Michael Kelly
“Doubt goes hand-in-hand with faith, but it is the approach to the doubt that leads to spiritual growth”, writes Editor Michael Kelly
The British-based sociologist of religion Grace Davie has coined the term “believing without belonging” to describe religion in post-World War II Britain. Her basic thesis is that there is a huge disparity in modern Britain between indices of religious belief, which remain relatively high, and statistics which reflect membership of a particular Church or denomination and statistics in terms of attendance at Mass or religious ceremonies, both of which are in marked decline.
The number of Britons describing themselves as Anglican has halved in the last 30 years from 40% to 20%.
Between 2012 and 2014, in particular, the Church of England lost some 1.7million members leading former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey to predict that Anglicanism will be extinct in Britain within a generation.
Figures for Catholics in Britain are considerably better, having fallen by just 1% – from 10% to 9% – in 30 years, though there is no room for complacency.
According to Prof. Davie, ‘believing without belonging’ best expresses the place of faith in modern Britain where the sacred persists, but not necessarily in traditional forms.
Insight
How might we apply this insight to modern Ireland? Now, the most obvious health warnings about such an extrapolation is that Britain is not Ireland and that, when it comes to the Church, Ireland is not a coherent entity. In some city centre parishes in Dublin, for example, Mass attendance is running at around 2%. In other middle class parts of the capital, Mass attendance is over 30% while in many areas outside of Dublin, Mass attendance is estimated to be anywhere from 40%-60%.
It’s patently obvious that attendance at Church services in Ireland has fallen dramatically, but not as dramatically as in other western European countries.
According to the most-reliable polling, around one in three Irish Catholics attend Mass every week, the figure rises to almost two in three when the question is asked as to whether one attends Mass at least monthly. Allowing for some exaggeration and residual feeling from the lapsed that they ought to be going to Mass, the figures are still quite high.
But what about the faith and beliefs of Irish Catholics? To mark the 2012 International Eucharistic Congress, The Irish Times commissioned a poorly-worded and badly-executed survey of Irish Catholics.
The design of the research showed a very poor understanding of Catholicism, but, nonetheless, some interesting detail can be gleaned from the results.
Almost two-thirds of Catholics (62%), according to the research, believe the consecration at Mass only represents the body and blood of Christ. Apparently, just 26% of Irish Catholics believed in the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist.
The same is likely to be true of many other key teachings. Critics of such polls argue that they are a blunt instrument, and they are. But, only a fool would believe that the faith of Irish Catholics is in rude health.
Many Irish Catholics have been infected by the tendency to see the goal of the faith journey as doubt, as if doubt was an end in and of itself rather than an impulse to deepen faith.
I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who speak confidently about their lack of faith in this teaching or that and then when each and every one of their questions is answered, they simply respond: “I don’t know”. In the spiritual tradition, doubt has always been seen as indication that one is in need of nourishment. The spiritual masters have used the metaphor of hunger: when one feels hungry, they don’t simply sit with the hunger, they eat. Doubt goes hand-in-hand with faith, but it is the approach to the doubt that leads to spiritual growth.
Deeper questions
The fact is that many Irish Catholics don’t know where to go to answer the deeper questions. Sometimes they have asked priests or their fellow Catholics and been less-than-nourished by the response. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that there isn’t an answer, or if there is, it’s not to be found in the Church.
Irish Catholics have been lazy as a result of our mono-religious culture where a tradition of inquiry was – at best – discouraged.
The idle reliance on the culture to inculcate Catholicism has also been disastrous. It has led to a situation where many Irish Catholics belong to the Church without believing in key tenets of the faith.
