The Future Church: How Ten Trends are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church
John L Allen, Jr
Doubleday, 2009.
ISBN 978-0-385-52038-6
John Allen’s new book is worth reading, not because he is “right” – readers will vary in their judgements of that – but because he offers an intelligent example of reading the signs of the times. In this sense he is reiterating the central message of the Second Vatican Council: Imagine a new way of being Church! You can add to that statement, “Or else…” and name the consequences as you see them.
Allen developed six criteria for what he calls “trends”: a “trend” must be global; have impact at the grass roots; involve official leadership; have potential to explain a variety of factors; contain predictive power; and not be ideologically driven.
His ten “trends” are: A World Church, Evangelical Catholicism, Islam, The New Demography, Expanding Lay Roles, The Biotech Revolution, Globalization, Ecology, Multipolarism and Pentecostalism.
Allen deals with each “trend” by starting with a discussion of some of the pertinent facts. For example, he notes in reference to “A World Church” that in 1900 there were roughly 266.5 million Catholics worldwide. Of these, 200 million were in Europe and North America and only about 66 million elsewhere. In the year 2000, there were slightly under 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide. Of these, 350 million were in Europe and North America and 720 million lived in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Latin America alone accounted for some 400 million.
In reference to “Evangelical Catholicism”, Allen tables some statistics from a 2002 Pew Global Attitudes Project which asked people around the world to say how important religion was to them. The following are some of the percentages who said it was “very important”: Indonesia 95%, Nigeria 92%, India 92%, Philippines 88%, United States 59%, Poland 36%, Great Britain 33%, Italy 27% and Germany 21%.
Having laid out some of the facts, he speculates on the implications of these facts.
Allen reminds us that what preoccupies us in the affluent West, is not the same as what preoccupies people in Asia and Africa and Latin America. Given their preponderance in the Catholic Church today, we would do well to pay close attention to what is happening there, if only to avoid the pitfall of thinking that what is happening “here” is all important.
Allen states towards the end of the book: “What this century will demand will be the courage to be globally Catholic, moving out of the parochialism of a given language, ethnicity, geographical region, or ideology, and embracing membership in a truly “catholic” Church.”
Nothing will bring about change within the Catholic Church more effectively than the tough facts of history – the demands of kings and governments and parliaments, the loss of the Church’s power in the civil sphere, the mass movements of history such as the environmental movements and so on. The Church is at its best when it is facing those facts with courage, faith and intelligence, when it is in serious dialogue with those facts, seeking to join with men and women of good will in the pursuit of justice and peace for all.
The originating event that gave birth to the Church is the Incarnation – the enfleshing of God. God has taken human experience and human history and human culture seriously. It is in the midst of these tough facts of life – messy and sometimes tragic – that we become Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Church is not a sanctuary from the world but a sign in it. Allen’s book is a sturdy reminder of this truth.
Michael Whelan SM
A Persistent Peace:
One Man’s Struggle for a
Non-Violent World
John Dear SJ
Loyola Press, Chicago, 2008.
I met John Dear on one of his recent visits to Australia. I attended his retreat in Mittagong and invited him to speak at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).
He is such an unassuming man you can hardly believe he has been jailed many times and sometimes for months at a time for civil disobedience. It seems he couldn’t hurt a fly let alone do something worthy of arrest. He explained that the story of Jesus overturning the money changers’ tables in the Temple was Jesus’ proclamation that his followers must never settle for “business as usual”. Jesus came to overturn the system and invited us to do the same.
The retreat mustered a few dozen trainee troublemakers but the overwhelming response at UTS saw many standing in the corridor unable to hear the gentle voice of this preacher. We soon realised we were listening to the next Daniel Berrigan or Martin Luther King.
His autobiography, A Persistent Peace, traces the childhood and youth experiences that formed him and led him to the Jesuits, sometimes with strong resistance. He recalls the early meetings with Daniel Berrigan, Martin Luther King, Martin Sheen, Joan Baez, the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador, Mother Teresa, Bishops Helder Camara and Oscar Romero. He was always encouraged at the edges if not always by his superiors.
