If You Were a Bishop, by David Carlin

By David Carlin, The Catholic Thing, March 5, 2021

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

If you were an American Catholic bishop in the decades prior to Vatican II, your chief problem as an administrator was how to manage prosperity.  You had an ample supply of priests and seminarians and religious sisters.  You had churches filled to the brim every Sunday at three or four or five Masses.  You had a great multitude of generous Catholics who were quite willing to contribute money to the Church, including an ever-increasing number of Catholic millionaires who were happy to make very generous contributions.  (In those days, a million dollars was real money.)

If, on the other hand, you have been an American Catholic bishop in the decades following Vatican II, your chief problem as an administrator has been how to manage decline.  In this respect, your task has been rather like that of post-World War II British Prime Ministers, who had to manage the decline and collapse of the British Empire.  …