CV NEWS FEED // Trent Horn, a well known apologist and author at Catholic Answers, has released a new book in which he argues that current tensions and divisions inside the Catholic Church are mostly caused by the actions of liberal Catholics.
According to a Catholic Answers press release, Horn’s latest book, “Confusion in the Kingdom,” details “the heated intra-Church conflicts over issues of faith, morals, and prudence, and takes to task ‘progressive’ Catholic groups and figures for stoking the flames.”
“To a new and extreme degree, people both inside and outside the Church are less certain than ever of what Catholicism proposes and what it rejects; what it blesses and what it condemns,” the press release says.
In the introduction of the book, Horn argues that “though Catholics of any theological leaning can distort the Faith, people usually reach out to me for help when it comes to dissecting the confusion of liberal Catholicism.”
“Maybe it’s a Catholic author who says Catholics would really respect women by not outlawing abortion. Or maybe it’s a well-known Catholic priest who says that it’s okay to have ‘gay pride,'” Horn explains.
The author avoids cliches or uncharitable adjectives to describe Liberal Catholicism; he instead uses the description of a noted liberal Catholic, Heidi Schlumpf, executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter.
Schlumpf describes “progressive” Catholics as the following:
They are the gray-haired old-timers at church reform organizations and parishes. They are the young Catholics taking their first theology course at a Catholic college or university—and the theologians teaching those classes. They are the retired priests, sisters, and even some bishops who have spent their lives working for social justice. They are Women’s March marchers, Green New Deal supporters, and Black Lives Matter protesters across generations.
Horn then says, “I’m glad Heidi Schlumpf offers this fairly accurate illustration, because if I did, it would be dismissed as a caricature.”
The book, reviewed by CatholicVote, is divided in two main parts with several short chapters each. Part one addresses “Sex and Life Issues;” part two addresses issues related to “Faith and Justice.”
Horn explains in his book that the liberal Catholicism he critiques “fails the people who need God and his Church the most. It causes them to downplay the spiritual hazard of certain sins (especially sexual sins) and retreat to a relativistic view of conscience and culpability.”
“Where Catholicism was once a rock of faith, increasingly people see it as shifting sands,” states Todd Aglialoro, director of publishing for Catholic Answers Press in the press release. “Trent Horn does a service to believers and nonbelievers alike by exposing—and refuting—those who promote such confusion by substituting liberal ideologies for perennial Catholic truth.”
“Confusion in the Kingdom” can be purchased here.
