Is the Church Shifting "Right"?

.....Maybe?

The circular firing squad surrounded by the echo chamber that is the Catholic Church in 2024.

The blessing and curse of a writer, especially one writing for fun is as follows: You frequently stop and start something because you get distracted by the latest shiny object. So it was with yours truly, writing on how 2018 was the beginning of a new era in the Church. I immediately sidelined that when my messenger and feed started burning up by this (long rumored) piece by the Associated Press. This is generating considerable discourse among trads online (and outside trad circles), and while its good, I think some of it is missing a few things I’d like to bring up to my few subscribers. (Some of you are writers, or writers using burners, I see you. So take my advice accordingly!)

What The Article Gets Wrong

There’s always a big danger when someone from a secular background tries to write about something they aren’t a part of. A lot of the nuance is foreign, and so they become hostage to their sources, some who might be poorly informed. So it was with Sullivan describing FOCUS as a “traditionalist” organization. FOCUS absolutely is not traditionalist. Their roots are in the Charismatic movement, and an attempt to copy/appropriate a lot of the evangelism from Protestants that was lacking in Catholic culture, especially on college campuses. As far as things you normally hear about in trad discourse, FOCUS barely takes a position on, and when they do, it is often not a “traditionalist” position. Now like a lot of the Charismatic movement, there’s been a considerable change in how they relate to traditionalists. So maybe the person involved with FOCUS was a trad, and he extrapolated incorrectly. Or maybe he was talking to someone who doesn’t like FOCUS and is on the more “liberal” side of the equation, who throws around traditionalist like an insult. This is a mistake by Sullivan, and you really can’t shy away from that. Sources have to be buttressed by individual research, and this dropped through the cracks.

What The Article Gets Right

Those errors aside, he’s onto something real. Whether it’s the shift among the young, or the increasing loneliness of the 1970s era Catholic, this is a real change going on. I’d even wager this is going on elsewhere outside of the United States. As a traditionalist telling the Kevin Tierney version of this story, you’re going to get a viewpoint you understand well. Yet you could be Massimo Faggioli and realize the article still has a point: a “Pope Francis Catholic” is having an increasing difficulty speaking to anybody but the already convinced. We have to seriously talk about this shift, it is real (the evidence cited by Sullivan is compelling), and it will likely have real ramifications the longer it goes on. We must talk about this as a Church. Those outside the Church also need to know and understand this change. The Catholic Church is the largest Christian organization in America and the world, and it isn’t even close. Changes in that community will have an impact in the wider world.

Is The Church Moving Right?

This brings us to the meat of the article. Is the Church in the US having a “conservative” shift? I’m skeptical of it. The pro-life position isn’t becoming more popular. The Latin Mass is growing, but its mostly eating existing Catholic communities. I think some things are happening that give the appearance of a rightward shift.

The biggest change is the Church is becoming more atomized and fragmented, and this is rapidly accelerating in the age of Francis. As the Pope and his allies have lost control of the ship, others are hopping into the lifeboats and attempting to drag the rotting husk in their direction, taking it to a port of their choice for repairs. Given the number of boats attempting to pull such a hulking tug, eventually boats team up an try to move it to a mutually agreeable port, even if not their port of choice. In this fractured and atomized environment, trads have a distinct advantage. There’s a difference between being a motivated 1% out of 100,000, and a motivated 1% out of 10,000, even bigger a motivate 1% out of 1,000. When the center collapses, individual cohesion and willingness to build coalitions matters.

A second reason for this occurrence is the trads and conservatives of 2024 are not carbon copies of the trads and conservatives of 2000, or 1980. Even if sometimes they are the same individuals. Coalitions form around pressure points in a political landscape In 1980 they were bitterly divided over the theological disputes of the Second Vatican Council. In 2000 these disputes remained, but there was a general acceptance between trads and conservatives that the days of revolution were over. In 2024 they are adopting to that post-revolutionary landscape. How much is religious liberty discussed? How much are the 1988 consecrations of the SSPX discussed? The dividing line most trad discourse isn’t over “trad” theological disputes of the last 40 years, but around issues such as the impossibility of changing Church teaching on divorce, abandoning the fruitless attempts by the Church spend endless time about what we should compromise on, rather than what we should believe. Most trads have made their peace with the existence of the Novus Ordo, even if they have no desire to attend it, or attend it exclusively.

If you ask a traditionalist from the 1970s, they will say that traditionalists have moved “left”. They’d be right! Yet this is why there’s limitations to right/left discourse. “Right” and “left” aren’t defined by the present. They are defined by the past. Those coalitions change over time. In many ways, traditionalists are not looking to preserve. Most traditionalists today barely remember the 1990s (if they were born then), much less the 1950s! They are looking to build anew. The difficulty for those in power is they assume that those looking to build anew would always do so with their sentiments and priorities: the priorities that dominated their lives. Those priorities are not etched in stone. The Church in the US (and the world) is absolutely changing. Yet it is not changing in ways that the past is fully comfortable with explaining.

A third reason for this change (and I’m going into pundit mode here full force) is the center of gravity in the Church (the Pope and his allies) have been about as incompetent and feckless as possible in guiding opinion and discourse. History will long remember that the reformers finally got what they wanted: A Church ran by their own. They will go their graves the most disappointed. On issue after issue, the Institutional Church has continued to cede ground to conservatives and traditionalists, transforming the institutional Church into the world’s only echo chamber that somehow isn’t shredded by all the bullets from the concentric circular firing squad. Catholic institutional leaders have responded to this by pouting, stomping their feet, picking up their ball and going home, retreating deeper into their echo chamber, stewing over their critics. Conservatives and traditionalists continue to have discussions on the ground that is abandoned, causing further retreat from the Institutional Church, as the vicious cycle continues, and the circular firing squad runs low on ammo. Will they always be this dysfunctional and hopeless? What happens to the alliance of conservatives and traditionalists should one of them take over the circle once the institutions surrender or the last octogenarian cleric dies off?

At this point, and only this point, we can have the discussion about if the Church is shifting in ideology, because a new ideological center will take hold. Right now, what we are witnessing is the death march of the old consensus. Those who understand this is what is happening are better prepared than those still denying it.