Hope from the Bronx for a sane Catholic center [John Allen]

[Catholic_Press]

Overcoming polarization in the church often feels like the Catholic equivalent of bringing peace to the Middle East. Everybody pays lip service to it, and from time to time some bold new initiative is rolled out, but veterans who have watched such efforts come and go generally feel in their bones that the reality is permanent war.

If peace is going to break out, therefore, it probably won’t be those veterans who make it happen.

That’s more or less the instinct behind the Fordham Conversation Project, a group of younger Catholic theologians that wants to think beyond the polarization in American Catholic life. I spent part of this past weekend in the Bronx with roughly 17 young Catholic intellectuals brought together under the project’s rubric.

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[manualman]

The term “center” is already a sign of failure in reasoning. While it is true that there is a lunatic fringe on both sides of the actual spectrum of church teaching, you don’t find truth by seeking the “center.”

Instead, what must be done is for people to learn to weed out those who have traded in the gospel for their own judgement and understanding. Those who outright refuse to have their conscience shaped by Scripture and Tradition simply aren’t part of the spectrum at all! What those folks need is evangelization, not a voice in the direction of the Church.