My history with computers and journalism is long and complex.
Back in 1978, soon after the cooling of the Earth’s crust, I held a newsroom copy-desk job that required me to memorize (OK, I had a filing-card cheat sheet) the manual codes to control all of the fonts and text sizes for news stories, headlines, photo credits, cutlines, etc. I used to have nightmares in which I would mess one up.
A few years later, everyone had work stations tied to a newsroom mainframe. Then there were giant portable computers for the sports reporters and political-desk pros (the people who wrote copy that really mattered). Then there were tiny Radio Shack laptops.
I know, I know. Jurassic journalism territory.
But this brings me to what I think is a must-read online commentary about the Pope Francis decision to allow — some would now say require — priests to bless same-sex couples and/or their relationships. There have been many worth noting (see this essential Clemente Lisi post), but I think a tweetstorm from Ross Douthat looms over the debate, because he writes for The New York Times.
But how to embed all those tweets without making readers jump over hurdles of repeated material? I confess that I do not have the technical skill to do that. Thus, I did a cut-and-paste “think piece” — with Douthat’s leaping off post embedded at the very top.
It’s a quick read, but offers much to think about.
This still seemed to me to inevitably exacerbate tensions in the long run, widening gaps between liberal and conservative practice, encouraging liberals to always push further — a "slow road" to schism.
My initial take on Vatican permission for (a kind of) SSM blessings has been that it's more of the same, a move that claims to preserve doctrine as against the dramatic changes demanded by progressives; contradiction-heightening but not crisis-creating:
Following the reaction though I want to caveat that "more of the same" take, bc the core question raised by the document is what it asks/requires of priests. Is this a permission to offer blessings of the (ambiguous) kind envisioned, or a requirement?
If "permission" then the document essentially encourages the increasing separation of practice between different Catholic parishes, dioceses and countries. Again, in keeping with the larger pattern of (ambiguous) papal permissions for (partial) liberalization.
If it's a "requirement" for such blessings, OTOH, the document sets up a situation where conservative practice becomes disobedience, where a form of liberalization can be effectively demanded and not just embraced where it's desired.
The latter situation much more likely to lead to an explicit crisis of authority. Which is no doubt why the document declines to clarify: "no further responses should be expected about possible ways to regulate details or practicalities regarding blessings of this type."
That line seeks to immunize Rome from demands from more liberal Catholics for some kind of enforcement mechanism against conservative priests and bishops. But the rest of the document makes such liberal demands seem entirely plausible.
So the document is not a full departure from the "slow road" situation -- but only because Rome does not want to exercise enforcement powers. But it is a shift, insofar as the document legitimizes demands that, if answered, could push things closer to a breaking point. /fin
Here are a few selected reactions on that Douthat thread (read it all):
That’s enough for now.
In the comments pages, please leave the URLs of other online comments and commentaries — by other writers, on other websites — that you believe are essential.
UPDATE: OK, there is certainly this, a new column from Douthat at the Times: “No Better Time to Be a Catholic.” Here is the jumping off point:
… Pope Francis ascended, and over the past decade, the church has been governed by a liberalizing, destabilizing, provocateur pope.
This has created high drama in the church and ample opportunities for explanations of its controversies — but in those controversies I’ve found myself crosswise from the papacy itself, a peculiar position indeed for a Catholic columnist at a secular publication. I imagined myself making Catholic tradition and thinking attractive to secular and liberal readers. Instead, I’m often obliged to explain why, in seeming to move the church closer to the median secular liberal, Francis is actually driving Catholicism toward crisis.
Yet, read that headline again. That drew a response from my friend Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher, via his Substack newsletter. A sample:
Pope Francis elevates the bad guys and the worst tendencies in contemporary Catholicism. He won’t live forever, and it’s encouraging to see how orthodox the coming generations of priests in the US are. Nevertheless, there’s no way things can revert back to business as usual after Francis passes into history. The simple faith one had in the papacy before Francis is not possible anymore.
Keep reading, folks.