Pope Francis’ fake news
By Rod Dreher, The American Conservative.
[…Ross] Douthat’s new book on Pope Francis and his times, To Change the Church, will be published in just over a week. I highly recommend it. I try to follow this stuff in the Catholic Church fairly closely, but I learned a number of things from Douthat’s book that I didn’t know. The crisis is much more serious than I previously thought. If you have even a passing interest in Catholic affairs or the religious history of our era, you really have to read this book. It’s going to be big. Richard Rex’s review in First Things indicates why: because Douthat understands the theological stakes. Excerpt:
It looks as though the position for Catholics in the West may become more difficult in the near future. There are already calls in Britain and Europe to exclude from the medical professions persons who are unwilling to perform abortions or to collaborate in their organization or provision. A number of Catholic charities in Britain found they could no longer lawfully provide adoption services on account of their incapacity, for reasons of conscience, to offer children for adoption by same-sex couples. The exclusion of Rocco Buttiglione from high public office in the European Union in 2004 on grounds tied directly to his religious beliefs is indeed unlikely to be repeated—for who would be so foolish as to propose what we might call a “public” Catholic for such a public office again? That is how discrimination works. Subaltern groups learn their allotted position in society, and a degree of complicity in it can become the condition of their continued tenure of that position. The fact that such discrimination, were it to arise, would be carried out in the name of equality and nondiscrimination would lend it not only piquancy but almost irresistible social power and legitimacy.
In such a world, it would be for Catholics to learn from the counsel and example of Thomas More. If you cannot achieve the good, as he said in Utopia, then you can at least try to secure the least harm. For him, participation in public life was all about advising the sovereign, the king. And that could mean showing some tact and diplomacy. Today, the people are sovereign, and participation in politics therefore means advising the people. It turns out that the people en masse are as willful and prone to flattery as any Tudor monarch. In such a world, we should also remember More’s example. We don’t need to go looking for trouble. We can let it come to find us, and hope it passes us by. But if and when it does find us, then we have to look to conscience and steer by the stars of justice and truth.
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