Ross Douthat: Boy Genius

In today's column Ross Douthat argues that

Conventional wisdom holds that such respect [for the papacy] is increasingly misplaced, and that the papacy is increasingly a millstone around Roman Catholicism’s neck. If it weren’t for the reactionaries in the Vatican, the argument runs, priests might have been permitted to marry, forestalling the sex abuse crisis. Birth control, gay relationships, divorce and remarriage might have been blessed, bringing lapsed Catholics back into the fold. Theological dissent would have been allowed to flourish, creating a more welcoming environment for religious seekers.

And yet none of these assumptions have any real evidence to back them up. Yes, sex abuse has been devastating to the church. But as Newsweek noted earlier this year, there’s no data suggesting that celibate priests commit abuse at higher rates than the population as a whole, or that married men are less prone to pedophilia. (The real problem was the hierarchy’s fear of scandal, which led to endless cover-ups and enabled serial predation.)

And yes, the church’s exclusive theological claims and stringent moral message don’t go over well in a multicultural, sexually liberated society. But the example of Catholicism’s rivals suggests that the church might well be much worse off if it had simply refashioned itself to fit the prevailing values of the age. That’s what the denominations of mainline Protestantism have done, across the last four decades — and instead of gaining members, they’ve dwindled into irrelevance.

Except, of course, that Pew reported in 2007 that

While those Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion have seen the greatest growth in numbers as a result of changes in affiliation, Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic.

Here is the political breakdown of Catholic's political affiliations:

 

Republican 23%

Lean Republican10%

Independent 10%

Lean Democratic15%

Democratic 33%

Other/ no preference/ don't know/ refused 9%

 

48% support the more socially liberal political party while 33% of them support the less socially liberal party.  The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other yet remains steadfastly less socially liberal and this won't and hasn't hurt it because those that left did not because they are socially liberal and the Catholic Church isn't but rather because of the opposite reason.