Liberal Catholic layman Garry Wills has written another book on the Catholic Church, a kind of follow-up to his Bare Ruined Choirs (1972), which I reviewed a long time ago in The Wall Street Journal. In that book, he reminisced about the parish of his youth, one that sounded a lot like the parish in Going My Way. It was gone forever, he said, and good riddance. A newer, more liberal Catholicism had replaced the Catholicism of his youth. Wills had been radicalized in the 1960’s, and he argued that the American Catholic Church had, too.His new book is called Papal Sins. I prefer to let Catholics respond to Mr. Wills’s historical critique of conservative popes and liberal ones Who Did Not Go Far Enough. Here, I want to discuss some implications of statistical trends that he brings up.
From Going Their Way by Gary North
Every Protestant denomination that has adopted liberalism has suffered a significant decline in its membership. The onset of this decline can be dated: 1926, the year following the Scopes trial/media circus. Also beginning in 1926, independent fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches started growing.Catholic liberals, such as Garry Wills, have told the Catholic hierarchy ever since 1950: "Liberalize or die!" By 1960, the Catholic church had entered the race to match the mainline Protestants. Despite its late start, it seems to have won.
Sums up the current situation pretty well.