Thread by @jdflynn

There have long been divisions among American Catholics between the sociopolitical “left” and “right” and roughly correspondent theological worldviews.

But the way in which the last four years has deeply fractured “conservative” Catholics is seriously underappreciated.

cont

I used to think this was just a phenomenon among the very online, but it’s not. I hear from a lot of practicing Catholic families who have been seriously fractured over Trump, Vigano, and now vaccines, etc. I hear from campus ministers who say students are confused by that.

What I spent my 20s and early 30s thinking of as kind of the “JP2 coalition” of apostolates, movements, organizations, institutions are now often internally divided.

My impression of bishops is that many of them don’t really see or appreciate this, or its significance.

*Some do. But my impression is that many dont, or think of it as something happening “online.”

Anyway, the real world implications of this are significant, and play out in families, parishes, seminaries, and religious orders.

I see it in responses to our work from “right” or “center right” that ask why we don’t pick a fight with “the other side.”

(Cont)

Inasmuch as I know what they mean, I think we do.

But I also try to call attention to the implications and causes of this phenomenon because, to be honest, I think it’s going to be a very serious storyline in American Catholicism over the next 20 years.

And I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to navigate all of that, myself included.

There is a desire, in personal life, in ministry, in work, to conciliate where new division emerges, but that itself comes at a cost.

For pastors this might be especially acute.

It’s easy to see new fault lines, it’s harder to see new alliances. “Center right” “JP2 Catholics” are alienated from the growing “hard right,” but many find it equally hard to find cause with “center left” Catholics who don’t emphasize opposition to abortion, Humanae Vitae, etc.

Even while the children of 90s “JP2 Catholics” are likely more vigorously opposed to the death penalty, and more economically liberal than their parents probably were- places where they might find common cause.

Still, it’s hard to imagine the big L-R fault line will just away.

Pope Francis, or reactions to Pope Francis, figure into this in important ways too. But I’ve noticed that most Catholic tribes, from far-left to far-right, hold stereotyped views about everyone else’s view on Francis, while believing their own is nuanced and misunderstood.

And finally, the McCarrick scandal has been a dramatic accelerant to all of this, because it was the immediate cause of considerable distrust among many Catholics of their bishops, and to a lesser degree, of their pastors. That distrust has led people to hard right social media.

Sorry, that wasn’t finally, because the other things evidenced in all of this are:

the anemic doctrinal formation of many, many practicing Catholics - a situation that many Catholics I know recognize about themselves, but find it difficult to remedy.

(Cont)

And the degree to which many corners of Catholicism have been personality/celebrity driven in a way that resembles American evangelicalism.

I don’t have answers to any of this, but it is the landscape as I see it.

And that read of the landscape drives a lot of my journalistic work.

Take it for what it’s worth.

Obviously, yes, the solution is the Most Holy Trinity. I just don’t know what the intermediary steps are.