Catholic Ideas and Catholic Realities
10th July 2021
But among Catholic writers there has been substantial fracture, experimentation, realignment, and division. The older categories certainly persist. There remain conservative Catholics who believe in the fusionist project of American conservatism, the Catholic reading of the American founding advanced by John Courtney Murray, and the virtues of the pre-Trump Republican party. Meanwhile, the Biden presidency has given a boost to liberal Catholics who believe that the Democratic party is their natural home and meliorist, welfare-state liberalism the obvious way Catholic social teaching cashes out.
But there are also new categories, revived and reinvented movements and tendencies, which matter more to intellectual debate than they did in years past and may eventually matter to Catholic politics as well.
My personal view is that what has happened to the Roman Church since Vatican II is a tragedy – which is why I am no longer Roman Catholic. It could all be summed up in a phrase I heard when I was a student, ‘Catholic is the new Eposcopalian’. But of course both sides of that equation have degenerated since then. The election of Pope Benedict gave me new hope, but his abdication and the election of Francis indicated that things were starting to circle the toilet bowl once more. Sad, but there it is.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, as we used to say in the Navy.