c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ Catholicism took a beating in the media during the national funeral interlude a couple of weeks ago but not, this time, because the media were deliberately or consciously anti-Catholic.

However, both the tone and the content of the coverage proved that the producers, associate producers, writers and news directors have, to say the least, an odd image of Catholicism. They perceive Roman Catholics as members of a quaint medieval institution that imposes rigid rules on its members but makes compromises in favor of important people regardless of their lack of virtue. Moreover, according to this view, Catholics have very odd religious beliefs appearing to some to be a holdover from the Middle Ages.

Thus, following the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and his sister-in-law, such question as these were asked: Why did the church forbid a funeral Mass? Why did it permit cremation? Why does it permit people whose private lives leave something to be desired to pose as good Catholics at the time of death in their family? And is it really true that Catholics believe in life after death?

The contretemps over funeral versus memorial was started by the Associated Press, which certainly ought to know better. The only difference between a Mass when the body is present and not present is that in the latter there is no blessing (“commendation”) for the body at the end of Mass. The trouble over cremation resulted from calls to TV stations from Catholics demanding to know why the church permitted cremation for this family when it denied it to others. Neither the callers nor the networks who went into a tizzy over the issue were aware that the church has permitted cremation for almost a quarter-century. Are not some members of the family notorious and public sinners? Our God is a God of forgiveness. Besides, let the one without sin throw the first stone.

Do Catholics really believe in life after death?

Yes, they do. So do at least three-quarters of all Americans, which may well not include the people who work in newsrooms. Such folk find the belief strange and think those who believe it are a declining and superstitious minority.

How could the media so mess up the beliefs and practices of a group that is one-quarter of the American population? Malice? Ignorance? Stupidity? Deadlines? Some strange combination of all four?

No matter how one explains the phenomenon, it is a form of institutional anti-Catholicism, aided and abetted by the incompetents who act as official or quasi-official Catholic spokespersons.

As for belief in life after death, I’m sure no one at The New York Times or the Washington Post or Time or the networks will believe this, but belief that humans survive death has actually increased sharply in this century, according to polls by the National Opinion Research Center.

When one compares the beliefs of those born in the first birth cohort of the century with those born in the 1970s, faith in life after death has increased by some 15 percentage points. This increase is concentrated among Catholics, Jews and those with no religious affiliation.

Catholic belief in life after death has increased from approximately 60 percent among the older cohorts to almost 80 percent among those born in the 1970s. For Jews belief in life after death has doubled _ to almost 50 percent _ across the same cohort lines.

How can this be? The story is complicated and interesting. For Catholics it is a story of people becoming clearer about what they believe because of the extraordinary efforts of Catholic parishes and Catholic schools to educate Catholic immigrants. For Jews the pattern is less clear because even in a huge sample like NORC’s General Social Survey there are not enough Jews to do precise and detailed analysis.

Naif that I am, these stories seem to me to be news. Yet the religion paradigm for the media does not permit them to notice it. The only increase in faith they can cope with is the”surge of fundamentalism”_ which, in fact, has not happened. Belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible, for example, has declined. That Roman Catholics and Jews are now more likely to believe in life after death than they were at the beginning of the century simply can’t be true, can it? Let’s pretend, at any rate, that it’s not true.

As a sociological colleague said to me, an agnostic is someone who is afraid that there might be a God after all.

DEA END GREELEY