As much as I’ve enjoyed your writing on the topic of the crisis in the church, and as excellent as this article is, I’m very glad to hear the conclusion that you’ve come to. I’m sure it’s not easy to rethink and back off from something you’ve been committed to for so long, so I want to commend you for the courage that it takes.
I’ve always gone back and forth between over intellectualizing and living out my faith in the real world, living a liturgical life. Recently I’ve basically committed myself to the latter, and my relationship to God and to the people in my life have been thriving because of it.
One book that reaaaally helped me in this regard-despite some controversy around it-is ‘Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries’ by Sebastian Morello. As it turns out, our Catholic tradition is much more magical and embodied than trad social media had me believing.
His diagnosis of the crisis mirrors your work, especially your last two articles, albeit using different language and looking at it from a philosophical and metaphysical standpoint. And his antidote is very similar (in my eyes anyway) to the conclusion that you’ve come to, although he’s fleshed it out quite a bit more. If you haven’t read it I think you might get some good out of it!
What ‘worries’ me about this whole trend is that people are beginning to treat Catholicism almost therapeutically — less as a divinely constituted Church with binding doctrine, jurisdiction, and sacramental order, and more as a path toward personal balance, symbolism, embodiment, aesthetics, or psychological flourishing.
Certainly a Catholic life should bear fruit in the soul. But the crisis cannot be solved merely by stepping away from “over-intellectualizing” into lived experience, ritual atmosphere, or mystical language. Even beautiful spiritual language can become another refuge from the harder juridical questions.
At some point the Catholic mind still has to ask:
who was lawfully sent?
where is demonstrable mission?
how is authority publicly traced?
Otherwise we slowly drift from revealed religion into curated spirituality dressed in traditional clothing.
I actually agree with part of this. Many people do see the catastrophe but then retreat into camps, personalities, or systems they emotionally trust. But the solution cannot simply be choosing our preferred model of crisis management.
The real question is much narrower and much more Catholic:
where is the demonstrable apostolic mission and jurisdiction required to govern and sanctify publicly in the name of the Church?
Once that question is asked clearly, the conversation changes. Because Catholic authority was never meant to arise from psychological balance, prudential branding, moderation between extremes, or whichever faction feels most reasonable. It must be publicly traceable to lawful mission.
That is the point many discussions continue to orbit around without directly confronting.
I've enjoyed your writing even when I've disagreed good luck on future
I have always enjoyed your writing, even while I may disagree, it will be sad to not see a good moderating voice go. That being said I pray for success in future adventures and be sure that IIT beats out the Herod Fable or whatever it's called.
I remain skeptical of applying wholistic psychological models in definitive ways. I don't discount that it can apply in particular and can't say where the line between the two is...
That being said the model reminds me of Thomas Sowells Constrained vs Unconstrained vision political philosophy. Where one vision disregards human considerations as arbitrarily limiting what could be. The other doggedly insists those constraints are real and must be considered and worked within. Generally speaking constrained is conservative and vice versa, although it doesn't map perfectly to a conservative liberal binary.
As much as I’ve enjoyed your writing on the topic of the crisis in the church, and as excellent as this article is, I’m very glad to hear the conclusion that you’ve come to. I’m sure it’s not easy to rethink and back off from something you’ve been committed to for so long, so I want to commend you for the courage that it takes.
I’ve always gone back and forth between over intellectualizing and living out my faith in the real world, living a liturgical life. Recently I’ve basically committed myself to the latter, and my relationship to God and to the people in my life have been thriving because of it.
One book that reaaaally helped me in this regard-despite some controversy around it-is ‘Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries’ by Sebastian Morello. As it turns out, our Catholic tradition is much more magical and embodied than trad social media had me believing.
His diagnosis of the crisis mirrors your work, especially your last two articles, albeit using different language and looking at it from a philosophical and metaphysical standpoint. And his antidote is very similar (in my eyes anyway) to the conclusion that you’ve come to, although he’s fleshed it out quite a bit more. If you haven’t read it I think you might get some good out of it!
I look forward to seeing where you go from here!
What ‘worries’ me about this whole trend is that people are beginning to treat Catholicism almost therapeutically — less as a divinely constituted Church with binding doctrine, jurisdiction, and sacramental order, and more as a path toward personal balance, symbolism, embodiment, aesthetics, or psychological flourishing.
Certainly a Catholic life should bear fruit in the soul. But the crisis cannot be solved merely by stepping away from “over-intellectualizing” into lived experience, ritual atmosphere, or mystical language. Even beautiful spiritual language can become another refuge from the harder juridical questions.
At some point the Catholic mind still has to ask:
who was lawfully sent?
where is demonstrable mission?
how is authority publicly traced?
Otherwise we slowly drift from revealed religion into curated spirituality dressed in traditional clothing.
I actually agree with part of this. Many people do see the catastrophe but then retreat into camps, personalities, or systems they emotionally trust. But the solution cannot simply be choosing our preferred model of crisis management.
The real question is much narrower and much more Catholic:
where is the demonstrable apostolic mission and jurisdiction required to govern and sanctify publicly in the name of the Church?
Once that question is asked clearly, the conversation changes. Because Catholic authority was never meant to arise from psychological balance, prudential branding, moderation between extremes, or whichever faction feels most reasonable. It must be publicly traceable to lawful mission.
That is the point many discussions continue to orbit around without directly confronting.
I've enjoyed your writing even when I've disagreed good luck on future
I have always enjoyed your writing, even while I may disagree, it will be sad to not see a good moderating voice go. That being said I pray for success in future adventures and be sure that IIT beats out the Herod Fable or whatever it's called.
I remain skeptical of applying wholistic psychological models in definitive ways. I don't discount that it can apply in particular and can't say where the line between the two is...
That being said the model reminds me of Thomas Sowells Constrained vs Unconstrained vision political philosophy. Where one vision disregards human considerations as arbitrarily limiting what could be. The other doggedly insists those constraints are real and must be considered and worked within. Generally speaking constrained is conservative and vice versa, although it doesn't map perfectly to a conservative liberal binary.
Good luck with whatever you decide to do!