Welcome to the cafeteria, Ross

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by Thomas Reese | Jan. 14, 2016

Last week I reviewed and commented on the conservative narrative as described by Ross Douthat in "A Crisis in Conservative Catholicism." This week I would like to continue the conversation by looking at his comments on Pope Francis and his recommendations to conservatives.

Douthat believed that there was no "vibrant, potent alternative" to conservative Catholicism until the election of Pope Francis. "The waning of liberal Catholicism seemed to be continuing, and outside of certain theology departments and the pages of the National Catholic Reporter, the idea that the Church needed constant revolution seemed to have lost its once intoxicating appeal."

I will ignore his rhetorical excesses (that liberal Catholicism wanted "constant revolution&quot and partially agree with him. It is true that the hierarchy suppressed progressive voices in their publications and seminaries. Only NCR and Commonweal, as lay-run publications, were able to be critical voices in a time of heavy-handed censorship. Likewise, only tenured lay theologians in Catholic universities had the freedom to speak and write, which was not enjoyed by their clerical colleagues.

Liberalism did not die because it lost the argument; it was forcibly suppressed wherever church authorities had the power to do it. The weakness of the conservative cause was shown by its need to use power when persuasion failed.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/faith-and-justice/welcome-cafeteria-ross

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. For those who wonder about the title of the piece, here is another excerpt from it

To conservatives who have used the popes as a club to beat up liberals, he warns, "a conservative Catholicism that became too quick to play the 'magisterium' card as a substitute for sustained argument must acknowledge that it’s being hoisted on its own petard."

Now Douthat concludes, "The papacy is not always the first bulwark of orthodoxy." In some cases, "the papacy has conspicuously failed to be either wise or courageous when orthodoxy is on the line." In short, "sometimes Peter misspeaks or goes astray."

Douthat now believes, "There needs to be more discretion in the claims made for papal authority, more weight placed on the fullness of tradition rather than the words of just one pope."

All I can say to that is, "Welcome to the cafeteria, Ross." Liberal Catholics were condemned as cafeteria Catholics during the last two papacies for saying the same thing.

Speaking as a progressive Catholic, I feel a bit of Schadenfreude here. Conservatives have been accusing progressives of picking and choosing which doctrines to accept and which to reject, and now they are doing exactly the same thing. Of course, they have been doing the same for ages, rejecting Catholic social teaching. And now Laudato Si' has come out, saying that dealing with global warming is a moral obligation, and the fiction that conservatives obey the pope in all things is no longer sustainable (as, in fact, it never really was). As Reese says, welcome to the cafeteria.

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3. Where I live the local teabaggers claim he's a false pope, etc etc...

And all that stuff about having to accept 110% every last thing the Pope says no matter what goes right out the window then. They bend themselves into all sorts of pretzels trying to justify how they don't have to listen to or do as the Pope asks. Just like the conservative leaders in the church.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

5. I know a man who insists that Pope Francis is a Marxist

Of course, this man has essentially no knowledge of Marxism, but that doesn't stop him. He also claims that essentially all Democrats are actually socialists, and his knowledge of socialism is on the same level as his knowledge of Marxism.

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6. Yeah they call him that too.

They must've gotten their marching orders on Francis.

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2. I think tenure still didn't stop the Bishops from going after theologians

I seem to recall that if theologians rocked the boat then Bishops could revoke permission for them to teach at Catholic institutions.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

4. That's exactly what happened to Charles Curran

He was removed from his position at Catholic University, even though he had tenure, basically for saying that Humanae Vitae was crap as a piece of moral theology.