Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, the “Distinguished Professor for Philosophy, Gender, and Culture at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY,” sees in Bill Keller’s recent call for Catholics who disagree with their Church to leave an, “important broader transformation in the self-understanding of the Roman Church,” specifically, the embrace of an ethic of “neoliberal” rational choice:
The idea that Roman Catholics could or should simply walk away from their church communities and chose different ones clearly requires a novel model of belonging. One cannot “simply” walk away from family—and even if a person is forced to make this painful decision, everyone will carry a modicum of pain, including the family members who remain. [ . . . ]Presenting “walking away,” therefore, as a viable option in which the remaining community remains unchanged or even changed for the better requires a paradigm shift — away from the model of the church as family to one of the church as a community of choice for rational free agents.
Viefhues-Bailey also sees this viewpoint as being espoused by members of the church hierarchy, particularly Benedict XVI in his prediction that the Church of the future will no longer have the large numbers, public prestige, or worldly trappings that it once took for granted. Catholics in Philadelphia are undergoing the painful birthpangs of this new church as Archbishop Charles Chaput sells off the Archbishop’s residence and closes many dearly loved schools and parishes.
Yet a prediction is not a wish. Benedict may take hope in the fact that those who remain in a smaller church will be committed to rebuilding, but that is very far from applauding the choices of one’s fellow believers to desert the sacraments and fall into apostasy.
Nor, of course, is it quite so easy for Catholics to leave the Church. Even Catholics formally excommunicated are still counted as members of the body, bound by the Church and her laws (including, as I understand it, the obligation to attend Sunday mass). In short, if Bill Keller thinks writing a column in the Times is enough to remove him from the Church, he is mistaken.
That said, Viefhues-Bailey has put his finger on an important and unfortunate tendency in our culture. While showing respect for the convictions and considered choices of our friends, we should refrain from speaking of people who were baptized and confirmed as Catholics but only embraced the faith later in adulthood (after a period either of disbelief or of participation in another Christian community) as “converting” to Catholicism. They are not receiving a new faith, but reclaiming their birthright. They are returning to something that they never really left, however far they wandered.
