Is Liberal Catholicism Dead?

[ButterflyBlood]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1737323,00.html

While this article is over four years old, but I found it kind of prescient with recent events and the Vatican basically now openly condemning the Obama administration ever since health care reform and Cardinal Dolan giving the invocation at the RNC. Quite interesting in hindsight. I mostly agree with the point about the direction it's going, especially considering how easy it is to leave the Catholic church.

[Peregrine Took]

1. Its very much alive in many city parishes and some suburban ones.

I think John Fuglesang said the church admistrators are very smart about trying to appoint priests to parishes with similar political persuasion.

For example, the lakefront parishes in Chicago are pretty liberal do are the pastors with one exception. In the neighborhoods the pastor's tend to be more conservative reflecting their parishoner's.

Same applies to suburbs that are notoriously liberal - they get the liberal pastor's. This is done to keep the people gong to church and liking their pastor so they keep throwing the money in the collection basket.

[LiberalCatholic]

2. We are still out there.

We find churches where our liberal views are nourished in the sermons. Right now we belong to a parish 20 minutes from our house despite the fact that there are 2 (very conservative) Catholic churches in our town. Our pastor preaches that God is loving, forgiving and generous and that as his followers we should follow suit. We have openly gay couples as well as divorced couples that belong to our parish.

It is difficult to see the hard right that the Catholic Church and the nation have taken. I just don't get it. And every time that I feel hope that things will be changing it seems that I am disappointed. I know that when I cannot find a liberal church I, too, will leave the Catholic Church. I feel stuck in this country, however.

[Warpy]

3. Catholics on the whole are much more liberal

than their Protestant counterparts. It's the Roman hierarchy that has moved far to the right and will soon be reaping the reward of doing so in collection plates across the country.

I keep hoping this is the pope who is so egregious that he'll mark the end of an anachronistic monarchy and national churches will declare independence from his right wing, iron fisted and completely addled rule.

[rexcat]

4. That is not what I have seen...

Lived in Florida (Space Coast), Omaha and Cincinnati metro and Catholics overall are very conservative in these areas.

[ButterflyBlood]

5. Based on pure voting patterns, the statement is accurate, but kind of a pointless comparison

It's true that Obama won Catholics while losing Protestants and the Catholic vote is pretty swingy (in fact it went Gore-Bush-Obama and has gone with the popular vote winner every election in the last four decades at least), while the Protestant vote is reliably Republican. But there are a ton of factors to consider as well. For starters the Catholic vote has more minorities thanks to lots of Hispanics, and black and Asian Catholics aren't few either. While most blacks are Protestant, they still make up a far smaller share of Protestants than minorities do of Catholics. The white Catholic vote is far more Republican, and the numbers would be much closer if each group had comparable demographic shares. Even then there's an edge to the Catholic vote, but you also have to control for the very lopsided numbers from the south. Outside the south even evangelical Protestants aren't that lopsided, for example Obama won 35% of white evangelicals in my state per the exit polls (that doesn't sound like a lot, but consider that it means on average every third person at an evangelical church service voted Obama. That's a lot of people!) And then of course that Protestants are not similar at all. Once again in my state Obama won 35% of evangelicals, but overwhelmingly won non-evangelical Protestants, with about 60%. Meanwhile McCain narrowly carried Catholics. Furthermore a lot of people identifying as "Catholic" on these exit polls are probably Catholic only in name and go to church two times a year without weddings/funerals if even that. Granted that might apply to lots of Protestants too, but since Catholics are more represented in more secular areas where this type of thing is more common (like the Northeast) and people dropping out of evangelical Protestantism from the south and whatnot are certainly not likely to still identify as such, the numbers are probably skewed toward a great percentage of Catholics being CINOs than Protestants being PINOs. A lot of people argue that these CINOs might return if the church quit being so reactionary but I don't buy that, if they wanted a church but didn't want all the archaic teaching on sex and women they could just join a more progressive Protestant church. These people aren't interested in church and probably not the whole religion thing at all.

So it's not even comparing apples to oranges, more like two baskets of tons of fruits not at all alike. And even then there's mass variance throughout the country, all the areas you mention are quite conservative so that's not surprising. Here in Minneapolis the Catholics are far more liberal, but hell even the evangelicals are (I go to a charismatic evangelical church that no doubt is voting overwhelmingly for Obama, not going to find that in most places.) There's just so much variance a direct comparison doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like how California as a whole is indisputably more liberal than Texas as a whole. But when comparing individual parts that fact is meaningless as evidenced by comparing Orange County to Austin.

[ButterflyBlood]

6. Actually, I don't see why the church would have anything to fear

It won't "soon" be reaping the consequences in collection plates, it has been for years already. But people not passing spare change into the plate is not going to make the Vatican go broke. Its property holdings and investments that go back centuries can keep funding the church for a long, long time. Most collections are for the individual church, and while they've been hit hard (a bunch here are closing and parishes merging, I read some news articles about that recently), the actual diocese is still loaded. And it'll still have right wing Catholics giving a lot, and leaving behind a bunch in their wills. And with liberals just dropping out of the church altogether, less churches and funds are needed anyway.

As for schism due to this, not going to happen. It's quite clear from Cardinal Dolan and the like that the Rick Santorums have more influence than any liberal Catholics, even if they are just a vocal minority. Where would they go after a schism? And it's the Dolans and the Pope who control who gets appointed to where. If liberal Catholics were really into a schism, they could already do it right now...that was already done 500 years ago after all. I mean in the Episcopal church you have basically the same thing except with priests who can be both married and/or women. What's the point of splitting from Rome then? Or waiting to change their ways when it obviously won't happen? That's why I see the future as a much smaller Catholic church (you already have 1/3 of people raised Catholic abandoning it under current statistics), but one far more right wing and united in views.

[pinto]

7. Interesting article. There has always been a socially liberal / progressive "wing" in Catholicism,

especially in America. And Latin America. And there's always been a conservative hierarchy in the church bureaucracy, John XXIII not withstanding. Liberal Catholics have usually been coalesced around single issues, though, and somewhat disjointed. Progressive pockets in a largely straight jacketed religious structure.

Is liberal Catholicism dead? Not at all, imo. Yet likely to remain a somewhat behind the scenes segment of a largely conservative church. That may be a good thing, fwiw.

Thanks for the post.