God will understand

No one explanation can account for the continued decline in Sunday Mass attendance, in Malta and elsewhere. There are, however, a number of issues which are worth discussing.

First, it is necessary to refute some common errors. Broad-sweep arguments about the "collapse of Western values" or "secularisation" tend not to stand up to historical-empirical scrutiny. I don't think that contemporary Maltese cherish less values than their forbears, and the massive investment that goes into feasts, among many other trends, makes theories of secularisation look rather less grand.

Equally unconvincing is the argument that the Liturgy needs "spicing up", and that the churches would fill up again if sermons became less "boring". This is clearly a non-starter. When one compares the average content of sermons to that of our TV and radio programmes, not least the interminable phone-in programmes on political stations and certain other TV programmes that enjoy a ravingly high viewership, one finds that the former are much richer. At the very least, the average priest is relatively well-versed in his subject and has a juicier Text off which to bounce ideas than his media counterparts. Short of employing "televoting" or fruity cheerleaders, I really don't see how the Liturgy could be modified to attract the masses. As I know it, it is generally fine as it is.

To my mind, comparison provides one of the keys to understanding falling Sunday Mass attendance. When I first started my anthropological fieldwork among Hindus, I found myself constantly baffled by the fact that many of my informants who described themselves as "practicing" Hindus very seldom went to the temple. "All paths lead to God," I was told. Quite apart from the theological content of this statement, I eventually realised that I was in fact dealing with a different concept of what religion is all about. Nothing new, of course - this characteristic has been commented upon by scores of writers on Hinduism, and has partly to do with the fact that Hinduism has no such centralised institution as a "Church", no one sacred text, no Pope, and no Catechism. So much so, that superficial observers often conclude despairingly that Hinduism is "more a way of life than a religion".

In a sense, falling Sunday Mass attendance is of the Church's own making. There is, in fact, a meaningful convergence between the contemporary attitude of the Church and the increasing reluctance of people to engage with formalised, institutionalised practice. In recent decades, especially post-Vatican Council II, the Catholic Church - at least at the grassroots level - has moved away from the old emphasis on control in search of structure, towards a more flexible approach in search of meaning. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is not for me to decide. It could also be argued that the shift was itself a response to the already-declining power of the Church as an institution.

Be that as it may, there is a sharp discontinuity between the religious culture of my grandparents and that of later generations. People of my grandparents' age rushed to have their newborns baptised for fear of Limbo, and were very much concerned with the logistical details of fasting. When I was in school in the 1980s, however, I was taught (by Jesuits) that what matters is not so much the time that elapses between lunch and Communion, or the ranking of the different classes of angels, as my belief in and acting out of Christian principles. I am not exactly sure what children are being taught today, but they do not strike me as being particularly "God-fearing", and I have even heard a priest say, on air, that Jesus is to be seen primarily as a "role model"(!) Limbo, too, seems to be closed down indefinitely for refurbishment. In other words, we are witnessing an ongoing and radical shift in the meaning of God and the practice of religion. The Deity is no more a calculating father to be feared at all times, but a benevolent and indulgent friend.

I said earlier that the Church is the prime mover behind this shift. This needs explaining, since to my knowledge the Church has never told people to forget about Sunday Mass as long as they believe in God. My point is that there is a logical consistency between the contemporary attitude of the Church towards formality, and the popular belief that "all paths lead to God". I would go so far as to say that there is a logical continuity between going to Sunday Mass on Saturday (a relatively recent concession) and not going to Mass at all. After all, if God is not that calculating, He might not mind the occasional, and eventually the regular, lapse. To paraphrase a tired cliché, the à la carte option was introduced by the Church itself (as happens in any restaurant), and it turned out that people preferred it to the old fixed fare.

It will, I suspect, prove very difficult for the Church to wean people off this dining style. To do so would require a renewed investment in vertebrate understandings of ritual and a re-appraisal of God's leniency. Failing that, Sunday Mass attendance will continue to fall as Christians become more "like the Hindus". No harm there, given that Hindus are as decent as any other. For the Church as an institution however, it would be a disaster.