The Church’s future steeped in its past

When Pope Benedict reigned, my publisher — Random House — asked me if I could write a very quick biography of Cardinal Marc Oullet if the Holy Spirit went all Canadian and gave us a homegrown Pope. I agreed of course, but part of me was dreading the speed at which I would have had to proceed. It didn’t happen of course, and while the cardinal would have made a splendid Holy Father, I would not have made a splendid biographer. Right, said Random House, instead we want a book about how the Church will change or not change, how Pope Francis will shape things. This was firmer ground. And it’s just been published as The Future of Catholicism (Signal Books).

Let me emphasize that prophecy is not one of my gifts, and nor I am a member of the Magisterium. The book is not concerned with prediction or with advising the hierarchy; there have been some books of the latter variety — from the left of the Church for years, from the right of the Church quite recently — and I find them to be presumptive and arrogant. No, this book is something a little different.

After an introductory essay explaining what Catholicism can and cannot change, the nature of truth, the basics of Church theology and what Pope Francis is perhaps trying to achieve, I analyse various departments of the Catholic future. In a chapter on same-sex marriage I explain precisely why we hold the views we do, how they are based on love and not hatred, and how they cannot be altered in any substance. The way we explain marriage and sexuality may change, but what is actually being explained cannot. That, for example, Pope Francis uses the word “gay” instead of “homosexual” is a new style, not a new truth.