Progressive Catholicism losing hope

A rare candid acknowledgment that this pontificate is a failure

For years now, secular journalists have been curiously reluctant to notice the obvious failures of the current pontificate: the failure to resolve the sex-abuse scandal, the failure to restore confidence in the Vatican’s financial affairs; the failure to reverse the steady exodus of young Catholics from the faith. Almost a decade has passed since a veteran Vatican journalist told me candidly that he could not imagine what it would take to prompt active criticism of the Pope by the liberal media.

Well, as we approach the endgame of this pontificate we may finally have reached that tipping point. An article in the New Statesman, while openly favorable to the liberal (that is, hostile) perspective on Catholicism, acknowledges that Pope Francis can be seen as a failure:

“His liberal bent is defended as a survival mechanism for a church in decline, with a reputation so badly bruised by years of sex-abuse scandal that it will likely never recover. If this is the aim, the outcome is bleak: under Francis there has been no flurry of the lapsed re-embracing the church.”

The author, Finn McRedmond, sees the current papacy as the Last Great Hope of “progressive” Catholics who are struggling to overcome what they see as the defects of traditional Church teaching. It isn’t working. The trouble is, she says, that it isn’t working. The scandals linger. The contradictions between established doctrine and current popular opinion are all too evident. The old progressive Catholics are losing both their patience and their energy. The young progressive Catholics are… Well, the point is, they’re hard to find. Young Catholics have not rallied to the cause; following the logic of what they have been taught to believe (or disbelieve), they are leaving the Church in droves. The long-anticipated revolution is going pffft.

Meanwhile the young Catholics who do show up in Church are turning decisively toward more traditional views. So while Pope Francis and his allies may prop up liberal hopes in the short run with their use of progressive rhetoric, in the long term the outlook is— from a liberal perspective— bleak. The New Statesman article sums up the situation with admirable clarity:

“The young think they can engage with the style while subverting the dogma. And the reformers believe that everything can be forced into a liberal shape, no matter its inherent nature, logic be damned. Meanwhile, the conservatives are at the gates.”