Salvaging Catholicism

1. Taylor Marshall's new book (Infiltration) shines a spotlight on the dilemma facing Catholic conservatives. Many Catholic conservatives view the moral and theological implosion of Catholicism under Pope Francis with alarm bordering on panic. But if you think the Catholic church is the indefectible Bride of Christ, then you can't say the source of the problem originates in Catholicism, since that would imply that Catholicism suffers from a design flaw. 

So one face-saving apologetic strategy is to say the source of the problem comes from outside forces, foreign to Catholicism. It's like the alien invasion trope in science fiction where extraterrestrials conquer the human race, not through a full-frontal assault, but by quietly replacing humans, especially in positions of leadership, with look-alike aliens. By the time humans catch on to the ruse, it's too late. The aliens outnumber them or control all the levers of power. 

However, the problem with that apologetic strategy is that if forces alien to Catholicism sneak into the organization and systematically supplant members of the hierarchy and priesthood, then Catholicism loses its original identity. It ceases to be the church founded by Jesus. This is especially destructive to an organization whose doctrinal vision is defined from the top down. 

2. Catholics like Taylor have a grand theory. I think many other Catholic conservatives are simply hoping against hope that the worst won't happen. Their response is to stay the course in the desperate conviction that God will divert the asteroid before a theological cataclysm. Or, to vary the metaphor, they won't push the button on the ejection seat until the last possible moment. If the Catholic church really is the undetectable Bride of Christ, then it's inconceivable that God will allow the asteroid to maintain a collision course right up to the point of impact.

However, a problems with that pragmatic policy is that it leaves them with no contingency plans if their faith in Catholicism is misplaced. If they preemptively discount the Protestant faith as a viable fallback option, what's left? Some will flee to Eastern orthodoxy, but that suffers from the grass is greener on the other side syndrome. Moreover, Catholic apologists present Catholicism in such totalistic terms that for some Catholicism, to falsify Catholicism falsifies Christianity. 

3. The crisis is generated by a changing church. When theology and Christian ethics undergo sea-change, that raises the question of what is true. If past teaching is false, why think new teaching is true? If past teaching is false, that means the source of teaching can't be trusted. Over the centuries, the Catholic church has been changed by the times and places in which it finds itself. 

The Protestant faith doesn't have the same problem. Unlike the Catholic church, the Bible doesn't change. What we've got is all we're gonna get. Protestants have their own intellectual challenges, although I don't think those are formidable, but Catholics face a different kind of challenge. They are using a mutable ruler. Yesterday's ruler is longer or shorter than tomorrow's ruler. The standards keep changing. So what's the standard to distinguish truth from falsehood?