The number of people who would be comfortable with lay people and others, other than
    male celibate priests, administering parishes also rose 17%.

  72% of those polled favored the ordination of married men to priesthood.

  64% of those polled are for the ordination of women.

In a nutshell, the Gallup poll reveals a readiness among Catholics for many changes that will come with the impending shortage of priests.

There were other statistics that would give one pause:

  The number of those polled saying you can be a good Catholic and disagree with the
    Church's teaching on abortion also rose 17%.

  73% of those polled said that you can be a good Catholic without regularly worshipping 
    or participating in a congregation or faith community.

  52% felt that you can be a good Catholic and not be concerned about the poor.

  57% said that you can be a good Catholic without a spirit of stewardship of time, 
    talent or resources to a faith community.

When I read the first round of statistics, I felt like applauding. It sounds like the Church is becoming adult, no longer dependent on male, celibate clergy. But with the second round of statistics concerning the poor, abortion, stewardship, parish involvement, I became very concerned. It sounds like at least some Catholics are becoming more individualistic, disconnected, privatized, subjective about morality -- and swept along by the dominant culture around us.

This is not a commentary on the Catholic Church. I am sure surveys of other Christian churches, synagogues, mosques would reveal that the longer a religious body is rooted in a consumer culture like ours, that body is significantly influenced by the dominant culture.

I was teaching a course for a group of deacons recently, and we were reflecting on the influence of culture on faith and life. One of the deacons used an image that I am sure is a vivid one for many of us who saw it on TV. He said, "Christians in America are like the house and barn shown on the news when the Mississippi and other rivers were flooding recently. The house and barn were lifted up and washed away like playing cards. Sometimes people of faith seem to be being washed along with the flow of the values of the culture that we live in."

Another writer put it this way recently: "American Christians seem to have a preferential option for middle-class living over living the gospel."

In the 22nd Chapter of Matthew's gospel, verse 21, Jesus delivers that powerful statement when He is asked whether it is proper for "religious" people to pay a tax to a pagan emperor. Jesus says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's; but give to God what is God's."

Jesus sounds to me like the ultimate realist in that passage. If Caesar stands for the dominant culture or reality around us, Jesus seems to say, there are parts of ourselves, our time, or talent that need to cope with, mingle with, inter-act with, be with the culture, the politics, the reality around us. Or, if Caesar in some sense stands for the world, we cannot run from the world. We are in it. Our faith and spirituality needs to be lived out in the context of the world. Leonardo Boff and other liberation theologians have taught for years that there is no retreating from the world. No -- the Reign of God is being ushered into, is being revealed in the world. And the Church is the servant that helps in this process. Boff says that the world, the Reign of God, and the Church need to be kept in a healthy balance.

Give to Caesar, what is Caesar's.

But give to God, what is God's?

Perhaps the second part of Jesus' statement is the more difficult to assess. What is God's .... What do I, do we owe God?

A basic thing that we owe God is to not allow the house and the barn, our hearts, minds, to be washed away by the culture around us. But let us try to become more specific. What do we owe God? What is God's?

I think we owe God enough time and space each day for prayer, meditation, contemplation, so that we are always in communion with God. We owe God (and ourselves) a prayerful contemplative spirit. I was struck by Michael Jordan's language when he retired from basketball recently. "I have been on a roller coaster for nine years. I simply want to get off the roller coaster to experience other things." Many of us are on roller coasters of job, busyness, compulsive activity that do not allow us the time for God that we need, and God deserves. Many of us need to get off our own roller coasters.

What is God's? What do we owe God? Enough time on a regular basis to discern, sort through what seems to be God's will, God's plan, God's calling in our personal and relational lives. Struggling to name God's apparent will, we need further effort in submitting our will, our ego to God's plan. I think we owe God also the effort, time and energy needed to develop a critical awareness about the values that bombard us from the culture. Which are of the kingdom and deserving of support? Which are anti-Kingdom and therefore to be resisted?

What is God's? What do we owe God? I think God wants us to have a passion regarding our relationships -- our families, our co-workers and neighbors -- the stranger with whom we are not supposed to have eye contact. This seems scripturally, in both Old and New Testaments, to be a significant part of God's plan -- that human beings live in communion with each other. Scott Peck in his book, A World Waiting to be Born, speaks of our need to retrieve the value of civility. He describes civility as our unconditional acceptance of the other, because the other is unconditionally loved and accepted by the Higher Power, God.

What is God's? What do we owe God? I think we need to see or imagine ourselves as God's partners in the ongoing creating and salvation of creation and our world. I believe God has called us to this. I believe also we owe to God a posture of servanthood, or stewardship. Whatever we do, whoever we are -- blue collar or professional -- lay, religious, or clergy, Christ has called us to a life of foot washing, a life of service.

What is God's? What do we owe God? I believe we need to offer to God daily, a moral inventory. On a regular basis, God and other people deserve from us attitudes and behaviors of reconciliation. And something we certainly owe God is to live in a spirit and posture of praise and thanks. All is gift -- all is grace. All has come to us freely from God. With the Old Testament psalmist, constantly we should praise God for life and His benevolent care of us over the years. I was struck recently by how St. Paul begins his great letters with prayers of praise for the people that he worked with, and subsequently wrote. Each person in our lives, even difficult people, is a blessing, a grace. God deserves praise for these gifts. In fact, it would be good if we let people know how grateful to God we are for them.

What is God's? What do we owe God? I add this thought after completing AIDS awareness week in my parish. I think we owe God some real attempts at an integrated sexuality. Human sexuality is such a broad, pervasive reality. It cannot be relegated to the physical, genital acts so frequently and irresponsibly portrayed by some in the media. Sexuality involves a life-long quest to feel good about and love one's self as a male or female. Sexuality also refers to the capacity an individual has and develops to communicate, to relate, to be committed in relationships. Sexuality has been given to us, not to be trivialized, not to be exploited, but rather to be integrated into our personalities. We are embodied spirits; our souls are incarnated in flesh. One of the quests of adulthood is to overcome the guilt and shame associated with sexuality in the Story of the Fall and in so much of our religious tradition, to free ourselves of medieval metaphysics which some church people still use to the confusion of most others in the church, and the addictive, abusive trivializing of sex by the dominant culture.

The quest of adulthood is in part to move toward a healthy integration of human sexuality. So much of what is good, but also painful about the human condition, is tied into human sexuality. It would be good if parishes and congregations spent more time in research, conversation and positive education about human sexuality. The leadership for this should come from the people of God themselves, not just from the clergy. Our young people need to hear not just about the latest sitcom star who in the show's story is going to lose his or her virginity. Our young people need to hear that 60% of the adolescent population abstains from intercourse and with good, moral reasons.

What is God's? What do we owe God? Listen to God in Isaiah: "I am the Lord; there is no other." God wants to be at the center of our lives. We need to spend a lifetime naming and rooting out of our lives the subtle idolatries that keep us from God.

I talked to a colleague recently at the university where I teach. He was reflecting on his life and teaching. He said: "You know I teach all the right things when it comes to theology, community living, progressive parishes, the nature of the church. I have done my share of bashing the hierarchy, and wagging my finger at people in parishes who do not live up to my high standards. But I have begun to confront myself, look at myself. I am the church and I do not live up to the ideals that I espouse nearly as much as I should."

I jumped in with my own confession of talking a lot but not walking the talk. We concluded our time together with the insight that we are both a couple of Irish introverts who talk a good game, but need greater efforts at ourselves living the values that we teach.

What is God's? What do we owe God? I do not think God needs anything from us. But I do think God wants us to become holy. What is holiness? It is everything I have talked about so far: prayerfulness, a discerning spirit, a critical awareness, a passion for relationships and communion, partnership with God, servanthood toward each other and the world, a reconciling spirit, a sexuality that is morally and responsibly integrated -- beyond safe sex and serial monogamy. But holiness is also this self-confrontation that my colleague modeled and called me to, self-confrontation that leads to attitude and behavior change, real growth.

We live in a culture of Caesars. We need to be realistic enough to give to Caesar what is Caesar's. But let us not allow Caesar to wash away the barn and the house of our hearts, our souls, our minds.

In holiness, let us give to God what is God's.

Dave Hardin: Pat, we talk about this value system of ours, the consumer-driven economy. I've seen the polls and they indicate that people believe you can be a good Catholic or a good Baptist, or a good Jew, or a good Muslim regardless of what you do. It is okay. There is an enormous amount of self-selection in what counts.

You are talking here about being what I would call "generative." I happen to be spending some time in that area. My wife is deeply involved in the concept of generativity, which is the idea that once we've grown up and gotten our careers going a while, we get tired of just taking out of the system. Either we decide to retire, become comfortable and improve our golf game, or we decide to retire and do something for the planet. How do we get people to decide on making the generative option? What is your feeling about that?

Patrick Brennan:  I think we have to realize that the church in America now very much resembles the church in Europe in the 40's and 50's. The church in Europe was an aging church at the time, and I think the church in the United States is an aging, mid-life-and-up, kind of church. I think we have to ask the hard questions as Erikson posed the issue. Do we want to become stagnating Christians, sort of navel gazing and looking at our own intra-mural issues or do we, who now have leadership in the church and in the world, want to make a contribution to people younger than we? So the question is, what kind of world, what kind of church, do we want to pass on to generations behind us?

Hardin: I have heard people saying that they want their value system to change. They don't want to be just consumerists and eat up the latest electronic toy. They want to create something more than that, but they say, "If I stop buying, I am going to create a recession or depression." What is our answer to that? "If I don't buy the goods, I am going to throw people out of work?"

Brennan:  I am not an economist so I don't understand all of that, but I do think there is some wisdom in Twelve Step Spirituality which speaks of abstinence from that which is not life giving. As Christians and other believers get in touch with values that seem toxic, that seem to rub against the grain of the preaching of Christ, or whatever the religious tradition, I think we have to make a rather deliberate decision to abstain from some of that stuff.

Hardin: I think that is exactly right. I spent a lot of time in the Third World and I have observed a couple of things. One is that the people in the Third World -- if they are starving, of course, they are miserable -- but if they are just plain not receiving all the consumerist benefits that we have here, they are not necessarily unhappy. The Third World values are our values in helping people. If I don't consume, I can help someone. Is that maybe part of the value system the church has to teach?

Brennan:  A psychologist by the name of Theodore Isaac Rubin, uses the phrase, "the mythical it." He says that consumer culture is the ongoing pursuit of "the mythical it," until you acquire so many its, you realize they don't satisfy the heart's deepest hungers and thirsts. When you finally get the last "mythical it," that nudges you in a new direction.

Hardin: That is kind of an interesting way of putting it. We all have friends whose status in life seems to be a function of what kind of car they have or what brand of stereo speakers they have. You in the church, of course, have already given up consumerism to a large extent. You don't make a lot of money, to put it mildly. I want to know how we get people committed to God, maybe not at the level that comes out of the priesthood, but how do we get them to say, "Well, I am going to make decisions for God now and then in this optional use of my resources," without using a guilt trip? I hate to get people to do something because they feel guilty.

Brennan: I think people are getting to that realization themselves. They simply need support and affirmation, whether it is from the pulpit or in small Christian communities or learning groups. They need affirmation that the thing that seems to be bubbling up in their soul, that they have all this stuff, and it is not making them happy. I think they need to be affirmed in that and redirected, but I think it happens naturally.

Hardin: I've just got a few seconds left, but you mentioned this issue about small groups and getting together. The churches maybe need to do something more with community than they do.

Brennan: I think Scott Peck is on to something when he says that we are in pseudo-community most of the time. I really feel the movement of the Holy Spirit around the world pushing us towards small groups and genuine community.

Hardin: Rather than just letting the church stagnate. I am glad to hear your optimism and I think I share that. Thanks a lot for being with us.