Is Liberal Catholicism Dead?

[TJ in Oregon]

"Liberal Catholicism" means two different things, one of which is more culturally relevant and basically dead within the Church, and the other is still alive within the Church but dead within society. First, the idea of the Church as an organization open to the "modernization" of morality and sexuality is basically dead (if it ever was alive to begin with). The Second Vatican Council took the Mass out of Latin, put it into modern languages, increased the involvement of the laity, and relaxed many disciplines of the Church. But many people misinterpreted Vatican II to mean some vague sense of openness and relativism that is unfounded by the actual writing in the document (aka "Spirit of Vatican II"). This never was the Church's teaching.

However, the idea of social justice is definitely still alive. Exactly how it applies to politics is somewhat confusing. The core principles are solidarity (emphasizing a personal relationship with the poor and seeing their humanity) and subsidiarity (that services should be provided on as local a level as possible) can be interpreted a variety of different ways in a political context. There are some conservative Catholics who view "subsidiarity" as an argument for federalism (though this interpretation seems somewhat vapid to me because I question how much solidarity would actually occur in it's implementation if taken to the extreme). There are also some liberal Catholics who believe political conservatism is effectively violating the principal of solidarity by stripping away funding (and there are certainly some conservatives insistent upon sticking it to poor people). This type of liberal Catholicism isn't going away any time soon. However, it damages a devout liberal Catholic interpretation when a decent number of those who follow it also take positions blatantly against the Church's personal moral teachings or speak out against the Church as an institution for it's moral teachings.