A survey published last year in the journal Politics and Religion indicated that 53% of Catholic priests admitted to being more liberal than most of their parishioners. Where the Catholic Church in the United States is concerned, the days of the liberal priest are numbered.
There have been indications in recent years that progressivism among Catholic clerics is literally dying out — that the new generation of priests are no-nonsense conservatives, unapologetic about the traditions and moral teachings of the church, and altogether resistant to the ideological fads of the day.
The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., released an 18-page report in November indicating that in terms of theological self-identification, 85% of the youngest cohort of priests described themselves as "conservative/orthodox" or "very conservative/orthodox," with only 14% describing themselves as "middle-of-the-road."
The report, based on a census of 131 bishops and thousands of priests, indicated that this represents a seismic shift, given that "theologically 'progressive' and 'very progressive' priests once made up 68% of new ordinands. Today, that number has dwindled almost to zero."
"We are witnessing a major shift in the way priests in the United States view themselves and their priesthood. Younger priests are much more likely than their older peers to describe themselves as politically conservative or moderate," said the report. "Younger priests are also much more likely to see themselves as theologically orthodox or conservative than do older priests. These shifts can be a source of friction and tension, especially between younger and older priests."
The report concluded that "many of these trends have been decades in the making and show little sign of reversal any time soon."
The New York Times confirmed this week that the priesthood's return to orthodoxy continues unabated.
Brad Vermurlen, a sociologist who has long studied political shifts in the American priesthood, emphasized that the priests ordained since 2010 "are clearly the most conservative cohort of priests we've seen in a long time."
Vermurlen and his fellow academics have observed that these priests are, for instance, by the book when it comes to questions of the sinfulness of homosexual acts and female priests or deacons.
'They're trying to restore what us old guys ruined.'
Referencing the Catholic University of America's findings, the Times highlighted that not a single surveyed priest ordained in recent years has characterized himself as "very progressive."
Younger priests are not just theologically conservative but politically conservative. Whereas roughly half of Catholic priests ordained around the time of Vatican II identified as politically liberal, almost all priests ordained since 2020 are conservative or are at the very least "moderate."
This conservative generation is apparently not interested in sugarcoating or watering down church teaching and are instead keen to embrace challenging teachings.
Rev. Zachary Galante told the Times that numerous priests in the 1970s and 1980s "were looking at the world and saying, 'The world is changing; we need to change too.'"
Apparently neither Galante nor his peers are of the mind that the church ought to be unmoored by the zeitgeist.
Rev. David Sweeney, a 31-year-old priest who was ordained with Galante, raised the matter of the sacrament of marriage and secular hollowing-out of the institution.
"That's a core tenet of our faith that our culture has shifted drastically on in the last 12 years," Rev. Sweeney told the Times. "If we're saying that we're holding to eternal truth, something that is changeless, and the world changes, well, now I guess I've changed in my relation to the world."
Rev. Galante added, "Maybe we're more conservative now because the culture moved, not because we moved."
Earlier this year, Rev. John Forliti, a retired Minnesota priest, suggested to the Associated Press that the young conservative priests "say they're trying to restore what us old guys ruined."
The Times indicated that this restoration not only means that "the liberal Catholic priest could essentially be extinct in the United States" but that it "puts the rising generations of priests increasingly at odds with secular culture, which has broadly moved to the left on questions of gender, sexuality, reproductive issues, and roles for women."
Accordingly, there may be fewer priests like Rev. James Martin doubling as LGBT activists on cable news and more priests reinforcing church teaching on various issues of moral and spiritual consequence.
The generational diminution of heterodox leftists in the priesthood is likely the result of multiple factors, but Michael Sean Winters, a columnist for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, suggested to the Times that the tendency among increasingly secular liberal families to have fewer children means "there are fewer liberals in the pews with large families."
Alternatively, conservative families who have gone forth and multiplied have contributed more to the pool of potential priests and left a conservative mark on that pool.
There is reportedly also an emphasis on "normalcy" now in Catholic seminaries. Motivated by a desire to flush out potential predators, seminaries screen applicants for psychosexual maturity. It's unclear, however, whether seminaries' emphasis on normalcy and screenings against perversion have also served as checks against progressivism in the priesthood.
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The Catholic archbishop overseeing the Archdiocese of Washington suggested in late March that despite claiming to be a devout Catholic, President Joe Biden had effectively subordinated his faith to leftist politics. The term Cardinal Wilton Gregory used to describe Biden and others with the tendency to pick and choose which nonnegotiable moral teachings to follow was "cafeteria Catholic."
In his recent speech at a Napa Institute event in Washington, D.C., Cardinal Robert Sarah — one of the most senior and recognizable leaders in the church — similarly slammed Biden, reusing Gregory's descriptor.
Cardinal Sarah, the former head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum under Pope Benedict XVI, noted at the outset of his remarks that the "West, while not the birthplace of Christianity, is home [to] much of what was once called 'Christendom' and much of what has become modern society, the roots of which are firmly European."
Sarah, a socially conservative West African, bemoaned the loss of distinction between the former and the latter, indicating that Catholics in the West have assimilated some of the same beliefs as "the general population."
The Catholic leader singled out Biden, now unpopular with the vast majority of American Catholics, as a poster boy for this kind of syncretism and willfully diluted faith.
"You have a self-identified Catholic president who is an example of what Cardinal Gregory recently described as a 'cafeteria Catholic,'" said the archbishop.
Blaze News previously reported that while Biden was celebrating the so-called "Transgender Day of Visibility" on Easter Sunday, Cardinal Gregory said that "like a number of Catholics, [Biden] picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts."
'Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense.'
"There is a phrase that we have used in the past, a 'cafeteria Catholic.' You choose that which is attractive and dismiss that which is challenging," continued Gregory.
Cardinal Gregory further suggested that "there are things, especially in terms of life issues, there are things that [Biden] chooses to ignore, or he uses the current situation as a political pawn rather than saying, 'Look, my church believes this, I'm a good Catholic, I would like to believe this.' Rather than to twist and turn some dimensions of the faith as a political advantage."
While Biden's position on gender ideology and homosexual unions certainly put him at odds with Catholic teaching and the church, his radical stance on abortion stands in direct opposition with millennia-old church teaching.
"Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable," says the Catechism. "Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life."
Cardinal Raymond Burke, a canon lawyer and former prefect of the church's highest court, said in 2020 that on account of his antagonistic posturing against the church's moral teaching on abortion, Biden "is not a Catholic in good standing and he should not approach to receive Holy Communion."
Cardinal Sarah noted that it's not only Biden who is a "cafeteria Catholic."
"Many of you Catholic public officials are in the same category. Many of your Catholic hospitals and universities are Catholic in name only," said Sarah.
'The latter is a dangerous disease even if its first symptoms seem mild.'
The religious leader noted further that the "important witness to the fullness of our Catholic faith" in America "has been traded for cultural assimilation" and that the "uniqueness of the Catholic community" in America has been lost at the macro level.
However, Cardinal Sarah said that whereas the faith in Europe is "dying and in some places is dead," in part because some prelates are fearful of "opposing the world," the same is not true of the majority of church leaders in the United States.
"[The European prelates] dream of being loved by the world. They have lost the concern of being a sign of contradiction. Perhaps too much material wealth leads to compromise with the world affairs," said Sarah. "I believe that the church of our time is experiencing the temptation of atheism. Not intellectual atheism, but this subtle and dangerous state of mind: fluid and practical atheism. The latter is a dangerous disease even if its first symptoms seem mild."
Cardinal Sarah clarified that by "practical atheism," he meant a loss of the sense of the gospel and the transformation of Scripture into a tool for secular purposes.
This practical atheism is growing increasingly popular among Catholics in other regions of the West, with the ostensible exception of the United States, said Sarah.
Cardinal Sarah added, "Too many do not take the faith seriously."
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The Vatican has recently released a declaration titled “Dignitas Infinitia,” which condemns gender theory, surrogacy, and "gender-affirming" surgeries.
While the pope is not quite as biblical or conservative as popes in the past, Allie Beth Stuckey is “excited to see this.”
“The church recalls that human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God. Desiring a personal self-determination as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God,” the declaration reads.
“That is so true,” Stuckey says, adding, “Autonomy when in submission to God can be good, and authenticity when in submission to God can be good. But when the God is self and these things are held supreme, then autonomy justifies whatever you want to do in the name of controlling your life.”
The declaration goes on to explain that gender theory denies “the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings,” which is “sexual difference.”
“In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world,” Pope Francis writes.
Francis also called on the people to “protect our humanity” by “accepting it and respecting it as it was created,” which was followed by his denouncement of "sex-change" surgeries.
The pope then goes on to call surrogacy “deplorable,” as it “represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child.”
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” he wrote, adding that he hopes the world will “prohibit this practice universally.”
Stuckey is again in complete agreement.
“You don’t have a right to conceive a child, you don’t have a right to a child. A child is not an object that you have a right to obtain. It is a gift,” she says.
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The Catholic Church strongly denounced gender theory and sex-change operations on Monday.
For years, Pope Francis' critics have argued that he has embraced liberal and progressive ideologies or, at the very least, that he placates liberal Christians by signaling a willingness to embrace progressive ideas.
Francis has no doubt given his critics ammunition.
Last November, for example, the Vatican said that priests can, in some circumstances, baptize transgender-identifying people and that such individuals may serve as godparents. One month later, the Vatican said that same-sex couples and couples in "irregular situations" may receive priestly blessings. Those directives came months after Francis told a trans-identifying person that "God loves us as we are."
But on Monday, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document — Dignitas Infinita, Latin for "Infinite Dignity" — explaining the Catholic Church's high view of human dignity.
The document outlines the theological, philosophical, historical, and scriptural basis for its view, and it lists some "grave violations" of human dignity, including: war, abortion, poverty, violence against women, human trafficking, sexual abuse, assisted suicide and euthanasia, the "marginalization" of people with disabilities, and surrogacy.
Two more "grave violations," according to the document, are gender theory and sex changes.
After establishing that all human life "is a gift from God," the document first states that embracing gender theory is akin to making "oneself God."
"Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel," the document declares.
Second, the document condemns gender theory for trying to eliminate the biological differences between men and women.
"This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world," the document explains.
Because gender theory "envisages a society without sexual differences," it must be rejected, the document instructs.
In fact, it says the only way that people can "fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity" is through acceptance of sexual differences.
Still, the Vatican emphasized that every person — regardless of the ideology or identity — must be respected and not discriminated against.
In addressing sex-change procedures, the Vatican centers its instruction on the core Christian idea that humans are created in the "image of God."
Because of this reality, the document explains that sex-change operations — many of which are irreversible — threaten human dignity.
"Any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception," the document explains.
"This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities," it adds. "However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here."
The importance of the document cannot be understated.
While many progressive Christian denominations have gone the way of popular culture and embraced far-left gender ideology, the Catholic Church has drawn a line in the sand and is standing firm on traditional and historical Christian teachings.
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Race grifter Robin DiAngelo has made a career out of projecting racism at home and abroad. In a recent podcast, she indicated there is probably no better example than in Vatican City.
While DiAngelo is admittedly ignorant when it comes to the subject matter of at least one of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, she is nevertheless convinced that Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo's masterpiece is peak "white supremacy."
DiAngelo, a supposed expert in the evils of whiteness, appeared last month on a little-known podcast entitled, "Not Your Ordinary Parts." After rehashing her go-to claims about "white fragility," DiAngelo told host Jalon Johnson that she frequently tours around with an image of a 513-year-old fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which she figures for a manifestation of identitarian hubris.
"When I'm doing a presentation, I use a lot of images. You may be surprised that the single image I use to capture the concept of white supremacy is, is, um, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel — God creating man," said DiAngelo.
While DiAngelo was able to confidently assert that the image she routinely refers to during lectures was racist, she revealed she had no idea what precisely she has been talking about.
"You know, where God is in a cloud and there's all these angels and He's reaching out and He's touching — I don't know who that is," said DiAngelo. "David or something."
The fresco DiAngelo uses in her lectures is called "The Creation of Adam," Adam being the key figure opposite God. In the fresco illustrating the creation story from the book of Genesis, God is depicted as an elderly man reaching to Adam with an outstretched finger, ostensibly giving him life.
"And God is white and David's white and the angels are white," continues DiAngelo. "Like that, that is the perfect convergence of white supremacy, patriarchy, right."
— (@)
"I don't know how you were raised. I was raised Catholic, so I saw many images like that as a child. So I'm sitting in church and I'm looking up and I see these images, I don't think to myself, 'God is white.' But that's, in a lot of ways, it's power," added the race grifter.
DiAngelo has been roundly ridiculed online for her latest comments.
"It's literally called The Creation of Adam!" wrote Reason senior editor Robby Soave.
The Rabbit Hole, fresh off helping to expose billionaire and DEI advocate Mark Cuban's discriminatory thinking, noted on X, "DEI advocates are typically amongst the most race obsessed people you'll ever meet. They mask this obsession by labeling it 'race consciousness' as if that's somehow better. When you are a hammer in search of a nail, all you see are nails; similarly, if you are a Woke in search of racism, all you see is racism."
DiAngelo's knack for finding racism anywhere and everywhere has been a lucrative gig.
Reason noted that the University of Connecticut shelled out $20,000 for DiAngelo to teach at a seminar. DiAngelo, who claims "all white people's households are racist," reportedly bags tens of thousands of dollars just for a few hours decrying imagined racism.
S4 Episode 1: White Fragility with Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D.youtu.be
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This long-anticipated declaration offers essential guidance on major moral issues and presents wisdom any serious Christian should appreciate.
An eclectic coalition fights this motherless baby-enabling technology because it violates the rights of both women and children.
The growing use of aborted fetal cell lines in medical research has been largely ignored by Catholics and the pro-life movement.
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