Francis’s Missteps

A couple of days ago, Rusty Reno offered one of the most astute analyses of the Pope’s recent comments on gay marriage, abortion, and contraception. Reno said that the comments were in themselves innocuous, but the fact that Francis expresses himself in the rhetoric of progressivism creates problems:

“Pope Francis has been undisciplined in his rhetoric, casually using standard modern formulations, ones that are used to beat up on faithful Catholics—‘audacity and courage’ means those who question Church teachings, the juxtaposition of the ‘small-minded’ traditionalists to the brave and open liberals who are ‘in dialogue,’ and so forth. This gives everything he says progressive connotations. As a consequence, American readers, and perhaps European ones as well, intuitively read a progressivism into Pope Francis’ statements about abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. Thus the headlines.

“This is not helpful, at least not in the field hospital of the American Church. We face a secular culture that has a doctrine of Unconditional Surrender. It will not accept ‘talking less’ about abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. The only acceptable outcome is agreement—or silence. Dialogue? Catholic higher education has been doing that for fifty years, and the result has been the secularization of the vast majority of colleges and universities. Today at Fordham or Georgetown, the only people talking about contraception, gay rights, or gay marriage are the advocates.”