Should Catholics Keep Up With The Times?

Michie · Oct 4, 2023

Or is it time to slow down?

Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, one of the Church’s leading prelates, has called for a revision of Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Why? Well, because “the Church has always moved with the times and has always adapted.”

Only, “today we must be faster,” says Hollerich, because “the change in Civilization we are witnessing today is the greatest change since the invention of the wheel.”

I don’t know if Hollerich is old enough to remember, but the same thing was being said by many in the 1960s. In that era, it sure looked like the times they were “a changing.” People wore bell-bottoms, beads, and tie-dyed shirts. The Civil Rights Movement was changing the way we thought about race. The Beatles were all the rage. And students were taking over colleges and universities all across the nation.

Moreover, the sexual revolution was in full swing. Women wore mini-skirts. New types of sexually transmitted diseases were discovered almost monthly. And movie theaters featured films like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Meanwhile, nuns and priests were leaving the Church in droves in search of self-fulfillment.

Back then, as now, many in the Catholic Church called for changes that would enable the Church to get with the changing times. If only priests could marry or women could become priests, it was argued, the Church would become relevant to the modern world, and modern people would fill the churches.

Those two changes were never enacted, but numerous other reforms were. The Mass in Latin was replaced with the Mass in the vernacular, Gregorian Chant was replaced with folk-rock, religious studies texts were rewritten to reflect the latest theories in psychology, priests winked at contraception and out-of-wedlock sexual activity; and, in general, the clergy took a much more relaxed attitude toward sexual sins.

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