c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a 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 _ The most fundamental truth to remember when trying to understand Roman Catholicism in this country is that Catholics like being Catholic because they like the meaning and belonging, the stories and the community which Catholicism offers, whatever its other faults may be.

They stay in the church because of the sacraments, which tell the stories, and with the neighborhood parish, which provides the community.

Most academic and media types don’t get that. Neither do the Catholic elite, left or right. Hence none of these folk really comprehend the nature of the Catholic appeal.

Two social science books illustrate this point, one negatively and one positively.

In”Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed”(Harvard University Press), professor Gerald Gamm of the University of Rochester answers the question his title raises by arguing that Jewish congregations are”portable”and Catholic parishes are not.

Jewish temples and synagogues, he explains, are the most”congregational”in America. They are owned by their members, no central authority controls them. The members of the congregation can pull up stakes and move whenever they wish. So too can the congregation itself. Membership does not depend on territory.

Exactly the opposite is true, he suggests, for Catholics. Their parishes have firm geographic boundaries designed by central authority. They are fixed in place and cannot move. Therefore Catholics are much less likely to leave the neighborhood and the parish than Jews are likely to move to the suburbs.

In a process of suburbanization which goes back to the 1920s, there is little conflict between Jews and other groups when the latter move into a neighborhood, because Jews may simply move elsewhere. Catholics, however, move much more reluctantly and only after stubbornly refusing to give up their neighborhoods and parishes.

Gamm writes sensitively and gracefully. His research is meticulous. He does not moralize or blame anyone. Yet, alas, he does not understand the Catholic communal imagination.”Downtown”_ church headquarters _ creates neighborhood parishes because it cannot help but picture Catholics living in strong communities. The Catholic laity go along with this practice because their communal imagination sees local communities as part of their Catholic heritage. Loyalty to the parish is not so much imposed by authority, as Gamm seems to think, as part of the Catholic worldview. Because he overestimates the power of central authority in the Church he misses the point.

Another scholar, Michele Dillon of Yale, provides another angle of vision in her book,”Catholic Identity”(Cambridge University Press).

How do dissident Catholics, she asks, construct a self-description which enables them to be at ease with both Catholicism and dissent. It is a critical question because most Catholics _ clerical and lay _ dissent on at least some points of official teaching. Church authority insists there is only one possible Catholic identity and all dissidents are something other than”good”Catholics.

This may be the case canonically and theologically, but the inescapable truth is that most Catholics choose to belong on their own terms and fashion their own personal Catholic identity.

In order to sharpen the question, Dillon concentrates on three notably dissident groups _ pro-choice Catholics; gay and lesbian Catholics; and Catholics who agitate for the ordination of women.

At the risk of over-simplifying her intricate analysis, Dillon shows that these dissidents value their Catholic heritage and do not want to give it up. So, instead of leaving the church, they remain inside and campaign for reform, in the name of principles of Catholic theory as they understand them.

It would be easier, perhaps, simply to leave the church. Many conservative Catholics and some church leaders tell them they should do that. But they won’t leave, even if many people outside the church think they are inconsistent.

Why won’t they leave? Because they like being Catholic. Their Catholic heritage is so much part of them that it is impossible to give it up.

Well, you might say, they are not good Catholics. Perhaps not, but _ though Dillon does not make the point _ God alone knows who is good and who is not. The 90 percent of Catholics who are dissident on fertility _ birth control and in vitro fertilization _ have clearly appealed from a church authority they think does not understand to a God whom they think does understand.

They can’t do that, you say? But they are doing it. There is absolutely no reason to think they will stop.

END GREELEY