CV NEWS FEED // In a recently published op-ed for The New York Times, Catholic author and political analyst Ross Douthat explained why now, more than ever before, is the best time to be a Catholic.
In spite of the latest controversy surrounding the Vatican’s declaration on same-sex blessings, Fiducia Supplicans, and the effects of Pope Francis’ “liberalising” pontificate, Douthat asserts that the Church has a “decisive part in revealing God’s intentions and history’s ultimate direction.”
Answering the question of British Catholic convert, Gavin Ashenden, “who would choose to be Catholic at a time like this?” Douthat wrote: “In perfect seriousness, there is no better time to be a Catholic than this one.”
“Whatever papal authority means, the church’s history shows that it’s fully compatible with periods of deep internal Catholic turmoil,” he said, adding:
This is not exactly pleasant to live through, it raises all kinds of difficult questions for individual Catholics, but it does not somehow make Catholicism the wrong place for a religious believer, a would-be follower of Christ, to be planted.
The Catholic Church is important, Douthat maintains. Those seeking vindication in the eyes of the Church are indicating something vital about its cultural relevance in modern society. For, as Douthat asks: “Why be a dissenting and disgruntled Roman Catholic when you can just be a faithful Episcopalian or Congregationalist?
His answer is that “it proves very little about God’s ultimate intentions if a few modestly sized bodies in the firmament of mainline Protestantism embrace the sexual revolution.”
He continued:
You will know and prove that God wants liberalization only when liberalization comes to the Church of Rome and its billion-odd Catholics. You can’t be fully vindicated, fully assured of Providence’s favor, unless you change that church.
The history of the Church has featured “failed and feckless popes all the way back to failed and even treacherous disciples,” Douthat wrote. “Christianity will come through this crisis as it has come through past ones.”
“And whether you’re a liberal, a conservative or just a believer trying to stay out of the crossfire,” he concluded: “you should feel confident that what happens inside Roman Catholic Christianity will show some of those ways through.”
