Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Sketch 3: The Problem With Conservatives
I will critique "a type of conservative Catholicism" which makes the same error as liberals in an excessive preoccupation with the church’s visible government. This point will be short, since I presume most of you tend toward liberal Catholicism and there is no point in preaching to the choir about the deficiencies of conservative Catholicism.
Naturally, I'm going to be even briefer. Chalk it up to the human condition, not the innate superiority of conservativism. Check this link for the full Commonweal article, but I think the cardinal sees the problem more clearly than he lets on:
While certain that it differs fundamentally from liberal Catholicism, this conservatism shares the Bellarminian understanding of the church as society. The hierarchy therefore become central, responsible for all good as well as for all ills, able to correct all aberrations by invoking their authority. Correct in understanding that the church is essentially conservative in handing on the apostolic faith, contemporary conservative Catholicism can fail to see that the church is also, for that very reason, radical in its critique of any society. Just as liberal Catholicism is frequently uneasy with the church’s understanding of the gift of human sexuality when her teaching runs up against the popular Freudianism of the sexual revolution, conservative Catholicism is often uneasy with the church’s understanding of a just society when her social teaching draws conclusions about social services and the distribution of wealth from the premise of universal human solidarity.
Extreme positions on either side, or more accurately, intensely personal views obscure God's place in the realm of faith. Cardinal George, like many other critics of Catholic liberalism, might be caught in a log/speck situation. Liberals have largely failed to speak in the necessary language to communicate the problem. So it might not be totally the cardinal's fault.
