{"id":542,"date":"2023-09-06T06:07:59","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T10:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/?p=542"},"modified":"2023-09-06T06:07:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T10:07:59","slug":"attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/","title":{"rendered":"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Young woman praying in church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire<\/em> ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been arguing in various venues<\/a> that the \u201cdumbing down\u201d of Catholicism has stymied rather than enhanced the Church\u2019s efforts at evangelization in the modern West. The dumbed down Catholicism on offer today in many Catholic parishes and even more Catholic schools and universities, as defined by Barron, emphasizes social justice<\/a> as divorced from the rest of Catholicism\u2019s rigorous intellectual tradition and theological understanding.<\/p>\n

The Universal Church<\/strong><\/p>\n

Contra Barron, the contention of many on the \u201cCatholic left\u201d (a designation that, like \u201cCatholic right,\u201d underscores a fundamental misunderstanding of the faith <\/a>among many of its self-professed faithful) is that the de facto defenestration, if not the de jure excision, of various Church doctrines and teachings is a price worth paying<\/a> for a more welcoming and inclusive church.<\/p>\n

As a lifelong Catholic who has often been frustrated myself by the mainstream Church\u2019s culture of braindead clericalism, pervasive sexism, and myopic parochialism (racial, ethnic, and other), I understand as well as anyone why many of my fellow Catholics would readily sacrifice Aquinas and Augustine on the altar of openness to other \u201cways of knowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this impulse among many Catholics to express our supposed faith by parting with, well, Catholicism<\/em> is ultimately self-defeating, even on its own terms.<\/p>\n

The way to a more empirically inclusive Catholic Church is in fact through embracing the totality of our intellectual tradition, which is more than nuanced and dynamic enough<\/a> to assimilate worthy additions and critiques. It is not wise to pick and choose only those pieces of our intellectual heritage that fit most easily into today\u2019s iteration of a progressive political ideology. There are two main reasons why.<\/p>\n

True Inclusivity<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, to set on one side of a ledger \u201cintellectual rigor\u201d and on the other \u201cinclusivity\u201d is to create a false and patronizing binary. To comprehend the fundamental teachings of the Church is to understand that faith and reason<\/a> together constitute truth, and that any inquiry by any person\u2014of whatever race, creed, sex, or color\u2014that discerns truth deserves respect and attention. That this imperative has indeed far too often been disregarded in deference to the prejudices and power structures of a fallen world is an argument for fully engaging those teachings while striving in good faith for the specific open-mindedness that they mandate, not one for discarding them in obeisance to a trendy version of open-mindedness that is in fact anything but.<\/p>\n

What Catholics willing to sacrifice intellectual rigor for greater supposed openness are really saying is that they wish to summarily include as truth so-called \u201cways of knowing\u201d in which reason self-evidently does not abide\u2014if said ways of knowing emerge from the mouths or pens of \u201cthe marginalized.\u201d This constitutes sycophantic condescension to women and to racial, ethnic, and cultural others in what is really the self-deceptive pursuit of fashionable tolerance<\/a> by mostly white elite progressives who merely happen to be Catholic, and who wish to reconstitute Catholicism in their own intellectually flimsy and emotionally solipsistic<\/a> image.<\/p>\n

After all, aren\u2019t women and people of color perfectly capable of meeting the intellectual standard of reason as well as the spiritual standard of faith by which the Church discerns truth? I believe so. Do Catholics less attached to our intellectual tradition disagree? If so, I find that deeply unsettling and patently bigoted. More important, I find it unworthy of the universal Church, in which all superficial distinctions between people are understood to be the products of a lower world that the Church must transcend in pursuit of truth rather than replicate in pursuit of mainstream progressive accolades and self-congratulatory virtue-signaling.<\/p>\n

True Evangelization<\/strong><\/p>\n

Second, to insist that a Church bereft of intellectual rigor has or will lead to a slowing of young people\u2019s defection from Catholicism<\/a> is to deny reality. As the mainstream Church has asked less and less of the faithful in the West, it has gotten exactly what it has bargained for: the kind of stupor that pervades any organization lacking clarity of purpose. Take a look at the nearly empty mainline Protestant churches, which long ago sacrificed their principles on the altar of elite progressive belonging, to see where that ends. It turns out that if I can\u2019t get anything out of religious participation that I wouldn\u2019t get out of a collegiate English seminar, there\u2019s no point in attending church. (Indeed, it\u2019s likely no coincidence that as the humanities themselves have similarly eliminated rigor in pursuit of a patronizing, racially essentialist, and anti-intellectual version of equity, they too are losing enrollments<\/a> hand over fist. Why take Shakespeare, if I can already parrot a few catchphrases about his dead white maleness?)<\/p>\n

Contrast the malaise of the Church in the West with its growth in the Southern hemisphere<\/a>, where unadulterated old doctrines find both new adherents and new cultural valences by the thousands. It doesn\u2019t seem to matter to a Church comprised almost entirely of people of color that many of the Church\u2019s historical thought leaders (though not, it bears mentioning, the man who died on the cross to begin this whole enterprise) fit within a fundamentally unchristian social construction<\/a> known as whiteness. Such a concern would, after all, be antithetical to the tenets of the faith.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s true that many of these new faithful, like most Catholics throughout history, are not reading foundational Catholic texts<\/a> for themselves. It\u2019s also true that life in the Southern hemisphere is in many places less modern and thus less hospitable to the kinds of lifestyle options that facilitate defection from religion writ large among so many Westerners. Still, for the Church to have a future, any marriage between Catholicism and modernity must entail the more democratic engagement of Catholicism\u2019s foundational doctrines among the faithful, not the abandonment of those doctrines unto the superfluous irrelevance of the Church itself.<\/p>\n

Any sacrifice of intellectual rigor or theological truth on the altar of alleged inclusivity is a dance with the literal devil.<\/p>\n

It reduces the Catholic Church\u2014the greatest purveyor of both knowledge and charity in the history of the world per the totality of our doctrine, the politically expedient parts of which cannot simply be hived off intact\u2014to just another among dozens of bland voices for toothless tolerance.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it fails to achieve the very inclusivity for which we are urged to part with everything that makes the Church an institution in which any significant number of people might actually seek to be included.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been arguing in various venues that the \u201cdumbing down\u201d of Catholicism has stymied rather than enhanced the Church\u2019s efforts at evangelization in the modern West. The dumbed down Catholicism on offer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4810,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAttempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Faith and Reason\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-09-06T10:07:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1600\/2023\/09\/catholic-mass.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"612\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"408\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElizabethGMat\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/\",\"name\":\"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2023-09-06T10:07:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-09-06T10:07:59+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60\"},\"description\":\"Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/\",\"name\":\"Faith and Reason\",\"description\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\u2019s "Faith and Reason" considers culture, politics, and religion through a passionately moderate and thoughtfully Catholic lens.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60\",\"name\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\"},\"description\":\"Elizabeth Grace Matthew (https:\/\/elizabethgracematthew.com\/) is a Regular Opinion Contributor at The Hill. She writes about culture, politics, and religion. Her work has appeared in various outlets including USA Today, America Magazine, Deseret News, Law and Liberty, the Washington Examiner, RealClearBooks&Culture, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and FemCatholic. Matthew holds a bachelor's in English from The University of Pennsylvania, a master's in English from Penn State, and a doctorate in Education from St. Joseph's University. Before turning to writing full-time, she was a university professor and administrator. Follow her on Twitter @ElizabethGMat\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethgracematthew\/?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ\",\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/elizabeth-grace-matthew-a95b6977\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElizabethGMat\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/author\/ematthew\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite","description":"Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite","og_description":"Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/","og_site_name":"Faith and Reason","article_published_time":"2023-09-06T10:07:59+00:00","og_image":[{"width":612,"height":408,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1600\/2023\/09\/catholic-mass.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ElizabethGMat","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/","name":"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website"},"datePublished":"2023-09-06T10:07:59+00:00","dateModified":"2023-09-06T10:07:59+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60"},"description":"Recently, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, whose Word on Fire ministry has made him one of the Catholic Church\u2019s most prominent online voices, has been","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/2023\/09\/attempts-to-make-catholic-theology-more-inclusive-actually-do-the-opposite\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Attempts to Make Catholic Theology More Inclusive Actually Do the Opposite"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/","name":"Faith and Reason","description":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew\u2019s "Faith and Reason" considers culture, politics, and religion through a passionately moderate and thoughtfully Catholic lens.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/638734eab5c5225abae2fcb86491bb60","name":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2db8f965b6555e065b49abd2a22e3f97?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew"},"description":"Elizabeth Grace Matthew (https:\/\/elizabethgracematthew.com\/) is a Regular Opinion Contributor at The Hill. She writes about culture, politics, and religion. Her work has appeared in various outlets including USA Today, America Magazine, Deseret News, Law and Liberty, the Washington Examiner, RealClearBooks&Culture, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and FemCatholic. Matthew holds a bachelor's in English from The University of Pennsylvania, a master's in English from Penn State, and a doctorate in Education from St. Joseph's University. Before turning to writing full-time, she was a university professor and administrator. Follow her on Twitter @ElizabethGMat","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/elizabethgracematthew\/?igshid=MzMyNGUyNmU2YQ","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/elizabeth-grace-matthew-a95b6977","https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElizabethGMat"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/author\/ematthew\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4810"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithandreason\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}