As I catapult into middle-age with all of its liabilities (e.g., those extra pounds that cannot be taken off with a blow-torch), one of the advantages is gaining a bit of perspective (if that was all one gained, it would be all right). One enjoys watching new generations of Catholics coming forward and discerning how the Lord will employ them and their gifts in building the kingdom. I think I have a four and a half generation perspective now, by which I mean I am ready to make vast generalizations about groups of Catholics some 15 years apart from ages 20-60. Let's put me at about 45, give or take (give) a few years. This is what I see.

     The faithful Catholics some fifteen years ahead of me were blind-sided by the pseudo-reforms following Vatican II. They were Cassandras whom no one would believe when they declared that the sky was falling. Some became very bitter and a few even left the Church and waited in vain for it to come to its senses. Others turned to prayer and fasting and to apparitions for the spiritual sustenance they needed and were not finding in their parishes. Many of the dissenters in the Church are of that generation. They have not left the Church. Most of them are still extremely smug in their conviction that the Zeitgeist will eventually change in their favor but they also feel their momentum has been stalled by an intractable and retrograde pontiff. They are still fighting the battles of their youth and don't realize that today's youth finds their battles passe.

     The faithful Catholics of my generation have rushed to the intellectual ramparts. We have been laboring to fortify the foundations by defending the very basics of the faith. We have been determined to do so not in any pre-Vatican II formulaic fashion but to do so by reformulating the basics in terminology more accessible to our times and to draw upon the best of modern thought (especially that of Pope John Paul II) to deepen our understanding and the understanding of others. Most of us are scarred from the battles and our manners aren't so good, for we have been resisted by our colleagues and treated very badly on occasion. But, as a result, we have the savvy and focus of old war horses who are ready and eager to fight a few more battles before we are put out to pasture. If you need polemics, you can count on us. The dissenters of our generation left the Church and have little or no interest in returning. Even concern about the future of their children doesn't seem to draw them back; they display a kind of arrogance that since they survived the ravages of the sexual revolution, drugs, and general misbehavior (yeah, right), so too can their children. In my speaking engagements to young people, I regularly apologize for what my generation has done to the world. Some of us are very sorry. More should be.

     Those a half generation younger than myself, the thirty-five year old faithful Catholics have learned to move ahead by ducking the cross-fire. They saw how embattled my generation was and learned to bide their time and watch their backs. Many of them have stealthily and nigh miraculously negotiated hostile graduate programs and selection committees and landed jobs in places--like diocesan family life offices--where their kind (faithful Catholics) have not been welcome for a full generation. They are using their positions of influence to try to revitalize the institutions they serve. It is slow and painstaking work, but they are making progress. The dissenters in this age group use the Church to their advantage. They practice a smorgasbord Catholicism; they adhere to what they find pleasing; they reject what they do not; they are not really passionately committed to anything.

     Now to the kids. Those in their young twenties and young teens. There are few if any "dissenters" in this group. Unspecified Catholicism has little appeal to the passions of youth. These kids are on a quest--a quest for holiness. They say so quite straightforwardly and unabashedly. They want to be holy. And they have some idea of what it takes; they go to daily Mass, they go to confession regularly; they are often found praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. They accept all of the Church's teachings and just want to know more about them. They don't really feel strange. They look like the rest of their age group, slovenly and even sometimes sporting earrings and colorful hair. But they love Christ and the Church and are simply prepared to follow the Pope and His Church wherever he goes.

     From where I sit, the state of the Church looks surprisingly good. Dissenters still hold the vast majority of positions of power but they are aging and the upcoming generations are well poised to occupy the vacuum they and their ideas have created.