Sunday, October 19, 2003
(3:07 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Okay, I'm backsliding
Here's an editorial in the New York Times by everyone's favorite Catholic homo-con, Andrew Sullivan.
Here he drops the bombshell: "For the first time in my own life, I find myself unable to go to Mass." That's a classic Sullivan sentence -- did you previously find yourself unable to go to Mass during, say, your mother's life?
In all honesty, though, only the Catholic Church has enough weight behind it for people to care about its moral teachings, whether they're right or wrong in themselves. With every other church, one can find another version of the same denomination that has the exact right calibration of doctrines and practices. Not pleased with the gay Episcopal bishop? Well then, a conservative church that still uses the Book of Common Prayer is not too hard to find. Some people might be worried about who's "most truly Anglican," but the stakes are vastly smaller than with Rome. A break with Rome means something in a way that a break with Canterbury does not.
Hence my position that Rome represents the last best hope for Christian unity. A lot of things would need to change for that to really happen, and in order to preserve a sense of continuity, things would have to move somewhat slowly. The abuses that a centralized church authority has brought with it in the past are not sufficient reason to throw out the idea of authority in the church in general. The key is authority for service. Too often, it seems that popes have been worried about preserving authority for its own sake, as though we can only deal with matters of pastoral concern or discipleship after we're absolutely certain that the appropriate teaching authority is in place. An authority in the service of discipleship would, I think, be able to avoid the pitfalls of the "papal persecution complex" to which the church has been subjected for the last 100-odd years (with the exception of John XXIII).
So I probably need to start building up my resume in order to have a shot at the papacy.
