Late Cardinal Francis George Predicted Theologically Faithful Trend Among US Priests

In a recently published essay, the scholar behind a recent study detailing the theological  divide among US priests, argued that the tendency was predicted years ago by a late cardinal. 

The Catholic Project, a project of the Catholic University of America, released the second installment of its National Study of Catholic Priests last month. The report detailed that almost all newly-ordained priests identify as conservative or moderate theologically, while very few priests identify as liberal or progressive. 

Stephen White, the project leader, wrote an essay in The Catholic Thing, explaining that while some may see this as a recent trend, it has a longer history. 

“This collapse isn’t a sudden or recent trend, but it appears to be steady and unbroken all the way back to the cohorts ordained in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council,” wrote White.

White noted that, since the early 1990s, Catholic leaders have noticed this trend. He shared an excerpt from a homily given by the late Cardinal Francis George, who served as the Archbishop of Chicago:

Liberal Catholicism is an exhausted project. Essentially a critique—even a necessary critique at one point in our history—it is now parasitical on a substance that no longer exists. It has shown itself unable to pass on the faith in its integrity and inadequate, therefore, in fostering the joyful self-surrender called for in Christian marriage, in consecrated life, and in ordained priesthood. It no longer gives us life.

In an analysis of George’s homily, White recognized that George’s homily rings true today, but that Catholics must also take heed of a warning that George shared about conservative Catholics.

“Nevertheless, if the exhaustion of liberal Catholicism explains, at least in part, the collapse of vocations from certain corners of the Church, Cardinal George’s warning about the inadequacy of a certain kind of ‘conservative Catholicism’ is equally pertinent,” wrote White.

 George shared the warning that White had mentioned in a later homily.

“The answer, however, is not to be found in a type of conservative Catholicism obsessed with particular practices and so sectarian in its outlook that it cannot serve as a sign of unity for all peoples in Christ.”

 White observes that while the survey found that more priests identify as conservative,  politically moderate, theologically orthodox, and are the most ethnically diverse group of priests that the Church has seen in recent years.

“If one were looking for priests who could avoid the ‘exhaustion of liberal Catholicism’ while also avoiding forms of  ‘obsessed’ and ‘sectarian’ conservatism, if one were hoping for priests who could ‘serve as a sign of unity of all peoples in Christ,’–one would probably look for a generation of priests that looks, at least on paper, a lot like the younger priests we have in the United States today,” wrote White.

He added, however, that the Church does not unfold on paper but in the pews amidst the dangers of the world, and that the late Cardinal warned about this very reality in one homily:

The Catholic faith shapes a church with a lot of room for differences in pastoral approach, for discussion and debate, and for initiatives as various as the people whom God loves. But, more profoundly, the faith shapes a church which knows her Lord and knows her own identity, a church that is able to distinguish between what fits into the tradition that unites her to Christ and what is a false start or a distorting thesis, a church that is united here and now because she is always one with the church throughout the ages and with the saints in heaven.