American Catholics made a deal with liberalism. It hasn’t worked out - from the Catholic Herald

Brandon McGinley, in the Catholic Herald, writes:-


"The idea, that is, has been that the Church can be strategically liberal while families remain nodes of illiberalism – of hierarchy, of authority, of communalism, of quasi-public religiosity. We ask merely for an equal voice in a neutral public square, and parents are still supposed to convince children that the Church is one, holy, apostolic, and catholic. We ask for a deeply individualistic and relativistic kind of “religious liberty,” but parents are still supposed to enforce the duties imposed by Baptism as unchosen and binding. We beg the civil authority not to enforce a comprehensive vision of the good, but parents are still supposed to teach that the Church has just such a vision – that She is that vision.

But of course this catechesis hasn’t trickled down at all; instead, families have been almost exclusively catechized by liberalism – and more so the farther they are from networks of academic and socioeconomic privilege. Not only has the domestic church been ravaged by the liberal privatization of religion, but the very idea of the domestic church—the idea of the family as place of communal religious duties, where the life of faith should infuse every moment of every day – has been rendered incomprehensible. To actually live as if what we affirm at Mass is true and binding – not just the hot-button moral issues but the personal and social sovereignty of Christ – is considered unbalanced, anti-social, and, worst of all, illiberal....So, why not change course? Why not assert reality – the cosmic hierarchy, the Church Triumphant, the sovereignty of Christ, the necessity of grace, and the personal and political implications of all of these? On its own terms, the strategic compromise with liberalism has failed – not to mention the collateral damage. It’s at least as likely as not that an uncompromising and deeply-rooted orthodoxy will meet with more practical success than a selective liberalization driven by focus groups and partisan politics."


To see the whole story go to:-

https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2019/06/07/american-catholics-made-a-deal-with-liberalism-it-hasnt-worked-out/