Catholic Delimmas.(Book Review)

A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America By Peter Steinfels Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $26

It's difficult to generalize about a religious group with 65 million adherents, but an outsider might reasonably observe that American Catholics today are a confused lot. It is perhaps not surprising that there is significant diversity of opinion in such a large population, particularly in one that exists in a liberal democracy. But in his new book, A People Adrift, Peter Steinfels argues that it is more than just particular disagreements that plague the American Church today; it is a lack of direction.

The conservative and liberal factions, argues Steinfels, have little to say to each other any more, and the vast majority of Catholics in between have nowhere to turn for guidance. It is this last group with whom he seems most concerned.

Steinfels, who writes the "Beliefs" column for the New York Times, and who served for many years as editor of Commonweal, provides a useful historical perspective on this breakdown. He notes the significance, for instance, of former New York governor Mario Cuomo's signing legislation to provide public funding for abortions and the subsequent threat of excommunication issued against him by Archbishop John O'Connor.

Cuomo's response, a theological one, that "there is no Church teaching that mandates the best political course for making our belief everyone's rule" shocked American Catholics, who had rarely heard Catholic political leaders publicly challenge the Church hierarchy.

On the flip side of the question of political versus religious loyalty, there was the moment when many Catholics began to rethink their historic affiliation with the Democratic Party. At the 1992 Democratic convention, former Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey was banned from presenting his view opposing the party platform on abortion, despite his support for just about every other Democratic article of faith, and his tremendous popularity.

And, in another historical reality check, Steinfels notes that the recent sex abuse scandals are nothing so new. Most of the priests involved, he maintains, are of an older generation, the majority of the incidents took place decades ago, and many similar charges were made in the early '90s.