Introduction: Bad sermons -- I. The great transformation: 1. The end of the Immutable fortress church -- 2. The construction of the American Catholic ghetto -- 3. Dismantling the ghetto in the 1960s -- 4. The American cultural revolution blindsides the Church. II. Philosophical undercurrents of the great transformation: 5. Cultural relativism seduces a generation -- 6. Ethical emotivism creates a novel morality -- 7. The authoritarian personality legitimizes suspicion of authority -- 6. Secularism emerges as the dominant American paradigm. III. Evolution of a national religion: 9. America as a moral and religious community -- 10. A Protestant nation becomes Judeo-Christian -- 11. The end of the Judeo-Christian era -- 12. Secularists win a place in the national religion. IV. The deeper problem of Catholic identity: 13. Church, sect, denomination: three kinds of religious body -- 14. The denominational mentality -- 15. Harmony before doctrine: forging denominational consensus -- 16. The denominational consensus -- 17. The denominational mentality causes membership decline -- 18. The denominational mentality destroys the dogmatic principle -- 19. The denominational mentality erodes orthodoxy. V. The search for a national moral consensus: 20. Experimenting with a national religion based on morality -- 21. Evolution of the personal liberty principle -- 22. The inevitable culture war -- 23. American Catholicism's key battles in the culture war. VI. The decline and fall of the Catholic Church in America: 24. The probable demise of American Catholicism -- 25. Losing the Catholic voice will harm American culture -- 26. The church faces a crisis of leadership. VII. Can the fall be prevented?: 27. Three small steps that must be taken immediately -- 28. The Church must identify its enemies -- 29. The secularist agenda is Enemy Number One 30. What a vigorous, surviving Church will look like -- Conclusion: "Holy Troy shall fall" -- Appendixes: 1. Statistical evidence of American Catholic decline -- 2. A critique of the personal liberty principle.
Summary:
Many Catholics blame Vatican II for the decline of the Church in America these past 30 years: traditionalists say it caused too many changes, liberals say too few. In this book, sociologist David Carlin shows that although Vatican II was the flashpoint for change in the Church, the roots of today's crisis go deeper than anything that happened at the Council. Basing his conclusions on sociological analysis rather than on theology or Church teachings, Carlin shows that in the 1960's the Church in America was weakened by the triumph of tolerance as an American virtue (which led Catholics to downplay their uniquely Catholic beliefs for the sake of unity) and then was battered by a culture that, seemingly overnight, had become boldly secularist and even libertine. Called by Vatican II to engage the culture in order to evangelize it, while pressed by the culture to downplay its Catholicity in the name of tolerance, the Church in America lost its way. The result? A widespread loss of Catholic identity; weakening of fidelity to Church teachings; Catholics abandoning their faith; and a diminishment of the Church's role as a moral voice in American society. Carlin's analysis has uncovered a problem that's older and even more dangerous for the future of Catholicism than the deeds that have lately thrust the Church onto the front pages. Indeed, says Carlin, the scandals are merely symptoms of this deeper problem that will continue to drain the Church's vitality long after the scandals are forgotten.
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