John Allen: "Evangelical Catholicism Triumphant"

(Hat tip: Custos Fidei)

There are people who would never otherwise dirty their fingers with the newsprint from National Catholic Reporter who, nevertheless, will sing the praises of the Reporter's man at the Vatican, John Allen.

For me, the jury's still out. Allen seems fair-minded, but every once in a while he writes something that has me scratching my head and wondering what his agenda is.

The following piece is one of those moments. Allen uses the term "Evangelical Catholicism" to describe the traditional elements within the Church as opposed to the more "progressive" elements in the Church, which he describes as "Liberal Catholicism". And I'm left wondering: "What's Allen's angle here - why is he trying to link the traditional elements within the Church to evangelicalism?

Here's an excerpt - see if you can make anything of it:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (National Catholic Reporter) – History always cuts deeper than headlines, a point that clearly applies to recent Vatican moves to dust off the old Latin Mass and to declare Catholicism the one true church. Beneath the upheaval triggered by those decisions lies a profound shift in the church’s geological plates, and perhaps the best way of describing the resulting earthquake is as the triumph of evangelical Catholicism.

Beginning with the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978, Catholicism has become a steadily more evangelical church – uncompromising and unabashedly itself. Evangelical Catholicism today dominates the church’s leadership class, and it feeds on the energy of a strong grass-roots minority.

Proposing a Catholic counterpart to evangelical Protestantism may seem the ultimate in apples-and-oranges comparison, especially since some evangelicals would view being lumped in with the pope as tantamount to fighting words. Yet in a secularized, pluralistic world in which Christianity is no longer the air people breathe, Protestants and Catholics face the same crucial question: Should the relationship between church and culture be a two-way street, as most liberals say, with the church adjusting teachings and structures in light of the signs of the times? Or is the problem not so much a crisis of structures but a crisis of nerve, as most evangelicals believe, with the antidote being bold proclamation of timeless truths?

Liberal Catholicism enjoyed a heyday from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, and it’s not about to die off, overeager prophecies in some circles notwithstanding. During the last quarter-century, however, the evangelicals have won most of the fights in terms of official Catholic policy. Whether that’s a rollback on reform or the emergence of a “new, sane modernity,” as Pope Benedict XVI claims, is a matter for debate, but there’s no mistaking which way the winds are blowing.

(emphasis added)

Allen then discusses "the Vatican’s twin blows for traditional Catholic identity [which] have produced both consternation and delight": the motu proprio and the declaration from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declaring the Catholic Church to be the Church.

Okay, now here's where it gets dodgy and has me thinking "Okay, what's he up to?". Allen goes off on a tangent claiming that "such robust assertions of tradition" are "implied in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a project of former Nixon aide and prominent evangelical Charles Colson and Father Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic convert from Lutheranism." (emphasis added)

Huh? What does what is essentially an American political coalition between conservative Catholics and Evangelicals have to do with tradition-oriented Vatican policy and Church teaching? Draw your own conclusions as to what Allen is getting at, but, among other things, I do think this betrays, once again, the prevailing America-centric ethos of the National Catholic Reporter.

Allen continues by attempting to define this "Evangelical Catholicism":

The evangelical impulse isn’t exactly “conservative,” because there’s little cultural Catholicism these days left to conserve. Instead, it’s a way of pitching classical Catholic faith [ED.: So, why not use "Classical Catholicism"] and practice in the context of pluralism, making it modern and traditional all at once.

***
... in terms of their broad underlying concerns, the evangelical agenda ... pivots on three major issues: authority, the centrality of key doctrines and Christian exclusivity. If so, there’s little doubt that Catholicism under John Paul II and Benedict XVI has become ever more boldly evangelical.

***
To be clear, evangelical Catholicism isn’t fundamentalism. Benedict, after all, recently jettisoned limbo – understood as the eternal resting place of unbaptized babies – as a theological hypothesis that had outlived its usefulness. Yet just as Protestant evangelicals stay closely tethered to the Bible, evangelical Catholics strongly affirm the magisterium, meaning the church’s teaching authority.

(emphasis added)

Again, huh? Why are those concerns "evangelical" as opposed to "Catholic" or, if you will, "traditional Catholic"?

Why the term "evangelical"? Is it merely to avoid using the term "traditional" with all of its connotations? If so, then why not use "conservative", which has connotations of its own but has been the term Allen has used in the past? There is Allen's assertion that this "impulse isn’t exactly 'conservative,' because there’s little cultural Catholicism these days left to conserve". Perhaps that explains it. Or, perhaps, Allen has taken to heart the criticism that the Reporter's coverage of divisions within the Church mirrors too much the divisions in the American polity - in that case, "conservative" also has connotations that Allen might want to avoid. But then, why does he use the term "Liberal Catholicism"? And as far as loaded terms with all sorts of connotations go, it's pretty difficult to find a more loaded word these days than "evangelical". So, I'm at a loss as to what's up.

Please go read the whole thing. I would appreciate any feedback as to what readers think might be Allen's purpose behind using the term "evangelical" to describe this version of Catholicism.


NB: As a former evangelical myself, I do not take issue with evangelicalism. Nor do I have any quarrel with those Catholics who have described themselves as "Evangelical Catholics", many of whom I hold in the deepest respect and whom I believe have much to offer. And I have absolutely no desire to reignite the debates over the meaning of "Evangelical Catholicism" that ravaged much of St. Blog's earlier this year.

Suffice it to say that Allen is writing to a particular audience, and that audience has a particular point of view regarding evangelicals, especially conservative ones. In that context, I am suspicious of an attempt to paint a perceived direction in Vatican policy and in the Church itself with the brush of "Evangelical Catholicism", especially when there is an attempt to link such a direction in the Church with American conservative political coalitions.