Here comes everybody's church: forty years after the Second Vatican Council, "Catholic identity" is still in flux. What can future generations of Catholics expect?

Lino Rulli is 30, just one guy but also a symbol of the future. Like more than half of American Catholics today, he can't remember the Second Vatican Council--he wasn't even born when they did away with the Latin Mass.

Working for St. Olaf Parish, Rulli hosts a cable television show in Minneapolis for young adults wanting to know about Catholicism--tune in, and you can listen to a snake-handling nun at the zoo discuss if animals have souls--and these are some of the e-mails he gets: "I'm gay. Does that mean I'm going to hell?" or "What is it about the Catholic Church and women?" or "Where do we go when we die?"

The young people he talks with want answers about theology and a place to talk about their doubts. They want a "Mass that's not boring," Rulli says, and a parish where they're not the only person in the room who's single and under 35. They are the church of tomorrow, and they have no memory at all of what one researcher calls the "smells and the bells," the church before the Second Vatican Council.

For American Catholics, the church they know now, the church that's emerged from nearly 40 years in the stewpot with the teachings of Vatican II, embodies a much different kind of Catholic culture than that of their parents' or grandparents' generation. It's a church that's been shaped by. changes within the church--the rise of lay ministry, the shortage of priests, the transforming power of seeing the congregation as the "People of God." But that's not all.

Forces from the outside, from the general culture, are also having a mighty impact, particularly on the attitudes of younger Catholics. Accustomed to having choices, to questioning authority and institutions, American Catholics feel free to challenge doctrine with which they disagree, to look skeptically at organized religion, to stay home, or keep looking until they find a parish that offers what they want.

"Like party mix"

Parishes, once ethnically distinct and theologically more monotone, now take on the color of their communities, with one stressing orthodoxy and another social justice, with gospel music and charismatic Masses, with churches ministering to migrant workers or offering Mass in Korean or Spanish or Vietnamese.

Last summer, St. John Vianney, a parish in Louisville, Kentucky, installed a dramatic, 10-ton white marble statue of Our Lady of La Vang, a depiction of the Virgin Mary standing in triumph over a seven-headed dragon. The statue, created by a sculptor in Vietnam and shipped by boat and train to Kentucky, was set in a place of honor outside the church, fulfilling the dream of Father Anthony Chinh, a Vietnamese priest who wants the Asian immigrants who have settled nearby to feel welcome. Our Lady of La Vang, in the Vietnamese tradition, appeared to comfort Vietnamese Catholics trying to hide from persecution in 1798. Now longtime Catholics from the parish, many of them of European descent, are being introduced to stories and traditions from other cultures, to other visions of celebrating faith.

It's happening all over the country. "I have some vague memories of going to church with mostly white people," says Tod Tamberg, the 38-year-old director of media relations for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where Mass is now celebrated in nearly 40 languages. But mostly "I kind of took it for granted that everybody was mixed up, like party mix."

In the United States, the Catholic Church has long been full of immigrants. In bigger towns, a century ago, you might have the Italian parish, the Slovakian parish, the German parish, the Irish parish. And for many Catholics, the church was the absolute center of their community life--partly out of faith, and partly because they just weren't welcome in other places.

Even a half-century ago, Catholic identity was imposed in some measure from the outside, with Protestants often being suspicious of Catholics, unwilling to hire them or live near them, afraid that if the Catholic influence extended too far, soon the pope would be running the country. So, through the first half of the 1900s, American Catholics tended to congregate in what some have called the "Catholic ghetto," often residing in the same neighborhoods, sending their children to parish schools, reading Catholic newspapers, and preferring Catholic hospitals.

John F. Kennedy's election played a role in eroding that sense of "otherness," as did the reshaping of thought provoked by Vatican II, including the shift from the Latin Mass and changing views on ecumenism and religious freedom. Now when someone says they're Catholic, "there are no stereotypes," no sense that Catholics are outside the mainstream of American society at all, says Dean Hoge, a professor of sociology at Catholic University of America.

But that change in Catholic identity also can mean that Catholics--especially so-called "cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose from among the church's teachings--aren't so sure themselves exactly what they believe or why being Catholic is different from being any other sort of Christian. Catholics used to memorize the answers to the Baltimore Catechism--they knew word-for-word what they were supposed to believe. Now, in contrast, many younger Catholics--shaped by an ethos of consumerism--feel entitled to choose for themselves.

"Like other affluent Americans, boomer Catholics have embraced the culture of choice without feeling compelled to consult a tradition of wisdom or any other source of authority beyond their own culture," R. Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, wrote recently.

Many older people "still have that notion of the church as an enduring institution founded by Christ," not to be compared to other institutions, Appleby said in an interview. But lots of younger people "believe the church is like any other institution, subject to criticism.... It's full of sinful people, but not necessarily in the sense of human people on the road to redemption."

Younger Catholics also have been affected by changes in their world. They have learned firsthand about divorce and family break down, about multiculturalism and terrorism and tolerance of others' beliefs, about the idea of being "spiritual" outside of organized religion. Where some Catholics were disowned in previous generations for marrying outside the faith, about half of Anglo Catholics now marry non-Catholics, meaning the borders between "us" and "them" are breaking down.

All of these factors mean that many younger Catholics don't have that same sense of being distinctively Catholic that their parents or grandparents did. They call themselves Catholic but have enough doubts that they're not always sure what the glue is that's holding them to the church.

Under the big tent 

For some, that glue is simply diversity of practice--the "big tent" aspect of American Catholicism today--which leaves room both for conservative Catholics to find parishes where orthodoxy is cherished and for others to find a hand-clapping Sunday night Mass. Some also see a new appreciation for older ways--for practices such as praying the rosary or eucharistic adoration--in what one Catholic called a "nice dynamic tension" between the reforms and the traditions.

St. Martin of Tours in Louisville, for example, pulls people in from 53 ZIP codes to an inner-city church that offers 24-hour eucharistic adoration, Gregorian chanting, classical music, and a weekly Tridentine Mass in a congregation where many young families either homeschool their children or send them to conservative, independent Christian schools. "People are hungry for a sense of the sacred, the holy, the transcendent, and they experience that When they come to St. Martin," says the pastor, Father Dennis Cousens. "They're looking for orthodoxy, saying, `Don't give me your opinion--what does the church teach?'"

For others, the changes provoked by Vatican II gave them room to be Catholic and still feel they could breathe.

Jeannie Crawford, 59, left the Catholic Church in the 1960s--"a lot of folks my age were traumatized by pre-Vatican II," she says--and stayed away for 23 years. In 1988 she finally decided to give Catholicism one more try, at the Sunday night Mass at St. Monica in Los Angeles, where the mood is informal, the music contemporary.

Here's what Catholicism seemed like to Crawford in the 1960s: "It was always `God's going to punish you, and you'd better toe the line.' It was such a distant, removed church--we're up here and you're down there."

Here's what she found when she came back: "The music appealed to me and seemed a lot more creative. The homilies seemed real, rather than hellfire and brimstone. ... It wasn't crime and punishment, or `you're a bad person.' The Mass seemed totally different. ... It was much more alive than oppressive."

Finally, Crawford says, she has found space in the church for both her faith and her conscience. "I'm definitely in the liberal wing, but I'm in the ballpark of Catholicism. What I'm finding is there is a lot of room; there are a lot of people like me. I'm very involved in ministries. I go to Mass almost every Sunday.... I can be myself and be a Catholic, where all those years before I felt I could not be myself and be Catholic. If I tried [then] to be a Catholic, I would literally go crazy."

So here is one change: A generation or two ago, the culture of the American Catholic Church was imprinted with certainty, what author Paul Wilkes calls a "kind of paint-by-numbers religious belief." It was a time, for many Catholics, when the "conscience had no place and the priest was it," Hoge says. Today, the church is much more layered with paradox. This is a church where Mass attendance is down, but lay ministry is up; where women's ordination isn't to be discussed, but women hold increasing power; where, according to Hoge, the "pope is very widely admired, held almost in awe" among young Catholics, but some of his teachings are disregarded. ("It's like dealing with your grandfather," Hoge says of that view. "You find him inspiring, but you don't have to go along with everything he says.")

Catholic to the core

One of the most obvious areas of paradox involves doctrine.

Hoge and several other authors have just released a new book, Young American Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice (Notre Dame Press), which tracks the views of young adult Catholics, interviewed in 1997, who had been confirmed. Many view as "optional" church teachings on what they consider peripheral issues, Hoge says, particularly matters of sexuality and questions of whether the church should allow more participation by the laity and women in decision-making and ministry. They've decided, he says, "they can be Catholic and redefine what that means."

At the same time, however, researchers also have found strong agreement, even among younger Catholics, on what James D. Davidson, a professor of sociology at Purdue University, describes as "core" Catholic teachings--basics of the faith. Davidson is coauthor along with William V. D'Antonio, Hoge, and Katherine Meyer of the just-released American Catholics: Gender, Generation, and Commitment (Altamira Press), which analyzes Catholic attitudes based on surveys taken at six-year intervals from 1987 to 1999.

According to that research, Catholics tend to accept what Davidson calls "core teachings" of the church, including belief in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection; the meaning of the sacraments, including the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist; the obligation to be of service to others; even devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And Davidson contends that American Catholics follow what the Second Vatican Council termed a "hierarchy of truths." They've distilled out the "essence of what it really means to be Catholic"--what they consider the most important teachings--and believe they can disagree on lesser issues--things such as capital punishment or the ordination of women--and still be good Catholics.

Meg McLaughlin, a 34-year-old nurse-practitioner from Boston, is one young woman who has tried to balance her doubts with her deep sense of rootedness in Catholicism. She's now active in Xairos, a community of young adults at the Paulist Center in Boston. But after college, McLaughlin struggled with her relationship to Catholicism and "definitely felt alienated, felt there was not a place for me." She finally did make a connection, through a group of young adults working in the youth ministry program in the parish where she'd grown up.

"I felt like I had to define faith for myself, as opposed to what I had learned from my parents," McLaughlin says. "It became very important for me to find a lot of authenticity in what I was experiencing in church." In that small group, she says, people shared their doubts and could say, "I call myself Catholic, but I'm not sure I believe in this, that, and the other--what does that mean about me?"

McLaughlin, for example, struggles with gender issues, "feeling like I'm not necessarily represented in this church in the hierarchy or the power structure or even the language that we use.... It wasn't until I was able to say those things out loud and be in a group of Catholics who can say, `I totally identify and agree,' or even, `I disagree but I understand that,' that I was back engaged again. Before it was like I was out there with all these questions, and I didn't know what do to with them."

Still, McLaughlin says she feels deeply rooted in the Catholic faith, something about the tradition and the ritual "kind of grounds me."

And that's another paradox: Even people who disagree with doctrine often feel a visceral connection with the liturgy and draw deep comfort from the familiar rituals and music and even smells of Catholic worship--what Helen Deines, an active laywoman from Louisville, describes as the "unspoken language of the church."

For Diana L. Hayes, an associate professor of theology at Georgetown University in Washington and a convert 22 years ago to Catholicism, "It comes from a deep-rooted sense that this is where God truly is. It doesn't mean that he's not in other religions, other faiths. But for me this is home. Even though I may disagree, may get frustrated, may get angry at some of the behavior of the hierarchy or others in the church, there's no way I would leave it."

She adds: "It's very difficult to verbalize. There's just a sense of belonging, and of rightness." People feel comfortable in the church, "which ironically also makes them feel comfortable with critiquing it."

Still work to do

There are, however, signs in today's church of significantly reduced participation.

About a third of people who think of themselves as Catholic have little or no connection with a local parish. According to 1999 data from the "American Catholics" study, Davidson says, only one in five Catholics between ages 18 and 39 attended Mass weekly.

"Today they believe they can be spiritual without being religious, they can believe in God without embracing the church, and they can be people of faith without going to Mass every week," Davidson says. "They believe that being Catholic is a much larger thing than abiding by the laws or the rituals.... How you treat your fellow man, your neighbor, is more important than whether you show up for Mass on Sunday."

Those weakened ties with institutional Catholicism have some warning that the church can no longer assume that young people will return if they marry and have children.

And the Catholic Church itself can no longer view itself as one of the mainstream institutions that set the tone for a culture. Instead, Appleby says, the church needs to talk about the counter-cultural nature of religious faith--the radicalness, in a consumer-driven culture, of loving our neighbor and believing in something beyond ourselves. And the key to doing that, he says, is to revitalize lay ministry with leadership that's dedicated, supported, and trained.

"I would like to see the church begin a program of Catholic ministry in which the bishops come forth in a very robust way and describe the plan to provide financial and career support for lay ministers, and not see them simply as a stopgap or replacement until we get more priests," Appleby says. That conversation should include discussion of the ordination question, he says, and a "sound theological statement" from the bishops that considers lay ministry "complementary to the priesthood, enduring and permanent"--not just "assistance to the priests."

For Deines, the laywoman from Louisville, one of the biggest changes since Vatican II has been the role of women in the church. She remembers vividly a Saturday years ago, when she and her two daughters were hard at work dusting the choir loft in her old parish. She glanced out the window and saw the priest leaving with the altar boys, going out for pizza. Deines says she looked at her own girls, cleaning up the dirt, and thought: "Nobody ever thanks them." She now sees women doing just about everything. "And they're asked to do it--they don't have to push. They're asked to do it, and their gifts are recognized."

It's not just women, either. In the United States, the Catholic Church is growing, primarily through immigration. Today, nearly 30 percent of U.S. Catholics are Latinos, and estimates are that they'll make up the majority within 20 years. At a time of increased ethnic and religious diversity in the United States, people of color feel freer to bring their own music and traditions into the Mass.

The changes show a "retrieval of our history," a looking back to the early church, which was influenced by many cultures, Hayes says. At a gospel Mass, when black Catholics "shout out `Amen,' "some complain "they're bringing Baptist stuff in," she says. "That's not Baptist, that's Jewish. And the `alleluia' is Greek.... For so long blacks were not allowed to express that within the service. So they're reclaiming that and re claiming a sense of ownership within the church as well."

Looking into the future

As for what lies ahead, that's a difficult question. Besides the culture, there are other factors in the mix influencing American Catholicism, including what's done about the shortage of priests, who is welcome in leadership and who becomes the next pope, and what tone and priorities that person will set.

But for many Catholics, particularly younger ones, the answers may come not from far off, but from much closer to home--with the question of whether what they find at church, their local church, makes them want to come back. Do they feel welcome and connected? Does the worship inspire them, do they sense the presence of God? Is there a place for them in ministry? Can they be honest about what they believe? The answers may be a blend of the old and the new, the pull of the strength and breadth of Catholic history and Catholic tradition along with today's demands that what people find when they go to church makes sense.

"One of the hallmarks of postmodernity is the ability to hold apparently contradictory things in tension comfortably," says Brian Mitchell, 29, the director of interGen, a new intergenerational ministry project of St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Oshkosh, Wisconsin that is exploring places where church and culture intersect.

This spring, interGen is going outside the church walls, sponsoring a film-and-discussion series advertised as a "six-pack of postmodern spirituality" (with six movies, from Pulp Fiction to Shrek) and inviting Christian bands to play at the local Eagles' club. In thinking of Catholicism, Mitchell leans hard on his own formative memories of fish fries in Lent and doughnuts after Mass on Sunday mornings. But he's also going outside the church, searching for grace at work in his town.

Mitchell is a young Catholic, 40 years after Vatican II. He's looking at how his church fits into the world. He doesn't know yet what he'll find.

LESLIE SCANLON, a longtime newspaper reporter and columnist, is a Kentucky-based writer.