It’s been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled “progressive” Catholics.
First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish pope was a hero all over the world during an epic pontificate that bent history’s arc in a more humane direction, and did so without the aid of liberation theology. John Paul’s funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, became, in the apt phrase of NBC anchor Brian Williams, “the human event of a generation,” a moniker unlikely to be attached to the obsequies of, say, Hans Küng, John Paul’s most embittered progressive critic.
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Then came the election of the progressives’ bête noire, Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI: a horror that a prominent progressive, Notre Dame’s Fr. Richard McBrien, declared electorally impossible a mere 24 hours before it happened. Catholic progressives hunkered down for what they hoped would be a brief Ratzingerian interregnum. But Benedict XVI has proven an energetic pope whose pontificate has been in dynamic continuity with that of his predecessor, an astute analyst of the cultural crisis of the West, and a man determined to strengthen Catholic identity as the sine qua non of Catholic reform.
Thus the Wojtyla-Ratzinger years have put paid to the notion, beloved of Catholic progressives, that Catholicism began anew — ex nihilo, as it were — at the Second Vatican Council. Committed to the hoary “liberal/conservative” hermeneutic of the Council’s history, Catholic progressives hold that Vatican II represented a dramatic rupture with the past. The great teaching pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, however, have proposed a far more plausible interpretation of the Council as one in dynamic continuity with the great tradition of Christian orthodoxy. That interpretation, in turn, is shaping an entire new generation of Catholic intellectuals who are far more interested in exploring the complex riches of that tradition than in deconstructing it. Unlike the aging progressives, who have shown themselves rather infertile intellectually and who survive in large part because of that most conservative of institutions, the tenure system, many younger Catholic scholars are fully committed to putting theology at the service of the “New Evangelization” for which John Paul II and Benedict XVI have insistently called.
In the United States, the progressives have also been steadily losing their grip at the national, diocesan, and local-parish levels. Various lay-renewal movements have become vital and self-consciously orthodox factors in Catholic life, and a new generation of priests and bishops, many of whom look explicitly to John Paul II as their model of ecclesiastical leadership, have come to the fore. For the past half-decade or more, the Catholic bishops of the United States, following the pope’s lead, have increasingly stressed the importance of Catholic identity, by which they understand fidelity to Catholic teaching, in confronting an increasingly hostile cultural and legal/political environment. That problem has been considerably exacerbated by the Obama administration, which many Catholic progressives welcomed with loud hosannas, and for whose regulatory assault on Catholic health-care and social-service agencies progressives have provided cover, often by implausible appeals to Catholic social doctrine.
Generally Mr. Weigel is on point with his comments on progressive Catholicism. But his description of OWS as "madcap anarchists" is wrongheaded and shows an arrogant disconnect with the cynicism and despair people of all ages feel about their own futures and that of this country. If he really took the time he'd understand the Tea Party and OWS are fighting on the same side against mismanagement of money and priority. I think JPII and Pope Benedict would support the protesters questions and provide The Answer. It's yours and mine too, Mr. Weigel.
I too have tried to understand the OWS but they are unfocused, immature and irresponsible to themselves and society. In trying to understand their message, their most notable leaders that sound coherent enough to put a sentence together is unfortunately Geroge Soros and Bill Ayers. So after listening to those two, it comes with great resentment that anarchist is the most modest word that comes to mind.
No - the OWS are babies asking for mommy to give them a pacifier. The Tea Party are adults saying allow me the dignity of managing my own affairs. The similarity of seeing crony capitalism as a problem is all they have in common, as the OWS types fail to realize there is another person in the room with the crony capitalists called progressive govt. The Tea Party recognizes you need both to have a real problem.
If my kid was ever at a OWS rally it would be a very interesting meeting afterwards.
Have you ever been down to a general assembly? Have you read up on the official demands on your own and come to your own conclusions about them? Or are you just making brash generalizations founded on weak assumptions spoon fed to you by NRO columnists and fox news?
I suggest you read these, and then come back and defend your statement that they are are "asking for mommy to give them a pacifier." I assure you the cognitive dissonance in your mind after realizing that you actually agree with them will be deafening.
I read your link and it doesn't do your point of view justice. At a time when over $4 trillion are being redistributed from the "rich" to the "poor", the OWS protesters protests are absurd. They just want more cowbell, not less. Did you read thier demands? They could have been written by Obama himself. Funny, how few if any OWS clowns protest the commander-in-chief, whose prolifigate economic policies have frozen the bond market (which will eventually have its own form of protests and teach the OWS protesters a most unpleasant lesson in economics). And there are namely 2 Congressman ( one who will retire this year) who ran the banking oversight committees from 2007-2011. But not one protest has been issued against Barney Frank nor Chist Dodd.
No, the OWS are not thumbsuckers; they are ignorant, foolish, and smelly dupes for Barry Soreto, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and George Soros.
Dear name-caller: Plerase read Mt. 12:
"For every idle word you speak, you will render an account, for by your words are you justified and your words condemned." You can throw all those adjectives and sneers you want: OWS continues and grows.
I'm 52, and thus came of age in the Church during the brief flowering of this "progressivism." It was an incomprehensible mess, and the self-styled progressives did much harm. Theology class in my high school was more an exploration of "situational ethics" (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) than a study of Church teaching or the Gospels, and the Mass was re-made to accommodate felt banners with mediocre slogans and trite music. A friend of mine joined the seminary and dropped out after one year -- this supposedly serious Catholic religious order was using Kung's "On Being A Christian" as its theology textbook. (If you haven't read it, you should force yourself, just so it will be clear to you exactly why Kung was utterly discredited.)
Like many other Catholic kids of the 1970s, I went off to college with only a very muddled understanding of the teachings of the Church and of Christianity in general. I was easy prey for the secular humanism commonly preached in universities, and bought it "whole hog" for awhile. For all that, I sensed there was something fundamentally wrong and terribly limiting in humanism. But it wasn't the modern Church that set me straight -- it was writer such as C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien. In contrast with these lucid exponents of Christianity, the modern Church seemed nearly as mired in humanism as my university professors.
Then Came John Paul II, Benedict XVI and the new evangelism -- and such great works as Fr. Robert Barron's "Catholicism" series. I feel like the Catholic Church has finally caught up with where I, and many like me, wound up through independent study and reflection.
I have this to say to the "progressives" out there:
Thanks Mr. Weigel for that explication of the difference between the official word of Rome on doctrine, and the 'noise' produced by churchmen elsewhere opining on matters of current politics. I am pretty sure I was called a Bad Catholic the other week in a comments section hereabouts for making that distinction myself. It was a rubicon I had to cross a number of years ago, upon being confronted with a Monsignor (now a Bishop) who indicated it was our duty to donate money to a communist revolutionary group in Central America; and another Bishop in a different diocese who was down with abortion, providing it was done with sufficiently grim visage and an affectation of moral seriousness. I am regularly reminded by the often-nutty words of visiting pastors at my own parish that the Church is first and foremost Christ and his teachings, and his people; and that as often as not human bureaucrats with the church administrative structure tend to get in the way of that relationship. The grasping claims of various Vatican administrative bodies seem to be more interested in propagating temporal political positions, than in evangelizing new believers and tending the flock.
I’m asking a serious question. The other night on EWTN, we came across an ecumenical prayer fest held at the church of St. Francis of Assisi in Assisi with Pope Benedict as the centerpiece. The speaker was a “nonbeliever” an atheist. Why is a nonbeliever elevated to the same position of a religious denomination? Thank you for enlightening me, because I don’t understand this.
What an insufferably poorly written piece on the part of Mr. Weigel. Is the J&P story the pope's word or not? I still can't tell. NRO, please ditch this windbag.
Raymond Arroyo, a respected Catholic journalist, has confirmed that the Pope did not even read this Note. Mr. Weigel is correct, this is not by any means a papal decree. It is rather just a silly report by some obscure Vatican committee.
MikeB,
You really need to educate yourself vis-a-vis official Catholic publications. And in light of Pope Benedict's recent comments regarding "social justice" (the term, he said, has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with Reason), your comments are quite ignorant. And if one considers the theft that occured last week with the EU bailout, bondholders (French and German savings account holders) to the tune of 50% or $150 billion, the Note is problematic. Theft from one group to another is still theft. This wouldn''t have happened in a decentralized banking system Europe had before 2000. Going global will just create more theft.
BTW, the Note was published without any input from the Pope (being a White Paper, it wasn't required).
Mr Weigel does not write at the 3rd grade level as do most newspapers. His writings are quite unlike the ideas of the left which result from such a dearth of contemplation that their ideas easily fit onto most bumper stickers.
