A Response to Ross Douthat
Where Peter Is was recently mentioned in the New York Times, in a column by Ross Douthat entitled, ?What Will Happen to Conservative Catholicism?? In the piece, he surveys the ways that conservative Catholics in America have responded to Pope Francis. He also analyzes two potential paths forward for Catholic conservatives other than that of Cardinal Burke or that which he describes as a ?schismatic plunge.? The first is:
A conservative Catholicism that strains more mightily than Burke to interpret all of Francis? moves in continuity with his predecessors, while arguing that the pope?s liberalizing allies and appointees are somehow misinterpreting him. ..it persists in the hope of a kind of snapping-back moment, when Francis or a successor decides that Catholic bishops in countries like Germany are pushing things too far, at which point there can be a kind of restoration of the John Paul II-era battle lines, with the papacy ? despite Francis? experiments ? reinterpreted to have always been on the side of orthodoxy.
This, of course, is a line of thinking that we?ve largely pushed back against because we can?t ignore that there have been changes during this pontificate, not only developments in doctrine or changes in discipline, but in a renewed approach to evangelization and radical conversion that?s already beginning to take hold in the Church. We are convinced that Pope Francis?s legacy will not be reduced to a footnote.
He mentions WPI while describing the second path forward.
Paul
Paul Fahey?is a husband, father of four, and?professional lay person.?He writes for Where Peter Is and Diocesan.
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