Ross Douthat and the Meaning of History

In a series of columns and blog entries at the New York Times website and in his recent Erasmus lecture, Ross Douthat has written of his desire to defend the Catholic Church from what he genuinely fears to be a papacy introducing unwarranted novelties into doctrine and practice. Although Douthat avoids explicit use of the "h" word -- "heresy" -- he does speak darkly of the "plot to change Catholicism."

I would like to engage Ross Douthat on the level of history, first by summarizing what I take to be his view. Like many conservative writers, he wants to see recent Catholic history as a struggle between two opposing camps that have their origins in the 1960's. On the one hand, there are the progressives, who understood the Second Vatican Council as calling for a continuing modernizing and updating of the Church. And on the other side, there are the conservatives, who wish to place a more restrictive interpretation on the Council. Douthat then recites that tired and familiar refrain about how everything bad that has happened to the Church since 1965 -- declining Mass attendance, the so-called crisis in marriage, and so forth -- is the fault of the liberals.

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