I was thinking about this the other day, after a visit to a Catholic bookstore when we went to go to that basilica, and then talking with the cassock-wearing seminarian my age in class -
The Catholic hierarchy is trending conservative, and so are people entering seminaries, so that means a lot of a conservative stuff top-down - a return to "tradition" (usually what was happening about 50 years before people were born, so people can get nostalgic about it), which includes Latin, priests wearing cassocks, etc.; and a big concerns with sex ethics (abortion, gay stuff, etc.).
-BUT-
I realized that something odd is happening with white conservative catholics, b/c of the rapprochement w/evangelicals since the concern with sex ethics has made them find common cause... At the bookstore I went to, fully 1/5 to 1/4 of books were by conservative evangelicals (!), which makes me wonder if the flock that is most in-tune with the future of the hierarchy and is all about tradition is actually getting more Protestant-like by osmosis in such matters as -
- biblical interpretation - there's proof-texting everywhere, like that "you created me in my mother's womb" as an argument for why people should be pro-life.
- there's tons of trashy facile pop culture theology, in shirts and bumper stickers etc.
- "lowest common denominator theology" - e.g. the cassock-wearing seminarian said he hears people say evangelical stuff like, "Well, if you think you're saved by Christ, that's all that matters," and he has to set them right.
I would love to get polls on this.
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2 comments:
You should check whether there are any sociology of religion types conducting such polls, which would indeed be fascinating. As to Biblical interpretation in part., it would also be interesting to discuss it with teachers of Biblical theology in Catholic seminaries and whether they sense a greater resistance to how modern Biblical studies figure in their curricula. Back home, for example, a substantive number of religious orders send their seminarians to this one graduate center founded by Dutch Dominicans for post-novitiate studies. Most of the Bible teachers there brings a hefty dose of modern Biblical scholarship into their teaching. And, although conservatism in Hispanic Catholics is not fully subsumed by what you nicely describe as "Protestant-like osmosis", seminarians here and there these days are, by and large, JP II conservatives and their Biblical sensibilities do converge. So I would be curious. Cheers. L.
PS. bring NOT brings...:)
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