Before Pope Francis was elected, conservative Catholics had fallen into a habit of dismissing the more liberal form of Catholicism as an old and faded thing, a vision of the future that belonged to the church’s past, a relic of the 1970s that had little purchase among younger Catholics seriously practising their faith. The last Read more
These days, Catholic intellectuals open the op-ed pages of the New York Times with the same dread they once had for the threatening, unsigned editorials of the official newspaper of the Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano. Except that we’re not talking about condemnations emanating from the pope. Instead, the condemnations found in world beacon of the liberal Read more
Fifty years ago, many observers of American religion assumed that secularization would gradually wash traditional Christianity away. Twenty years ago, Christianity looked surprisingly resilient, and so the smart thinking changed: maybe there was an American exception to secularizing trends, or maybe a secularized Europe was the exception and the modernity-equals-secularization thesis was altogether wrong. Now Read more
A New York Times columnist has hit back at theologians and other academics who queried his professional competence to write on Catholicism. Last month, columnist Ross Douthat wrote several pieces about the synod on the family in Rome. He suggesting, among other things, that clear factions among the bishops have emerged, that Pope Francis favours Read more