Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-30T07:05:11.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Credibility of the Catholic Church as Public Actor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Thomas O'Loughlin*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham

Abstract

This article assumes that there is a profound crisis of credibility in the Catholic Church today. This is distinct from the issue of the credibility of Christian faith or the credibility of theism, for many who believe, indeed many Catholics, are affected by this sense that the Church, as a public actor, lacks credibility. Moreover, while it would be a mistake to seek the roots of this lack of credibility within general appeals to “modern unbelief,” so it would also be a mistake to imagine that it is purely a matter of “image” or as a direct result of the revelations about clerical child-abuse and its cover-up. It argues that modern society has evolved, through painful experience, a healthy scepticism about large organisations and with this has developed a set of social values (e.g. mutual responsibility and transparency) that are at odds with many of the values (e.g. hierarchy) that the Church has inherited from its past. Far from seeing these developments as part of a pathology of modernity, they can be seen as the work of the Spirit and a challenge to the Church to embrace new ways of being a witness to the truth and new ways of embodying the Christ in its living.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2013 The Dominican Council.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)