UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Paul Lakeland | Dec. 24, 2014
THE CATHOLIC LABYRINTH: POWER, APATHY, AND A PASSION FOR REFORM IN THE AMERICAN CHURCH
By Peter McDonough
Published by Oxford University Press, $29.95
The Catholic Labyrinth: Power, Apathy, and a Passion for Reform in the American Church is a most unusual and remarkably provocative book, both in its thesis and in the way it is constructed. There are surely very few texts on “the state of the American Catholic church” in which bishops figure very little, the pope even less. There cannot be many written by someone quietly signaling liberal sympathies while being less than enthusiastic about the chance of real change. And this has to be the only one in which Jesus Christ, the Gospel and the Eucharist are remarkable by their almost total absence from the weighty 300 pages of closely argued but elegant and attractive prose.
Author Peter McDonough argues that since the Catholic community as a whole is mildly conservative and fairly complacent, the chances of an end to a moderately authoritarian and insistently hierarchical church are slim. Moreover, the fact that most contemporary Catholics vote with their feet on most if not all of the ethical teaching of the church, both sexual and political, reduces still further any righteous indignation for change. …
One of the more original aspects of the author’s argument is that he marginalized the effectiveness of both conservative and reformist pressure groups in today’s church. While many think of the church as an intensely polarized community, McDonough’s message is that these strong feelings only influence a minority, while the majority of Catholics just go to church and then get on with their lives without paying much attention to either left or right or, for that matter, the voice of ecclesial authority itself.
Conservative Catholic groups, of course, are very well-funded (the Knights of Columbus, Opus Dei, First Things magazine) and have figured out that their struggle is a cultural one in which old-time religion and “family values” blend into a coherent if not particularly influential ideological position. Influential, of course, with a minority of Catholics and, perhaps, a majority of Catholic bishops, but not especially with the mainstream, and destined, thinks McDonough, to fail ultimately to convince a body of believers suspicious of culture warriors and an ethic of sexual repression.
Reform groups, on the other hand, are passionate about internal ecclesial issues but far less well-funded (FutureChurch, Voice of the Faithful, SNAP) and quite disinclined to connect their various platforms to a wider national political agenda. Their cherished causes may find some support among the rank and file of the church, but not enough to inspire real reform.
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