situation of our ancestors, let us say, a hundred to a hundred and fifty years ago. Most of their choices were already made for them. They would be what their fathers and mothers were, farmers and farmers’ wives. They would, barring famine, live in the same villages in which they were born. They would marry someone from the same village or the next village. They would do what the priest told them because he was the absolute power in the village. There was dissent, of course, and some people did leave. But leaving or staying (or becoming a priest or a religious) were the basic decision alternatives. In the matter of a marriage partner, the range of choices was necessary small. Life was relatively simple and uncomplicated. Most of us, despite nostalgic longings for the simple life, would go crazy in such a context.

Fifty years ago, when my generation was growing up during the war, between depression and prosperity (that we never dreamed possible), much had changed, but had not changed. Few of us had cars. We dated people from the parish or the next parish or in some cases, two or three parishes away. A romantic involvement with those mysterious and presumably uncivilized folk we called "South Side Irish" was as imaginable as a romance with a Tibetan. There was a theoretical choice to attend college, but, fearful of the return of the Great Depression, most of us opted for security – a nurse, a teacher, a secretary, a cop, a fireman, a clerk, an occasional (very occasional) lawyer or doctor. If we went to college, we went to a commuter college in Chicago. When we married we moved one or two parishes west. We intended to send our children to parochial schools. We were active in the Knights of Columbus, the American Legion, and the Altar and Rosary Society. We took the Legion of Decency pledge and some of us even kept it. Divorce was unthinkable. We tended to have large families and agonized over birth control, practicing it, but confessing it at Christmas and Easter. We voted Democratic (naturally). The parish priest was not automatically obeyed, but we listened very carefully to what he said and took his words very seriously, except when he suggested we should not vote for Franklin Roosevelt.

Our range of choices was considerably expanded over that of our grandparents, but our lives were not structured by the constant challenge of choice and the freedom which comes with that challenge.

Consider the present – at lest for middle class Catholics. Naturally we go to college (like 60% of all Americans). We must choose among colleges as distant as San Diego and Miami. We must choose among programs that run from women’s studies to oceanography, fields which were unknown to most of us not so long ago. Our possible marriage partners come from all over the country and indeed from all over the world. We have a smorgasbord of careers to choose from and sometimes we make several choices in the course of our lifetime. Depending on our employer or our own personal tastes, we will live anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world. We don’t go back to the old neighborhood very often, in part because the old neighborhood isn’t there any more. We worry about where we will send our children to school, how to pay for their college education and how to protect them from drugs and pregnancy. Orders from our pastor, our bishop, even the Vatican plus a dollar and a half will get us a ride on Rich Daley’s subway. Divorce is a seriously considered option often in our marriages. Women have careers too. Choice, choice, choice.

Sometimes we make wise choices, sometimes unwise, but we cannot escape the obligation of choice. Our personalities, our characters our shaped by a constant exercise of freedom – and the agony of decision making that freedom imposes.

The Catholic Church has yet to make its peace with the inevitability of the freedom of its laity. It does not like one bit the laity’s assumption of the right to make its own decisions, and of its demand that it be persuaded instead of ordered. Indeed, the Church usually works on the implicit assumption that it is still dealing with peasants of a century ago who did what they were told (usually) without question, without argument, without the demand that it be heard, consulted, persuaded. Many pastors still assume that they have the same influence and power that their role models from a generation or two ago had. Catholics, they believe, still do what they’re told.

It ought to be patent by now that this is not so. When church leaders pretend to deny that the souls of the laity are now shaped by a constant exercise of freedom or lament the passing of the good old days when there was a lot less freedom, they have turned their faces against history. Moreover, they miss the point of their own tradition which has believed that virtue is formed by the frequent repetition of FREE human acts. In any event the days of the docile peasant and the not quite so docile immigrant parish are gone and they will never return. The church must adjust to the fact that in the European and North Atlantic world at any rate, the day of the free laity who make their own decisions after reflecting on the issues, who want to be heard, consulted, persuaded, is the world in which we live and work. In the present milieu, the laity reserve to themselves the right to say on what terms they will be Catholic. Nothing will change that fact, neither orders from Rome nor hysterical ranting from the tiny fundamentalist Catholic minority.

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