A Sound of Sheer Silence

But the Church’s theological factions are sufficiently far apart that each would rather do nothing than let the other side lead reform — because the liberals think the conservatives want an inquisition, the conservatives think the liberals want Episcopalianism, and there is some truth in both caricatures. --Ross Douthat, "Sheep Without Shepherds," November 17, 2018 . We are coming to the end, I think, of things to say about the sex abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church that are not restatements of previous ideas.  But, to go out, I'd like to unpack this is a very smart and insightful observation by Ross Douthat. Let's take the second part first.  On Twitter,  Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh expressed confusion as what Douthat meant by "Episcopalianism" in the above quote .  Maybe things are different in the UK, but I don't think Douthat was being obtuse at all.  "Episcopalianism," in the US Catholic context, is simply a push by fol...

In my last post , I previewed a discussion of Cardinal John Henry Newman and his highly influential work  An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.   A couple of months back, I talked about a discussion between Ross Douthat and Dr. Massimo Faggioli , regarding the future of the Roman Catholic Church in the Era of Francis.  One of the things that struck me about that conversation was that there was a hole in the middle of it--no one was able to really grapple with theological change and how it works.  Usually when issues involving theological change comes up, the default move is to cite to Newman .  I have read a great deal about  this work, but I had never actually read it myself. So, I went out and read it.  It was a clarifying read, because it is clear to me that the hole that Douthat and Faggioli circle around in their talk is a product of Newman and his approach.  Newman doesn't actually provide a theological basis fo...

1. Let's talk about family. I am the oldest of four children.  Both of my parents are alive and still married to each other.  In terms of the nuclear, biological family, I have as close to the ideal as can reasonably be imagined.  My parents love us, and us children love them back.  We are, by most standards, very close.  I saw my sister this weekend in New York City, and I will see her, my other sister, and her husband and children in a couple of weeks. It is customary to describe one's-self as "fortunate" with regard to having a happy family, and there is a way in which that is true.  No individual has control over who the other people are that inhabit your family of origin, and so there is an important sense in which the nature and state of one's original family is outside of your individual control.  But some people describe themselves as "fortunate" to have a happy family in a way which suggests that the state of any family is wholly outside...

This is almost certainly a mistake, but let's talk about Kevin Williamson and abortion.  For those who are not aware, Kevin Williamson is a conservative writer, long known for having controversial and provocative positions on things (he came to my attention for stating that people in distressed, rural communities have no one to blame but themselves, since they could always move from those distressed rural communities).  Recently, he was hired as a full-time writer for The Atlantic  (a higher-end, intellectually-oriented magazine), and then last week un-hired.  The source of his un-hiring was backlash stemming from repeated, public comments endorsing the idea that women who have abortions should be hanged . It is this position that I would like to talk about for a moment. The general response is to declare this an "extreme" position that is outside the bounds of any abortion-related discourse.  But, is it?  If you read the podcast exchange and strip away t...

Two stories came through the pipeline in the last couple of days that caught my attention.  The first was a piece by Ross Douthat arguing for some sort of extensive ban on pornography .  The other had to do with Shane Claiborne, one of the organizers of an anti-Trump revival in Lynchburg, Virginia , who received very strong push back due to his non-affirming stance on LGBT questions ( example here , see also Bill Lindsey here ), as well as the corresponding backlash to the backlash.  The backlash to the backlash primarily took the form of "how can you shun or criticize Claiborne and claim to be a classical liberal?," an example of which can be found here .  The link between these two stories is a discussion of classical liberalism, and so it is worthwhile talking about that for a bit. We can think about classical liberalism as having two dimensions.  The first is political--a particular area of human life will not be regulated or otherwise coerced by the stat...

Last night I listened to a discussion/debate between Ross Douthat and Dr. Massimo Faggioli, staged under the auspices of the Canadian Catholic media outlet Salt and Light Media, regarding the first five years of Pope Francis's pontificate ( video replay can be found here ).  Douthat has a book coming out about how Pope Francis is ruining everything (though, his posture at the debate was more like "he might ruin everything"), and Faggioli is and was one of Pope Francis's most articulate defenders.  While much of the ground covered was rather predictable, there were a couple things that cropped up that were interesting and clarifying for my own thought. I found myself listening to the debate while also following it on Twitter, especially following the excellent Twitter account of Dr. Natalia Imperatori.  To me, she got to the heart of the matter with this exchange: Changes in sexual ethics are a big thing, don't you think? asks Ross. "No" responds Mas...

So, the conservative journal First Things published a piece by Dominican friar Romanus Cessario, defending the Mortara affair .  For those not familiar, Edgardo Mortara was a Jewish boy living at the tail end of the Papal States period who was secretly baptised by a nurse in a Catholic hospital.  Having done so, Papal law required that he be raised Catholic, and so he was forcibly taken from his parents and raised more or less directly by the Pope at the time, Pius IX.  This has generally been seen as one of the more monstrous black marks on the Roman Catholic Church in its long history of anti-Semitism, and so the Hot Take of defending the Pope's action were bound to be controversial.  Ross Douthat, no liberal Catholic he, gave a strong negative reaction to the piece , as did others. In particular, Douthat makes the case that the article is clarifying as to the nature of the traditionalist Catholic stance--i.e. still anti-Semitic.  I think Douthat is right, ...

Six years is not a long time.  I've now lived in Columbus for six years, and it seems like a blink of an eye since I was living out on the West Coast.  But not all blocks of six years are created equal.  Six years in your thirties, as the last six years have been for me, is not the same thing as six years when you are younger.  Context and timing matter. From August 1990 to August 1996, I lived in Jacksonville, Florida.  That period of six years corresponded with my two years of middle school and my four years of high school.  I was 12 at the beginning of that period and 18 when it ended.  There is an argument to be made that this is the most significant six year period in any person's life, and I am coming to the conclusion that it is the most significant period of my life, by far.  And it was spent entirely in a strange place called Jacksonville, Florida. If you have never been to Jacksonville, you probably have certain associations with "Fl...