Faith in Crisis is an auspicious book which may serve many Catholics navigating the present chaotic conditions of the World and the Church. I have found this project much needed, especially as a Catholic Worker that still feels an increasingly idiosyncratic identification with traditionalist and integralist thought, even as both categories seem eclipsed by positions and promulgators I find repugnant and impious to their first principles and the Gospel itself. Again and again the text strikes at the crux of the matter: the role of authority and obedience in the tradition of the Catholic Church, and the indefectibility and divine safety of the magisterium in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
In the defense of this matter, Faith in Crisis is thoroughly excellent, and multiple chapters throughout are exemplary to this end. The book otherwise is a collection of diverse essayists which circle this theme and various issues in contemporary Catholic culture which have become pertinent to the authority question over the last decade or so. While the essays vary in strength, all of them appropriately direct conversation about those things which have been subject to scrutiny by a wide swath of Catholic critics, and put up a proper defense of the magisterium and the tradition against such interlocutors. Some are quite thorough, to the point that it feels relatively exhaustive as an introductory essay for even well-read Catholics, such as Dr. Fastiggi’s excellent contribution on Dissent in Chapter 18 or Fr. Mulcahy’s essay on Obedience in Chapter 20. Other topics such as on Ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, the state of Jewish-Catholic relations, or the so-called Pachamama affair, are so multifaceted that it makes it difficult for only a single essay to treat them in the succinct, comprehensive and strategic fashion required to answer the magisterial naysayers. Nevertheless, these essays in aggregate suffice well as good opening salvos responding to such discussions and many others, and serve as a solid springboard for further engagement.
In concurrence with the book’s preface, Faith in Crisis really does accomplish what it seeks to do, which is to mount a defense of the magisterium against those who “selectively accept or reject the teachings of the pope and the Church” and in so doing “[treat] the pope as merely another pundit to debate and oppose,” and does so well in the diverse modes which the hydra that is this postmodern critic requires. On the other hand, there are some glaring omissions from this collection that certainly belong, especially as it concerns magisterial dissent, common misconceptions, and the intransigent factionalism within the church today. Happily, some of those I feared absent were in fact treated: Americanism is explicitly addressed in Chapter 4 (though not to the extent necessary), and Liberalism is at least treated tangentially on several occasions (though not directly). Relatedly however: Capitalism has almost no mention let alone a critical treatment. Nor do the proponents of libertarianism within the Church. Neither is there a treatment of the common slanders against liberation theology, which was itself frequently conjured as a boogeyman against Pope Francis to dismiss his teaching. And sadly, there is no mention of Dorothy Day or Peter Maurin, who in many ways stand as an important prophetic American witness of fidelity to the tradition, the magisterium and the gospel, and thus serve as a most excellent salve to our present disease. From this assessment is the greatest criticism I could levy. While Faith in Crisis does well in many chapters to elucidate the history of various schismatic movements which rejected the magisterium and papal authority, it doesn’t do as thorough a job at unmasking those more pernicious movements which have sought to undermine that authority and in many sometimes more subtle ways sowed the ground for the current crisis.
The portion of these movements and individual proponents that I now draw attention can be aggregated under “Catholic Fusionism,” as Kevin Gallagher addressed in his article. For my purposes I mean to explicitly address that of Michael Novak, George Weigel, and the Acton Institute. The first two are both cited neutrally or positively within this text for reasons unrelated to my frustrations, and the latter, despite ranking among the top 20 most prolific Social Policy think tanks in America, has no mention whatever; the silence on these figures strikes me as somewhat deafening given their respective influence over American Catholicism and their continuity with strains of thought within it that have severely undermined magisterial authority for over a century. In these three figures, thoroughly important in the last few decades in the formation of the present American Catholic mind, we find critical errors about Capitalism, Liberalism and Americanism which desperately need to be addressed and explored in the context of this present crisis. This review does not seek to accomplish that lofty and exhausting task, but it does seek to at least broach the subject and begin perhaps several conversations thereabout that I felt were sorely missing from Faith in Crisis.
Michael Novak and George Weigel are both integral Catholic voices in the American neoconservative movement in the latter half of the 20th century, and remained influential among the laity and even clergy in publications like First Things and similar projects. I do not mean to suggest that Novak or Weigel are wicked men, or that their work is fruitless—I have personally benefited from both. However, when it comes to the disposition of both toward neoconservatism, liberal capitalism and the Western bloc, it is abundantly clear that their biases have frequently found cause to misinterpret or dismiss magisterial teaching in often egregious ways which obfuscate the knowledge and conscience of the laity in politically partisan or ideologically motivated fashion against the clarity of the papal magisterium. This is most clear in Weigel’s marking up of Caritas in Veritate “in gold and red,” as it were, but is likewise exemplified when any of their circle speak on things of the ‘Western bloc’ clearly warned about in the social encyclicals; be it Sollicitudo Rei Socialis or Laborem Exercens, the liberal capitalist project of the West always evades scrutiny in their magisterial imagination, even when it is the direct and obvious object of condemnation. For a brief exemplary treatment of one such claim among others, see my fellow Catholic Worker Sean Domencic’s essay titled The Papal Condemnation of Capitalism.
As to Acton Institute, though it is absent in the text, I was thoroughly happy that Döllinger, closely related to the Lord Acton which inspired the American project, does take rightful rebuke in that excellent Chapter 18. Fr. Robert Sirico founded his impious Acton Institute in 1990, as a libertarian think tank which has consistently dismissed papal authority and social teaching which contravene libertarian, capitalist and a perverse free-market dogma. The cohorts of the Acton Institute act akin to Novak and Weigel, but far more prolifically, and in manners which cannot be described otherwise than manifest dissent. If they do not dismiss encyclicals or their authority outright, through vain appeals to prudential judgment or assertions of lacking competence, they will twist their meaning to accord with their libertarian priors.
Wrapped up in all this of course is the American Church’s reception of social teaching critical of the ideology and practice of the Western bloc, most especially in magisterial critiques of capitalism, liberalism and the actions and policies of US regimes domestically and abroad. More recently, we see this in the demonization that papal teaching concerning the environment has received from American Catholics; in 2015 Laudato Si’ was already lambasted as communist, despite being only lightly developed from the previous two popes’ implicit and explicit teaching on the same matter and surrounding issues. This distortion—willful or ignorant—that slanders historical Christian teaching as a communist element in the magisterium doesn’t begin with Pope Francis, either; it is a long-held Americanist tradition of dissent. We see a constant dismissal of magisterial authority under the auspices of anticommunism, and not just from so-called rad-trads; a long line can be drawn straight from Weigel’s crusade against Caritas in Veritate under the specter of ‘communism’ in the 2000s, back to the general lambast 90 years earlier against the Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction in 1919. Anecdotally, I see this same dissent so casually and easily on the lips of American Catholics everywhere, whether it’s as simple and direct as ugly hateful opinions on the positive use of nuclear arms in WWII which were condemned by living popes, and other garbled impious judgment on just war which have been made embarrassingly manifest in the last several months, or as tangled as the widespread distortions and deceit about magisterial teaching on liberation theology since the 1970s, as propagated by Tradition, Family, Property (itself a dubious group rooted in dissent, heresy and idolatry from Brazil and historically entangled with anticommunist intelligence networks such as the CIA).
Lastly, this ubiquitous and dangerous American dissent warned about by Pope Leo XIII himself did not go unnoticed in its own day, as the dawn of the Catholic Worker Movement and the tireless work and preaching of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day were explicitly built on this fundamental reality: “Rome has spoken; but who has listened?” These two American heroes—whose absence from this otherwise great text is likewise noted with sorrow—sought to bring to the fore the dynamite of Catholic Social Teaching and the electric Papal Encyclicals that no one in America seemed to pay any attention to whatsoever. Notably, the very Bishop John Ireland who received Pope Leo’s warning in those days about Americanism tritely dismissed it as a “shadow heresy” that did not exist, and proceeded to do nothing about it, in part because he himself was a great proponent of liberalism, capitalism, and the things which the magisterium has often condemned in the papal tradition of the social encyclical that Americans love to trivialize, dismiss and undermine. It does not escape notice that Bishop Ireland’s xenophobia, intransigence and pride—vices common to those rightly criticized today in Likoudis’ collection—are also to blame for the great tragedy of Fr. Alexis Toth’s schism from Rome. Pride and dissent always cause schism and apostasy to flower. But the complicity and complacency of even American clergy in papal dissent did not deter Peter or Dorothy in their fervent recourse to the encyclicals and to the great Catholic tradition of political theology which inspired so much of Peter’s easy essays and the collective labors of the early Catholic Worker. And today, this same papal encyclical tradition nourishes orthodox Catholic Workers around the United States, whether that be the seasonal Embertide celebrations of the Rechabite community in Lancaster, PA; the excellent Maurin Academy and Dustbowl Diatribes run from JPII Catholic Worker Farm in Kansas City, MO; or the beautiful labor for the homeless performed by those Catholic Workers at Our Lady of the Road in South Bend, IN, where no one who dies in the streets leaves this world without a coffin lovingly crafted; to name just a few. This is the well-lived witness to the magisterium which the American Church must embark today.
Mercy, prayers and correction must be offered for these and those so deceived, for God knows I was likewise ensorceled by the likes of libertarianism for a time, until the scales fell from my eyes reading the Papal Encyclicals for myself. But this is why any analysis of our present crisis in the Church must include a foray into Americanism, Catholic Fusionism, Liberal Capitalism, and the sabotage of papal authority by much less obvious dissenters than Lefebvre; for, the obfuscation of magisterial teaching on matters of political economy and other idols of Western modernity has most clearly tilled the soil for American laity and sown the seeds of dissent which we can now see today on full display.
As a final word for Faith in Crisis, none of this is to say that this auspicious collection is unnecessary or unwarranted. On the contrary, it is a most welcome and ardent antidote to a disease that has plagued the American Church since its foundations. In truth, my critique can be summed up as this: that it ought to have been published sooner! No need to wait for the schismatic element to metastasize now in the reign of Pope Leo XIV when the American poison of dissent has been laid bare since the reign of Pope Leo XIII over a century before. And in this, I must give all thanks and appreciation for my friend Andrew Likoudis, who at last among all Catholic men in America mustered the strength and wisdom to gather such a good and holy medicine for God’s ailing people. Thank you, Andrew. May this be a testament of metanoia among American laity, and may we live to see our children more obedient than our fathers.
Photo: Christ Asleep in His Boat, Jules-Joseph Meynier, Musée de Cambrai, France.
James Boll is a husband, convert, and Catholic Worker who works with the homeless in Lancaster, PA. He and his wife were married according to the 1962 Roman Missal with the dispensation of their bishop in 2021, and spent the first few years of their marriage at Holy Family Catholic Worker.
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