True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church
By Francis X. Maier.
Ignatius Press, 2024.
Hardcover, 284 pages, $24.95.
Reviewed by Thomas Griffin.
Following the title page of Francis X. Maier’s True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church appears a page with a single, brief question: “Will you also go away?” It was asked by Jesus of Nazareth to his twelve apostles after many disciples had just abandoned him for inviting them to eat his flesh and drink his blood. This question and this arresting image of a rejected Jesus reaching out to his core followers serve as the epigraph to the entire book. It is also a question posed to today’s Catholics whom the secular world and a bumbling Church have sent reeling.
True Confessions is unique for many reasons. Most importantly, it is the product of “103 personal in-depth interviews conducted over a 17-month period.” Those questioned include 30 bishops, 16 priests/deacons/consecrated men and women religious and 67 laypeople. Maier makes these voices clear and cohesive while also presenting a more accurate picture of what the Church of today actually looks like. For sure, there is cause for alarm. Yet hope for authentic renewal is simultaneously present.
Ultimately, though it is hard-pressed on every side by foes within and without, the state of the Church is the same as it always has been. Quoting Pope St. John XXIII in his introduction, Archbishop Charles Chaput writes, “people either embrace him [Jesus Christ] and his Church and so enjoy the benefits of light, goodness, order and peace, or they live without him.”
In chapter one, Maier surveys the landscape of the American Church by referencing the true meaning of “ordinary time.” Having worked for the Church for 45 years, Maier has seen that it is in the “ordinary” that he has experienced both the best and the worst of the Church. “Thus, there’s never really been a golden age in the life of the Church; it’s always been a patchwork of light and dark, saint and sinner.”
This book shines in its ability to showcase what the leading minds of the Church, all speaking anonymously, truthfully believe about Catholicism’s state of affairs while also presenting the impact of remaining faithful to a Christ-centered Church. There are fires in the Church, as there always have been. Jesus is the only one who can put them out—but he needs our help.
Many of the anonymously quoted bishops expressed serious reservations about the Church continuing “business as usual.” Their concerns transcend geography. One bishop from a diocese that stretches from the city into the country focused on the structure and organization of the American Church as an impediment towards true mission and conversion. His claim is that we cannot blow everything up but that we must be honest about whether these structures and organizations are serving the wider mission: “Difficult times are difficult. That’s their nature. But they also make us think more clearly about who we are, what we’re doing and why.”
Consciously and honestly reflecting on the current state of the Church and how it must be re-focused is the common theme of True Confessions. So many of those interviewed provide key insights that all revolve around the person of Jesus Christ. Before we re-focus on him, however, we must admit how we need to change.
The suggestions that these True Confessions pose for renewal are aligned, whether they come from bishops or laypeople: we must recover the view that the Church is not an institution but a community founded on encountering Jesus Christ and living radically for him. As Curtis Martin (the founder of FOCUS) noted, “Peter didn’t drop his nets in Luke 5 to join an institution. He was overwhelmed by a person.” To make strides in accomplishing this shift, Martin says that the Church must dismantle its “misguided optimism” that things are better inside the Church than they actually are. Once we make that admission, we can cling more to Christ.
Another bishop from an urban diocese began his remarks with brutal honesty: “We’re living in unprecedented times, and I don’t know what God is up to.” He continued by stressing the importance of remaining steadfast to the truth of Jesus’ words and the gospel message, over and above everything else. “As a Church we need to get back to apostolic mission… My job is leading people to a transformative encounter with Jesus Christ.”
Several voices also highlighted their prediction that the flock will dwindle in numbers but increase in strength. One said: “What I don’t worry about is the future. I have a lot of hope. We’ll be a smaller Church but a stronger one. I believe that. A big, lukewarm Church attracts nobody; it converts no one.”
Many Catholics have become familiar with this mindset via Joseph Ratzinger’s famous radio interview of 1969 or the reading of Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. No one knows the future for sure, but what we do know is that we cannot continue in the old ways when so much of the Church landscape has changed.
One American bishop recalled what an African bishop had said years ago at a synod in Rome: “Maybe you gentlemen from Europe and America didn’t get the memo, but Constantine is dead. And so is his style of Church.” Having never forgotten these sobering words, the American bishop continued his reflection, remarking that “we’re living on the fumes of a ‘used-to-be’ Catholic culture and its institutional infrastructure.” This bishop said that there is no use in being anxious about what we are to do next. For him it is clear: Jesus “is asking us to return-not to the 1950s, but to the 30s, and I mean to the A.D. 30s; as John Paul II said, to the shores of Galilee.”
Influential laypeople concur with these bishops’ candid comments. A layperson who runs an investment advisory firm, but also is involved in the finances of Church life, said that there is “an ethos of managed decline” inside of the Church “that feels like we’re living in the human resources division of a bloated conglomerate.”
Whether it is an informed and passionate bishop or layperson, all are consistent throughout the pages of their confessions about the mission of the contemporary Church: we must remain true to actually giving people Jesus and we must be dynamic in presenting the truth of the gospel. In this way, True Confessions offers ammunition to those who desire to be bold about the future but who might be reluctant to do so. We have no other choice—we must be.
The ammunition for a true renewal is found in the words of many bishops and laypeople who earnestly work for and pray for a Church that is unapologetically centered on encountering Jesus as a real living person and preaching the truth. This means we place more focus on the Bible and the Sacraments. In this sense, they are calling for an uncovering of the apostolic and missionary nature of the early Church. While some might claim that this is an over-simplification, the dioceses and evangelization initiatives that act this way are changing lives and bringing about conversions—and that is what the Church is really about.
Because countless people have “gone away” in recent decades, just like the crowds withdrew from Jesus 2,000 years ago. However, a hope persists and their confessions are true: Jesus will overcome the world. For that reason, we have nowhere else to go because Jesus “has the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
Thomas Griffin teaches in the Religion Department at a Catholic high school and lives on Long Island with his wife and son. He has a master’s degree in theology and is currently a masters candidate in philosophy. He is the author of the forthcoming Let Us Begin: Saint Francis’s Way of Becoming Like Christ and Renewing the World.
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