To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism

by Ross Douthat

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker , “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.”

In To Change the Church , Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Catholic, Christianity, Theology, History, Politics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 2018

About the author

Ross Gregory Douthat is a conservative American author, blogger and New York Times columnist. He was a senior editor at The Atlantic and is author of Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class (Hyperion, 2005) and, with Reihan Salam, Grand New Party (Doubleday, 2008), which David Brooks called the "best single roadmap of where the Republican Party should and is likely to head." He is a film critic for National Review and has also contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, the Claremont Review of Books, GQ, Slate, and other publications. In addition, he frequently appears on the video debate site Bloggingheads.tv. In April 2009, he became an online and op-ed columnist for The New York Times, replacing Bill Kristol as a conservative voice on the Times editorial page. Douthat is the youngest regular op-ed writer in the paper's history.

Reviews

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ross Douthat has a job that is, I would guess, either enviable or unpleasant, depending on the day—that of being the only regular conservative contributor to the New York Times. A regular focus of Douthat’s is that most counter-cultural of doctrines, orthodox Roman Catholicism. If you want to suffer, you need only visit the comments section in the Times for any Douthat column, especially one on Catholicism. Exposing yourself to the firehose of bile and stupidity there will show you what Purgatory will be like, although perhaps Purgatory will be an improvement. Undaunted, Douthat now offers a full-length book on the changes being brought about by Pope Francis.

In some ways I am ideally situated to review this book. I am not a Roman Catholic, so I do not necessarily have a dog in the fight, and I bear no necessary loyalty to the papacy as an institution or to any particular Pope, nor do I feel constrained from criticizing. On the other hand, I am intimately familiar with not only the subtleties of Catholic doctrine, having been raised Catholic and attended a Calvinist elementary school (thus learning point-counterpoint), but also with some of its higher level theology, and I have been accused, with much justice, of being a crypto-Catholic. Really, Douthat and I are quite similar in our views—he is merely inside the formally Catholic side of the line, and I am outside it. Like Douthat, I have “a strong interest in religious questions but relatively little natural piety,” so we both tend to an intellectual approach to religious questions. But he is a practicing Catholic and I am an ambiguous fellow traveler (for now, at least). This frees me to say what I really think, which is more negative about all involved in current Church disputes than Douthat would have it.

Douthat begins by explaining his own religious background—that he was not a cradle Catholic, but his entire family converted while he was a teenager, so he embodies aspects of both a childhood Catholic and of an adult convert. He is not a traditionalist, but his sympathies skew conservative, in the John Paul II sense—someone who sees the virtues of modernity, and the need for some adaptation, just as Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger did during Vatican II, but not too much adaptation. Then we get into the analysis. Douthat incisively outlines the basic splits in the Church today, dividing around various issues relating to modernity, many (though not all) touching on sexuality, but underlain by deeper arguments about the authority of Scripture and, critically, the permanence of moral teachings. He also shows how “conservative” and “liberal” are defined in the modern Church, in a way that does not necessarily align with American use of those terms, but revolves primarily around the flexibility of Church teaching, as well as around what matters should be today emphasized by the Church. Throughout the book, Douthat does a good job of explaining these issues to non-experts, avoiding getting bogged down in minutiae, but accurately conveying the substance of the debates in a way calculated not to prejudice the reader one way or the other. This is particularly true in his chapter explaining Vatican II, where he separately writes sections from the liberal view and the conservative view, showing how Vatican II often could be read to support either side—and was so read in the subsequent decades, by both sides.

And so in those decades, under two popes, conservatives were able to tell themselves that they were on the right side of history. Yes, there were still liberals hanging around, and yes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not purge liberals or push a truly conservative structural agenda—quite the contrary, even if many new cardinals and bishops were fairly conservative. Doctrinally, those two popes taught forcefully that no moral teaching could change, whether that related to sexual morals, or euthanasia, or, for that matter, the moral implications of economics. Mostly, they functionally steered a middle ground, and since conservatives dominated the rising (smaller) generation of priests and religious, conservatives figured things would continue to swing their way. Complacency as far as the Church’s internal structure and governance was largely the order of the day; energy was focused on combating the evils of the world without, and of avoiding the fate of mainline Protestantism, implosion viewed as caused by liberalization. Liberals, meanwhile, bemoaned these papacies and called for “engagement with the modern world” and “collegiality,” code words for doctrinal flexibility and change, without much hope that the Church as a whole would move further in that direction. Therefore, they mostly redirected local Church practice in the few areas they controlled, really only Northern Europe (where the Church was enormously wealthy but dying fast) and some areas in North and South America, in the direction of liberal practice and emphasis, while they still held the upper echelons of the hierarchy in those areas. But this seemed like a rearguard, or at best a holding, action. Until Benedict, one fine day in 2013, chose to resign.

Douthat plainly thinks this was the wrong choice. Not only did it make the office of Pope seem like that of a CEO, rather than the heir of Peter, it (in hindsight) opened the door to change that Benedict obviously opposes, even if he refuses to formally say so. Thus, Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope, in a conclave Douthat describes precisely to the extent it is possible to do so. Bergoglio’s election was in a way very similar to Obama’s in 2008 (not that Douthat uses the analogy)—a mostly unknown candidate upon whom each faction could project their own views, imagining that Bergoglio would generally govern as they would, or at least not in dramatic opposition to their desires. Yes, the dwindling “St. Gallen” faction (liberal cardinals such as the German Walter Kasper and the Belgian Godfried Daneels) were instrumental in this—but probably not as part of some nefarious plot, merely because they viewed Bergoglio as the best alternative they could hope for. And conservatives were confident that the past three decades had put guardrails on the Church’s doctrinal future, such that a new Pope who was a somewhat unknown quantity was not a risk.

Francis began with, as we all know, a whirl of populist activity of no discernable intellectual or doctrinal consistency, which could be interpreted in many ways. And, like Vatican II, it was so interpreted, to offer something for everyone, at least for anyone who looked at the right angle, perhaps without stepping back to question whether his interpretations were not merely wishful thinking. All this changed, though, when the question of marriage came front and center in the councils of the Church. As Douthat notes repeatedly, the “marriage problem” is at the very core of Catholic identity. “From the first, [Christ’s] vision of marriage’s indissolubility, its one-flesh metaphysical reality, was crucial to Christianity’s development and spread.” It was tied to the specific words of Christ (unlike such more likely hot-button issues such as homosexuality and abortion), and the Church had always, uniformly, 100%, taught that one could not divorce and remarry without committing grave sin. Many suffered and died for this principle, from Thomas More on down. Yet this obviously conflicts with the modern secular view, and over the past few decades, liberals in the Catholic hierarchy had increasingly, in the mushy, elastic way that characterizes most liberal theological gambits, pushed changing Church doctrine to officially recognize that, at least in some circumstances, Catholics could divorce and remarry. All agreed that in practice Catholics were sometimes allowed to do this, through annulments or local bishops and priests implicitly tolerating the practice. But liberals wanted the doctrinal change, and, for reasons unclear, Francis decided to side aggressively with the liberals, calling a synod of bishops to evaluate the matter.

Conservatives argue that changing doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage would inevitably set the Church on the path to destruction (and would produce no benefits), since the Church has never recognized that the absolute moral law can be changed, or become subject to a relative, subjective analysis based on individual circumstances. Doing so would bring into question not just marriage, but every moral absolute. Douthat mostly agrees with this argument, which is a hard argument to dispute. The two supposed exceptions, slavery and usury, are not to the contrary. Slavery was always morally disfavored by the Church, and usury, though a closer question, was not a core moral doctrine in the same way as marriage. And the common liberal claim, variations on “Jesus said we sometimes have to ignore the law to exercise mercy, love and charity,” is simply false—Jesus never once suggested the moral law had any exceptions, only the ritual law. In fact, he repeatedly made the moral law more absolute—for example, by rejecting the Mosaic Law’s acceptance of divorce. As Douthat says, “This is not some complicated esoteric reading of the New Testament; it is the boringly literal and obvious one, which is why it take a professional theologian to dispute it.” (Of course, if you think all of this is pointless inside baseball, rather than the Roman church being the last, best hope of mankind, all this is silly. But if that’s true, you probably haven’t read this far.)

Douthat gives the blow-by-blow of the bishops’ synod on marriage and the family that took place in 2014 and 2015. Without going into detail, the bottom line is that a minority of liberal bishops, with the direct cooperation of Francis, attempted to manipulate the Synod into endorsing divorce and remarriage—and were defeated. The Pope was angry, and has stayed angry; he has therefore abandoned his earlier balance between conservatives and liberals, and now he excoriates conservatives, especially the younger generation of priests, and aligns himself totally with liberals. Engaging in various radical departures from past synod procedure, wrapping up he wrote a document (the exhortation Amoris Laetitia) that obliquely endorsed the liberal position, and followed that up with a long series of leaks, of private letters and the like, that openly encouraged defying the traditional Church position. At the same time, he has moved uniquely aggressively in modern history to strip conservatives of power and grant unparalleled power to liberals. So, says Douthat, here we are today, with conservatives unable to show definitively that Francis is engaging in an attempt to change basic doctrine, and thereby change the church wholly in all sorts of areas, from euthanasia to homosexuality, but knowing that to be the case. Meanwhile, liberals run riot and triumphant, more or less, although as of yet unable to accomplish their goal of formal doctrinal change. There is much detail around this, parsing specific statements, their implications and possibilities, but that’s what it boils down to.

The last third of the book evaluates possible futures. First Douthat draws analogies to the Church disputes over Arianism (in essence the denial of Christ’s divinity), in the fourth century, where rationalizers endorsed Arianism over the more mystical, and ultimately orthodox, position. Douthat’s main point is that it took several generations for the Church to declare a winner, and in the meantime, a lot of the discussion resembled today’s discussions about what type of Church to have, although revolving around a totally different set of doctrinal matters. Second, he draws analogies to the seventeenth-century controversies over Jansenism, a rigorist Catholic movement that was essentially a throwback to Augustinianism, with a focus on near-predestination and the worthlessness of man that had much in common with Calvinism. Douthat believes that Jansenism was too rigorist to survive in the modern world, and the more flexible Jesuits, their main opponents, had the right of it, even if some of them were too flexible, especially in accommodating the sins of the rich and powerful (a common criticism of the historical Jesuits). Still, even if the Church does require some adaptation to the times, “while there is a power to this logic, it is also true that Catholicism cannot both be a ship of Theseus in which every single part can be replaced and also be the church founded by Jesus Christ, the embodiment of a perfect and eternal Godhead.”

Finally, Douthat says, in essence, that “we’ll see.” Maybe liberals will triumph. Maybe conservatives will resurge. Either way, we may have a schism. Maybe we will have a period of flux and uncertainty lasting decades. As with larger political trends in the West, the Church faces an unsettled future, and in both, perhaps a new synthesis will emerge, opposed, perhaps, to the decline of the West and the erosion of doctrine, but also opposed to the neoliberal world order and modern “throwaway culture” (although that sounds more like a conservative triumph than the new synthesis Douthat claims it would be). He is somewhat optimistic and always civil in evaluating liberals’ motivations. His analysis is insightful and clear. But, at the end, Douthat doesn’t take his evaluation far enough, either on what underlies the current impasse or on what conservatives can do about it.

Douthat, like other writers have in the past, tries to understand what drives Pope Francis. He discusses his Jesuit background, his Argentinian experience, his stated beliefs about evangelization and “shaking things up.” He wonders if perhaps Francis thought marriage would not be a divisive issue and was surprised at the pushback. And like all writers on Francis, he ends up somewhat mystified, since the pieces don’t really fit together, in general and especially over time. I can suggest a simpler answer that nobody seems to raise—the Pope is just a very stupid man who has, like Zelig or Forrest Gump, stumbled into a situation for which his talents and nature make him totally unfit.

Such men lack consistency, because they simply don’t have the intellectual horsepower to maintain it, while they quickly and without noticing contradict themselves if it’s needed to get shiny baubles such as the praise of those they realize to be their intellectual or social betters. The betters are wholly aware of this, and use this tendency to easily manipulate stupid men (this technique is a form of flattery, obviously, which is known to work best with the stupid). Maybe Douthat thinks this and just doesn’t want to say it. He mentions Francis’s “ghostwriters” at least ten times, including repeatedly naming a specific Argentinian bishop, Víctor Manuel Fernández, as the Pope’s main ghostwriter. We can be certain neither John Paul nor Benedict used a ghostwriter; I doubt if any relevant Pope has extensively used ghostwriters before Francis. But if you have to use ghostwriters, you necessarily mark yourself as stupid, and, moreover, you place yourself in the hands of your ghostwriters, whom, as in the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, you don’t want to question, because, certainly, you don’t want to self-identify as what you know you are—stupid. Thus, Douthat says “Bergoglio embodied a certain style of populist Catholicism—one suspicious of overly academic faith in any form. . . . To the extent that his faith did have an intellectual foundation, it was the idea of a popular genius in theology, of the way that piety and creativity of the faithful could effectively teach and develop doctrine from below.” Again, it would be simpler to say “Bergoglio embodied the inability to think clearly about actual Catholic doctrine, its roots and derivation.” He��s just dumb, and has been manipulated into being the tool of liberals, who fortuitously were able to use him to rekindle their dying fire.

This is the Ockham’s Razor solution to Douthat’s conundrum. I don’t know if it’s true, but certainly, any parsing of the Pope’s unscripted discussions strongly supports this thesis. Oh, sure, he uses high-sounding, high-flying words—but if you look closely, they are used in a stupid way that betrays a simplistic understanding of any of the concepts he invokes. And since his writings aren’t his, we can conclude he is merely incapable of any higher level thought. That may be acceptable for the local hedge priest, but it’s a disaster in a Pope.

Let’s examine another indication of Francis’s stupidity. Douthat several times mentions the interviews Pope Francis has five times granted to an elderly atheist Italian journalist, Eugenio Scalfari. The weird thing, that nobody can understand, is that Scalfari refuses to take notes or record these meetings—but then offers extensive “transcripts.” Every single one of these has resulted in violently heretical utterings being attributed widely and publicly to Francis (today, for example, as Rod Dreher notes, Scalfari quotes Francis as strongly denying the existence of Hell, and directly endorsing the heresy of annihilationism, as if he were a Jehovah’s Witness). Yet Francis continues to give Scalfari these interviews, and after each one, the Vatican officially issues non-denial denials. Douthat, implicitly, and Dreher, explicitly, attribute this to calculation on Francis’s part—opening the door to extreme heterodoxy without creating a point vulnerable to counter-attack, like plate armor of the High Middle Ages, all angles to deflect sword blades. Presumably, in this scenario, the Vatican liberals, who control the official pronouncements of the Vatican as an entity, are cooperating in Francis’s plan. Again, maybe. But I think it more likely that in this scenario Francis is the drooling idiot child, rocking back and forth, continuing behavior he doesn’t himself comprehend, because the people he trusts, the people who feed him the sweet, sweet taste of adulation and praise for his brilliant insights, keep manipulating him into doing things like this. In other words, I don’t dispute there are smart people who are trying to undermine Catholicism and turn it into Episcopalianism—but Francis isn’t among them.

[Review finishes as first comment.]

[Ben De Bono · Rating 4 out of 5]

The many online debates over Pope Francis and Amoris Laetitia tend to sort themselves into two camps: those who think his pontificate is the saving grace for the Catholic Church and those who see him as an intense danger to the deposit of faith, if not a heretic than at least heterodox. But, as is usually the case with online debates, there's plenty of middle ground between the more vocal camps. That's where I've found myself as I've watched the synod on the family and absorbed the ever growing number of Francis ambiguities.

People like me aren't comfortable with either sides rhetoric. Accusing a Pope of serious error isn't something to be done lightly and yet the traditionalist camp has been quick to do so, often with dubious grounds and in ways that lack the proper respect that the Holy Father - right or wrong - is due from Catholics. At the same time, it's hard to feel comfortable with all that's developed during this Pontificate. Some of that has been the discomfort of necessary correction and growth, and that's a very good thing. But much of it is the discomfort that comes from watching Pope Francis make very liberal appointments, marginalize traditionalist bishops, lash out repeatedly at those he considers Pharisaical traditionalists (a label he applies very broadly and without nuance), and oversee a synod that - whether it was his intention or not - has created a situation where the Catholic teaching on divorce and remarriage is treated very differently depending on one's diocese.

My choice on how to handle being in that middle camp has been to mostly stay silent. I'm not comfortable openly criticizing the Pope but neither am I willing to wave away my concerns. I've avoided the recent swath of anti-Francis books because even a cursory glance showed them to be too far in the disrespectful/paranoid camp for me to feel them worth my time.

I chose instead to read this one because I've always found Ross Douthat to be a fair, articulate, and careful writer. While the book is certainly critical of Pope Francis, I feel he does a good job of walking the line of taking concerns seriously without lambasting the Pope.

Douthat couches his view of the Francis pontificate in the post-Vatican II liberal/conservative divide. In face, the book is more than a quarter over before he even begins discussing recent events. I think this is important context for understanding what's happening in the current Church. Even if Francis' conservative defenders are right in critiquing Douthat's claims about the Pope's own intentions, this context shows conclusively that the imprecision and ambiguity that have come out of Rome over the last five years have served as a breeding ground for those who do hold heterodox views.

I do wish Douthat had engaged more with the conservative defense of Pope Francis. Even though much of that has, to me, come to feel like attempts to wave away valid criticisms, I'd much prefer that those people be right. I think this would have not only made for a stronger book but would have demonstrated a commitment to giving the Pope the benefit of the doubt, at least to the extent of seriously considering arguments in favor of his complete orthodoxy.

That criticism aside, I very recommend the book for anyone who, like myself, finds themselves confused and torn between the dueling images of Pope Francis that populate internet comboxes. Douthat's done an admirable job of providing an overview of Catholicism's tumultuous last five years

[Nic Lishko · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book genuinely made me wrestle. I never really think of my faith organization in the same way I do as politics in the country, but Ross makes quite the case for division. The conclave seems to be made up of conservatives, liberals and a few in the middle. He submits several propositions around our current controversial pope and suggests more than a few instances where the house of cards could tumble down. I found his treatments of conservatives/traditionalists to be less than desirable throughout the book and seemed to give more progressive thinkers quite the pass when it comes to things fairly settled in the faith, like abortion or gay marriage. The slippery slope that could be seen by allowing re-married, unrepentant Catholics communion was well shown to be an avenue the church may need to pray a lot more on before going down.
I like to think of my bishops and cardinals as Ents like in LOTR rather than hasty men clamoring for power. I'd rather have them decide that first, we are not orcs and secondly whether or not to act on or change due to the culture's ideas, but it seems that with a more moderate thinking pope and left leaning cardinals, there's a push to change things harder and faster without carefully examining tradition. I'm sorry, but the church does not need to rush to "repair" (whateverthefu**thatmeans) the schism with protestants and Anglicanism and start handing on communion willie nillie because a few people think we need to make the first move. It's not the church that needs to change for the sake of the culture (READ: Sin is just as real as the ocean of mercy) but the people who need to come forward in all their brokenness to our hospital of sinners (church).
I'm in the camp of a less members with younger priests with a stringent desire to evangelize than old priests ready to say "hey whatever works for you works for us too."
3/5.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Roman Catholic Church does not have a particularly appealing image among many in the West. Critics decry the myriad of sexual abuses scandals committed by Catholic clergy and social liberals lament Rome’s antiquarian moral stances on contraception, homosexuality, divorce, priestly ordination, and other social issues. Pope Benedict XVI, undoubtedly one of the last great theologians of the twentieth century (I would also mention Hans Küng on the liberal Catholic wing and Jürgen Moltmann among Protestant theologians), ably captained the Catholic Church during his tenure as pontiff (2005-2013), seeking to preserve Catholic orthodoxy, but his unexpectedly resignation from the papacy in early 2013 left the chair of St. Peter empty until March 13, 2013, when Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as Pope Francis and Benedict XVI’s successor.

As journalist Ross Douthat chronicles, Benedict XVI and Francis have very different visions of Roman Catholicism. Whereas Benedict XVI was an erudite stalwart for orthodox doctrine, Francis comes across as a down-to-earth pastor. Francis has attentively made gestures and symbolic acts that have improved the public image of the Catholic Church, such as washing the feet of Muslim migrants and holding the hand of Gemma Pompili, a young girl with Down Syndrome, while he gave a homily. These gestures have made Francis appear to be a more inclusive pope than his stodgy predecessor, but Douthat reveals that underneath the public pretense, Francis’s very desire for inclusion has the potential to rend Roman Catholicism itself.

“To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism” is an engrossing book replete with all the intrigue of a political (papal) thriller as he narrates how the liberal “St. Gallen” faction within the College of Cardinals (Carlo Maria Martini, Walter Kasper, Godfried Daneels, and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor), sought to take back the papacy after decades of conservative rule. After a personal preface where Douthat tells readers that he is a convert to Catholicism as a child (and as such, in a unique place not as a cradle Catholic but also not as an adult convert) and more sympathetic to Catholicism’s conservative side, Douthat explores the competing narratives that surround the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 council that ushered in a series of reforms within the Roman Catholic Church. Liberals believe that Pope John XXIII’s (who first called the Second Vatican Council) declaration that Catholicism must “throw open the windows of the Church” and reform itself in accordance with the modern world was hindered by the conservative papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Conservatives believe that the Second Vatican Council’s reforms led to liturgical turbulence and created the conditions for heterodoxy to grow. Douthat points out that despite the Second Vatican Council’s concern to converse with the modern world, the council’s sessions convened before the rampant social upheaval of the 1960s-1970s (p. 21). The period from 1978-2013 in Roman Catholicism has been marked by a conservative papacy that solidified itself but that did not purge liberals to the same extent or degree that modernists had been attacked in the Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and this has led to an uneasy truce between the competing polarities of the Catholicism, with no side entirely satisfied (p. 25-26). Although conservative Catholicism appears to have prevailed against liberal Catholicism, this is only a relative success and does not indicate an overwhelming surge of numbers among orthodox Catholics (p. 28).

Douthat explores the circumstances of Benedict XVI’s nearly unprecedented resignation (the last pope to abdicate according to Douthat was Celestine V in 1294), an anomaly that was almost Second Vaticanesque (p. 43-46). Though it is understandable that Benedict XVI feared his aging fragility might encumber the exercise of the papal office (and he had witnessed his friend John Paul II’s very public decline in health, p. 42), I have often wondered if his resignation was the right move. In an era where we in the West have become so uncomfortable with suffering and dying that we are now allowing people (especially seniors) to receive doctor-assisted suicide, I wonder if it is not better, straining though it is, to have a figure as famous as the pope publically decline before our eyes (I am not so morbid!)?

Douthat provides background information on Bergoglio before he became Francis. Bergoglio served as a priest and later archbishop in Argentina before becoming a cardinal under John Paul II. He appears to have had a mixed tenure as the head of the Jesuits in Argentina, with many being attracted to his charismatic leadership while others grumbling that he was divisive (p. 53-54). Bergoglio did not seem to be tenaciously conservative or radically liberal, instead being critical of whichever polarity was in power while staying on a centrist path (p. 56-57). Like many Catholics in Latin America who had encountered liberation theology, Bergoglio was concerned about economic injustice and as Francis he would focus on economic issues (p. 66-67, 70-71).

Pope Francis appeared in his early days to be a breath of fresh air (the windows HAD been thrown open). His first days as pope were filled with stories of his modesty and humility (e.g. opting not to live in the Apostolic Palace and to instead dress simply). He had declared that the Catholic Church must not become moribund internally but be an instrument of outreach for Jesus Christ. The world came to love him, the same starry-eyed way that they love the Dalai Lama and Oprah. There was talk of a “Francis Effect” that would bring straying Catholics and unbelievers into the Church (who needs the “Benedict Option” when you have the “Francis Effect?”).

But then Douthat’s account shifts into the reforms Francis has initiated during his papacy. In a particularly brilliant strategic move, Francis has used the liberal wing of the Church, better suited by optimistic temperament, to reach out to non-Catholics as effective witnesses, rather than the moralistic conservatives (p. 72). Francis has employed the parable of the prodigal son to exemplify the Catholic Church, insisting that its more conservative members are disgruntled “older brothers” who do not have a heart of mercy for their wayward younger brothers (p. 76-77). Indeed, Catholic traditionalists such as Cardinals Raymond Burke and Robert Sarah have clashed with the pope and been demoted while Francis has replaced them with progressive officials who share Francis’ values; even then, Francis has not so much restructured the papal bureaucracy but ignored it entirely as he has increased his own power (p. 138-39).

The issue at the heart of the emerging split within the Roman Catholic Church is marriage and Francis’ attempts to alter church teaching on who can receive communion (Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “Amoris laetitia,” has been widely and wildly debated in Catholic circles, even as Catholics try to discern what exactly chapter 8 of the document is prescribing, p. 133-34). Due to its cumbersome and incomprehensible wording, it seems as if multiple readings of “Amoris laetitia” can be made and Douthat details how this myriad of interpretations has played out in the Church. A myriad of interpretations of “Amoris laetitia” also means that there is no longer a single, unified, CATHOLIC teaching on marriage and the sacraments.

Francis’ openness to revising teaching on marriage and the sacraments is based upon his pastoral, rather than doctrinal, approach to Catholic teaching. Indeed, Francis tends to elevate those he deems “pastoral” to positions of prominence in the Church (p. 67). As a Protestant who does not hold to the Catholic understanding of marriage, I am in great sympathy with Francis’ position (it is hard to declare the Eucharist to be “the source and summit of the Christian life” and then continually deny it to millions of believers) but I also recognize that Roman Catholic theology has constructed such an edifice around marriage that to tamper with it risks unraveling the whole tapestry. Douthat, along with other conservatives, is concerned that Francis’ reforms will eventually result in other far-reaching changes such as intercommunion with Protestants and an allowance for priests to perform last rites (out of pastoral need) for those living in countries with doctor-assisted suicide who opt to end their lives (p. 141-42). Douthat also believes Francis' reforms could lead to the Catholic Church radically altering its teaching on sexuality as a whole.

Before concluding, Douthat explores how Roman Catholicism should or should not accommodate to the modern world and uses the 17th and 18th century feuds between Jansenists and Jesuits as an example of how deep-seated theological entanglements in the Catholic Church have played out (chapter 10).

There is one other prominent public figure who many have compared to Francis, as different as they may seem (I first read this comparison from Matthew Schmitz). Both Francis and Donald Trump are known to speak off-the-cuff, to make brusque comments that wreak havoc on their publicists. Both have been stacking their respective bureaucracies with their ideological allies. Both have a charismatic personality that endears them to their followers (p. 69, 200).

This is a crucially important account of the rise and rule of Pope Francis. His tenure has reignited a theological clash that had lain dormant for a long time, between those who wanted to plant their feet firmly in the past and those who wanted to advance with the “spirit of Vatican II” (p. 9-10). For years liberals had sought to decentralize and curtail the power of the papacy but had been blocked by conservative opposition that was confident and loyal to John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But papal power can be a two-edged sword and with Francis’ attempts to usher in sweeping marital and sacramental reforms, it is now the orthodox who are anxious to see limits placed on what the papacy can do (p. 11-13).

(Note: this is based on reading an Advanced Uncorrected Proof and as such, I have not included any direct quotations from the book. Once the final version of the book is released and I can consult it, I will add quotations to the review)

[Sam Strickland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douthat really excels at presenting plausible interpretations from several perspectives of the shifts taking place in Francis’s pontificate and places them in historical perspective. Seeing him think in such a way while still having his own criticisms makes his book a great example of how to interpret current events, which Douthat has always excelled at even when he is wrong.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douthat is an excellent writer and thinker. In this book, he looks at the recent history of the Catholic church, in Francis' elevation to pope and the way he's affected the church and church tradition. He reaches back into more distant church history to compare the issues that sparked conflict and change, and how they compare to what is happening now. He is thoughtful in assessing the situation, studiously avoiding taking sides.

Parts of this book hit hard, causing me to reflect on how there are similarities in the trend toward liberalism in the Protestant church. Douthat said, "....it is difficult to see how the progressive faction can sustain its vision of Catholicism in the long term if it is not reproducing itself within the priesthood and religious life in greater numbers than today. Liberal Catholicism's difficulty, now as forty years ago, is that it has the most appeal to Catholics with the loosest connections to the church, and its appeal weakens as the intensity of commitment increases. This means it can do well in opinion polls of all Catholics, well enough in polls of churchgoers...and still fail to generate the level of commitment that induces men and women to give their lives in service to the faith."

And how can we be salt and light if we are not growing?

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Douthat’s rhetoric was perhaps meant to bring light to the current situation in the Vatican, the current situation isn’t a new development. Remember Jansenism? Remember Quietism? Yup, it indeed goes that far back. Nonetheless, the most disconcerting point this book makes is that we aren’t much better prepared today than Christians were decades ago. Like the saying goes the devil is in the details, in this case the devil is perhaps hiding on plain sight in the footnotes; thus, my commitment is to carefully reading the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and praying and trusting that the Holy Spirit would guide us through this challenging times.

[Callie Hornbuckle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of food for thought. Recommended reading for Catholics trying to understand and process what’s happening in the Vatican right now. I don’t necessarily agree with all of Douthat’s conclusions, but I greatly appreciate his efforts to present the facts along with a thoughtful analysis of Church trends and politics.

[Todd Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, interesting and timely. Also disquieting. Very unsettling.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Douthart does a great job of describing what is being played out under Francis: a general trend towards more liberal views on human sexuality, marriage etc. Douthart describes in some detail the way this is disseminated, the balance of official statements to the carefully planted unofficial ones. However, there is a conservative move amongst new ordinands that could keep Francis’s liberalising moves in check.

[DBA OSB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this book immensely, but found it extremely disappointing. The fact that the words "Peron" or "Peronism" appear nowhere in the index indicates a rather gaping lacuna in Mr Douthat's understanding of the Pope's psychology and modus operandi.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I enjoying reading editorials and essays about contemporary topics, I don't typically bother with book-length treatments of them. This, from Ross Douthat, was a good reminder why.

Don't get me wrong, "To Change the Church" is a nice treatment of the subject matter and will be of interest to anyone who likes Douthat's writing or who is following the current controversies in the Catholic Church. But I find it tough to justify an entire book "reflecting" on events that are still unfolding.

The first third of the book provides a good background of the papacy as a whole, the reforms of Vatican II, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XI, and the election of Francis. Through that narrative, Douthat lays out the conflicting post-Vatican II currents between Catholic "conservatives" and "liberals" in a manner that, if anything, borders on being *too* even-handed. That made for surprisingly interesting reading, particularly Douthat's account of the precise mixture of views and circumstances that led the conclave to elect Francis.

But the purpose of all this background is to set the stage for the theological conflict at the heart of the book: the controversy over the Church's doctrine on remarriage and communion. The middle third of the book describes the Church's historical teaching on marriage, the state of the controversy leading up to Francis's first synod on the family, and the playing out of that controversy culminating in Francis's issuing Amoris Laetitia with its ambiguous footnotes. In this section, Douthat drops most pretenses of neutrality and builds the argument that the proposed changes to Church teaching produce serious error of concern to all Catholics. He also describes in detail the specific tactical back-and-forths between the conservatives who are resisting Francis's potential changes and the liberals pushing them along.

The final third of the book discusses the immediate aftermath of Amoris Laetitie and the current uncertain situation, hazards a few predictions on how things may play out based on analogous situations in Church history, and reflects on the Francis legacy. Here, Douthat is at his most strident. Compared to the even-handed first section, and lawyerly middle, this last section is all alarm bells about the future of the Church.

My reaction to all this is that Douthat is completely right on the merits of the theological controversy. And his recounting of the details of the tactical wrangling between the two sides reads like good military history. The portrait that emerges of Pope Francis is far from a flattering one.

But the volume of the warning siren and the extent of the reading of tea leaves and the reflecting on the "legacy" of a spry Pope only 5 years into his term all seems a bit much. As Douthat himself acknowledges, Church teaching has not actually changed despite all of the unsettling talk. And the history he presents so far of the Francis papacy is of a Pope who wants to change the Church repeatedly backing down in the face of overwhelmingly opposed consensus from everyone other than a handful of West European bishops. Thus the handwringing over what might happen if a change *were* to happen, and if it proved difficult for Francis's successor to undo that change, strikes me as premature.

So although I share Douthat's concern, and his inclinations on the right way to proceed, the back half of the book reads like a lot of over-anxious wheel spinning. Whichever way things go, its prognostications swiftly will be overtaken by actual events. And while I hope Douthat's writing may act as an instrument of the Holy Spirit to move those in positions of power, there is not as much value for the laity praying from the sidelines.

[David Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book, especially for a Protestant who pays attention to the Roman Catholic Church, but hasn't paid much attention to its recent internal politics (and my, apparently there are a lot of them). The book is really a discussion of Pope Francis and how he might be changing the Catholic Church, with especial attention to the possibility of communion for the divorced and remarried, and all that might mean. (See also a prophetic comment that any Catholics who favor allowing the death penalty will soon be out of step with the modern magisterium.) It's a fair book, in the sense that Douthat knows he can't get inside Francis' mind and tell you exactly what is going on, so he presents many possibilities, and seems to settle on the answers most concerning to conservative Catholics.

Of course, I personally especially appreciated the examinations of Church history, from the "three ways to understand Vatican II", to the somewhat humorous story of Celestine V who, after being forced into the papacy, soon declared a right of papal resignation and got out of there, to a discussion of the Jansenist v. Jesuit conflict of the 17th century (we Calvinists do love to read Pascal). One also gets a presentation of some less-discussed Catholic doctrines, for example the idea that God will never put someone in a situation where intentionally continuing in sin is the best possible option (seen as one reason why communion for the divorced and remarried should be permitted). Or exactly what is required for a marriage to be considered valid by the Church, how that came about historically, and what to make of the fact that the world must be filled with Roman Catholics who don't know they are technically in marriages unrecognized by the Church.

One also certainly gets the sense of just how messy Catholicism is internally, which is not the picture the Church wants to present to potential Protestant converts at all. Actually at times reading the book I found myself wondering why Douthat is still Roman Catholic... but I think I say that as someone who, for a long time, has tended to think that if you reject any of the Catholic claims to authority, that would defeat the point of being Catholic. Lately though I tend to think... actually probably a lot of Catholics do reject some of those claims, you could still believe Roman Catholicism is the intended Church of Christ and preserves traditions largely ignored in alternatives, and still not quite believe in the whole "dogmatic package".

A quick and interesting, and recommended, read, you will learn things even if you disagree with Douthat's conclusions.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Douthat critiques the early years of Pope Francis - especially his process revolving around his post synodal document Amoris Laetitia. Douthat begins with three analyses of the last 30 or so years of the Vatican and the actions of the Popes. The first is from an imagined conservative Catholic. The second from a liberal view, and the third an attempt to create an honest study through unbiased eyes. This is an interesting presentation which, for me, resulted in a bit of agreement for all three. However, as much as it might help the narrative, Douthat is definitely conservative and this point of view rules the book.

I found the book difficult because much needed to be looked up as the author used the language of theology and poorly known history to create his book. While I have a good bit of knowledge of both, his presentation was much deeper and sometimes confusing as he presented the Arian heresy throughout its history in church thinking and a conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. I saw what he was trying to say by using these historical fights, but it was not sn easy read.

Douthat also talks of popes in history who went against church doctrine - again this was difficult. The entire nomination of Francis was discussed along with the machinations of the Cardinals that none of us would have known. His presentation of the 2 pronged Synod on the Family makes Francis impulsive, divisive, and one to stack the deck his way. The result is a divided church of liberal vs conservative, much like our country is divided today. He likens Francis to Trump in his behaviors. The sticking point of the Amoris Laetitia, which is the reason many are concerned, is a short part of Chapter 8 concerning the reception of the Eucharistic by divorced and remarried Catholics.

I do not have any way of knowing what is really going on in the Vatican or what Francis is trying to accomplish - or his methods and motives - but this book does not paint a pretty picture of a pope who seems to have love and mercy as his goals. It makes me feel bad about my feelings of joy that about the man as our church's leader. Douthat's analysis of Pope Francis's life as a pope and the direction the church may turn is kind of unsettling.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent look under the hood of a story that has been playing out in Catholic circles for the last few years: the papacy of Pope Francis and its intellectual discontents. Douthat is pretty clearly a partisan in this debate--Douthat is a Francis-skeptic, to put it mildly-- but it seemed to me that he was eminently fair in his characterizations.

One thing that I think this book would have benefitted from was more discussion of the laity and how they view Francis. It hits on it periodically, but I think a deeper dive there would have built out the conclusions a bit. One can imagine a new schism in theory along the lines that Douthat suggests--but it is hard to see how that plays out on the ground and what happens at the parish level.

Still, this is a great, quick read; it's not my favorite Douthat book (*Bad Religion* tops it, I think), but it's well-argued and timely, and I think could even be of interest to non-Catholics trying to get a glimpse at someone else's internecine squabbles.

[Brett Rohlwing · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to chew on here, and good pointers to other resources. I find its near-conspiratorial assessment of Francis' papacy to be a bit dramatic.

[Nigel Ewan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though the Vatican politics get extremely in-the-weeds at times, this was great. Douthat sets Francis' papacy in its post-Vatican II/post-JPII context, with excursions deeper into church history. Particularly compelling was his lucid comparison of this present drama with the Jansenist–Jesuit controversy of the seventeenth century.

[Laura Clawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful fly-by history of Vatican II to Francis. For someone who knew very little of the papal process, this was both informative and thought-provoking- especially on themes of communion, divorce and remarriage and the very present state of the Catholic Church.

[Steven H · Rating 3 out of 5]

A CRITICISM OF FRANCIS THAT IS MORE REASONED, AND LESS POINTED, THAN MOST

Author and columnist Ross Douthat wrote in the Preface to this 2018 book, “This is a book about the most important religious story of our time: the fate of the world’s largest religious institution under a pope who believes that Catholicism can change in ways that his predecessors rejected, and who faces resistance from Catholics who believe the changes he seeks risk breaking faith with Jesus Christ. It is also a story that cannot be written about neutrally… I was not born a Roman Catholic, but neither did I join the Catholic Church as an adult… I became a Catholic as a teenager, along with my family, in a shift that I welcomed but that was impelled more by my mother’s spiritual journey than my own…” (Pg. xi-xii)

He continues, “This book is not inevitabilist. It is conservative, in the sense that it assumes the church needs a settled core of doctrine, a clear unbroken link to the New Testament and the early church… If the church is just a religious tribe with constantly evolving views… then… the whole thing seems like a high-minded fraud, a trick upon the masses of believers.” (Pg. xv) He adds, “This is a … period of theological crisis that’s larger than just the Francis pontificate… My hope is that most readers, religious and secular, Catholic and otherwise, will come away from this book convinced of the importance of its story, even if they are not swayed by my interpretation of events.” (Pg. xvi) He acknowledges, “there are Catholic readers who will find this book’s critical portrait of a sitting pope to be inappropriate, impious, disloyal… But the major duty I assumed wasn’t to the pope; it was to the truth the papacy exists to preach, to preserve, and to defend.” (Pg. xvii)

He explains, “The nineteenth-century definition of papal infallibility… has… tended to restrain papal experimentation… by remining the pontiffs of the weight that a truly authoritative pronouncement has to bear… Paul VI, John Paul, and Benedict were always careful to leave a certain ambiguity as to whether infallibility had really been invoked… But what happens when a pope sets out to defy this reality… to act in the way that a watching world… seems to want the man at the center of the earthly church to act? What happens when a pope decides … [to] reshape Catholicism according to his vision? What happens when a pope decides to change the church?” (Pg. 13)

He says, “If the agenda of the two conservative popes [JP II, Benedict XVI] could be summed up as ‘retrench, restore, and then evangelize,’ Bergoglio seemed more impatient with the first two impulses, uncertain of their necessity, and focused almost exclusively on the third. ‘Hagan lio!’ [‘Shake things up!’] he liked to say to young people…” (Pg. 59)

He recounts, “In October of 2013… the Vatican announced that a synod on ‘the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world’ would be held … across the next two year…” (Pg. 103) “On… October 13, 2014, the synod’s managers released a so-called ‘Relatio post Disceptationem’ … which was supposed to summarize the proceedings thus far… The ‘relatio’ … only raised the idea of communion for the remarried, not for same-sex couples or the unmarried or polygamists. But it was extended in the direction---toward a larger revolution in Catholic sexual ethics---that [Cardinal Walter Kasper’s] conservative critics had argued his ideas would lead. The ‘relatio’ shocked many of the synod’s bishops. It had been sent to the press before it had even been read to them, and they did not recognize the synod they were attending in the confident proposals of the text.” (Pg. 107-108)

He records, “Then in September [2015], the pope surprised everyone by issuing---on his own, without consultation with the bishops---new guidelines for annulments… These were not only … an extension of the American annulment model to the rest of the Catholic world… They also included a ‘fast track’ option, in which local bishops could approve an annulment petition in less than forty-five days if both parties consented… it seemed to be a permission slip to liberal bishops to expedite most if not all annulment petitions where there wasn’t a contesting spouse, effectively making a Catholic annulment easier to get then a civil divorce.” (Pg. 115-116)

He points out, “At several points… Pope Francis granted interviews to … a prominent Italian journalist and noted atheist… the interviewer… published ‘transcripts’ of their conversations summoned up from memory… it was difficult to tell what the pontiff had definitely said, and what the aging journalist had embellished or invented or misrepresented… it was clear that Francis saw an advantage in this sort of deliberately unreliable communication---whether as… simply a way to talk casually without the strictures that an actual interview transcript would impose.” (Pg. 126-127)

He observes, “when the papal exhortation finally arrived… it was not quite what the conservatives feared. ‘Amoris Laetitia,’ ‘The Joy of Love,’ was the longest papal document in history… in which the pope took up the question of Catholics in irregular relationships, and said… well, once again, no one was quite sure.” (Pg. 129) He continues, “‘Amoris Laetitia’ left the church in a bizarre position… [It] came down to a strange question: Could long-standing church discipline and a core moral teaching be rewritten via a suggestive footnote to a deliberately ambiguous papal exhortation?... This uncertainty lent itself… to multiple interpretations of what the pope meant and where the church might go next.” (Pg. 132)

He notes, “Both John Paul II and Benedict had prodded the Vatican … by degrees… Francis seemed to be on a more hurried timetable, more determined to put his stamp on the church while there was time to do it, lest a successor be elected who might reverse the informal changes he had made. It was a high-reward but polarizing strategy.” (Pg. 139)

He summarizes, “What was happening in the Francis era---a war of words between Catholic elites, with the mass of churchgoers watching uncertainly or indifferently---was how you would expect a major theological controversy to begin in a more disenchanted and less zealous era, in which theology matters less than in the medieval or post-Reformation era past because the church itself is less politically powerful and culturally dominant. And Francis’s defenders… seemed to understand that… they tended to play up the significance of what he was attempting to accomplish.” (Pg. 150)

He argues, “at the very least Francis’s admirers clearly believe that his efforts to change the church… [are] demonstrating that just as Jesus set mercy and forgiveness and the relief of suffering above the law, so must his contemporary disciples, and accept that what we think of as ‘Christian morality’ is sometimes not the Christian thing to do. This idea is powerful. But it is not an idea to be found anywhere in the traditional teachings of the church; it is an idea, indeed, that the church has confronted in various forms across the centuries and rejected…” (Pg. 175-176)

He adds, “this is where Francis-era liberal Catholicism has so often ended up---in arguments that imply that the church must use Jesus to go beyond Jesus… using his approach to the ritual law as a means to evade or qualify the moral law… To fulfill Jesus’s mission, to follow the Jesus of faith, even the Jesus of Scripture must be left behind.” (Pg. 179)

He laments, “What power could conceivably [settle debates] if a Pope Francis II or John XXIV announces new developments of doctrine[?]… There is a historical irony here. It was conservative Catholics who backed the strongest possible understanding of papal authority … as an essential bulwark against liberal currents in religion… liberals who once complained about the papal authoritarianism of John Paul II have switched to complaining about the un-Catholic disloyalty of conservative ‘dissenters’ from the papal line…” (Pg. 189)

He asserts, “the pope’s ambiguous revolution worries even some of his allies and appointees… because it threatens to disturb the normal running of the church and their own sinecures within it. Heresy might be tolerable, but schism is bad for business.” (Pg. 200) He summarizes, “[Francis] has thrown away the opportunity, by wedding his economic populism … [to] the moral theology of the 1970s, making enemies of conservatives (African, American, and more) who might have been open to his social gospel… driving the church not toward synthesis but toward crisis.” (Pg. 203-204)

He concludes, “Francis has not just exposed conflicts; he has stoked them, encouraging sweeping ambitions among his allies and apocalyptic fears among his critics… he has taken sides and hurled invective in a way that has pushed friendly critics into opposition, and undercut the quest for the common ground… Yes, truces are unsatisfying… But sustaining a for-the-time-being Catholicism … is not an achievement to be lightly dismissed… So yes, the story could end with Francis as its hero. But to choose a path that might have only two destinations---hero or heretic---is an act of dangerous presumption… ESPECIALLY for a pope.” (Pg. 207)

Douthat’s book will appeal to those seeking contrary opinions to Francis, who are opposed to some of the more strident authors in this field.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who is at least a moderately serious observer of the Roman Catholic Church [1], I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book.  I think that the author believes himself to be more conservative than he really is simply because the left that he is to the right of is so far off from what is biblically correct that to be a part of it is insanity, and he comes off as a moderate but not an insane person.  That said, the author's caution and sense of justice is relatively even-handed, a tough thing when dealing with contemporary Catholicism as well as contemporary politics, both aspects this writer wades into.  The author also praises John Zmirak, who happens to be an online acquaintance of mine and a pretty hilarious commentator on contemporary Catholicism from a traditionalist perspective.  By and large I thought this book was a good one, as it honestly attempts to come to grips with Francis' dictatorial approach and its possible effects on the unity of Catholicism as a whole as well as the troubled relationship between Catholicism and modernity as a whole.

This volume of about 200 pages is divided into eleven chapters, and also includes a personal preface by the author (who explains his background and approach) and also acknowledgements, notes, and an index.  The author begins with a look about the fate of most popes to be prisoners of the Vatican (1), and then provides three different stories about Vatican II and its consequences, looking at a conservative and liberal narrative as well as the author's own more moderate narrative (2).  After this the author discusses the surprising abdication of the previous pope (3) and the surprise victory of the Argentine Bergoglio in the conclave that followed (4).  The author discusses Francis' agenda as a pope (5) as well as the marriage problem that ruined his papal honeymoon pretty quickly (6).  The author then looks at Francis' efforts to change the church in radical ways (7) and the pope's disinterest in responding to his conservative and traditionalist critics (8).  The author then finishes with a comparison between the contemporary crisis and the dispute between Athanasians and Arians (9) as well as between Jansenits and Jesuits in 17th century France (10) before looking at the Francis legacy as likely having been "making a mess," without really doing anything to fix the problems that contemporary Catholicism faces (11).

Again, without being a great book or an essential book, this is certainly a good one.  The author has thought seriously about the historical antecedents to the contemporary state of the Catholic Church and comments that schism and division are possible as well as a continued weakness within the Catholic Church.  The extent to which this weakness may be corrected by a more dynamic successor who is able to recover Catholic influence in a world that is growing ever more hostile to biblical Christianity or anything that remotely resembles it and the way that the divisions of the Catholic Church can be overcome by future events is somewhat unclear.  The author shows himself to be somewhat skeptical about the relationship between political and social and theological conservatism in the United States among many right-wing American Catholics and also makes a shrewd comparison between Trump and Francis as both representing populist opposition to contemporary institutions that are viewed as being dangerously out of touch with contemporary reality.  This book certainly gave me food for thought and if you find reading about internal Catholic politics interesting you will likely find something of worth here as well.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...

[Ashleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just made me sad. I think Douthat may get to the root of his particular issue at the beginning of the book, when he says he fears he may have had an incomplete conversion and is missing something. The entire book felt like the roasting of a political character who is too American politics liberal for his liking. The problem with this argument is that the Church is old, predates America and its politics by millenia, and has not closed up in all this time despite having some truly horrible temporal leaders. And for Catholics, is founded by Christ and not only a temporal organization. Thus arguing from current American political views just falls flat. His argument is that Pope Francis is too wishy-washy about doctrine and allowing too much ambiguity when it comes to issues like homosexuality in the church and birth control/family planning. Which he says will then destroy the church as everyone goes their own way and factions develop. I think this is 10000x too doomsday to be realistic.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much like the author, I am biased in my view towards Pope Francis. However, I may be the only one in these reviews who is biased in FAVOR of him. And it’s quite obvious that the Dominican-Jesuit divide has a lot to do with Douthat’s criticisms of Francis and overall direction of the Church in the modern age. While that’s to be expected, I don’t think we needed 200 pages of repetition.

Douthat is clearly Dominican in that he has done his theological and mysticism research. I respect the effort and I agree on his points of keeping with core faith and Catholic teaching. But if your main sticking point comes down to divorced Catholics taking communion, then I think there’s bigger issue at large.

The reason I give this book a two is because I feel like Douthat is SO CLOSE to getting somewhere sometimes and then he reverts back to cliches and stereotypes of Catholics around the world. His view is so fundamentally American that, as a fellow American who has lived in 3 Catholic countries (including Ireland and Italy), he fails to grasp that his views are greatly shaped by American exceptionalism and our belief in “rightness”. “Traditional” Catholics in Italy, for example, are not the same “traditional” Catholics we see in the US. In fact, I’ve found Italians to be more open and ACTIVE in their faith, including their approach to migrants, the poor, and even non Catholics.

I say Douthat is so close to getting it because he starts out the book saying, “if we take a deeper dive into [divorce or same-sex marriage], it becomes a discussion about whether Jesus’ words in the New Testament are definitely his words, whether the gospels are reliable, whether Jesus could have made mistakes, and other questions that are foundational to Christology, theology, the Church.” This is a great point because the New Testament SHOULD be taken at face value. And what Jesus says, “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:9). But Jesus also says this:

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” (Ephesians 4:31-5:1).

In today’s world, we know marriages can be abusive, that not every marriage is filled with love or faithfulness. This acknowledgment did not exist in the time of the apostles and certainly not in the time of the rise of Church as an institution. Do we think that Jesus prefers we stay in marriage of pain? Or would he allow that “immorality” extends beyond strictly infidelity? It is my understanding that THIS is the type of mercy and compassion that Pope Francis was reaching for when he said divorced Catholics might receive communion. It isn’t changing or ignoring church doctrine, it’s recognizing that immorality AND forgiveness can exist in many ways. It’s recognizing that the sun is the center of the universe, that the earth is round, and that Jesus’ message is kindness and mercy.

It felt like Douthat’s criticisms of Pope Francis and “modern” Catholicism stem from a combination of Dominican teachings and American religious beliefs. I have nothing against Dominicans because I am also extremely interested in theology and church history and believe in the important of education. My concern stems from the strictest readings of biblical works, without room for compassion, understanding, or mercy. But this is a theological difference and one I’m willing to read more about to gain a broader understanding of Church teachings. I was raised in a German Catholic family, and considering the times Douthat criticized the German Catholic Church, we were bound to having differing theological understandings to begin with.

My second concern stems from Douthat formally being Episcopalian, but converting to traditionalist Catholic. Phrases and terms used throughout the book, mainly regarded Islam and the constantly repeated phrase “sexual revolution” in purely negative light, indicate, to me at least, that Douthat is politically an American conservative. He talks about Marxism in Argentina, Poland, and East Germany through the lens of an American who was taught about the Red Scare, but not about the consequences of it. He fails to mention the reason that Argentina experienced its civil war, economic depression, and political instability was due to the US’ interference in Argentina’s politics. Who armed the juntas? Who overthrew governments in all of Central and South America? It wasn’t the Jesuits, that’s for sure.
Modern American conservatives are usually antithetical to Christ’s teachings regarding loving thy neighbor at the minimum, not even mentioning the current administration’s efforts to deport immigrants, strip social protections from the poor, and target the most vulnerable in society. This ties back to my original critique of the book: Douthat was raised in American household first and a Catholic household second. Again, this feels, to me at least, antithetical to the real message of Jesus Christ. When “othering” your divorced Catholic neighbor is more important than extending compassion, you’re not really upholding the very doctrine you claim to know.

I picked up this book following the death of Pope Francis and the ascension of Pope Leo XIV. I am sure Douthat has written other scathing articles about Francis since then, but I wanted to try this one because it got good reviews and it seemed more open in its concerns about the direction of the modern church. I think it’s incredibly important to read authors that don’t align with your own view. Like I said, I think Douthat was approaching important points and I could agree with him on quite a few things - but I will readily admit that communion being provided to the divorced is bottom of my list of concerns about the direction of the Church. Divorce is mentioned by Jesus once, in Matthew. Kindness - at least 70 times.

And one last note. There was one statement that I could not get past at the beginning of the book:
“Just a flight away, a European Catholic subsides in a religious landscape whose self-satisfied indifference can rival Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Star Trek’”.

First, this once again shows Douthat’s American-centric belief that Europeans Catholics are practicing wrong and that only American Catholics are right - which is somehow both ironic and also blatantly inaccurate. Second, this is a clear jab at Star Trek and its progressive message of equality and inclusion. Describing Gene Roddenberry as having “self-satisfied indifference” makes no sense in context and reeks of calling anything you don’t like “woke” or “politically correct garbage”. What did the Star Trek nerds ever do to you? Third, and maybe this is just me, this whole sentence reads as a whole lot of nothing. Europe is not predominantly Catholic but it certainly is a Christian continent overall. Is this sentence suggesting that Europeans are sitting smug in a sin-filled hellscape? That somehow Star Trek’s inclusivity and over-the-top dramatics means that Europe is full of sinners who don’t care about the state of the world? Honestly, what is this sentence supposed to mean??

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a time of immense polarity, people can complain of how fractured our systems are whilst contributing to that division themselves.
Ross Douthat in "To Change the Church" manages to walk the tight rope and remain fair to all parties. Though it is not hard to guess his opinion, he gives Pope Francis and his supporters a fair shake whilst offering criticisms to orthodoxy.

One of the major themes of Douthat's argument is that ultra conservatives emphasize too heavily on God's justice, whereas the ultra liberals emphasize too heavily on God's mercy.
Douthat furthers his argument by applying the current Pope's Ideological leanings to one of two possibilities:
1. His Holiness is trying to balance out his predecessors. Though it would be hard to claim that Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI were overtly conservative and too heavily emphasized God's justice, it is fair in saying another Pope could be more centrist than those two. In an attempt to create a more centrist Church, he tried to assert his moderate mindset on the battlefield of communion for the remarried. He accidentally picked a political streetfight with the conservatives. Rather than lick his wounds and go home, Francis has instead chosen to ally himself with the left and reinforce his liberal leanings.
2. Pope Francis too heavily emphasizes God's mercy and is exactly what many people think he is.

Douthat draws heavily from history for his arguments and outlook on the future of the Church in these conflicted times. He makes no guarantees and can only spectulate as to who will win the day and what that day will look like. The beauty of Douthat's writing is that at no point does it feel like a manifesto. Douthat is incredibly fair to both sides and as such ends up writing a very intriguing and powerful book in "To Change the Church." His ultimate question of Hero, or Heretic, is left for the reader to decide.

[William Korn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my church's Book Club (I belong to a Lutheran church). In the introduction, he notes that if Pope Francis makes the changes Douthat thinks he wants to make, there would be no point in he (Douthat) continuing to be a Catholic. At that point, I came to regard the book as more of an extended op-ed than a book about facts.

Having said that, there was a fair amount of material about historical background and internal Roman Catholic politics which I assume to be more or less accurate (although probably slanted towards Douthat's own biases). That was interesting. Also interesting was his realization that the social media have tended to exacerbate the heat (but not the light) of the debate surrounding Francis' reign as Pope. However, this isn't a very brilliant observation. Social media are very well known to have turned up the heat (but not the light) on pretty much everything that people disagree about.

When our Book Club discusses this book (next week) we will be joined by a clergyman from a breakaway Catholic group that has already implemented the changes in Roman Catholic doctrine that folks think Pope Francis wants to make*, as well as an Episcopal clergyman. It should be an interesting discussion.

* But does Francis really want to make them? Only God and Pope Francis really know. Douthat doesn't know and admits as much. He's merely afraid that Pope Francis does.

[The American Conservative]

On February 1, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pope Francis was finalizing an agreement with the Chinese government that would regularize the Vatican’s relations with Beijing in exchange for Rome ceding massive ground to the communists regarding internal church governance. Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired bishop of Hong Kong, denounced the deal as a sellout of the underground church. Ross Douthat, the U.S. Catholic commenter and conservative New York Times columnist, tweeted that it was “the second-biggest gamble of this pontificate.”

“One striking thing about the Francis era is that the papacy’s big-picture argument, especially in [the 2015 encyclical] Laudato Si, is a sweeping critique of the modern technocratic-capitalist paradigm,” Douthat continued.

Read the rest: https://www.theamericanconservative.c...

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it a startling read? Not really, because if you're reading this you've probably kept up on the news it summarizes. But Douthat's strength is in his op-ed style writing. And teasing out some possible future scenarios like the unlikely, "St Raymond Burke, ora pro nobis."

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In To Change the Church, conservative Catholic NYTs columnist Ross Douthat explores how a conservative and traditional institution reacts to a dynamic world. How much change can a group endure before its bonds of community break?

If we use Durkheim’s definition, religion is another way people establish sacred values around which they organize groups.

-Do Catholics organize around their belief in the trinity, the saints (often martyrs), and Jesus’s miracles?

-Do they organize around their abstention from contraceptives while also opposing marriage equality and assisted dying in terminally ill patients because those are the rules?

-Do they organize around the practice of radical compassion, mercy, and charity?

Douthat paints the liberals within the church as mostly subscribing to the first and third propositions while conservatives mostly worry over the first and second proposition. Because the consequence of not living a Catholic life includes things like damnation, the stakes are high and highly contentious. Change within this institution is incremental and cautious, if allowed at all.

Francis, however, has leaned into these conflicts. He is famous for performing public acts of charity. When asked about homosexuality, he has responded “who am I to judge?” Douthat shows the consequences of these policies among the church’s elites. How has a conservative institution like the Catholic Church responded to change? Mostly not well, and so far Francis appears to have countered with ambiguities and liberal appointments as he tries to change the culture of the church. Douthat worries that he has risked schism in pursuit of these changes.

“Catholic” is an identity but the church is an institution, which means the question of identity soon becomes pragmatic. Does the liberal approach (we are the people who X and who Z) or the conservative approach (we are the people who X but don’t Y) produce higher attendance at mass and more vocations? Though neither approach, broadly, seems to be working, the conservative approach seems to do better. Why? Several explanations occur to me.

First, why take lifelong vows of celibacy or wake up early on Sundays when God is changeable and forgiving?

Second, perhaps people rally around what they oppose more than they rally around what they support. We all go to cheer on our favourite sports teams, but especially when they play our rival.

Finally, the odder the ritual, the more it defines the group. So while lifelong celibacy seems like an odd vow to me, it’s a loud and enduring signal in a sea of otherwise fickle trends.

Once one starts to think about numbers, it’s only so long before one starts to worry about politics. If the church’s numbers are rising in Africa but if African bishops tend to be very conservative, should they rise or fall in Francis’s church? If you’re a bishop in a conservative culture, do Francis’s liberal declarations help you or hinder your effort to proselytize? If popes generally don’t break with tradition, does that mean they shouldn’t or can’t? Does it matter if the tradition is commonly viewed within the institution as having held for a thousand years?

(Although these questions are at the heart of To Change the Church, it is grating to read about these bishops wringing their hands about sexual relations amongst divorcees as their colleagues cover up the abuses of sexual predators.)

However gracefully Douthat summarizes Catholic discourse, at a certain point it comes across as earnest rationalization for personal preferences, glossed over as either the Holy Spirit inspiring change or revered tradition standing athwart history yelling stop. And it is even harder to resist this reading if one has studied political psychology and motivated reasoning. The difficult conservative position leads to something like “either what Jesus stated 2000 years ago was right or it wasn’t.” The difficult liberal position leads to “why call this a religion if it’s really just a sort of collective existentialism?” Either way, it is understandable that Catholics would not their martyred saints to have died for rationalizations, to give just one example. I couldn’t help thinking that there must be a moderate to superficial faith that endures relative to one exposed to deep questioning. Or, perhaps, as the world changes, people will take comfort in extreme customs that offer the veneer of deep roots.

What do we want? In My Struggle 6, the book I read before To Change the Church, Karl Ove Knausgaard opens every facet of his life up to interrogation and it all but destroy his family bonds. Was he living a lie and admirably initiated a necessary change, or do we/ should we prefer to live within moderate illusions? Everyone knows that, at some margin, it’s better not to ask how the sausage is made. And yet, the church’s greatest sins have festered when hidden from view. Speaking personally, maybe it’s hard to escape and ignore that change is inevitable. If so, Douthat’s depiction of the Catholic Church as perennially schismatic implies that groups mostly should not bind themselves to static rules and values for thousands of years.

**

"Gender. Transgender. The Holocaust. Specificity (not a word)."

What inspired the person who borrowed Ross Douthat’s To Change the Church from the library before me to cross out these words?

[Zee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, so, before I get into this review I have some major disclaimers.

I am not Catholic, first of all. I am decidedly not the designated audience for this book, I'm not really sure why I even chose to read it other than it seemed like something completely different than my usual book hunting grounds, and if you're looking for a good review to tell you whether or not this is a good, informative book... I am not the person to answer that inquiry and you should probably look for a better review.

Second of all, I didn't finish this book. It's not necessarily the book's fault so much as mine. If you follow my page, you know I am attempting to read 200 books this year and at this point, I need to finish a book every 2 days to keep pace. I thought I could do 208 pages of small-font, highly-informative nonfiction about a topic I'm not particularly clued into in 2 days. I was wrong. I got to page 160 and I cannot go any further. If I hadn't had a work shift today I probably could have done it, but alas, life happens.

Segueing into the actual review, I guess the first thing I should mention is that this book is not a quick read. It's dense. The font is very small. It took me 2 solid hours to reach page 50. I will readily admit that this might be because I was unfamiliar with pretty much everything and everyone except for Francis and Benedict. Actually, that's a stretch--I'm not going to tell you what page I was on when I realized I'd been confusing John Paul and Benedict for years, or how long it took me to figure out Ratzinger was not some random theologian but, in fact, a former pope. Suffice it to say, this is not the sort of book where you should randomly pop in and try to piece together what's going on with the Catholic church these days like I did.

The next thing I want to touch on is how Douthat so readily sifts through Catholic history for examples. This is equally fascinating and confusing, at least for me. I loved how he could casually pull up examples from medieval popes or detail out what happened in the 4th century a.d. It was super cool. I love history, and it was a really interesting perspective and it offered a unique insight on the way history still affects the modern day in a real sense. That said, I also tended to be a little lost. I'm willing to take some of the blame - if I can't keep the order of John Paul, Benedict, and Francis straight then lord knows I'm gonna be hopeless tracing anybody back to the Renaissance - but I also feel like some of the flashback, in-the-past-x-happened events weren't as obviously marked as being in the past as they could have been.

There was one really interesting point brought up in the book that I want to question, however. One of the main points, actually, is that liberal-leaning churches tend to die out and fail, and conservative churches are strengthening. I'm slightly bewildered by this and I wish I could see the numbers behind that claim. In my personal experience - and of course, I'm by no means any sort of Christianity expert - contemporary, liberal-leaning churches are the ones expanding and growing while members of conservative churches give up because of their burdens and head to liberal churches. Of course, all I have is anecdotal evidence about my town in southwest Florida and what my uncle, who's a former Methodist pastor, says about his trappings. It could be different overall, but what I've heard from a variety of Methodist churches is that contemporary is what's keeping the church alive.

It's possible that I only know one side of the story--I've never attended a Catholic Mass, I feel no inclination to attend any fire-and-brimstone, conservative church, and for all I know maybe those places are packed to the rafters and I simply had no idea. Alternatively, it's very much possible that the Methodist church is an anomaly to the trend, or that the churches I've seen are the exception and not the rule. Either way, I found it really interesting to consider that what I'd always taken as something obvious was apparently dead wrong according to statistics.

So all in all, I thought this book was interesting and informative. I wish I had more time to pick through it and finish it at a less than neck-breaking speed. If you're more aware of Catholicism than I am and looking for an interesting read, I'd recommend it for the way Douthat does history recall if for nothing else.

[Jan Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ross Douthat is a conservative Roman Catholic writer who has written for the NYT and other famous publications. Although our views differ, I appreciate his well-reasoned voice in general, and he does not fail to do so as well in this book analysing the current state of the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis.

The book sits in between two lines of thinking on the current Pope. One, he is the blend of conservatism appropriate for the Church, and liberalism needed to keep the Church afloat in modern society. This view seems to diminish the further one gets into the book, where it becomes mostly a harsh, yet not an unfair critique of Francis's reign.

Francis initially set out to reorient the Church outwardly, towards becoming relevant to those who had left the religion, or those considered to "not be saved" (whatever this exactly may mean is still uncertain to me after over twenty years experience in Christianity). Outwardly focused also meaning its focus on social issues, such as the climate crisis, critiquing capitalism and nationalism, rather than being known for its outspoken conservative stance on sexual ethics.

Although Francis set out to make the church outward focused and less self-referential, he ultimately got lost in an internal debate about remarrying and the Eucharist, and I think Douthat rightfully so pitties this outcome. This being the main takeaway from the book - with some other well argued remarks being made along the way.

I must admit that I found the hardest part to read the scathing critiques of liberal Christianity, something I have some good-will towards. Douthat sees this liberal faith as not being capable of keeping its followers going or bring new people in, and has numbers to back it. And here is where the book might fall short. Yes, Pope Francis's attempt on liberalisation is not something beneficial the survival of the institution, yet it may rekindle hope in those who have left and thus provide a sense of closure and, dare I say, forgiveness. As an outsider, I have grown warmer to the Roman Catholic Church throughout Pope Francis's reign and this fact, since it cannot be measured, is dismissed (or at least not explored) by Douthat.

As well, the comparison of Trump and Francis seems to be taken a bit too far (keep in mind Douthat is a conservative who opposes Trump). According to the writer, Francis takes his political power to an extreme by "firing" cardinals and bishops that aren't liberal enough and thus trying to make the whole institution to how he likes it. This point is counterbalanced though with a fair remark: with priests being more and more conservative, merely making the leadership more liberal is not going to solve anything. In the long run, it might even create more problems. Leave the comparison to Trump out, and then it can be seen as a point to be taken into consideration.

One of the strengths of the book is the awareness Douthat has as a writer. During the introduction, he acknowledges that his views will shape his opinion and with that the presentation of what is going on. A brilliant example of the nuance of the book is in his three different interpretations of the second Vatican council, something I found enlightening.

Overall, Douthat produced a good book, that was a critique of the liberalising of Roman Catholicism, and with, Christianity at large. It also was a fairly well-balanced book on Francis, although sometimes a bit too pessimistic. I do hope Francis can return to a focus on the social teachings of Christianity and liberalising those as he did in "Laudato Si"

[Voracious_reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 2018, this book proves prescient of Pope Francis' decisions, utterances, and writings between the date of its having been published and today (Jan. 1, 2024), but more so the way in which the Pope has handled dissent from his own explanations of Catholic theology. Notably, no statements have been issued ex cathedra, but he still seems to punish progressive and conservative (I mean this in the theological sense, not political one), though primarily conservative theists, who question his statements and writings.

An interesting blend of Catholicism's history, psychological analysis, and theology, Douthat deftly paints a picture of a Pope Francis who is very much the same man he was many years ago as a provincial of the Argentinian Jesuits as Jorge Bergoglio.

The end of the book quotes a Latin American Jesuit, who was quoted in Paul Vallely's sympathetic papal biography,

"As provincial he generated invited loyalties: some groups almost worshiped him, while others would have nothing to do with him, and he would hardly speak to them. It was an absurd situation. He is well-trained and very capable, but is surrounded by this personality cult which is extremely divisive. He has an aura of spirituality which he uses to obtain power. It will be catastrophic for the church to have someone like him in the Apostolic See. He left the society of Jesus in Argentina, destroyed with Jesuits divided and institutions destroyed and financially broken. We have spent two decades trying to fix the chaos that the man left us."

Only the passing of time will tell what the Catholic Church and society in general will ultimately make of Pope Francis' reign. Present day indications are that it matters very much what sort of man will be selected by the College of Cardinals to fill St. Peter's chair next time.

Whether the individual who fills the chair is theologically progressive or conservative, as a practicing Catholic, it would certainly create a more loving environment for congregants to feel that they were being led by someone who didn't attempt to obfuscate issues and create confusion for political gain, who was selfless, who felt comfortable among people who agreed and disagreed, someone who was the same in public as they were behind closed doors, and who worked on reaching actual theological consensus as opposed to attempting to silence and destroy those with whom they disagree.

I had very high hopes for this Pope. When first he was selected, he did some truly great things, but once he demanded loyalty to himself rather than St. Peter's chair, that's when I became very skeptical and concerned. I certainly wouldn't want to speak for an author, but I suspect that Douthat me feel similarly.