DAYTON (OH)
Dayton Daily News
October 08, 2018
By Ross Douthat
Let me ask you to do the impossible, tear your mind away from the Kavanaugh affair for a moment, and cast your eyes from the new Rome to the old one — from the American Empire’s judicial wars to the similar mix of scandal, polarization and intrigue in the Roman Catholic Church.
The pontificate of Francis and the presidency of Donald Trump have been odd mirrors of one another for a while — populist leaders, institutional crises, norm violations, #metoo scandals, leaks and whistleblowers and cries of “fake news” and more. And as the Trump era has moved toward its Kavanaugh crescendo, the Catholic drama has also escalated, with the church’s doctrinal conflict and its sex abuse scandal converging in a single destabilizing crisis.
This month the crux of the drama is the Synod on Young People, a meeting of bishops in Rome that like prior synods in the Francis era is a chance for the pope to prod some alteration of church teaching on sexuality through a process stage-managed to give the appearance of consensus.
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