A year ago, there appeared in the National Catholic Reporter an account of a Catholic men's gathering at Cape Cod, which the periodical said offered "glimpses of a future church". Blazing the path to this church of the future were the author, Bill Mitchell, and his buddies – "nine guys ranging in age from 57 to 69" (all of them white, judging by the accompanying photo).
They kicked things off with some hiking, they relaxed by a fireplace, they lunched. Then they read the Bible and "headed into the kitchen and gathered around a table, a processional provided with some liturgical oomph as Peter opened his mobile phone [and] played the 'Glory Be' he created by layering multiple recordings of his own voice". But oops: "We forgot to plan a sign of peace. Vincent reminded us, and there followed 72 hugs." Eventually, they performed a pseudo-consecration and took something like Communion. Then they went home.
As I read The Atlantic's recent cover story calling for the abolition of the priesthood, I couldn't help but be reminded of that earlier NCR essay. Here was James Carroll, another aging white American boomer, dreaming of a Catholicism that reverts to some mythical original Christianity, freed from priests and prelates and religious orders, from fusty structures and the cobwebbed accumulation of centuries of Roman tradition. A Catholicism, in other words, that might look and sound a lot like Bill Mitchell's: just some guys, reading the Good Book, hugging it out, lunching and reflecting.
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