Angelus News | March 22, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 6

leaders — particularly bishops — to
describe thriving ministries and success
stories. Enthusiasm is building toward
the National Eucharistic Revival
planned by the country’s bishops, set to
culminate with a large-scale pilgrimage
to Indianapolis this summer.
But rather than try to break down the
numbers and figures, veteran Church
communicator Francis X. Maier had
a different idea: Talk to Americans
serving the Church — bishops, priests,
and laypeople — give them the option
of remaining anonymous (in order to
be able to speak more freely) and gather
their thoughts in a book.
The result, titled “True Confessions”
(Ignatius Press, $24.95) represents a
doctor’s checkup of sorts on the state of
the U.S. church, offering
a snapshot of its hopes and
fears, as well as its strengths
and its sicknesses. After
reading it, I asked Maier,
who’s had a storied career
as a screenwriter, journalist,
and senior adviser to
retired Archbishop Charles
Chaput (in both Denver
and Philadelphia) about
his experience with the
project and what he took
away from it.
You frame this book as
a big undertaking: an
attempt to take a “snapshot”
of the Church in
the United States at this
moment in history. What
prompted you to take
something like this on?
I had the kind of experiences
that allowed me to do it: I
worked in and around the Church for
nearly five decades, first as a journalist,
then as a diocesan staffer, and then 23
years as senior aide to a metropolitan
archbishop. The clergy and laypeople
I worked with were overwhelmingly
good people. I loved the Church when
I started, and over the years I saw both
the best and the worst in the Church
in an intimate way; a way laypeople
rarely do. At the end of it all, I love her
even more now than when I began. So
when you approach the end of a good
career, you want to take stock and sum
up what you’ve learned and seen as a
record to be shared with others.
“True Confessions” is based on 103
interviews I did over a 17-month period
with bishops — 30 of them from 25
different states and one overseas diocese
— other clergy and religious, and
laypeople. I avoided the extremes in the
Church. I focused on faithful people
sincerely trying to live what the Church
believes and teaches. And I think what
emerges is an honest portrait of American
Catholic life in the third decade
of the 21st century: There’s a lot of
very sobering candor. There’s nothing
Pollyannaish about any of the content;
but there’s also a deep well of fidelity,
energy, and hope that rarely gets mass
media attention.
I’ve been disappointed with foreign,
including Roman, criticism of the U.S.
church over the past decade. It hasn’t
been fair, and the people I worked
alongside deserve better. I was struck
some years ago by a piece in La Civilta
Cattolica, which was remarkably
ill-informed. I could have done a better
and more accurate job of naming the
problems in U.S. Catholic life myself.
The article was a disservice to the many
people in this country who actually
live and do the work of the Gospel.
It operated out of an ignorance and
questionable spirit that left a permanent
bad taste. And it hasn’t been an isolated
example.
In the book’s introduction, you write:
“The Church is the soul of the world
and the leaven of a just society. To live
that mandate, she needs to recover
her health and mission. But an illness
can be addressed and healed only
when it’s named.” So, after all the
work you put into this book, what is
the illness?
In the process
of assimilating,
we tend to
absorb the flaws
of American culture
along with
its positives. We
forget our history
and therefore
our identity
President Donald Trump
and Democratic presidential
nominee Joe Biden
participate in their final
2020 U.S. presidential
campaign debate at
Belmont University in
Nashville, Tennessee,
Oct. 22, 2020. | CNS/
MIKE SEGAR, REUTERS
and missionary mandate as a believing
community. We become unmoored
from our foundations. As a result, a lot
of Catholics live their faith as a good
ethical code that more or less guides
their sense of right and wrong. But the
supernatural stakes at the heart of the
faith are forgotten, and that eventually
kills belief. You can see it in a variety of
ways: the urgency to conform ourselves
to popular opinion on sexuality issues,
for example. There’s a great desire not
to be different; not to be cut out of the
herd.
Tocqueville noted 200 years ago that
Americans, for all our talk about de-
March 22, 2024 • ANGELUS • 11