Word: hitchcock
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...Although Hitchcock excludes some liberals from his invective, his critique is aimed broadly at most of the Church Left. This is, in fact, they key problem with the book. Hitchcock ends up using the words "liberal," "radical," "progressive" and "reformer" almost interchangeably. Despite this key weakness, many of Hitchcock's criticisms are very much to the point. Indeed, a truly "radical" critique of the Church reformist movement could be built quite easily upon Hitchcock's evidence...
...James Hitchcock's The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism, in attempting to answer the first questions, replies with a loud "Yes!" to the second and (even louder) "Liberals!" to the third. For Hitchcock, many of the Catholic liberals of the early sixties were not primarily concerned with Church renewal and reform. They only thought they were. Their real crisis, he says, was a spiritual one which they were unable to face. What liberals thought were dissatisfactions about Church structure and liturgy were, in fact, much deeper doubts about religion and God Himself. (And indeed, even the idea...
...criticisms against the Catholic liberals are reminiscent of various revisionist critiques of the Progressive movement. Like the New Politics, the Catholic Left in America is primarily made up of the wealthy, well-educated and upwardly mobile. For Hitchcock, their revolt is in a very real sense a bid for power...
...Hitchcock notes that many of the new positions of authority in the Church have been taken over by the liberals--they are writing the catechisms, controlling the publishing houses, preparing the curricula. Their fight against authority he says, is not a fight against authority itself, but only against those holding power. Their victory would represent not a real revolution, but only a palace coup...
...Hitchcock perceives (very correctly, I think) that the liberals failed to realize that many of their reforms would lead not to a radicalization of the Church--that is, more power over the Church by individual Catholics and greater Church concern for problems of war, poverty and powerlessness--but rather to what Hitch cock tellingly calls "spiritual sub-urbanization." The radical spiritual ness of the Church is very much outside of the mainstream of American pragmatism with its emphasis on GNP and incentive systems. What liberal Catholics have failed to see--and what the Fathers Berrigan and Thomas Merton...